I'm Back
I got completely lazy over the holiday break, and didn't post a thing. I ate pretty badly, of course, but I worked out over the whole time. The result is probably a 0.2 - 0.4 kg gain. Not too bad considering I re-aquainted myself with the Pizza Hut Manager's Special (two large 1 topping pizzas with a side of buffalo wings for $19.95), ate a whole pound of Godiva chocolates, and otherwise sat around watching bad tv and snacking.
I cooked last night for the first time in over a month. While I was at Henry's, I ran into some friends from OA. Lisa was excited to see me, and was very friendly, as usual. But I got a very cold reception from Dan, who basically just tried to get away from me as soon as possible. I don't know what the story is, but it's probably because he doesn't really accept me at OA. Yes, I overeat too. But I don't belong in their victim's club. Maybe if I believed in any of their 12 steps, I'd get more acceptance. Turns out I have the wrong set of values.
I guess there are some New Year's resolution people at the gym this week. There certainly are a lot of gym membership commercials on tv, as well as marathon telecasts of last year's reality weightloss shows. There were also a whole bunch of US-Weekly type celebrity diet secret shows on VH1, which all helped me to get a little motivated to lose the last few kgs.
posted by stephenhow @ 9:30 AM
9 Comments:
I would be very interested in reading you blog about why you are a valid member of OA, but also why you are not part of their victims club.
I have a similar story, but I would like to save it for comments in that blog.
Well, I'm pretty sure I'm a classic overeater, since I share all the same experiences and feelings with other OA members, down to the tendency to isolate, the guilt and shame, the multiple fast-food drive-thrus in a night, etc.
But OA is a victims club, where overeating is some unexplicable disease that we have no power over, and have to relinquish control to a higher power. You're not allowed to deviate from the orthodoxy, and you can't say things like "overeating is a natural reaction to our fast-food environment" or "exercise is the best way to overcome your problems". So, I go just for the dinners after the meeting, and talk about overeating, and frame it all as a victim. But I'm getting hints that I'm not accepted, which is pretty bad in a place that accepts all kinds of behaviour and character lapses.
South Park had a really funny episode last week called "Bloody Mary", where Stan's father goes to AA, and they mock it along these lines. However, I tend to agree with AA about abstinence, since alcohol is especially bad on the body, and a binge may have really bad consequences. Also, with overeating, your appetite regulation tends to work when exercising, but there may not be any similar restraint mechanism with alcohol.
Hi Stephen,
It sounds like OA is exactly what overweight people DO NOT need. Diet and exercise will cure anyone's obesity, group therapy will not do much of anything.
Yes, especially when the group therapy is restricted to this "higher power" stuff, and reasonable discussion is prohibited. Or, maybe OA is only for people that really have no control over eating, *AND* where exercise doesn't have any moderating effect on their desire to binge. I'm sure there are some people that have this physiology defect, but I don't think it's even a high percentage of OA members. These people need a new religion.
am so glad to see your post today! Interesting perspective on your OA experiences. I didnt know it was such a victim type group, i always thought those of us that overeat did it conciously and with some level of control -- stopping at the point of being sick is probably a good indication -- are they all religious people? u just never understood how praying could help someone, wouldnt it be more effective to go for a walk? do they teach those kinds of habits at OA? getting active etc.. im very curious about this
ps. you are not alone in reclusivness, in fact i wasnt sure anyone else out there went through the same! did you go through any anxiety after makign the decision to put yourself back out there?
Well, not everyone in OA plays up the victim, but some do, and in doing so lose perspective on the lifestyle changes they need to make.
The "higher-power" is non-denominational, and is very vague as well. But the point is that you're supposed to relinquish yourself to the higher power, instead of looking to yourself to find the discipline to change.
On the positive side, you'll always hear something during "open sharing" that you'll identify with, like feelings of insecurity and shame associated with being overweight and bingeing. This is very powerful, because it's always good to know we share the exact same experiences and feelings. In other words, it's very human to binge and feel insecure. Sharing is much better than bottling up secrets and lies.
When I was a recluse, I refused to see family and friends. I had to lose a minimum amount of weight before I would see them again. As I got thinner and thinner, I felt much more confident, and finally saw everyone again. I also felt good enough to go shopping and otherwise show myself in public. Being a recluse was a vicious cycle, because I was too embarassed to go grocery shopping, and I'd just order pizzas, which of course got me fatter. But on the other side, as soon as I started losing weight, I felt confident enough to go to the gym, and my weightloss accellerated. So it goes both ways.
Man, you should have made that a separate blog. Look at all that meat!
(Excuse the food reference.)
Where do I start? I had a family member that went to AA, a friend too. I had another friend that knew people that went to NA. Another family member that should have went before his dementia set in.
My friend and I got along very well, except that he always seemed to feel that he had to talk about how much he had and how little I had. And these were times that I was already admitting to lacking in whatever we were talking about.
I knew that it was not coming from a malicious place, but another place in which he was overcompensating. When I spoke to my friend about his traits, she asked, "Is he in AA"? I was shocked that she was able to guess, but she told me that the "Higher Power" stuff sort of brainwashes you. It not only teaches you how to control your addictions, but it teaches that you are "higher" and people that are not part of the program are "not higher" which translates into "lower."
At one point, I wrote him a letter saying that my life is miserable enough without someone shining a nasty "look what I've got" light on it. He was so hurt. Not in a defensive way, but in a "I had no idea" sort of way. He apologized profusely, and wrote how he took my letter to heart, and talked it over with his wife, and told me about his life. Basically, he wasn't used to "real" friends, just people that had more than him, and related as such. Now, we are great friends. Sometimes, you have to deconstruct to reconstruct a much stronger foundation.
Now that I'm thinking about it, I recently saw my sister again for the first time in five years. She was always the "slender one," the one that could not gain weight. When she walked out of her house to greet me, I almost did not recognize her. Not that she looked that big, but she confessed to being 160 lbs. (I believe that she was as many lbs. as I do overweight, but she was originally less than half my size.) She confessed to taking up the habit of eating chocolate until she gets sick, walking away from it, and when she felt better, going back for more.
On the way home from the airport, I had mentioned it to my brother. He claimed that people naturally gain weight as they grow older. I argued that it wasn't necessarily the weight that was the warning sign, but the habit. Hurting yourself with food is pretty serious.
On the other hand, she did answer one of my blogs under the name of "Butterfat," so that's funny.
Yes, the xA crowd gets a little proprietary with the "Higher Power" concept. They interptet a lot through this filter. Once, we were talking about Oprah, and how she lost weight. They were convinced that Oprah made a bunch of veiled references to the 12-steps, and they were sure she prescribed to the whole OA programme.
You get a lot of "I'm blessed to have found blah-blah-blah through my Higher Power". I've heard an English writer describe the way Americans talked about being blessed as slightly nauseating.
It gets pretty pious in the meetings during open sharing, and there's some one-upsmanship involved. I just sit there with a blank stare when people talk about all of this.
My 2 cents on the alcohol topic...
moderate alcohol consumption has been shown to actually have positive effects on health! And not just red wine either.
Now, if one truly has a drinking problem and cannot control it when they just "have a taste" and that taste turns into an uncontrolled binge, then I would say its best to leave it alone entirely.
Just as a ding dong or Big Mac wont kill ya on a rare occasion, but if you eat one and you cant stop, its best to stay away completely.
Welcome back Steve, good to see the weight gain was minimal over the holiday!
Now back to work and focus baby!
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