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Gotta talk here. Not sure why but I feel like I'm at a very delicate point in this recent bout of abstinence. My obsessive thinking about food feels less intense than it has in the past. The constant murmur of the cookie aisle and yearning has receded a bit and I'm not sure what to think. It has to be good, but why this feeling of impending doom?

I recently realized that I am still as big as a house, and that messed me up for a few days. "Big as a house" as in I still have over 100 pounds to lose. After having suffered enough to lose 80 pounds how can there be so much left to lose? I'm distressed enough with the sudden arrival of my rib cage, I feel as though a hundred pounds down the road I won't even be recognizable. I probably haven't weighed 200 pounds since I was 16. I can barely imagine it.

It just seems like I'm at a major crossroads. I could really buy a mountain of junk right now and throw it all out the window, but I'm probably not going to. Part of me wants to gorge and binge just to prove that I am still in control. After all I've been doing what my sponsor tells me to all this time. When do I get a turn? I guess I'm still having problems seeing the good in all of this even though I'm hit in the head with it every day.

I feel amazing, compliments have been rolling in, sex has been better and better and I've been more rested and alert than I ever was when I was eating. So what is the problem? Can't eat whoopee pies. Can't eat ice cream. Can't eat candy. If the devil walked up to me now and told me I could buy a body impervious to binge eating with my soul, I'd have to think about it. I have to try to remember what it was like when I was in it, how miserable I was, all the poor health I had and other sad side effects I won't get into. None of it comes to mind when I'm standing in front of the bakery racks at the supermarket. I'm still very sick.


This video is about milk.

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Today is my first ever 30th day of back to back abstinence. About two months ago when Sam called me up on Mother's day morning and told me that he'd lost his abstinence after FOUR years, I really just wigged out. He couldn't be my sponsor any longer and I would have to find a new one, but the real damage was the realization that even if you've been straight up and down for that long, you can still fall off. I was seriously confused. Don't we get any respite? Doesn't this crap ever have an ending of some kind? I knew in my mind that people lived with their compulsions for a lifetime, but I didn't really understand it until then.

So I ate and ate and ate. Two weeks of practically nothing but junk and I gained back 20 pounds all the way up to 327. I was despairing hardcore and I didn't know what I was going to do. Luckily I went to my men's meeting and took the 're-commitment' chip from the chipster and got another sponsor. It's a shiny sliverlike coin with the OA emblem on one side and the serenity prayer on the other. If I made it to 30 days I would get another one, so I focused on that. Somehow it helped. My new sponsor is an amazing dude named Jerry and I can only hope that he has better luck than Sam did.

Now I'm down past my previous low and I'm feeling really healthy and energetic. My clothes are falling off of me and I have no money to replace them, but it's only a problem every so often. My wife is dieting too so we can both bitch about food now, which is a nice change. I have to admit that I've been skating through these days, not really working program very well, just calling, praying and weighing my food, but I think it's enough for now. If I did everything that is usually recommended, I'd be working two jobs instead of one. Perhaps it's gets easier as you go.

I just wanted to get all that out and say that I'm still here and still in OA. I'm changing the name of the blog to something more up-beat because I feel like it. Talk to you next time.