Abstinence

As I write this, 75 days of abstinence on my binge food list are behind me. That's 75 days since I re-started the clock after having an ice cream cone.

These are the foods things I don't eat anymore:

chocolate

cake

cookies

pastries

cheesecake

pie

candy

ice cream

Today at the grocery store there was a tray with various types of cookies for customers to eat... not even cut-up samples, these were full-sized cookies. In the past, I would have made a bee-line to that tray and grabbed a couple immediately. Now, these weren't delicious cookies, by any means. They were the cheap, buy-by-the-pound kind. No matter, I'd have slunk by that tray with my hand out at least two more times while in the store and again on the way out.

Isn't that weird? To eat cookies, and so many of them, that don't even taste very good. Why? Because I am an addict. Because I have an illness. I don't want to accept this fact about myself. But it is the truth. In OA, the teaching is that compulsive overeating and binging are symptoms of a progressive illness. Yes, in my case, it has been progressive. In my college years I was more discriminating about what I ate and didn't binge as frequently. Yet, even then, I would bake a batch of cookies and eat them all in two days.

Today at the grocery store, I was almost repulsed by the tray of cookies. I did not want them at all... was not tempted in the least.

That's the beauty of abstinence. It works. The longer I am abstinent, the less I want any of the things on my list.

We have a super fabulous bakery in our little town. I don't go there very often any more. But we're having house guests for 5 days and I wanted to buy some good bread for breakfast toast. This bakery does three things exceedingly well: bread, pizza and pastries. Before abstinence, I used to buy bread there regularly and always had a treat as well... a tart, a mini-cheesecake, a cookie or a pecan cinnamon roll. Today, I barely glanced at the pastry case. Only one thing called... chocolate brownies... but only softly and only for a moment. I quit looking at them and the faint urge departed completely.

Yay! This is what I call sanity. Abstinence works for me and it's not very difficult. What is still difficult is portion control on the foods I do eat. But that will be the subject of another post.