Monday, March 23, 2009

information vs. affirmation

Tonight’s meeting was so good.  i am excited to tell you all about it, but first I need to confess what happened before the meeting.

Right after I finished writing the post from earlier this evening, I went into the kitchen and realized I was missing half of the ingredients to my planned dinner- I had used them in a recipe and completely forgotten I was out.

a bare bones kitchen is killer for me. Not only was I completely out of most of the ingredients in my planned dinner, there was NOTHING remotely healthy in my kitchen- I knew I was getting low yesterday, but I didn’t take the time to see just how low until it was too late.

Instead of running to the store or subway, I completely caved and ate too much of one of my husband’s family sized frozen meals-something I shouldn’t have eaten at all in the first place.  I wish I could throw out all of my husband’s unhealthy food, but my marriage might suffer a tad :) I need to figure out a strategy for situations like this, my first safeguard being a well stocked kitchen.

After the incident, I didn’t even want to go to the meeting tonight.  It’s amazing how quickly my mentality can go from focusing on recovery to focusing on food.. i hate it!

The good news is, I went the meeting! I am so glad I did.

The focus tonight was on Physical Recovery. The woman leading the meeting is someone I really respect- she has been in program for a long time and has had a very steady abstinence. 

She talked about how our program is three fold- emotional, spiritual and physical… but we often forget the importance of the last category.  Weight loss is often when brings us to program in the first place, but it gets lost along the way.

I know that any of the three parts alone will not work without the other two, so it was really great to have the reminder.  However, I also know that my program is strongest when i put the most emphasis on the emotional and spiritual aspects of recovery. 

so what does that look like? I don’t really know. 

For me, it takes being really honest and trying new things when one stops working for my program.  The scale is something I need to use to track my progress- but I have to be very careful not to abuse it. 

Someone in the meeting summed it up like this:

The scale should be used for information and not affirmation.

wow! how powerful.  How many times have I let the scale dictate the way I feel about myself?

I have decided to try weighing myself no more than once a week- but I a committed to monitoring that and changing to once a month should it become an issue.

anyways, just wanted to share my thoughts from the meeting :)  I will write more tomorrow!

1 comment:

  1. I recently started attending OA meetings myself, and though I note you haven't posted for a little while, I do hope you are doing well. I've enjoyed reading your blog. :)

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