And the winner is......

So I have made a decision. I am not going to go to an OA meeting. And before you go, "well you should at least try it before you dismiss it", let me explain why.

OA bases its program around the Twelve Steps, which were created originally for AA.

The Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous

1. We admitted we were powerless over food — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

The first and most important step is admitting that you are powerless over food and that you can't just "use more willpower" to get your life under control. And I have to admit, that while I do have an unhealthy relationship with food, I am not powerless over it. I can eat really healthy and in small portions when I try and I set myself up to succeed. My biggest problems are that I'm lazy and I tend to eat my emotions. I'll eat when I'm bored, depressed, angry, and even happy. There are those out there who claim that all fat people are just lazy and if they just got up off their fat asses, they could lose the weight and be healthy. Clearly, this is not true in many cases. Unhealthy weight is the result of so many factors including medications, metabolism, and genetics. But to a certain extent (and only a certain extent) it is true for me. I am a lazy person in all aspects of my life. I would much rather do nothing than get up and work out.......or do homework......or clean my room. Not to mention that I'm not a fan of sweating. I know that most people aren't, but I inherited my father's lovely ability to sweat like there's no tomorrow. Even when I just walk, I will sweat. So the prospect of working out and feeling like I just came out of a shower of sweat is not appealing.

The other thing that puts me off about going to OA is that, while they claim to not be religiously affiliated, they talk about asking God to remove all defects of our character. I think that I have learned poor eating habits and that I have used food to cope instead of dealing with my problems, but I don't consider my issues with food to be a defect of my character. That's equating my eating problems with neglecting my family or being a jackass. How I handle food is nothing like that and I don't think that it is something that I should ask God to take away. Those of you who know me know that God is important in my life and that I'm a big believer in the Redemptive Gifts. As a Giver, one of my difficulties is that I can be manipulative, to the point of trying to manipulate God (which of course is ridiculous and never works). That would be a defect of character that I would pray about, not whether I eat too much ice cream in a sitting. Not to mention that I wouldn't pray for God to just take away a character flaw. More than likely, He won't do it anyway. Instead, He'll give me opportunities in which I could be manipulative and see if I don't. As much as I know God (which is very little), He's more about giving us the tools to use to help ourselves. We can ask for help and there are times when He will rescue us, but He wants us to do it ourselves. It's like that scene in Evan Almighty where God talks about opportunities. (clip at bottom of post) I just have a real issue with seeing this difficulty as a defect.

Instead of going to OA, I am going to try to employ the Mindful Eating approach. It basically says that you should take time to enjoy your food without distractions and appreciate the flavors, smells, and look of the food. There is no diet to go along with it and no steps or rules. It's just about eating when you are actually hungry, not at a certain time, and being mindful of what you put into your body. It seems to go along with my current plans better than OA, so I'm gonna try it out.

So here's the movie clip.