Stand By Me, Fatso & OA

A few months ago, with the encouragement of a Norwich List Serve post and a mentor of mine, I attended my first OA meeting. Based on the same 12 steps as AA, Overeaters Anonymous is far less known. I had never heard of it until this fall.

Today I went to my 5th meeting. They say that in order to decide if its for you, it’s best to attend 6 meetings before passing judgment. The funny thing is… I don’t want to want to go. I want to be ok on my own, lick this 4-decade+ eating situation through sheer willpower and resolve, because anything less than that indicates true weakness. That’s what I hear myself saying, anyway, over and over again.

The thing is – I really can’t lick it. I’ve tried everything that I can think of. Everything has failed. For years and even decades. Anyone who knows me well knows this.

Great example… a whopping 48 hours ago. After Bo’s successful first day on skates at Campion on Thursday afternoon, he and I went to the grocery store to get one solitary thing… hot chocolate and hot cups to test at Boloco. Once I found the hot cocoa, of course, I got distracted, and next thing you know there was over $120 of food that I absolutely “had to have” filling up the cart. I asked Bo as we went along the aisles “Do you think we need that, buddy?…because I do” and I’m not sure if he even responded as the frozen organic pizzas, frozen burritos, Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches, and… Graeter’s Black Raspberry Chip Ice Cream, my all-time favorite food in the world, found their way into our race car grocery cart.

From there, it started out innocently, as it always does. Got home, put the groceries away in the garage fridge, making sure I didn’t walk into the actual house with all of these goodies. But the Graeter’s I brought in, openly, as I triumphantly shared the play-by-play of Bo’s 30 minutes on skates. It was cause for celebration!!

By midnight, tragedy was building.  I had finished a quarter of the pint of Graeter’s. By 3 am (yes, I got up to hunt it down) it was half way gone. And by 11am the next morning it was fully gone. Nobody else got even a mini taste. I’m not sure anyone even thought about its presence, while I on the other hand obsessed about its presence in our house until every last bit of it was down that hatch.

I may not want to want to go to OA, but I’m most definitely not getting anywhere positive on my own.  I used to worry I drank too much, and wondered if I could stop. Turns out I could. But food? Totally different story.

I have vivid memories of what led to this point… and they would remind most people of the Pie eating contest as described so vividly in the movie Stand By Me… I’ll share some of them in the future, for fun and as one of the twelve steps.