Repeated efforts by me to be the "Lone Ranger of Recovery" failed miserably. So, as I shared in my introductory entry, I approach my recovery journey with LOTS of support from others. Among those who's guidance I seek: God, fellow addicts (of all sorts), the collective wisdom of Weight Watchers, my primary care physician, a dietician, a physical therapist and other professionals as needed.

When I think I have "all the answers" then I can expect relapse into active food addiction, which always includes weight re-gain.

When I get resentful toward others (Resentment being the #1 cause for relapse) and don't want their advice (let alone fellowship) any more, I can count on going into relapse and re-gaining some (or all) of the weight I've previously lost.

Just for today I stay "plugged into" all of the support I can find! The friendship and wisdom of others makes my journey much easier ("Together we can do what we could never do alone!" -- an observation from a co-founder of Overeaters Anonymous).

While most of the professionals I deal with are "earth people" (that is, they don't share my addiction), even they can (and have repeatedly) taught me much about how to eat and exercise sanely, one day at a time.

So when (as I did in my most recent entry) issue a warning about addicts who act as if they are dieticians and/or exercise physiologists when it comes to pontificating to fellow addicts, I wanted to remind myself that I'm NOT MY own health care (let alone any other kind of) professional. Indeed I know just enough about nutrition and exercise to be dangerous (to myself and other addicts). Hopefully this new-found humility will carry over to my work with fellow addicts.

A wise addict once observed that "humility" is NOT the same thing as "humiliation" -- humility is merely "the willingness to be equal". Along with "being equal", humility also makes it easier for me to be honest, openminded and willing to take directions (even when I don't feel like taking them).

Here are some questions that I have for those of you who struggle with food addiction and obesity issues (like I do):

-- Do you REALLY find the fat-bashing content of this video all that funny?

-- Is it (at least somewhat) painful to hear phrases like "Fat Fatty" and "Fat Cow" that come out of Stan's mouth?

-- What is your experience of being body bashed? Did it start when you were a child? Did parents or other family members put you down because of your weight?

-- To this day does it hurt when "earth people" give you judgmental looks or make comments about your weight?

I'll post my answers to these questions in a future post.

And now our video presentation: STAN KASNOWSKI: CANADIAN TIME TRAVELER...

I finally figured out that my fear is "goofy" and "senseless" because...

-- I'm not responsible for your being offended. It is your choice and your right to be offended.

-- I'm only responsible for sharing my story. I need make no apopolgy because my spirituality is somewhat (or a lot) different from yours. I'm hear to share my story and not share yours.

-- If you don't find something "offensive" in at least some of my journal posts then I'm probably doing something wrong. :-)  I've certainly not hesitated to post thoughts about carbohydrates that are no doubt greviously offensive to carb-phobic individuals! So why should I also of a sudden be afraid to offend my readers?

So here is my truth: I'm a Christian. Please note that this statement is not intended to imply that you should be a Christian. I wish you were a Christian, but that's between you and the Lord. I'm not here to debate. After all, God does the real "converting", I don't! :-)

I'm not even here to preach. Instead I would like to allow a man who taught me how to preach (among other things, I'm a "recovering seminarian") do the preaching for me through one of his more popular sermons. I wont be offended if you don't want to read Dr. H. Stephen Shoemaker's sermon Befriending Your Weakness.

On the other hand, if you are looking for some wisdom and insight into how to connect the painful reality of your addiction with the power of a God who is greater than you and your addiction, then please DO read on!

The short version of Dr. Shoemaker's sermon, in my words, goes like this: As an addict I had to REALLY get honest about the REALITY of the pain and outright INsanity of my addiction before I could experience God's strength to overcome my addiction, one day at a time. Being in denial about my addiction prevented me from truly seeking a Power Greater than my own in order to overcome it. Why seek to "overcome" something that isn't all that bad?

Getting REAL about my addiction got me to the point where I began to experience recovery. Embracing my REAL (and very broken) self (which in turn is helping me to LOVE myself "warts and all") is what keeps me in reacovery.

Two suggestions: If you do indeed want to read the following sermon, please consider printing it out and then take the time to read it with as few distractions as possible so that it really has a chance to "sink in".

And now, true words of wisdom from my friend. H. Stephen Shoemaker...

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Befriending Your Weakness
by H. Stephen Shoemaker

(© 1989, 1996, 2002 & 2007. H. Stephen Shoemaker.
All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.)

Can we talk? It seems to me that in church we work hard to hide our weakness and do most of our suffering in lonely solitude. We spend our days hiding from ourselves, from one another and from God. The gospel invites us to another way.

When you're young you think God uses your strengths. That is true. God uses your talents, your excellences, your triumphs. The older you get the more you realize God also uses your weaknesses. This is the beginning of wisdom.

Picture Simon Peter. On the day of Pentecost -- surely in his prime -- he preached and 3,000 were converted. Some sermon, huh? And the church was jump-started by the Holy Spirit into its world encompassing mission. But was that sermon a greater witness than the day years later when Peter was crucified? Upside down, he requested, for he did not think himself worthy to be crucified as our Lord had been, right-side up. Remember Jesus' words to Peter by the seashore the day He recommissioned him?

"When you were young you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go."

Indeed.

Jesus images aging: another girding you and carrying you where you do not wish to go. As someone quipped: Old age is not for the squeamish. But the image is a more encompassing one for all human weakness. In this discussion of weakness, let us examine a "spirituality of weakness," a spirituality which makes it possible to Befriend Your Weakness.

I

Two texts point the way. The first is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson entitled "Compensation." If you want to watch a great mind thinking read an essay by Emerson.

Compensation is a truth of the physical world: an animal with poor sight has extraordinary hearing, a strong right eye compensates for a weak left eye, and so on. It is just as true in the realm of the human spirit. Emerson begins with an arresting sentence, at least from the point of view of a preacher:

"Ever since I was a boy, I have wished to write a discourse on Compensation; for it seemed to me when very young that on this subject life was ahead of theology, and the people knew more than the preachers taught."

When I read those words they had the ring of truth for me. The lives of people have taught me more on compensation than books of theology, and you have known more than I have taught.

One of those compensations he said is this: "Strength grows out of weakness." The good, he said, "are befriended by weakness and defect." It sounds almost too pat, especially if you have suffered the torment weakness and defect bring, more especially if you are suffering terribly now. How could we ever be "befriended" by such? Then he offers a sentence that could have come out of the Book of Proverbs:

"As no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man ever had a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him."

That's an interesting paradox of life: strengths that trip us up, weaknesses that become useful to us. He illustrates with a famous fable, perhaps you've heard it. It's about a stag, a beautiful deer who admired his horns but disliked his feet. But when the hunter came his feet were what saved him, and afterward, caught in a thicket, his horns destroyed him. Therefore, Emerson concludes, every one "in his lifetime needs to thank his faults," because as he confronts his weaknesses, "like the wounded oyster, he mends his shell with pearl."

A person goes to sleep in good times -- is this not true -- but as Emerson adds:

"When he is punished, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts, learns his ignorance, is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill."

This compensation is not as easy nor as automatic as Emerson in his brilliant prose makes it sound, but it gives us real hope nonetheless. A caution: rarely do we quickly see compensation at work. Emerson explains:

"...the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding...after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts."

At the time all we can cry is, "O the loss, the loss, O the cost, the cost!" But in the strength of faith and by the remedial power of God's Spirit, we go on and over time are given the gift of compensation.

Is this true? It is our hope for wholeness and usefulness and our only escape from bitterness or destruction.

II

Emerson's essay is the first text; the second is the "luminous dark" of II Corinthians 12. The Apostle Paul was suffering the humiliating weakness of his "thorn in the flesh." The image Paul used is more terrible than its translation suggests. Not a small splinter, a giant stake. Not mildly irritated, Paul was impaled by an affliction at times too great to bear.

We do not know what this thorn was. The history of the exegesis of this verse reads like a medical dictionary: everything from foot disease to eye problems, from epilepsy to obsessions, to manic depressive illness.

Whatever it was, it was no mild private irritation. It was an agonizing, public, and humiliating affliction. It was, to use Paul Scherer's phrase, a thorn "lodged in the sinews of his apostleship" because it hindered his plans and made him a laughing-stock to his adversaries, the super-apostles. If he is so afflicted, they scoffed, "How can he be an apostle?"

The next verse is one of the bravest in the Bible. "Three times I prayed for this thorn to be removed." Three times, he prayed, but his prayers were not answered. He was not delivered of this thorn. The three times represent hours, maybe years, of agony. God, take this away! How can I be who you want me to be, do what you've called me to do, with this thorn?

Out of the silence of heaven finally came the answer, not the answer Paul wanted, but all the answer he needed. "My grace is sufficient for thee", the Voice said. "My grace I give you. Myself I give you in your infirmity, and that will be enough." The first hint of that answer must have been hard to hear. Lord, that is not what I asked for! But as the answer came and came again, Paul hit bottom with this thorn, with this thorn and all those unanswered prayers and he heard at the bottom of the darkness the rest of the answer:

"My strength is made perfect in weakness."

Strength made perfect in weakness. Such is the mystery of the gospel and the mystery of grace. God's strength is poured into our weakness, His grace flows into the hollow places of our lives.

III

The first text, Emerson, the second text, II Corinthians, the third text is the lives we have observed which give witness to this truth. It has almost been without fail. A person has been a great help to us, ministering to us with wisdom and compassion. Only later we discover how much they have suffered in life. Where did they get their wisdom and compassion? Out of their suffering.

The young man suffered a business failure. Years later he tells of the good it has worked in his life, a good he could not have seen at the time.

With all of us, it is our strengths that bring us success, and those same strengths trip us up. It is from the failures of our strengths that we learn our weakness, and from our weakness learn a truer strength.

The 12-step movement has been witness to this truth of the gospel. Meeting in church basements across America, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings have often been more "church" than what happens upstairs. They’ve discovered the door to healing in that moment when they say finally, "Over this I am powerless," and they call upon a Higher Power.

What they teach us is that to this point, whatever our weakness, all our efforts to get strong enough, smart enough, disciplined enough have failed. Ironically the harder you have fought your difficulty, the fiercer its power has become. Finally you admit that over this you have no power and you call upon God.

This is befriending your weakness. When you befriend your weakness you admit it may be with you always, and you learn to live with it day by day as friend, not enemy.

When you befriend your weakness you join the human race. This weakness is your doorway into your true humanity. Before, you pretended to be somehow different, better than most. We have this ideal illusionary self, a pretend self, and its pressed-down twin, our disinherited self.

God wants to love your real self, with all its strengths and weaknesses. If God can befriend your weakness, why can’t you?

When you befriend your weakness you for the first time take responsibility for it. You may have denied your weakness; or you may have said: That which I have no control over, I have no responsibility for. These are dangerous, illusionary, self-destructive paths. To this point all our efforts to get strong enough, smart enough, powerful enough to get control of the problem has failed. Ironically, the harder you have fought it, the fiercer its power has become. Finally you admit you have no power and call on God's power. This is befriending your weakness.

When you befriend your weakness you join the human race, a human broken race dearly loved by God, and admit your brokenness. When you face this truth you discover community, for we all are broken in some way. It is our strengths and pride which separate us; it is our common brokenness that unites us.

When you befriend your weakness you let God's grace be your sufficiency, both for pardon and for power. You begin to let God's strength work in your weakness. The following story is told of a certain Baptist pastor in Virginia:

"One day a badly intoxicated man staggered up to the pastor on the street and announced, ". . . I'm one of your converts." The pastor replied, "Well I'm not surprised. You look about like one of my converts. Next time, let's let the Lord do it."

Befriending your weakness is calling on a Power beyond you.

When you befriend your weakness you, for the first time, become -- responsible in your weakness. You've fought your weakness as an enemy. That has only made your enemy stronger. You may have given in to the weakness and said, "That which no control over I have no responsibility for." Dangerous logic. We are a responsible self in our powerlessness as well as in out power.

To be responsible in your weakness is to accept your weakness as part of your humanity loved by God and learn to live happily and at peace and responsibly in your powerlessness.

I do not know where your broken places are, but everyone has those places. And these broken places would be our deepest community; and they would be our best opportunity to experience the grace of God. Is it possible, asks the poet David Bottoms, to fall "toward grace?" It is not only possible, it is the gospel story.

My grace is sufficient, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.

IV

Famous lives have become testimony to this truth. Harry Emerson Fosdick's mental breakdown, Helen Keller's blindness and deafness, Flannery O'Connor whose illness with lupus forced her back home to Georgia to live with her mother, but whose best fiction was written in the country of her affliction.

How about Stephen Hawking, the world's greatest theoretical physicist, who teaches in the chair of physics at Cambridge which Sir Isaac Newton once filled. He is widely known as the smartest man in physics since Einstein. His book, "A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes," is a phenomenon, a physics book that became a best seller. What's more amazing is that he has Lou Gehrig's disease and can now move only one thumb. He gets around in a motorized wheelchair and talks and writes through a portable computer he has designed.

Hawking can speak only through that computer and can write only 10 words a minute, but he has made some of the greatest contributions to science since Einstein and is on his way to making the next great contribution in our generation. It was the onset of the illness itself which pushed him from being a brilliant prodigy with great promise into being the leading scientist of his generation. He says of his life: "Science is a very good area for disabled people because it is mainly the mind." Befriending your weakness.

Those are the famous examples, but I'm just as stunned by the witness of hundreds of people in every day life, out of the spotlight, who've befriended their illness and live with courage and skill and compassion in the face of a myriad of weaknesses: depression, handicap, physical suffering and loss.

The nurse who has suffered terrible mental pain who converts this suffering into compassionate service.

The teacher, herself abused as a child, went to seminary to become a missionary, but now follows God's calling as an excellent elementary school teacher.

The recovering alcoholic, a physician who now lives as a wounded healer, helping others befriend their weakness and receive and receive the healing graces of God.

The single person devoting her life to hundreds of boys and girls.

The woman in the nursing home afflicted with time converting her long days to the love of those around her, to prayers and to great witness of faith to her family.

The man who has forged his loneliness into a life of service.

God can use your strength, but if that were all God had to work with He'd have precious little raw material. He also uses your weakness.

It is the broken earth that receives the seed, the broken seed that gives forth growth, the broken bread that gives life. And it is your own very weakness into which the grace of God is poured and from the broken vessel of your life poured forth into the world.

So, befriend your weakness, don't fight it, or curse it, or ignore it, befriend it. That's what Jesus has done as He came to this earth. He's befriended our weakness, every weakness. He's befriended the whole running, limping, laughing, weeping, broken and beautiful human race. And He invites you to join it today and discover as you do the mystery of the gospel -- grace sufficient and strength made perfect in weakness. "For when I am weak," Paul said, still stunned with the news, "When I am weak, then I am strong."

Blessed be the name of the Lord, who came in lowliness and befriended our weakness, was Himself broken on a cross, and was raised to life to live with God and in us. Come, O Friend, help us to befriend ourselves that we might wonderingly say with the apostle, when I am weak, then I am strong. Amen.

I can relate to his comment -- at least at times. Sometimes I cry with little or no provocation. At other times I do a pretty good job at "stuffing down" my feelings -- ALL feelings -- including feelings that lead to tears.

I've heard it said of food addicts that if we don't "Face Our Stuff" we'll (eventually) "Stuff Our Face". I've found this is VERY true in the sense that some of my most painful feelings have surfaced during periods of sane eating.

How vividly the lyrics of Simon And Garfunkel's song I Am A Rock captures the emotional pain that many of us addicts have tried to stuff down...

"I am a rock.
I am an island.
I've built walls --
A fortress deep and mighty
That none may penetrate...
I have no need of friendship;
friendship causes pain.
Its laughter and its loving I disdain....
I touch no one and no one touches me...
And a rock feels no pain.
And an island never cries."

As a recovering co-dependent, feeling MY feelings should NOT be too difficult a task to handle since (in active co-dependency) I had NO problem feeling EVERYone else's feelings. But the reality has been that running from, denying and stuffing down ("stuffing" comes about with my ingesting EXCESS amounts of food) MY OWN feelings has been my pattern.

Many years ago I heard it explained that feelings, also referred to as "emotions" , are "energy-in-motion" (think "e-motions"). My understanding is that ingesting any any mood-or-mind-altering substance can (and does) "block" the processing of emotions. Hence the state of "emotional constipation" that many of us addicts experienced during out days of active addiction.

I don't know why, but feeling MY feelings CAN seem overwhelming. At times I've found myself wondering if I was going to "e-mote to death" by allowing myself to feel my feelings!

The Overeaters Anonymous brochure entitled, A Plan Of Eating: A Tool for Living - One Day at a Time (Copyright 1988, 2001, 2005 Overeaters Anonymous, Incorporated. All rights reserved.), addresses the connection between food and emotions with these words:

"For a compulsive overeater, eating is attached to emotions. We are never fully satisfied, no matter how much we eat, because we are eating for emotional reasons rather than physical reasons. We eat for excitement, love celebration, loneliness, escape, pleasure and comfort. We devour food to anesthetize ourselves. We eat out of anger, resentment, envy, jealousy, fear, pride, guilt and grief."

The good news is that, through working the 12 Steps, I've actually been able to discover/uncover whatever feelings I've been stuffing down with excess food. Through working the 12 Steps while working with other addicts I've found the strength to NOT act out with food in an addictve, compulsive or impulsive manner, despite feeling some intense and pretty crappy emotions!

Recovery doesn't magically protect me from feeling painful feelings. Recovery gives me the strength and courage to discover, feel and then move beyond my feelings without the need to swallow excessive amounts of food or avoid physical exercise. How does all of this work? One Day, One Step and One Feeling at a time!

Some people with a "food issue" make a big deal about how they identify themselves and insist that others identify themselves exactly the way they do when it comes to identifying problematic food-related behavior.

My position, when it comes to identifying my out-of-control food behavior, is that ultimately I'm an addict and that excessive food intake and avoidance of physical exercise are merely manifestations of my underlying addictive disorder. As I mentioned in a previous post, I tend to agree with a friend who believed that codependency was underneath every single self-destructive addiction.

Whatever.  How I identify my disorder isn't all that important. What is important, IMHO, is what I'm doing about.

I'm certainly cmpulsive when it comes to food and exercise avoidance.

I'm definitely an addict when it comes to these two things.

I'm also very much of what I would call an "Impulsive Overeater". "Impulsive" to the point that when I want to eat something (or want to avoid exercise) ALMOST NOTHING will stop from having my way!  If this isn't a classic definition of "addiction" I don't know what is! <blush> As I've also heard this reality described, we addicts, "want what we want when we want it -- if not BEFORE!!!"

I can really relate to the following definitions of "impulse" and "impulsive".

IMPULSE
* "Sudden, involuntary inclination prompting to action."
* "A sudden desire."
* "A sudden pushing or driving force."

IMPULSIVE
" Without forethought."
* "Determined by chance or impulse or whim, rather than by necessity or reason."
* "Characterized by undue haste and lack of thought or deliberation."

Being impulsive explains a LOT about my behavior with food and exercise avoidance...especially with the food part of my addiction process! How many times it seemed almost if food MAGICALLY came FLYING into my mouth! No forethought, just an INSTANEOUS action took place, over which I felt powerLESS.

And when I am powerLESS, what a great place to "tap into the power" I find when working the 12 Steps, praying, working with other addicts! I find it of absolute importance that I share HONESTLY (with both God and other addicts) about at those moments when I want to act out in a self-destructive manner. Mentioning food and behaviors by names often does much to diminish the power of my self-destructive behaviors.

I bring up this issue of "impuslive overeating" because this issue is related to one of my few frustrations with the Weight Watchers POINTS food plan.

As I've mentioned on this blog before, I think the POINTS plan has to be one of the nutritionally-sanest food plans ever written. Because it is so very "sane" when it comes to nutrition, I have found it to be the easiest food plan I've ever tried to follow. This is NOT another "diet". Given the variety and volume of food it allows me to consume, for the most part it is a sheer joy to follow. Figuring up the POINTS value of foods takes some work, but my experience is that most things in life that are worthwhile DO take work.

So when it comes to MY impulsiveness and working the POINTS food plan the "rub" is that I really can't just "grab and inhale" any old food whenever I feel like it.  In order to honestly work the POINTS food plan I must know the POINTS value of every food item I consume. It doesn't great math skills to work the POINTS food plan, but it DOES take some discipline. And discipline makes it pretty hard to act out impulsively with excess food! This is NOT necessarily a bad thing. The only problem is that my "addict within" doesn't particularly care for this! :-)

In one of my favorite movies, a character quips that addiction is "a three-fold disease: Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years!" No doubt for most of us food addicts, the three major winter holiDAZE pose a major challenge to our recovery effort!

Many of us find ourselves surrounded by food this time of the year. All sorts of party and dinner invitations can make the temptation to overeat even more intense than it is the rest of the year.

And what about those "food pushers"! You know the kind of person I'm talking about. They regularly remind us that "different rules apply" to any and all holidays. We MUST overeat, indeed we are EXPECTED to overeat on these days! And if we don't overeat on holiDAZE, then something MUST be terribly wrong with us.

My recovery journey has taught me that NO food addict "must" overeat on any holiday anymore than any other addict "must" give in to his addiction on these special (and often times very stressful) days. Our addiction takes no time off for holidays and neither should our recovery effort.

Here's a list of ten reminders that help keep me on track at all-you-can-binge buffets, holiday parties and even when surrounded by even the most obnoxious food pusher(s):

1 -- I have the right to say "No."

2 -- With God's help (and the support of other addicts) I can make my "No." mean "No." and be consistent sticking with "No." Remembering to pray before, duing and after food-centered events helps me connect with God. Having the phone numbers of other addicts on my person helps me connect with other addicts when faced with temptation. Therefore PREPARATION IS ESSENTIAL when placing myself in stressful (let alone tempting) situations.

3 -- "No." is a complete sentence. Therefore I do NOT have to justify, rationalize or otherwise explain my decision to say "No." to excess amounts of food.

4 -- I have the right -- without explanation -- to remove myself from the immediately proximity of people and places that threaten my recovery. If an explanation is "owed" it can be made LATER (e.g., like when I'm in a better spiritual/emotional space).

5 -- Without apology, I believe that I have the right to take care of me, one holiday/one day at a time.

6 -- Having a well-balanced, nutritionally-sane food plan makes my recovery effort EASIER: I know what my boundaries are and my boundaries are reasonable.

7 -- If I can't remember how MISERABLE I felt after I had my last food binge, then I probably have at least one more binge ahead of me!

8 -- "Insanity is doing the SAME thing over and over while expecting DIFFERENT results." Therefore what am I prepared to DO ("DO" = action) DIFFERENTLY when presented with circumstances, people and places that have defeated me in the past?

9 -- Failling to plan is (subconsciously) planning to fail. What is my plan? Write it down! Share it with another addict!

10 -- Holidays last just 24 hours -- just like every other day of the year. And I have a God and a program of recovery that works amazingly well when I WORK ("WORK" = action) it, just ONE (HOLI)DAY at a time!