SHiFT – Recovery by Acorn

Registering NOW!

• 5-Day Living in Recovery, Jan. 27 – 31
• Alumni Retreat: Relapse Prevention, Feb. 2 – 4
• Primary Intensive, Feb. 6 – 11 

Call 941-378-2122 or click here to register on the ACORN website.

Often the start of a new year brings the desire to make commitments and promises to change habits, begin a new health routine or sign up for a new class. This used to mean resolutions around diet and exercise with the sole purpose of losing weight. Whether it was 24 hours or 3 months later, the time ALWAYS came when I just gave up, accompanied with the message, “there you are again; you’re a complete failure with no willpower whatsoever.” I eventually just stopped making New Year’s resolutions.

Then, in January 2015, at Sugar Free Place in Bradenton, I was introduced to abstinence and recovery from food addiction.  Each year since then, January brings another 365 days of freedom from food obsession along with awareness and action of what I need to do—one day at a time—for the next 365 days to maintain abstinence and deepen my spiritual, mental and physical healing.

ACORN strongly believes in the importance of staying connected with your ACORN alumni network.  It offers a safe place to be accountable and honest with others. The first alumni weekend of 2018 is at Sugar Free Place in sunny (read warm) Florida, February 2-4.  The topic—drum roll, please—is RELAPSE PREVENTION!!  Anyone, whether currently in strong recovery or in major relapse, can benefit from time set aside to focus on this topic.  Feedback from the November Relapse Prevention workshop was overwhelmingly positive.

Relapse can be a scary word.  I have every right to be afraid of relapse.  It could kill me.  While relapse is common in addiction recovery, relapse is not inevitable nor is it mandatory!  The more we understand the relapse process, the less threatening it needs to be.
Here are a few facts about relapse:

1. We cannot relapse until we have had some period of sustained recovery (meaning complete abstinence from the foods we are addicted to for a period of time after initial detox).
2. The relapse process starts long before we take the first bite or pick up our substance.
3. Abstinence is ONLY A PREREQUISITE to food addiction recovery; abstinence is not the end of recovery.
4. People stop attending 12-Step meetings and working their recovery program because they are already in a relapse process.
5. People in relapse are not aware of their individual relapse warning signs as they are happening and don’t recognize them until after the fact.

If you have any interest in avoiding a relapse—or getting out of a relapse—then, this ACORN Alumni Relapse Prevention Weekend is for you. We will cover the facts noted above, as well as much more. This work is crucial for all food addicts on a journey of long-term recovery.

The upcoming Relapse Prevention workshop starts on Friday, February 2, at 6 pm and ends Sunday, February 4, at 3 pm. It is offered at an amazing price of $550 US which includes lodging and meals. The last RP workshop filled quickly, so reserve your spot NOW!  Register today at https://foodaddiction.com/programs/registration/.

Join your ACORN alumni and staff for a weekend of recovery support.  Who knows, we may even have a little FUN!!

Here’s to an amazing 2018,
Amanda

P.S. Want to deepen your recovery even more?  Join us a few days before the Relapse Prevention weekend at our 5-day Living In Recovery Program, January 27-31.  Click here for details and more information.

Happy New Year!!!
As 2017 comes to a close and the newness of 2018 settles upon us, I can’t help but think about gratitude. I have so much to be grateful for. I don’t always see this, but, if I choose, it is always there, available for me to be aware of and bask in the glory of my gratitude.

I was reminded of this recently when talking with a friend on a very rainy, gray day here in Vancouver. She said, “Wow, it’s raining so hard today.” The next words out of my mouth were going to be, “I know! Isn’t it awful, I hate these days.” However, before I could get those words out of my mouth, she said, “It’s great! My car was so dirty and now it’s clean!”Yea, right, that’s just what I was thinking….NOT!!

It is so easy for me to fall into the depths of negativity and self-pity. Sometimes it feels like it’s my “comfort zone” since I spent so much of my life there. I never knew that was what I was doing or even that I had any other choice. Life just seemed hard, and it was definitely hard on me, or so I thought. The idea never occurred to me that I was completely responsible for how I saw things and whether life was “hard on me.” This doesn’t mean that struggles wouldn’t appear in my life—after all, that is life. What it means though, is that I get to choose how I view things and, therefore, I get to choose to believe life is “hard” or that life at times is “beautifully challenging.”

I have spent a lot of time with my niece (yes, the one and only Georgia, who, as I am sure you have noticed, I love to squeak into any newsletter that I possibly can) and my other sister’s two dogs in the last month. Wow! Talk about gratitude and staying in the moment; young children and animals are an amazing reminder of how this can be done. They have all taught me some beautiful lessons in the last couple of weeks.

Georgia and I were walking to the park with the dogs and I said, “Georgia I am feeling a bit sad because this is the last time I am going to see you before I go back to Florida for a couple of months.” She was quiet for a minute and I could see her little mind racing, and then, she looked at me with a bit of a furrowed brow, raised her hands with palms facing upward and said, “But we’re here together now”! From the mouths of babes; what brilliance this beautiful little 4-year-old human being had just shared with me. Amanda, be grateful for what is happening NOW!!

I think the key for me to remember is that I always have a choice everyday in how I view each situation that comes my way. So I ask myself—and each of you—to be cognizant of the fact that when our thoughts say, “Life is Hard” our next thought can be, “Life is beautiful and I am grateful for this situation because I know, if I choose to, I can grow and learn from it.”

Today is January 3^rd  and I am reminded of the many events of 2017 and am in awe of what I have to be grateful for. There are so many miracles in my life. My top 10 gratitudes for 2017 are:

1. Freedom from the bondage of food for another 365 days.
2. The ability of my body to physically re-build its way back to health and strength after years of abuse.
3. My powerful, strong, smart, beautiful niece Georgia and the role I get to play in her life because of abstinence and recovery.
4. That I have a career which allows me to support others who are travelling the same path as me in recovery from the brutal disease of food addiction, and, therefore, get to witness on a daily basis the strength, tenacity and hope of human beings.
5. The country and city I call home, Vancouver, Canada, for its natural beauty, diversity and the freedoms it allows me.
6. All the long walks I have taken in the stunning forests in Vancouveor or along the gorgeous beaches in Florida.
7. The summer vacation I took with my Mom where I showed up as a responsible, respectful adult who had the ability to get outside of herself and truly “see” my Mom for all her amazingness.
8. For all the people in recovery who walk this path with me and show me that recovery is possible one day at a time.
9. For my family who stuck with me through active addiction and is now allowing me the opportunity to show up differently, one day at a time, and slowly gain back their trust.
10. For my daily growing relationship with my higher power who, when I let go of control, truly guides me to a life beyond my wildest dreams.

November is Diabetes Awareness month.

Diabetes affected me personally, and I see its negative effects on the lives of many people that I know, both personally and professionally. And the kicker to this is that having Type 2 Diabetes was, for me, completely avoidable; and this seems to be the same for the majority of people I know who have this diagnosis. We know today that Type 2 Diabetes is oftentimes preventable.  For me, the Type 2 Diabetes diagnosis was completely a symptom of my primary disease of food addiction.

I remember my doctor telling me for a couple of years that I needed to be careful because I was “pre-diabetic.” I would leave those appointments feeling ashamed and embarrassed, blaming my lack of willpower as the reason I couldn’t stop shoving so much food in my mouth. I would then be determined that I would change. But….of course, I couldn’t. I really wanted to and I really tried, but nothing changed. In fact, it just seemed to get worse.

In June 2013, I went to yet another doctor’s appointment—except this one specialized in Obesity! My hopes were high; I was hoping with all my might that this might be the day when I finally got the help I really needed, whatever that was. And I did get help; I was told that I was no longer pre-diabetic. Now, I was a full-blown diabetic with type 2 Diabetes!

The good news was the doctor prescribed me a medication that would control my blood sugar levels; I only had to inject myself with it every day. How simple is that?! PLUS…wait, there’s more good news…it would help me lose weight. YAY!!! Phew, I was finally getting some real help. My doctor was treating me for diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety, sleep management and obesity!! Great stuff, right? Wrong!!

All along, I was being treated for the wrong disease! All of the maladies I was being treated for were symptoms—horrible consequences—of the primary disease I really had. I had untreated food addiction and, until I received treatment for that disease, my symptoms might be managed but they would continue to worsen … which indeed they did!! I continued to see this doctor who regularly suggested I consider weight loss surgery. (Remember that I had already had weight loss surgery and it had completely failed because I couldn’t follow the diet.)

Needless to say, not a lot changed in the next few years; my anxiety, sleep apnea, diabetes and high blood pressure were being “managed” by drugs; my weight was holding steady at about 300 pounds, and I continued to hate myself and believe I was a complete failure.

Thank goodness this ended when I finally received a proper diagnosis and, therefore, proper treatment, and was presented with a solution to the disease I actually had which, wouldn’t you know, cured ALL of my secondary diseases. I was taken off all Diabetes medications within six months. This is not rare; we have worked with others who, under doctor supervision, have had their insulin reduced after only a few weeks of abstinence.

Those of us who work in this field and/or have walked the path with other recovering food addicts have been witness to this over and over again. It is my hope that, in the near future, one of the solutions presented to those with Type 2 Diabetes will be to consider treatment for food addiction.
Check out our upcoming events. In mid-January, we kick off another four weeks of recovery in Florida:

Remember, abstinence and recovery first, absolutely.

Wishing you peace and abstinence during the holiday season,
Amanda