It’s hard to believe that it’s February already! I have been in Florida for over three weeks and, while I am enjoying the rain-free days, I have to say it’s much colder than I expected. I am hopeful the beautiful sunshine will continue to warm the air.
Besides the cold, the last three weeks have, once again, been phenomenal times of recovery, growth and abstinence. As Phil wrote recently, we had a very successful Primary Intensive in January, followed by an alumni weekend. Another Primary Intensive begins this week. WOW!! I have personally witnessed so many miracles. Here is one: A participant had been struggling with Type 2 Diabetes for years, unable to manage her numbers. On arrival she said her blood glucose level was 428, and when she left two weeks later she indicated it was 109! That’s a 75 percent drop in just 17 days. A miracle of detox and abstinence!!
February has a focus on Eating Disorder Awareness and Heart Health. In the past, we have written on eating disorders and the difference between an eating disorder and food addiction. Eating disorders are serious and can be fatal; it can also be fatal to be treated only for an eating disorder when also suffering with the disease of food addiction.
Simply put, the biggest difference between these two diseases is that an eating disorder is a response to being unable to deal with feelings around past trauma, and food addiction is when our bodies are physically dependent upon the consumption of addictive foods. The treatment for both is also very different: for eating disorders, it is lifestyle changes and therapy to assist in learning new ways to cope with feelings; this is very difficult work. For food addiction, treatment is complete abstinence from all addictive foods and eating behaviors.
Most people coming to ACORN have both an eating disorder and food addiction.
- For a more detailed description of the difference between these often deadly disorders and the treatment for them, click here.
- For more information on eating disorders go to http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org.
- If you have further questions, please feel free to reach out to me. I would love to chat with you about this.
Might food addiction be one of the leading causes of heart disease?
According to the American Heart Association these 7 things can stop heart disease and add years to our lives:
- Maintain a healthy body weight
- Eat a healthy diet
- Manage blood pressure
- Take charge of cholesterol
- Keep blood sugar at healthy levels
- Don’t smoke
- Engage in regular activity
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 3rd 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:
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
Dear Friends,
Thanksgiving Day, as celebrated in North America, is traditionally a time to gather with family and friends to give thanks for our many blessings. In the United States, Thanksgiving is on the fourth Thursday of November; and in Canada, it is the second Monday in October. (Do you know which other world country celebrates their Thanksgiving, like in the US, on November 23rd this year? See the answer below.)
The meaning of Thanksgiving can easily become lost under the cloud of huge meals and the ever-encroaching commercialism of the holiday season. Sometimes we see others “enjoying” themselves with all the foods we “can’t eat” and we end up feeling “deprived.” It’s important for me to remember that when I am not abstinent, I am “depriving” myself of the experience of being present with myself, with others, and with my higher power. For those of us with the disease of food addiction, it is imperative that we approach this day of Thanksgiving just as we would any other day by asking ourselves: What do I need to do—today—to put my abstinence and recovery first?
Here are just a few ideas that might be helpful:
