If you’re new to Compulsive Eaters Anonymous-HOW, the idea of weighing and measuring your food might seem unnecessary or even overwhelming. But for those of us who have struggled with eating disorders, it provides structure, clarity, and freedom from the chaos of food obsession. The following article explains how a simple cup, spoon, and scale can transform your relationship with food and support lasting recovery.
From the pamphlet Weighing & Measuring from a Food Plan (PDF).
A Cup, a Measuring Spoon and a Scale
Those who suffer from weight and eating disorders are more than aware of food and its “rightness” or “wrongness” as a means to weight loss or weight control. If anything, people who suffer with a food addiction do battle so long that we become grandiose about our ability to make choices when it comes to food, meals and eating in general. What we fail to realize is that after dieting, starving, fasting and exercising for so many years, we know less about our real relationship to food than we did when we encountered our first diet. This grandiosity may be the set-up for constant failure in the area of controlling our food addiction.
Food takes a life of its own. Somehow addicts tend to destroy any semblance of boundaries about the one thing that is poised to do us in—food and eating. We steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that when it comes to food, we are down for the count. The food addict unwittingly insists that in the area of food and eating we can make choices and choose well even though time and experience have shown this is not so.
In CEA-HOW we establish boundaries by insisting that mastery over the physical aspects of weight and eating disorders begins with the act of weighing and measuring every morsel of food eaten. This act clearly defines what is eaten, how much is eaten and is the most meaningful beginning of honesty. The feeling among those who are recovering from food addiction, eating disorders or weight disorders is that the reason food addicts are so resistant to weighing and measuring is that it removes the element of “control” from their purview. Addicts want control over their substance and weighing and measuring tells the addict they are no longer in the driver’s seat.
Weighing and measuring also speaks to the willingness of the recovering food addict. Someone else has established the quantities that may be eaten, the time and frequency of the meals and what is acceptable “Abstinence” as it manifests itself in the CEA-HOW program. The addict has turned over control of everything concerning food. We accept that we must weigh and measure from a food plan. For some, it is the only means of recovery when to eat or not to eat becomes a critical decision.
So in CEA-HOW we have a food plan and we utilize it as a schematic, a blueprint to begin the process of honesty and willingness. However, that process can only be manifest if the recovering individual is willing to weigh and measure. Further, since we weigh and measure and utilize a food plan, we know about the boundaries of “that first compulsive bite.” The boundaries are set—cross them and we are out again. Stay within them and there is a safety and security that comes with adherence to a plan of recovery. Stay within these guidelines and guilt about food takes a back seat to mastery over addiction.
Suddenly all decisions concerning food and quantities are made and accepted. Anxiety, worry and angst take a back seat to exhilaration and renaissance. The simple act of weighing and measuring from a food plan offers us a chance to become someone new, someone different, someone whole.
From this feeling of newness and rejuvenation comes an openness. There come feelings and actions that speak to a new person, not the one that started on the quest and begrudgingly weighed and measured their food from a food plan. This is a serene individual, centered in the now, dedicated to living in the moment and self-assured that all food decisions have been made and a life routine which frees the food addict to make life decisions without being under the influence.
A food plan and the act of weighing and measuring affirm the physical nature of this disease. They offer a cause and effect relationship to the most obvious problem we have—eating compulsively. It also allows us to focus on other physical problems which we can no longer blame on our weight, our diet, our job or our family. It shines a glaring light on the effect food has upon us and what problems we are having that are not food related.
By weighing and measuring we get a picture of just how much we actually ate and the difference in what we are eating. For years, we protested that we did not eat “that much” but utilizing a weighed and measured food plan points out just how much we did eat.
Further, a food plan is the beginning of acceptance. We must accept that someone other than ourselves is doing what is right for us. WE need to believe that the plan of eating and disciplines connected with it are a means to a salutary end.
Further weighing and measuring offers us a baseline or data base from which to judge how we are doing. Initially, weight loss is the only way we can attest that were “doing it.” Weighing and measuring is our foundation for recovery.
If all else goes wrong in the abstainer’s life, we weigh and measure with even greater verve and dedication. Thus, if we are experiencing chaos in other areas, we are experiencing calm with our food. We accept life as it is because all we can do to control any part of our life is to weigh and measure. Also, it is through the use of a food plan that we learn to let go of other things going on in our life.
On a food plan there are foods that we may feel have been left out and are healthy and necessary. We often share our knowledge with our sponsor whose response is, “I only sponsor what is on the food plan.” The newcomer then strains a bit, but eventually wants what the sponsor has, so learns to let go.
When a family crisis arises and we are told to let go we have experience in this process in our first dealings with weighing and measuring and a food plan.
Weighing and measuring from a food plan becomes a prototype of accepting things as they really are and letting go of wishful thinking.
We define what we eat and how much we consume so that the task later on of defining who we are and how we fit into the scheme of things has meaning and history. All of this gives us insight into new levels of feeling and allows us to separate the imagined aches and pains of being an addict with the real aches and pains of living in the real world. Above all we approach things quietly and thoughtfully and learn to “weigh and measure” decisions, relationships and choices in our lives and in what we see in other’s lives.
Weighing and measuring gives us distinctive boundaries.