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I'm back in the twelve-step Rooms where I lost 188 pounds. I'm taking it as seriously as my anxiety allows me: calling other addicts, going to meetings in the many formats they now come in, writing essay responses to the series of questions that covers the first three steps. My food is very clean: three meals a day, weighed and measured, nothing in between, no sugar, no flour. I tell my sponsor what I'm eating each day. I've learned to not mind the task of making salads again and to inspect my refrigerator for what I might be running short of so that there's no futzing around with, say, ice cream as a protein.
I've been reading The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous in order to address some of the essay questions I've been assigned. The Big Book is always a refresher course for me and something new always pops up from the text. Among the small epiphanies I've had in the last couple of weeks is this short fragment: "The idea that somehow, someday he will...enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker."
Substitute "food" and "eater" and you'll hear me gasp over something I'd forgotten about until I cleaned up my daily fare: I am strange about food. When it's binge-worthy food (loaded with sugar, fats, and/or refined carbohydrates), I barely taste it until I am the end of it. I'm too busy to taste it. Maybe I'm protecting it, a vestige of my wise genes that would have been terrific in a mini-ice age. Maybe I'm sucking in the feel-good molecules of sugar. I'm certainly gobbling or trying not to gobble. I'm thinking about wanting more and whether I can get it. If I'm in public, I'm trying not to look like a pig; if I'm at home, I'm inhaling it with the intention of passing out as quickly as possible.
However, lately I've been noticing the taste of my food, which is quite abundant. Certain greens bring out the fruit of olive oil. I roasted a chicken last week and stuffed it with an onion and heaps of rosemary; with squash, it was complete comfort. Greek yogurt, pan-toasted oatmeal and strawberries or, better, blueberries, is a study in textures and contrasting flavors -- smooth, pebbly rough; sour, sweet, toasty. That's a lot to be going on in one mouth at one time.
Even alcoholics who come into the food programs often say that finding and settling into a sane food plan is harder than getting off the bottle because everyone has to eat but no one has to drink. But in this one instance, foodoholics have it over drinkers: we can quit the crazy-making substances and favorite foods, the quantities and, even (if you really stick to what you tell your sponsor you're going to eat each day and if you engage in the shopping and cooking preparedness) the thinking and wondering about food.
Because certain greens are mollified by the fruit of the oil and blueberries, I swear, are the laughter of the angels.
