I'm Fat!

Time to face it.
I quit smoking 8 1/2 years ago and gained 15 pounds. Make that 16.
I'm 5' 4 1/2" tall and I weigh 148 pounds this morning and I can't take it anymore. Nothing I do works. Nothing. If I start to diet, I can't stick with it. If I start to exercise I gain weight immediately and become discouraged.

I have to eat less and I just can't. Or I can for a minute. I'm a victim of the law: "You must," "you must not." Everything I do revolves around those statements and I cannot adhere to what I must or must not do.

I have to get outside the law. I have to make all things lawful, but I can't. I do not have the power. I can't deceive my own self.

Jesus, help!
I need healing in my relationship with food, my body, all of what comprises this issue. I no longer know how to feed myself, how to nourish myself. Help, help, help!
How do I truly surrender?
How do I commit all of this to You?

I'm not really working, so I have way too much idle time on my hands and my income is reduced to the point where I live in one room. That means my food is about three feet from me wherever I am. It's like living in the refrigerator, literally. More work = more money =distance from fridge in every way: larger space, other things to think about, time occupied, brain on things other than space in stomach.

Not working is part of this, I think. But a part of me feels that all of that is a cop-out. If I had it together I wouldn't need to work to distract myself from food, I could live under any conditions and not have it affect my weight.  But maybe that's the point. I'm not together. Why lie about it? When I got sober 20 years ago, I went to AA and avoided alcohol for a while. Not forever, but for a while. When I did have to be near booze, I had a plan: I had an escape planned or I had another sober person with me.This is another addiction and I can treat it as such. I can go to OA. I've been before. Just go. Work the program and use the tools. Get a sponsor to do the steps. Have a plan. Accept the fact that this is a real issue, that isn't going away- that I am not all that together when it comes to food.

I want this to be easy, effortless, but it isn't. I have a problem- a number of problems- that need to be addressed.

I'm writing this and inside I'm saying, "whatever I do, it will not work. This is another lame attempt that will go nowhere."
But I need to try something.
Move a muscle, change a thought.
Just try.

So I will. I have plenty of writing to do, plenty of studying for the job I want and a manuscript to finish. There's plenty to do. Go to meetings. Walk. Get busy, as busy as I can get. Yes, distract myself. It's okay to not be "together." The point is to get there. In AA, it eventually got to the point where I could be around alcohol without freaking out. But first I needed a plan, and I needed to follow through.

So. Work. Meetings. Church. Distract, distract. Make some money while I'm at it and build a life where I have enough. Perhaps that's part of the problem: all that financial deprivation is getting made up, maybe, in my belly.