Thinking about Religion and Overeaters Anonymous

One of the ideas I've toyed with over the years to help get me sorted out with this food thing is joining Overeaters Anonymous or OA for short. I've often thought that talking out my issues with food, listening to others relate their stories of success and failure and having some kind of support system in place might be useful as most of the people around me really don't understand or have nothing helpful to offer other than pointless platitudes and clichéd advice (yes, I have thought about putting down the candy bar thank you very much).

The idea of having a support buddy in times of temptation kind of appeals to me, the ability to call somebody and talk out what is going on with me at that particular moment might actually yield some benefit. However, the other side of the coin is having your support buddy calling you at some inopportune time when you really don't feel like listening to it. This give and take thing could be dicey, especially for someone like me who is, admittedly, a little selfish with his time. Don't get me wrong, I'm a great listener and I'm interested in people; why they do the things they do, how they think, why they think that. But I really don't have an interest in being available 24/7 to listen to someone have a crisis over a slice of pizza late at night after being out at the bar. I probably wouldn't make the best support buddy.

The other problem I'm having with OA is the religion thing. They've modeled their program on the 12 steps program created by Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm going to list the 12 steps here as presented on OA's website.

The Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous

1. We admitted we were powerless over food — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs,

Notice the overarching religious slant? If you are Christian, this is probably not an issue for you. But what if you are not? Say you are Muslim? Or Buddhist? Or *gasp* atheist? You can see how this program and its religious overtones were created back when America (and Canada for that matter) were primarily christian. With our global community now firmly entrenched, this program seems horribly outdated. And what's this crap about turning our will and our lives over to God so that He can save us from the double bacon cheeseburgers we so crave? 

Going over them, I'm okay with the fist one. I do feel powerless over food, it has a strange hold over me. It's the ultimate love/hate relationship. I love food and eating brings me so much pleasure but I feel such self loathing when I eat. The back and forth that goes on in my head when it comes to food is maddening. Numbers two and three begin the surrender and acceptance of God where Him and only Him can save us from the terrible food demons that haunt us. A problem if you don't buy into theistic thinking. Number four is fine, making a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves makes sense. Five, six and seven take us back into God country where we ask for salvation from our shortcomings and defects of character (defects of character???). Admitting to others our wrongs? I'm sorry, did we kill and eat babies in some hunger lust? Try to eat a spouse during sleep?  Steal slices of pizza meant for orphans?

Eight, nine and ten are ridiculous in this context. Make a list of people we harmed and make amends? I can see how some alcoholics may need to do this as they may have actually harmed others in a drunken stupor or rage. But fat people? Who did they harm? Too much cheese on that pizza send them into a gooey psychotic episode where lives were endangered? Was the garbage man injured on the job while collecting that enormous pile of pizza boxes stacked at the end of your driveway? Silliness. Finally, eleven and twelve return to the God thing and again, if you are not a believer in such things, well...

I did a little research (I cannot stress enough the word "little") and found out that the religious thing does play a large role in meetings with many members being quite militant in their beliefs about the 12 steps and how God is central to their success. This flies in the face of what OA itself proclaims on its website about not being a religious organization. Sure, they are not advocating a particular religion but you can't deny the Christian slant to everything they do. Some former participants reported the heavy handedness of religion and prayers ending each meeting which made them uncomfortable and they did not return. As an atheist, I know I couldn't sit there and listen to them talk about surrendering themselves to some imaginary being in the sky because they can't find the will power to make it happen on their own. A better approach might be to help people find that will power, to encourage them and teach them how to tear down their toxic relationship with food and rebuild that relationship in a healthy productive manner. Showing them that they aren't defective people with terrible shortcomings who need to apologize to others for being fat. 

I don't know what kind of success rates an organization like this actually has. I've read that AA doesn't really have that great of a success rate either, I guess it depends who you ask. I'm still curious about OA and whether it might be of some benefit to me, but I have too many questions and concerns at this time. And from what I've read about it, I'm not sure I want to find out.

Bariatric Surgery On The Rise

I watched a news report this evening on the CBC about the huge leap in bariatric surgeries over the past few years and was rather alarmed at the attitudes of the doctors they spoke to. Now I have documented my experiences with this invasive procedure here, here, here and here. If you haven't read it and you are considering this operation or just want to know what it's really all about, you need to do so now.

The good folks over at the CBC added the story to their website which gave me an opportunity to look it over again and I have to say I'm disappointed in the medical establishments attitude towards this particular "fix". The prevailing attitude seems to be that since we have the technology to perform this surgery, then why not? People are fat and getting fatter and surgery has become the go to fix for just about everything that is wrong with people so why not this? I do understand that some people are in seriously bad condition due to their weight and surgery may be necessary to save their lives, but you can be sure there are others who are viewing it as an easy fix to their weight problems, much like liposuction. The medical community is supposed to have qualifiers before they okay this procedure and I hope they are followed diligently but somehow I doubt this is happening.

Bariatric surgery should be a last resort, one made after all other avenues have been exhausted. There are simply too many risks and complications and often, the underlying problems are not resolved so the patient will continue their eating patterns despite the fact that this will be met with severe consequences by the body itself. Intense vomiting, which among other complications, wears the enamel off your teeth, excessive scarring, which causes blockages in your abdomen and could result in life threatening situations (like I suffered), and painful gallstones requiring the removal of your gall bladder are some of the very real ramifications many will face. Some don't make it beyond a month or so before being readmitted to hospital with a variety of other complications and the need to perform a reversal. Some die although that number is very low.

Surgery should always be a last resort for anything. Once you open up the body you risk infection and the beginnings of other problems you probably never would have suffered from had you not gone under the knife. The fact that this surgery continues to increase in popularity as an obesity fix is frightening. Back in 1990 when I had mine done, I knew of nobody else who had experienced it. I was given no support or therapy to help me adjust to the new reality I was about to be exposed to and certainly no information or insight into what to expect. They just gutted me like a fish, stapled off most of my stomach and sent me on my way. I know the technology is supposed to be better now but is the support there? Are they treating the underlying issues? Twenty four years after my surgery and reversal, my issues remain and I'm no further ahead in getting them under control than I was when I eagerly agreed to the operation. My fear is that this is becoming just another routine procedure like lipo or botox injections. And that is sad.

RIP triple triple

I had a rude awakening the other day when Red and I were discussing calories and the problems with losing weight. I have a habit of not counting my coffee or tea in my daily calories because I thought coffee and tea were basically free with the exception of the sugar and cream or milk used in them. Since I don't use sugar in my hot beverage and the amount of cream I would use is what I considered negligible, I figured it wasn't hurting me. Boy was i wrong!

Half and half cream is a killer in the calories department, approximately 20 calories per tablespoon. And I know I use more than that in a cup of coffee or tea, probably the equivalent of 3 or 4 anyway raising the calorie count to 60 or 80 in addition to the few calories already existing in the beverage itself. So imagine my shock, and Reds, when we googled the calorie count of an extra large triple triple from Tim Hortons, God of all that is coffee in Canada, and realized it comes in at about 420! That's way more than 3 tablespoons of sugar and cream each in one cup. Go figure that a fast food place would find a way to increase the calorie count of something as simple as a cup of coffee. I guess if McDonalds and the like can make a salad upwards of a thousand calories then anything is possible.

Thinking about it, it makes sense. Replace the cream with milk and the coffee takes on a whole different taste, same when you cut or replace the sugar. Tim Hortons coffee is highly addictive and people who drink it love it. No wonder when it basically tastes like dessert, so sweet and rich. People are always saying they put something in the coffee to make it addictive, to me its just all the cream and sugar that makes it so good. I've had Timmys with Splenda and milk and its quite a different experience.

While i was sick a couple of years ago, I lost my taste for coffee and switched to tea with sweetener and milk. At work, I'd use cream in my tea because I do love the richness of it, but when I'd order a tea, I'd get milk. It has only been recently that i rediscovered my love of the triple triple and thankfully after only a couple of weeks, I've realized the truth about its calorie content. This would help explain some of Red's problems losing weight and mine for that matter. I was enjoying about 2 of these drinks a day so that's an additional 800 calories I wasn't accounting for! That's more than a pound a week! Now at work, I've switched to 1% milk in my tea, I'd prefer 2% at least, but the cafeteria doesn't seem to offer any middle ground here, its either half and half, 1% or skim.

So this change should yield results in the coming days. I stepped on the scale this morning just for a look and it read 215, the same as last Friday. I'm not concerned really, as I did drop 5lb last week and until Tuesday was still enjoying those 400 calorie coffees. I'm still in the gym first thing in the mornings and taking a cardio class roughly 4x a week in the evenings so things have to keep going down I'd think. I did screw up a bit last night at dinner, we had a couple pieces of steak leftover from the weekend that needed to be eaten so I enjoyed those which wasn't a problem except that Red cooked up some Kraft dinner for her dinner as she's sick and wanted something soft and easy, so I shared in that too. Add in some roasted veggies and it was a bit more than I required. Of course I did drink one of my banana smoothies later on which I certainly didn't need, so while the day wasn't a write off by any means, it probably didn't help my weight loss goals.

Tonight I am taking a cardio attack class at the gym and I'll be enjoying some roasted veggies for dinner in addition to some leftover roast chicken so today will be good. This weekend we are heading home for a Bar Mitzvah and they're serving both lunch and dinner in addition to a dance so we'll have to remain vigilant and not blow the good work we've accomplished. I, for one, plan on being good.