I'm reading Jackie Guerra 's book and I'm loving it.  It has taken me to a deep, reflective mood.  So many things make so much sense.  Jackie refers to those that take part in "chub gen".  OH MY GOD!  Finally a great description.  Chubby Generosity.. a term for someone that does something that no one else would do because they are the chubby girl.  I am repeat offender! I'm not even chubby anymore.  

I'm doing a bit of research about OA.  Overeater's Anonymous.  It occurred to me that after I did my bit on food addiction, what do we have available?  We have after care if you’re fortunate and support groups like OH.  Thankful, grateful for that.  I want to help those that can’t stay with their program.  I need to know how…better than I’ve done up to now.  So I’m thinking (dangerous indeed) and I wonder how we might best work on our addiction.  We’ve had the surgery, the pipes are fixed but the operating system has some serious bugs.  Some Mac/PC humor would probably be appropriate here but I’ll leave that to the commercials.  By the way…I’ll step out and tell you I’m on a PC and happy to be here.   Don't hate me because I'm PC based!

So I was researching the OA website and saw some cute stuff.
H.O.P.E.  Happy our program exists 
R.E.L.A.P.S.E.  Recovery exits life and program seems empty 
S.L.I.P.  Sobriety losing its priority  (our sobriety is not over eating) 
F.E.A.R.  False evidence appearing real 
D.E.N.I.A.L.  Don’t even notice I am lying 
A.C.T.I.O.N.  Any change to improve our nature 
F.I.N.E.  (I’m fine!) frustrated insecure neurotic 
emotions 

There were a few more.  I picked some I liked.  

I believe we are addicts and until we fix that, we will continue to struggle.  People in these programs like AA would call it “bare knuckles”…trying to do it by yourself with no support.  I have family in AA.  I’ve known about it for years.  I just didn’t now I could apply some of it to me.  Then I realized OA is out there.  I talked to a big name OA’er on the phone before the conference and he told me something very interesting.  He said that they look at us (WLS people) as thinking we have a medical problem.  Yep, that’s what he said.  “They think they have a medical problem that can be solved by surgery”.  That hurt. 

After thinking about it for a while, I realized that if I’d known and understood it all when I was in the 4^th grade, I could have done something.  But I didn't know it.  I didn’t even know any of this until recently as a post-op.  It seems that due to my lack of after care, I created my own rules… borrowed some here, some there and so much of it runs parallel with 12 steppers.  I want to learn the Spanish phrase that Jackie said.  It means that “it’s not for me”.  Wow do we miss out on some stuff sometimes when tons of people do something that works and we say "not for me".  Sorta like obese people that are losing their lives little by little every day but the surgery is not for them.

I don’t know where this is going, this research,  but I do know that I feel deeply that there is a connection with all of it and I’m going to go to a OA meeting and ask questions.  I want to know one thing in particular.  Has there ever been a post-op come to their program??????????  I’ll bet not…or maybe not many.  I’ll report back.  

Have a beautiful day.  Think grateful… 

Remember where you came from.  Pay it forward.  Failure sucks….some of Ramon’s rules. 

Hugs, Y