I'm going to do something about this procrastination next Monday!

Blog 8th May 2015 My eating disorder recovery has slowed to a very slow crawl. I am barely doing anything at all. I am coasting. My eating is not out of control but it’s not in control either. Every day I overeat in regards to my evening meal and at least twice last week I have eaten trigger foods. The awful thing is I don’t even care that much, talk about a slump in motivation. I didn’t go to OA this week, I could have gone if I really set my mind to it but instead I choose to lie on the sofa watching the box set of Game of Thrones (new addiction) and bemoaning a very bloated abdomen as my IBS was playing up. I was well and truly sitting squarely on the pity pot. The next day to cap it all I went to the dentist and as they say “You don’t get away with anything” All the years of regurgitating and vomiting in response to the gastric band have really taken their toll on my teeth. They are going to look like the cemetery in Dodge City soon. I can’t have a crown or a bridge on my front tooth as there is not enough bone left in my jaw so my only option (bar dentures) is an implant. This comes with the princely cost of two thousand pounds. I nearly choked on the mouthwash when young handsome, perfect-teeth dentist gleefully explained this. “I’m going to refer you to an implantologist!” he said I thought he was joking and laughed. It was no laughing matter. Coupled with that bombshell I needed a root-canal filling and a crown on my back tooth. I’m far too vain and young (cough) for dentures so I had better start saving up. That or look like one of the Clampets. If the situation continues I won’t even have to worry about an eating plan, it will be soup for life! I also visited my Aunty this week, she’s my Fathers last remaining relative and she has breast cancer. She went for a lumpectomy last week and will need radiotherapy. It’s a lot to cope with at any age let alone at 77. What I was struck by was how positive she was and how she managed to find humour and humility in what must be a scary and over-powering situation. It was inspiring. I learnt that your urine goes bright blue following a lumpectomy and that my Auntie has got an incredibly high pain threshold and has only taken 2 Paracetamols since coming out of hospital. When I think of all the drugs I took to block out emotional pain, it’s an odd comparison. I love my Aunty very much - she is witty and sparky, full of fun and can be a little bitchy at times (which to me adds to her appeal) as I find it funny and shocking at the same time. My Aunty adored my Father and misses him; I enjoy talking about him with her as she recounts stories of when they were children and the funny things he used to do. I received such a beautiful text from her when I got home, comparing me to my Father which made me feel all warm inside. Returning to the eating disorder: could someone please kick me up the arse? I know I have to get back on track, I know I have to be willing and I know I have to take action to get motivated. I cannot sit here waiting to be thin, it is not going to happen by wishing or by eating what I am eating at the moment. I will eventually take another leap of faith but the question is when? Monday perhaps? (Try doing it TODAY) W X Julie

Detached Indifference!

Blog 24th to the 26th April 2015 I learnt a lesson this week. The lesson was: do not send emails when in an emotional state. Some battles are just not worth fighting or indeed even worth entering into the arena. I had to ask myself “Where in the general scheme of life’s events does this one come?” If only I had asked this before demonically pushing the send button then announcing triumphantly “That‘ll teach him” to the bemused staff team. Of course it didn’t teach him anything and he retaliated also trying to be big and clever. This could easily have developed into email tennis wars but fortunately I was called into a meeting, burning with self-righteous indignation, championing my inner child. It was only on refection that I suddenly thought “0h dear!” I went to my boss and explained what I had done “I sent an email when I was in an emotional state of mind”. She face- palmed, “Oh no, who to?” I knew it was wrong, I knew it was childish, non-professional and ultimately stupid. It didn’t even make me feel better. In fact I just felt a bit daft. The conclusion of this was that I had to go and see my boss’s boss (the big boss) I held my hands up and apologised before she even opened her mouth. Honesty is a simple tool. My task then was refection and resolution. I may have to work with the receiver of the email again and I have to be professional. My other rather big and strangely cathartic mistake was to copy-in the Director of the company. Another rather impulsive error on my part! I was instructed, rightly so, to apologise. All of this is a learning curve. It’ll turn into a positive experience in the long run. Prior to recovery I could never have looked at this incident in such a way. I would have fumed for days, evilly plotting revenge and figuratively stroking a white cat in a menacing fashion. The email receiver would have been sworn at and ridiculed and blame, oh so much blame, would have been apportioned. Thank God today it doesn’t have to be like that. I cannot carry resentments: they eat away at my very soul. I have to find the middle ground and remain calm. Wyn calls it “detached indifference”. I am powerless over people, places and things and one snotty-arsed email is not going to change anything, win an argument or score points. I can’t change other people but I can change the way I react to other people - be that face to face, over the telephone or via sarcastic emails. In the words of Disney’s Frozen “LET IT GO” Julie

The Miracle Will Happen One Day

Blog 13th to the 24th April 2015 It’s been almost two weeks since I last blogged. That sounds a little like it’s been two weeks since my last confession. Sometimes I feel I write my blog like a confession. A confession to myself that these things have happened and by typing them out it confirms the truth and makes it more real. Out of my head and on to the paper. My last blog was very desperate and dark; I was struggling big time and wanted to escape in food. It all seemed inevitable and helpless. I knew what to do, I had the tools of recovery, what I lacked was the willingness. Then something important happened in the form of an OA meeting. We read a story from lifeline which helped considerably. It was about a woman who was bulimic and was vomiting up to twenty times a day. I related to it, in the year before doing anything about my food addiction I had been in the same situation, my gastric band had been tightened to within an inch of its life on my orders and I was regurgitating up to ten times a day, sometimes more sometimes less. It was horrendous; at each meal I was anxious, I would sit there consciously aware that I would have to leave the table and throw up but desperately wanting to feed myself and unable to stop. I would leave the table throw up then return to the table to try and get more food down, invariably being disappointed and frustrated when I couldn’t and I would need to run to the toilet to throw up again. Eating out was a misery, I would insist on eating out then spend the whole experience running back and forth to the toilet. Owen would then get angry (understandably so) which would make me more nervous and it would happen more. I felt guilty as he had paid for the damn band which I perceived meant that he didn’t love me the way I was and wanted me thin. This was despite the fact that I had asked for the money for the operation. Owen didn’t understand my eating disorder, how could he? If I couldn’t get it or understand it what hope did he have? All he saw was that he had paid for an operation out of his grandmother’s inheritance and I was not even trying to stick to the recommended diet that the consultant and dietician had advised. I couldn’t stick to it because I was a compulsive overeater and food addict, but neither of us knew that back then. Owen would then look at me with disgust and anger and I picked up on this and ate more to comfort and reassure myself. It was hell, my physical health was suffering, and my teeth were (and still are) in a shocking state. The only foods I could keep down were chocolate, sweets cakes, biscuits; these trigger foods would slip down past the band with gay abandon. I was getting no nutritional value from foods and my weight remained the same. Looking back it was horrifically unhealthy and madness. When I ate with my mother my trips to the toilet were even more frequent as my fear of being criticised for eating too much became too stressful and I often couldn’t keep anything down. As we read that story in OA I was taken back and instead of beating myself up I listened and actually patted myself on the back. I had come a long way. OK I was not perfect a long way from it but I was making slow but steady progress. I was losing weight albeit slowly. I was eating mainly healthily, I was eating regularly, I had apart from on a few occasions abstained from eating my trigger foods. I did still over eat but it wasn’t through triggers. I had for the most part eaten in the right places. In fact I had much to be grateful for. I had coped. This was my primary addiction and it was not going to vanish in a few weeks. My preoccupation could still be there but it was manageable and it did pass. This is turning a negative around and making in into a positive. I could have wallowed in misery and pity but that would have taken me to the end of the road and a ‘sod it’ moment which would have taken me back into the food. I don’t want to go back into the food. I do not want that emotional attachment with food any more. It has taken too much of my life and now I need to learn to manage it and come alongside it. It can be my ally, it can show me where I don’t want to be, it can alert me to the fact that I am not spiritually or mentally healthy and that I need to take action - change or step up my recovery. Food can be my friend and motivator not my enemy. I may have been taking it a little too seriously, we do not live in a famine-torn country, I will not starve to death, and it is not a life or death situation if I do not get to eat a box of Krispy Crème donuts. I need balance and perspective. I also need to stop comparing or getting jealous of others in OA who get it. The important thing is to keep attending these recovery-oriented meetings. They are on their path I am on mine, we are different. I am different and unique; my experience is going to be very different to that of others. I am where I am supposed to be at the moment. I need to take it easy and have faith that the miracle will happen one day. Julie

A sense of hopelessness as nothing seems to be working.

Blog 12th of April 2015 I’m just not feeling it or getting it at the moment. It’s like I’m stuck, restless, irritable, I can’t put my finger on it, and a piece of the jigsaw is missing. I am not willing, there is a big wall in front of me and I’m not ready to surrender to it. I’m wishing all sorts of nonsense, angry that I can’t eat what I want to eat, sabotaging by doing things that I know are off plan. I deliberately ate a Chinese takeaway in front of the TV last night using the very pathetic and lame excuses (even for me) that Ninja Warrior was on! I find myself day dreaming about being able to eat what I want when I want and never gaining a pound. I am so obsessed by food. I just want to stuff my face and I’m getting madder and madder about it. My rational side is patiently explaining to me that I feel one hundred percent worse and the addict side is fighting back. I’ve even started buying bags of chocolate for other people. What the hell is that all about? I bought my mother enough chocolate to stun a small oxen for her birthday and my friend, whose just had a baby, half of Thornton’s. As I drove to see her the jury was still out on whether I would actually go through with giving her the box of Thornton’s Premium. My conscience batted with my addiction. In the end I thrust the box at her like a demented person, then regretted it all the way home. I took group yesterday then went to town to look for some sandals. I just wanted to feed myself. I managed to pass the new cookie dough ice cream stand in the New St David’s 2, but only just; I didn’t quite make it past the Pretzel stall and quickly bought and ate standing up a hot dog covered in cheese pastry pretzel. I chowed on it like a cave woman, devouring it, loving it, spurring myself on for more. What the hell is wrong with me? What am I running away from? I look at all the others in OA, the ones who have got it and I think how? I don’t understand it. I don’t take it seriously. I know alcohol drugs and smoking will kill me most probably after one binge if I went back to them. I’m healthily scared of them. I am not scared of food, I love it, I am obsessed by it, I crave it, I want it. I do not see it as a killer. I know it is but it would take years to eat myself to death. And when you talk in groups about relapse with a flapjack people, myself included, find it hilarious. I can’t seem to see the harm apart from when I look in the mirror and hate what I see I want to be willing, I want to take action. I’m stuck at this weight and I can’t seem to find that willingness to take it up a notch. There is quite a lot of change going on around me at the moment and change can bring fear. The Living Room is changing and that has scared me as a lot of the old gang are no longer attending and I miss them. Work is changing and the politics are as troubling as ever. Joe and Annie’s recoveries worry me, and Owen’s been out of sorts. I think another fear I have is the fear of becoming ill again and people losing patience with me as I am finding this recovery from eating disorder so difficult. I managed to surrender to drugs, smoking and alcohol. I know where they take me. I can’t go back. With eating I’m screaming, kicking, and fighting it all the way. I am not making this easy, I don’t know how to. I can’t seem to apply the tools, find the faith to help me. It’s hard to impose the positives at present. I am praying, I am asking my higher power but I seem to be fighting myself. Answers on a post card please? To compulsive over- eater, stuck and raring to binge. Julie

An addict on her own is in very bad company!

Blog 29th March 2015 It’s happened again, eating out of control. It all started on Wednesday when I was booked to go away to attend a course on dialectic behavioural therapy with my work. I was so pleased I’d been given that opportunity as I had wanted to know more about this therapy as it’s the recommended treatment for patients with personality disorder (the field I have worked in for many years) I was also interested for my own personal recovery as this treatment has proved successful in an adapted form in the treatment of addictions and risk taking behaviours. I was all set, Owen dropped me off at the station, I went straight in to Marks and Spenser’s and bought some food for the journey as I would be unable to have an evening meal due to travelling to Chester on the train. I bought some sandwiches and a bag of baked pizza chips, cheese and red onion flavour (large packet) I then justified buying a flapjack as it was seeded and in my addict mind healthy! This was the first step in dropping my guard. I did well when I got to Chester, even managing to ignore the biscuits in my room that adorned the complementary tea and coffee tray. The following day was quite torturous, temptation was all around, for breakfast I avoided the cooked buffet session and went for an omelette instead with cheese, onion and mushrooms freshly cooked in front of me (this was off plan, I am supposed to have cereal and toast) Again justification, I’m away, I deserve it, its healthy full of protein, and the killer blow, its free I need to get my money’s worth. I finished with toast and butter. I felt fine, smug almost, I convinced myself I had done very well. The actual conference was a food heaven haven, a thing of joy for an overeater. Yet the first day I resisted all trigger foods. There were even sweets on all the tables, Swizzles children’s sweets in little bowls, drum stick lollies and Palma violets along with other lovelies and they were in the centre of each and every table, no escape. Break times were no different, home-made biscuits, cakes of every descriptions endless varieties. I avoided them feeling strong. My colleague is aware of my problems and was sympathetic, encouraging even. Lunch was a veritable banquet four choices of main, plus bread rolls and butter, salad and a groaning desert table. I did well, I commended myself, shepherd’s pie, and vegetables and a bread roll (small portion) then fresh fruit salad (this was easy) Then in the evening I was planning to go to an AA meeting but when looking on the web site I found it had closed down. My colleague was going to accompany me as it was an open meeting and she was interested, she’s a clinical psychologist and was keen to find out about 12 step programme. So instead we decided to go for something to eat. I had passed a Thai restaurant earlier in the day when I went for a walk so we headed there. It was a lovely night, I slightly over ate but not to extremes. Sadly on my walk earlier I had bought another flapjack from the shop opposite and as we walked back I obsessed about it. I returned to my room shut the door and dived in. Sweet and satisfying just ramming it in, knowing that it wasn’t the right thing to do but simply not caring. On packing in the morning I stuffed the two packets of ginger biscuits from the tea tray (which I’m not even that keen on) in to my handbag. At breakfast it was like my mind-set had changed, I wolfed a cooked breakfast then a croissant, I was in freefall. I knew what I was doing but couldn’t stop myself, justifications I ate two biscuits as they were gluten free, then at lunch I thought that gluten free apple crumble would be perfectly acceptable with cream, then followed in the afternoon by not one not two but four shortbread biscuits an grabbed a handful of drum sticks to eat on the train home. I was determined then, I went to the station shop to buy another flapjack to have with a coffee, then stopped off in Crewe to buy sandwiches a grab bag of walker’s crisps and a packet of fruit tellers. This was alongside the ginger biscuits in my handbag. On the train Owen rang, “Have you eaten?” “Not much, I lied, just some sandwiches” “Shall we get a take away?” I didn’t need to be asked twice, he picked me up and we went to get 2 large Dominos pizzas, where on getting home I devoured 4 pieces! I woke up the following day, resigned but all right, today would be different. It was, until after I left the Living rooms when I discovered the half eaten packet of fruit tellers in my pocket after stuffing them in without tasting them I then drove to Sainsbury’s and bought a bag of walker’s Brazil nut toffees. I just rammed them in my mouth in the car one after the other desperately. I needed to do it. On getting home I confessed. I was in big trouble, we went to Chapter to eat and to watch a film, I made an unhealthy choice hot dog and fries and ate far too quickly again feeding something. I then went to the toilet and brought it up. After the film I was obsessing, I needed something sweet I went to the cupboard and ate cake decorations, again I knew I was doing it, I needed that sweetness that comfort that release from something. Today, I needed to tell you this. Today I want to be honest with you, today I don’t want to lie and hide, and today I want to get better. Going away from home may well be a trigger, when I left my parents’ home at 18 to come to Cardiff to do my nurse training. I put on four stone in a year. I was away from the restrictions the critical eye and voice and felt free. I’m not free today as I feel chained to this disease at the moment. I just can’t seem to get it. I was even thinking of radical acceptance to the fact that I am fat! How mad is that?

Competition in the Recovery Stakes!

Blog 25th March 2015 Early recovery is exhausting and being with someone in early recovery can also be all consuming and relentless. I am delighted, comforted and relieved that my son has returned to the bosom of a twelve step programme. It’s been a good leveller for me and a healthy reminder of the pain and suffering this illness causes. Going to lots of meetings, being with newcomers and sharing experience, strength and hope helps me as much as it helps others. The flip side to the coin is that I have become totally and utterly preoccupied and consumed with Joe’s recovery. This happened the first time he entered in to the process, so keen was I to see him well I chivvied him everywhere. I took him to meetings, put money in the pot for him, drove him here there and everywhere, tried to control and take over his life. He was not ready; he was using recovery as a means to please me, to shut me up and to obtain money and cigarettes. My emotions would veer from ecstatic to anger to hope and despair in the blink of an eye. I was hyper sensitive to his every emotion when he was happy, I was happy when he was angry, I was furious and when he was low, I would be on high alert looking for signs of the red-eyed relapse. I would constantly quiz him, nag him to ring other members of the fellowship and follow the programme. Looking back I must have been a nightmare. I was in early recovery too and floating on a pink cloud. I realised I was in danger and enabling the other night. I lay in bed and was totally preoccupied with him using. Questions whirled around my head that were impossible to answer. I could not sleep, I kept imagining him using and the fear of him using was driving me mad. I finally drifted in to a fitful sleep where I had nightmares about attacking him physically and verbally. I even took a co-codymol to get myself off to sleep rationalising this insane addictive behaviour by pretending that I had toothache. I was unable to switch off, and unable to see the damage I was doing to my own recovery. Co-dependency at its best! Joe needs a lot of support but he also needs to toughen up stand on his own two feet and find his own way in life. I want to give him a flying start and help him as much as I can, but I have to keep myself safe in the process. If I go under and allow people, places and things to possess me, my recovery is in trouble. Joe is similar to me in many ways, one of his coping techniques is exactly the same as mine and that’s a tendency to talk ten to the dozen about himself and block everything else and everyone else out. Wyn calls it talking your feelings away or verbosity. I do it, and it’s dangerous as you are so preoccupied with yourself and your self-preservation that you don’t listen to others: you can also talk your feelings away which prevent you from actually sitting down and feeling them. I was a master of this and can still be guilty of it today. It’s quite exhausting to the people around you but the addict is oblivious to this and just keeps on and on like a Gatling gun. It generally stops when the recipient can take no more and hollers “Shut up” at the surprised addict. I, self, me. It was all about me when I was addicted and it’s all about me now. It’s one of the hardest things for us to learn to be “givers” not “takers”; I need work on this one daily. I have to take a step back and resist the urge to enable. I don’t help him when I enable and I destroy myself in the process. I hinder his recovery with that thinking, tough love and stepping back does work. Joe is living proof of that but as soon as he starts to do well there I go again treating him like a child, rewarding him, enabling, prolonging his agony; keeping him sick. Wrong things; right reasons. I’ve made some mistakes this week in the name of “love” giving him money, paying his rent, paying off a dealer. All backward steps for me and leading me to those feelings of panic, fear and resentment. Getting the balance right is tough, trust takes a long time to build and action has to be put in by the addict. Openness, honesty, willingness, forgiveness and re-establishing the family relationships are what are required. Compassion underpinned by that bond of unconditional love I feel for him. He seems committed, he’s been clean for three days today which is miraculous, he’s been attending meetings every day, 1:1s, sharing, reading, phoning, using the tools of recovery and the path has started to open. He moved in to The YMCA (I am resisting the urge to do the song and dance routine) he now has a Dr, a support worker, is in process of getting a dentist and is going to see a specialist about his ADHD and Tourettes. He has plans to improve his literacy and numeracy. He looks alive again instead of stupefied by the drugs and it’s like he’s woken up. He’s started some pre step work too and is going to get a sponsor. And I need to learn how to butt out and let him find his own recovery path and standalone to find and become the lovely person he always was and always will be. Joe could go on to help many, many, people. I am so proud of my brilliant son. As for my eating, I have been so wrapped in in Joe, I have not thought a great deal about it. I’ve stuck to my three meals a day with a small snack. I don’t seem so fixated, routine most definitely helps. I’ve also tried to identify my own feelings more this week, generally when I’m lying in bed. When I’m feeling something I’m trying to let it in and work out why it came and what it’s trying to tell me. I was overwhelmed by anxiety the other night, that electrical feeling in my stomach like a jolt shooting through me. I worked out I was worried as I had interviewed seven of the staff from the ward for a senior job last week and there was only one vacancy. I knew that I had conducted the interviews fairly and marked fairly. What I was feeling was fear, fear of disappointing people, and fear of upsetting people. Fear that people would dislike me and say unkind things about me, fear of being accused of favouritism and people thinking that I was useless and hopeless at my job. Deep seated horrible and insecurity gnawing away. I challenged these thoughts then rationalised them, I sat with the feelings and they didn’t hurt me or kill me, they were not very nice to feel but the sky didn’t cave in and I survived. This is what recovery is all about - learning to deal with life. Julie

Relapse

March 15th 2015 Relapse Life can change overnight, with a relapse it’s rarely like that, there is always a seed, a seed that is planted a week, a few weeks, or a month before hand. It is a slow creeping insidious process. In the weeks leading up to my slip I had become complacent, almost flippant, bored and restless of it all. Playing lip service, using the jargon, doing the programme but not really feeling it. Taking the shortcuts, eating off plan and justifying it, making deals to myself, not sharing or being totally honest. There was a horrible inevitability about it all, life seemed quite flat. I wasn’t communicating with Owen, the connection seemed to be missing, keeping things from him for fear of anger or reprisals. I was becoming distant and paranoid feeling that if his mood was low it was because of me. The general self-seeking addict head that should have alerted me to the fact that the wolf was at the door. We planned a holiday, my idea, no consultation with him at all. I had an itch, it needed scratching. Again huffing puffing justification “we wouldn’t go anywhere if it was left up to him” I don’t think I consciously planned the relapse but the signs were there, not once did I think of planning my meals. We were half board at the hotel with a buffet type meal basis so I figured that there would be something to suit me. On the first night we got there a Saturday evening I slipped, I went over to the desert section and the only desert there I could have eaten staying on plan was technically an orange, instead I chose what I considered at the time the “next best” jelly and peaches. That seemed to go all right, no urges to binge. Sunday we walked past an ice cream stall and Owen asked if I wanted an ice cream (he totally forgot) and Owen does not have responsibility or any type of accountability for my eating disorder. I knew this was off plan, I could have said no but I took my opportunity and was in like Fllin. Then it built and built through the week and by Thursday (this was how quickly it gathered pace) I was binging and the old behaviour came crashing back. The obsession the fixation, the insane thinking. There was a Marks and Spencer’s food shop just up from the hotel. I went in for some biscuits (just one or two with my cup of tea) I kidded myself. Two packets later! I didn’t even want them when I was eating them, I didn’t taste them just that urge that compulsion to cram them all in, not to share them, the overwhelming fear and panic that there would not be enough that I wouldn’t be satisfied. I didn’t even taste the bloody biscuits; I was a free-falling cookie monster, out of control and hungry for more. The other horrible thing was that it really wasn’t working, it wasn’t doing anything for me, and in fact it was making me feel awful, hopeless, ashamed and miserable. Owen could see it too but sensibly kept quiet, silently hoping that I would come to my senses. On the last day I looked through the photographs on my I-phone and then it flooded in earnest. My feelings were out of control, I looked at those pictures and felt disgust, hatred, self-loathing, I pulled at my rolls of fat in the bathroom hating how I looked. Feelings so intense and overwhelming. I could either say “sod it “and go in for total relapse but heaven knows when I would emerge out of that? Or I could make a decision, this stops decision. I decided that it stopped the minute I got off the plane. I decided that I needed to go to three meals a day the OA stalwart. I decided that I needed to get back on eating plan and to take this illness seriously. Still I was unsure if I could, I didn’t trust myself. Go back to step one, one day at a time. Then a miracle happened, Joe my son who is an addict contacted us, he wanted us to move some belongings from his house in Tonypandy, he was being evicted and he asked us to store his things. Of course we said yes and Owen and I drove him up there. Joe was about the lowest we had ever seen him, he had reached his rock bottom, life had never been this hopeless, and he was homeless and living in the Huggard centre. He asked for help, he wanted recovery. This week I’ve accompanied him to meetings lots of meetings. We went in to recovery together initially but he was not ready, he went back out, I stayed clean and sober he relapsed. I recognised my primary addiction was eating and I was struggling, I was yet again out of the lifeboat. The action came from an unexpected source, Joe. Going to meetings with a newcomer has been the best thing that has happened to me in a long time. It has made me think about step one, share early recovery thoughts and feelings and my own eating disorder; head has not been half so troublesome or all consuming. Joe has given me strength and hope; I have looked at him and learnt. It has put my problems in more perspective. It has made me grateful. Today on Mother’s day, I have been given the greatest gift and miracle of all for myself and my family and that is recovery. Without my recovery there would be no family, no work, no relationship, no life. Its early days for Joe, the first few months are hard - openness, willingness and honesty. I need to remember that trio myself to arrest my eating disorder. I have completed a week of three meals a day, no trigger foods has been achieved by working the programme and through the help of my higher power. I’ve used my techniques from the early days of recovery, reinforced by accompanying Joe to meetings and listening to newcomers. Julie