Tools for a Balanced Lifestyle

A Program of Recovery from Weight Related Problems
Going for the 3 increases: Increase of Health; Increase of Happiness and Increase of Energy

Chapter 4: Addressing Resistance to Change

I. Overcoming Resistance to Working on Food Addiction
The messages of this chapter about food and your relationship to it may be creating a great deal of intellectual and emotional unrest inside of you. You may be finding yourself having difficulty accepting the concepts about food being promoted by the Tools for Balanced Lifestyle Program. What follows is a possible explanation for why this resistance may be happening in you.

This program posits the belief that you are powerless over the fact that you are compulsively driven towards food in an unhealthy way. Accepting this powerlessness and then turning it over to your Higher Power is necessary for you to get on with your balanced lifestyle efforts. You may be hearing these words and saying to yourself one of the following three things.

1. I can't change it. There is nothing I can do to help myself.

2. It's too hard and I want someone else to do it for me, in the mean time since I can't do anything about it, I am just going to relate to food as I always have.

3. No matter how much effort I exert, nothing is ever going to change, since I have never been successful in dealing with food before, I will never be able to handle it now or in the future.

If you are saying #1, you are thinking, feeling and acting helpless. If you are saying #2, you are thinking, feeling and acting irresponsible. If you are saying #3, you are thinking, feeling and acting hopeless. These three responses to the concept of powerlessness over being a compulsive over eater, foodaholic or food addict are irrational, not based in reality and cop outs. These responses do not understand or accept the concept of powerlessness and do not appreciate the hope available to food addicts or compulsive overeaters in the principal of letting go or handing it over to a Higher Power. The freedom from obsessing over how to rid yourself of the power, food has over you, gets lost by the messages of resistance present in Helplessness, Irresponsibility and Hopelessness. What follows is a rational look at these three resistances.

1. Helplessness

"I can't change it. There is nothing I can do to help myself."

Helplessness is rooted in poor self-esteem and self-hatred. This concept is full explored in Overcoming Helplessness in the Tools for Handling Control . Helplessness is based on the belief that "no matter what you do, you will never be able to help yourself, so why try?" This is a manipulative message intended to hook a caring, loving and compassionate person to take on your problem and solve it for you. It is the ultimate self-pity party or pity pot ploy. It is intended to tug at other's sympathy and caretaking. The intention is to get someone else to take on the emotional burden of the problem for you. It is a control mechanism to get the other to do for you what you cannot do for yourself. It also is a sign of your lack of motivation to do the work necessary to solve your problem. In the case of powerlessness over food addiction, it is an indication that you may be lacking in a spirituality or belief in a Higher Power and therefore have no where to LET GO or hand over your powerlessness over food to. You are unwilling to do the work to gain a Higher Power or develop a spirituality and therefore give up and try to "hook" someone else in doing it for you or making it easier for you to do or "understand." The amazing thing is that letting go of powerlessness over food is a "simple" and "easy" task to do, which takes persistence and perseverance to do over and over again, day in and day out for the rest of your life. You may be just too stubborn, bullheaded or unmotivated to hear how simple and easy a task this Letting Go process is. You may be stuck in blaming others, excuse finding and sidetracking to be open to accepting you can do it on your own. You would rather believe that others are responsible for your lack of success in accomplishing your overcoming your powerlessness over food and ultimately in your achieving success in attaining a balanced lifestyle. You probably prefer to point the finger of blame at others for why you are unhappy and dissatisfied with your weight rather than pointing that finger back to yourself and accepting your responsibility to take care of yourself.

2. Irresponsibility

"It's too hard and I want someone else to do it for me. So in the mean time since I can't do anything about it, I am just going to relate to food as I always have."

Irresponsibility is rooted in self-hatred, low self-esteem and a belief that you are a loser who is not worth the effort. This concept is fully explored in Accepting Personal Responsibility in the Tools for Personal Growth. Irresponsibility and not taking responsibility for your actions may be due to being lazy, unmotivated to change and looking for a reason or person to blame for why you will never be successful in your dealings with food. This is the rationalizer's, excuse maker's, and blame shifter's modus operandi. It is a sign of your refusal to grow up and accept personal responsibility for your own life. You would rather blame your past life's tragedies for you current misfortune than accept that life is a series of choices which you have made. You would rather obfuscate the message of the LET GO system to overcome powerlessness over food than accept responsibility that you need to take steps to change your life and your relationship with food. You find it easier to complain about how complicated, difficult or obscure the message is than to heed the simplicity and purity of it to Let Go and hand it over to your Higher Power. You would rather complain that this message sounds like religion or pious mumbo jumbo than take the time or effort to explore your concept of spirituality and Higher Power. You are probably so unwilling to accept responsibility for your failure to achieve success in attaining a balanced lifestyle that you would rather blame the lack of entertainment value in the program or lack of motivational charisma of the class leader for your failure. You are not willing to face that you are lazy and unmotivated. You are unwilling to face that you enter programs like this to "look externally" like you are doing something about your problems with food when in fact all the time you are in the program you are concentrated on criticizing, belittling or complaining about the program, the leader and your class members. You probably never are willing to say: "I am not successful in gaining a healthy relationship with food and a balanced lifestyle because I have not made the effort to do so." That would be too responsible an act, too mature and too honest for you to utter at this time.

3. Hopelessness

"No matter how much effort I exert, nothing is ever going to change, since I've never been successful in dealing with food before, I will never be able to handle it now or in the future."

Hopelessness is rooted in a lack of self-worth, low self-esteem and self-hatred. It is also based on your belief that "I can only rely on myself to fix my problems." It comes from the absence of a clear identity and concept of a Higher Power in your life. It is the result of a lack of a healthy spirituality. Hopelessness is the message of the person who has the type of pride as explained in Handling Pride in the Tools for Personal Growth. Hopelessness in dealing with food comes from the unawareness or unwillingness to accept the message that you are powerless over your addictive, compulsive and obsessive relationship with food. Hopelessness ignores that the only way to deal with food is to LET GO of this powerlessness and hand it over to your Higher Power so that you have the energy and motivation to do those things which are in your power to control so that you can attain a balanced lifestyle. Hopelessness comes from a stubborn refusal to listen to or heed messages of recovery which lessen the burden, pain and suffering you go through. Hopelessness comes from being habituated to being miserable. It is based on the belief "I've been miserable all or most of my life so why should I expect any different now or in the future." It is a pessimistic message which only looks at the half empty glass rather than the half full. It is focused on "impossibility thinking" rather than "possibility thinking." It is filled with the "yes...but" syndrome. It tends to be based on the belief that you are "predetermined" to be the way you are and no effort or action that you take will ever change that fact. It lacks the "redemptive vision" that "although life sucks you still can have a reasonably happy life as long as you accept reality the way it is rather than the way you want it to be." If you are suffering from hopelessness at this moment, then you are stuck in your ideals and expectations about life the way it should be. You are probably unable to let go of your fantasy or dream of how life should be for you. You may be stuck in magical thinking which says "it should be easier for me to control my relationship with food than what it is." Hopelessness comes from holding onto the belief that there should be a simple solution to solve your food, eating and weight problems. The truth is that there are no easy answers but the Tools for Balanced Lifestyles Program offers you a program that works as long as you work the program.

If you are holding onto helplessness, irresponsibility or hopelessness messages you are being resistant to the new thoughts, emotions and actions available to you if you accept the belief that: "I am powerless over my addictive, compulsive and obsessive relationship with food and I need to LET GO and hand over this powerlessness to my Higher Power so that I can be freed up to do those things necessary which are in my control to attain a balanced lifestyle."

The message of this program is "I may be powerless over food, but there are responsible actions I can take to address how I can deal with this reality so that I might effect changes in my life to gain a balanced lifestyle.

The only way you will be able to accept the messages of this program is to LET GO of your helplessness, irresponsibility and hopelessness and hand them over to your Higher Power. You will need to face yourself honestly for who you are and who you are not. You will need to accept that you cannot change your relationship with food by having others do it for you nor conversely doing it all on your own. You will need to accept that you will need to let go of the mask or facade you are currently carrying around with you which on the surface says: "See I'm attending classes and reading the materials and I am doing something about my weight, food and eating problems." You are not doing anything about your real problems if you are not making a commitment at the intellectual, emotional and behavioral level to love yourself enough to do what is necessary to LET GO of what you cannot change or control and to take actions to do what you can change and control. This means that you need to be more active in pursuit of learning to love yourself more through self-affirmations and CHILD visualizations. You need to let go of your ANGER and grow in self-forgiveness. You need to be ALERT to when you are becoming irrational, unrealistic or anxious over your food "crazies." You need to increase the amount of exercise you do on a daily basis. You need to start working the 12 Steps of the SEA's Program. You need to accept the message of the Serenity Prayer as your mantra for recovery from your powerlessness over food. You need to accept that there is only one person responsible for your success in this program and that is you. Finally you will have to humble yourself to accept personal responsibility for your own success in attaining a balanced lifestyle by saying daily:

"The Tools for a Balanced Lifestyle Program works for me only if I work the program."

With kind Permision
James J. Messina, Ph.D., & Constance M. Messina, Ph.D.Copin www.coping.org