Elephants

There is alcoholism in my family, my father and sisters have the disease. I have inherited the traits myself... traits that sometimes result in drinking too much and most of the time results in eating too much.

In the world of alcoholism, there is an analogy of how the alcoholic is a big elephant living in a family's house and how, due to it size it breaks china and rampages through the house causing havoc. Yet everyone in the family/house ignores the elephant. They tread lightly around the elephant. They don't say anything.... especially they don't say anything to cause the elephant to get upset and go on another rampage... or binge.

The world of over-eating is just the same. Our family and friends see us, the elephant, getting bigger and bigger... yet they ignore the elephant. They don't say anything, they don't want to hurt our feelings. They don't want the to cause the elephant to get upset and go on another rampage.... or binge.

Binge eating and binge drinking, the basis is the same... uncontrolled. Every time I allow my emotions to control my eating, I allow a binge to occur. A binge for me could be eating a bag of chips or it could be eating a cookie that I don't need. Large or small binge, a binge is a binge is a binge... let's call it what it is.

Getting back to elephants, my sister's blog yesterday tells of her nine-year-old son's wise words to her as she was frustrated with frantically trying to find paperwork in her "cluttered office." He said, "Mom, how would you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. You would need to chew and swallow before you could take another bite. So you can't run around doing a million things at once or your mouth is too full. You need to bite one. Get done and do the next one. OK? No more anger."

How true! How do we deal with elephant in our life - be it drinking, over-eating, or too much to do at work? One bite, one step, one day at a time, that's how!