One Day At A Time - 13th September 2025

ABSTINENCE


“It’s a funny thing about life. If you refuse to settle for anything less than the best, that’s what it will give you.”

–W. Somerset Maugham

When I first came to program, I was in the diet mentality. After a few “slips” I had to face the facts: I was in relapse, and I had never really surrendered. With the help of the program, I gained an increasing awareness of this progressive disease. Did I really want to recover? Was I really willing to go to any lengths to find relief from compulsive eating?

When I finally surrendered the food and began working the Steps, I didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was that food could no longer be the answer. With seven months’ abstinence, I now know that I have a long way to go in my recovery. However, one day at a time, I am willing to find my answers in the Steps instead of in the food. Thank you, Higher Power!

One day at a time…
I choose abstinence and will listen for God’s calling in my life. God’s will for me is the safest and most loving place I can be, and I know God wants me to live a life free from the compulsion to eat.

~ Christine S. 

ONE DAY AT A TIME #essentialsofrec #Recovery #Abstinence #Temptation

STRATEGY

“Better shun the bait than struggle in the snare.”

~ John Dryden 

Perhaps the most important strategy for beating temptation is to avoid it altogether. Temptation pits me head-on with my disease and all of its cunning and baffling ways. It’s so much easier to stay out of its claws and devices than to try to free myself once caught in its web.

What ways do I bring temptation right into my house or provide access to temptation when I go out? Do I keep forbidden foods in my house? Have I ever asked other family members to go without those things because they are dangerous to me or my recovery? Do I go places or engage in activities that increase my desire to eat compulsively? Have I considered that, for now, I just can’t go certain places because of the risk to my recovery? Have I considered that I might have to give up socializing with certain groups of people because they lead me into temptation? Does watching TV trigger compulsive eating? Does putting myself in the company of a certain individuals lead to self- defeating behavior of any kind? Do I continually expose myself to stressful situations or people that tempt me to eat compulsively? Do I continue doing the things that tempt me to eat to ease the feelings or emotions that come up over it?

Perhaps I am in an unwholesome relationship, or I overspend, or have another addiction or compulsion. What am I willing to do to recover? What am I willing to change to keep myself out of harm’s way?

It is easy to pray for God to keep me from temptation, but I must do my part also.

One day at a time …

I must remember to avoid the people, places and things that tempt me to eat compulsively and provide a way for the disease to touch me again.

~ Diane 

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ABSTINENCE


“It’s a funny thing about life. If you refuse to settle for anything less than the best, that’s what it will give you.”

–W. Somerset Maugham

When I first came to program, I was in the diet mentality. After a few “slips” I had to face the facts: I was in relapse, and I had never really surrendered. With the help of the program, I gained an increasing awareness of this progressive disease. Did I really want to recover? Was I really willing to go to any lengths to find relief from compulsive eating?

When I finally surrendered the food and began working the Steps, I didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was that food could no longer be the answer. With seven months’ abstinence, I now know that I have a long way to go in my recovery. However, one day at a time, I am willing to find my answers in the Steps instead of in the food. Thank you, Higher Power!

One day at a time…
I choose abstinence and will listen for God’s calling in my life. God’s will for me is the safest and most loving place I can be, and I know God wants me to live a life free from the compulsion to eat.

~ Christine S.

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Acceptance ~


Until you make peace with who you are, you will never be content with what you have.
–Doris Mortman

Through abstinence and recovery, I can begin to accept myself. I can pay attention to my likes and my dislikes as I continue to grow and learn about me. Learning about myself is a new adventure. There are so many layers that have been hidden under years of food abuse and weight obsession. Exploring and discovering the new me requires a lot of acceptance. There are parts of me that I do not like, and there are also wonderful surprises. By accepting all parts of myself, I am honoring my Higher Power and demonstrating spiritual recovery.

One Day at a Time . . .
I will accept myself. By learning to accept myself, I will find myself growing in my acceptance of others.

~ Christine S. ~

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Commitment ~

Shallow men believe in luck ~
Strong men believe in cause and effect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Abstinence did not happen for me until I made a commitment to it. I realized that I would have abstinence until something was a bit too uncomfortable for me to face or feel. Then I would have a slip. So it became a game for me. Was this event or circumstance enough to justify another slip? Sure, why not? That’s the nature of the disease. Everything and anything was an excuse to eat.

It wasn’t until I made a commitment to abstinence that I was forced to find my solutions in the Twelve Steps and really let go of my addiction. I’m grateful to my Higher Power that I hit the bottom I did. By accepting the truth about myself and my food addiction, I am now free to live in the solution.

One Day at a Time . . .I will renew my commitment by receiving the gift of abstinence and practicing my program to the best of my ability.


~ Christine S. 

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PATIENCE

“Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is Patience.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Today’s topic is Patience! When I first came to Program, I didn’t really know what abstinence was. I thought it was a diet. It turned out to be far more than I ever imagined. since beginning, I’ve gained abstinence, I’ve lost weight and my physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being has changed more than I ever thought possible. I’ve come so far … beyond my wildest dreams … yet, sometimes it feels like it’s still not enough. I’ll get in a row with my 12 year old daughter over some minor issue. She has a way of pushing my buttons which sends me into “fingerpointing” and “lecture” mode – good intentions gone totally awry! She’ll ultimately tune me out – and I’ll walk away feeling like a bad parent. The guilt will set in and I’ll deride myself for lacking patience and having bad judgement! But once I’ve calmed down – I’ll remind myself that my intentions were good and – as in my food plan – progress not perfection has to apply to my parenting just as it does to my any other aspect of my recovery. This requires me to be patient with MYSELF as well as with others.

One Day at a Time . . .

I will learn to be patient with myself as well as with others.

~ Rob R. 

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A WOMAN’S SPIRIT #essentialsofrec #Abstinence #Recovery

To experience a feeling is to open a window to our soul.

~ Sarah Desmond ~
Abstinence and recovery offer us the opportunity to really know ourselves. It surprises us, initially, to discover how unfamiliar we are with our feelings and our motivations. Alcohol and other drugs muffled most of what we felt and thought for much of our lives. Now meetings and the Steps are helping us foster an acquaintance with our true self. It’s both fun and a little scary.

We don’t necessarily like every aspect of who we are now. And most of us loathe who we used to be. But having the tools to peel away the layers of denial about the past and having the willingness to face our feelings are paramount to becoming who we’d rather be. What we’re getting to, what’s deep in our soul, is the person God has hoped would emerge all along. Having the chance to know our soul is a profoundly important gift. Let’s gently unwrap it.

I will respect all my feelings today. They tell me important things I need to know about myself.
© 1994 by Hazelden Foundation

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ABSTINENCE


“It’s a funny thing about life. If you refuse to settle for anything less than the best, that’s what it will give you.”

–W. Somerset Maugham

When I first came to program, I was in the diet mentality. After a few “slips” I had to face the facts: I was in relapse, and I had never really surrendered. With the help of the program, I gained an increasing awareness of this progressive disease. Did I really want to recover? Was I really willing to go to any lengths to find relief from compulsive eating?

When I finally surrendered the food and began working the Steps, I didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was that food could no longer be the answer. With seven months’ abstinence, I now know that I have a long way to go in my recovery. However, one day at a time, I am willing to find my answers in the Steps instead of in the food. Thank you, Higher Power!

One day at a time…
I choose abstinence and will listen for God’s calling in my life. God’s will for me is the safest and most loving place I can be, and I know God wants me to live a life free from the compulsion to eat.

~ Christine S.  

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One Day At A Time #essentialsofrecovery

ABSTINENCE


“It’s a funny thing about life. If you refuse to settle for anything less than the best, that’s what it will give you.”

–W. Somerset Maugham

When I first came to program, I was in the diet mentality. After a few “slips” I had to face the facts: I was in relapse, and I had never really surrendered. With the help of the program, I gained an increasing awareness of this progressive disease. Did I really want to recover? Was I really willing to go to any lengths to find relief from compulsive eating?

When I finally surrendered the food and began working the Steps, I didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was that food could no longer be the answer. With seven months’ abstinence, I now know that I have a long way to go in my recovery. However, one day at a time, I am willing to find my answers in the Steps instead of in the food. Thank you, Higher Power!

One day at a time…
I choose abstinence and will listen for God’s calling in my life. God’s will for me is the safest and most loving place I can be, and I know God wants me to live a life free from the compulsion to eat.

~ Christine S. 

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THE FUTURE

When I look into the future, it’s so bright it burns my eyes.

~ Oprah Winfrey ~

I receive the gift of abstinence one day at a time. I am relieved from the obsession to eat one day at a time. With the help of my Higher Power, I can live life on life’s terms… one day at a time.

As my recovery builds and builds, I start to imagine all the possibilities for my life. Things I never had the confidence or emotional stability to pursue are options for me. Now that I am free from the despair and self-destruction of overeating, there is space to actualize new adventures. But before I become overwhelmed or grandiose in my thinking, the Program gently reminds me that it is STILL just one day a time.

One Day at a Time . . .

I will work my program so that I have a future.

~ Christine S. ~ 

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ABSTINENCE


“It’s a funny thing about life. If you refuse to settle for anything less than the best, that’s what it will give you.”

–W. Somerset Maugham

When I first came to program, I was in the diet mentality. After a few “slips” I had to face the facts: I was in relapse, and I had never really surrendered. With the help of the program, I gained an increasing awareness of this progressive disease. Did I really want to recover? Was I really willing to go to any lengths to find relief from compulsive eating?

When I finally surrendered the food and began working the Steps, I didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was that food could no longer be the answer. With seven months’ abstinence, I now know that I have a long way to go in my recovery. However, one day at a time, I am willing to find my answers in the Steps instead of in the food. Thank you, Higher Power!

One day at a time…
I choose abstinence and will listen for God’s calling in my life. God’s will for me is the safest and most loving place I can be, and I know God wants me to live a life free from the compulsion to eat.

~ Christine S.

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The Eye Opener #essentialsofrecovery

We alcoholics are, in all things, extremists. We either over-indulge or we must abstain entirely. Drinking is not the only field, however, where this characteristic is noticeable; it exists even in the way we practice our AA.

Many of us who thought nothing of paying $10 or even $20 a quart for liquor in Prohibition days, feel that we are more than generous when we drop a quarter in the basket on meeting nights.

Probably if we all loosened up a little more, our Committees would be able to do those things that we now criticize them for not doing.

A cheap brand of AA is no bargain.

Copyright Hazelden Foundation 

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HOPE

Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.

~ Jean Kerr 

I pray for hope today, and I am receiving hope today. Hope is something that comes more and more readily to me as I stay abstinent and continue working my program of recovery.

In the past, many of my feelings of hope were centered around the next diet or the next fix for my bingeing. However, now that I am abstaining and practicing the Twelve Steps, I have been freed to hope for bigger things. There is now space in my head where the food and diet obsession used to be!

One Day at a Time . . .

I will abstain. One day at a time I will direct my attention to the Steps when I am in need of a solution.

~ Christine  

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DAILY REFLECTIONS #essentialsofrecovery

NOTHING GROWS IN THE DARK

We will want the good that is in us all, even in the worst of us, to flower and to grow.
~ AS BILL SEES IT, p. 10 ~

With the self-discipline and insight gained from practicing Step Ten, I begin to know the gratifications of sobriety— not as mere abstinence from alcohol, but as recovery in every department of my life.

I renew hope, regenerate faith, and regain the dignity of self-respect. I discover the word “and” in the phrase “and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.”

Reassured that I am no longer always wrong, I learn to accept myself as I am, with a new sense of the miracles of sobriety and serenity.

Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc.

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SERVICE

“A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.”
–St. Francis of Assisi

There are many tools I use to maintain my abstinence, but none of them is as important to me as service. I do a lot of service, but it’s not for fame or glory: I do service in order to keep my program strong. I came into program for the first time back in college, and got there only because someone offered to give me a ride.

When we first walk into these rooms, we often feel lost and alone in the dark world of addiction. But at that very first meeting we hear people talk about their experience and strength, and a small glow of light comes into our view. All it takes is that “single sunbeam” and we have hope again and our world seems brighter.

As we keep coming back and working the Steps, we encounter lots of different sunbeams, and slowly the shadows in our lives are cast away and the world becomes bright again. It is then our responsibility to let our own light shine. One of the beauties of this program is that everyone can find a way to give service. Whether it be on the group or Intergroup level, whether by sponsoring or just making a call, whether by serving as secretary, treasurer, or just by helping to put chairs away after a meeting, there is a job for everyone.
No one should feel “unimportant.” I’m sure that the lady who gave me a ride to my first few meetings didn’t feel like she was doing anything special, but she was the first sunbeam in my life. All these years later, her act of giving has ignited in me a burning desire to give back to others the miracle of this program.

One Day at a Time . . .
I will be unafraid to let my light shine.  Any act of service that I can give will not only help another, but will ensure that my own light does not burn out.

~ Laurel 

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ABSTINENCE

“It’s a funny thing about life.
If you refuse to settle for anything less than the best, that’s what it will give you.”

–W. Somerset Maugham

When I first came to program, I was in the diet mentality. After a few “slips” I had to face the facts: I was in relapse, and I had never really surrendered. With the help of the program, I gained an increasing awareness of this progressive disease. Did I really want to recover? Was I really willing to go to any lengths to find relief from compulsive eating?

When I finally surrendered the food and began working the Steps, I didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was that food could no longer be the answer. With seven months’ abstinence, I now know that I have a long way to go in my recovery. However, one day at a time, I am willing to find my answers in the Steps instead of in the food. Thank you, Higher Power!

One day at a time…
I choose abstinence and will listen for God’s calling in my life. God’s will for me is the safest and most loving place I can be, and I know God wants me to live a life free from the compulsion to eat.

~ Christine S. 

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SUNLIGHT OF THE SPIRIT

“Trust God and buy broccoli.”

Author Unknown

I heard that quotation in an OA meeting years ago. “What an odd thing,” I thought. “Why does God care what I buy?” But as years have gone by and my abstinence continues one day at a time, I see the meaning of that phrase and have deep respect for its principle.

I can trust God ’til the cows come home, but there is work to be done. A more familiar quote is: “Trust God but continue to row toward shore.”

Abstinence for me is not only refraining from compulsive overeating, but abstaining from what I call my “alcoholic foods.” They block that beautiful contact between me and the Sunlight of the Spirit. It is my responsibility to purchase, prepare, weigh and measure the best foods for my peace of mind ~ and to open the channel to a Power Greater than Myself. Now I live this way, with thanks to the twelve steps.

One day at a time…

I will be grateful that food does not have power today.

~ Gerri 

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Step by Step #essentialsofrec #Recovery #Abstinence

“(Alcoholics) have one symptom in common: they cannot start drinking without developing the phenomenon of craving. This phenomenon …may be the manifestation of an allergy which differentiates these people, and sets them apart as a distinct entity. It has never been …permanently eradicated. The only relief we have to suggest is entire abstinence.”

– Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition, 1976, “The Doctor’s Opinion,” p xxviii.

Today, I will not play the game of illusions that I may again be able to drink responsibly; the risk is too high, its costs potentially lethal. I will not try “just one” or “controlled” drinking with the myth or desperate thought that I can undo by returning to the thing that ravaged me physically, emotionally and spiritually – alcohol. For if the physician cited in the Big Book is accurate that we as problem drinkers have a craving for alcohol, any amount of it is paramount to a relapse from which I might not return. Today, I accept that I am an alcoholic, that I cannot play the potentially deadly game of by-passing that fact and, in so doing, I refuse to fuel the craving. Today, I have a choice: I will not drink. And our common journey continues.

Step by step. – Chris M.

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Walk In Dry Places #essentialsofrec #Recovery #Binge

The Delusion of “Just one more”
Other Excesses

A binge is a chain reaction that starts with one drink. After a grim period of enforced abstinence, that first drink may have brought us intense emotional release and a peak feeling of euphoria. For the rest of the binge, there was a continuing delusion that the next drink would help us recapture that peak experience.

Delusion leads us to other excesses. Some alcoholics also binge on smoking, food, sex, and power and recognition. In this frantic seeking, our basic delusion is that substances and things can satisfy what is really a spiritual need. Instead of realizing that there is a law of diminishing returns in the enjoyment of such things, we cling to the delusion that “just one more” will bring the relief and satisfaction we want.

Delusions brought disillusionment, and only the truth set us free from alcohol. Other excesses might not hurt us to the extent alcohol did, but the excesses of our drinking years carry lessons that are equally applicable to other human problems.

I will carry out the day’s activities knowing that I already have enough of everything I need for this day alone.

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Step by Step #essentialsofrec #Drinking #Turmoil

  9
December

“Our liquor was but a symptom. So we had to get down to causes and conditions.” 

– Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition, 1976, Ch 5 (“How It Works”), p 64.

Today, I cannot hear too often and shirk off the powerful truth that my drinking “was but a symptom” of a deeper emotional and spiritual turmoil that plunged me into alcoholism. Accepting this truth, logic brings the companion truth that abstinence from drinking by itself will not bring me the serenity and better life that sobriety and recovery promise. Without confronting and taking on the “causes and conditions” of my alcoholism, I may be a relapse waiting to happen. This is why, for me, I have to move beyond abstinence alone and work the Steps of the Program, from the gut-wrenching honesty of the Fourth Step to offering amends to everyone my drinking hurt and to the spiritual renewal promised me in Step 12 – and its command that I be in some form of service if for no other reason than to take my attention off myself and on the needs and plights of the alcoholic who still suffers. Today, simply not drinking is not enough by itself and I look to the Steps to guide me to the promise of being sober and not just a dry drunk. And our common journey continues. 

Step by step. – Chris M.

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