leadership change

The leader of my Sunday morning meetings has moved on to a new site. I completely understand her desire for change. She's been with this group for 6 years, and she's been offered an opportunity to lead at a new WW site that sounds very promising. She is a fantastic leader, and I know the WW people must have plucked her up for this new set of meetings. But she has meetings all over the Twin Cities, and our Sunday meeting is quite a bit out of her way. I think she hung in there with us because the group of people itself is vital and dynamic. Many of them have been coming to the meeting for years, and they know our leader quite well. I'm a relative newbie compared with many of the group members, but even since joining last May I have come to appreciate the sanity of this meeting.

What worries me is our new leader, who is enthusiastic and quick and otherwise a just fine person. But today the talk devolved into things people have done to avoid eating tempting foods...as in pouring salt over the remainder of a restaurant meal to take away any desire to eat it. Or filling up on other foods before getting to a party so you're not hungry when you get there. Someone even talked about not wanting to go to social occasions because she's worried about the food offerings. All those things remind me of the old me, the one who was rigid about points and inflexible in my eating habits. I remember not wanting to go out to dinner because I didn't know how many points my meal might be. I remember throwing away girl scout cookies and bringing the bag out to the garbage right away so I wouldn't continue eating them. Scary. Because really, what power does food have over us. It's food. Those behaviors are really a signal of something else, and doing all the little preventive strategies (throwing out food, etc) won't really solve the why behind weight gain. I can eat all the right stuff before going to a party so that I'm full when I get there, but I'm still going to want to eat, because parties are uncomfortable for me. Throwing away food so I don't eat it is admitting that food has power over me.

So I worry, because our former leader really seemed to get this, and she led our discussions back into a sane reality. I don't think our new leader is there yet, and I don't want our meetings to devolve into scare tactics and worry. I guess that means I should speak up a bit more in my meeting to provide an alternative viewpoint. I certainly didn't get emotionally healthy about food overnight. It's taken a very long time, and I have moments of anxiety about food. I won't keep weight off unless I deal with the feelings behind eating. Pretending that I've got it solved if I avoid restaurants or social obligations or "red light foods" won't get me any farther than I was last time I reached goal. Which is to say I'll end up spending another five years trying to fix the food craziness in my head before I am ready to lose again. That is a path I will not be taking.