RYW 154: 5 Beliefs That Train Your Brain to Feel Powerless Around Food.

Um, again, you've already seen the title, so if you're listening to it, I'm assuming it's because you've already thought, "Oh, what's Rachel got to say about this?" And it's to do with sort of feeling powerless around food or being powerless around food and where that fits in, specifically through certain kind of approaches, such as Overeaters Anonymous.

So I wanna talk about it, um, that'll probably challenge some people if I'm honest, and I'm okay with that.

This is not about attacking anyone who has actually found something really helpful for them.

It's more about questioning an idea that has never sat comfortably with me personally, um, well, both personally and professionally.

So I want to explore a little bit around Overeaters Anonymous, and more specifically, one of those fundamental ideas that sits underneath the 12-step model, which is around powerlessness.

Because the first step of OA begins with admitting that you're powerless over food and that you've always struggled with that.

Now, this is not because I don't understand what feeling powerless around food feels like.

I absolutely do.

I've spent at least 14 years myself feeling completely out of control with food and eating, and I've also now worked professionally with people who describe exactly the same thing.

And also, I've worked with quite a few people over the years who have spent time attending Overeaters Anonymous and reading sort of addiction literature, um, abstaining from certain foods, and also identifying themselves as food addicts or compulsive overeaters.

So I wanna just be really clear here.

Some people absolutely find OA helpful.

Um, community for sure can be incredibly powerful when we're working through our stuff, and having somewhere to go where somebody finally says, "Oh yeah, that's, that's me too," like it can honestly reduce enormous amounts of shame.

Um, structure and accountability as well can really help people enormously.

So I'm not interested in telling somebody who's found something genuinely life-changing that they're wrong.

Um, this is more a conversation of what doesn't sit well with me, and I guess I just wanna share it.

So one part of the model that I think deserves a little bit more scrutiny, because I-- because that's what I like to do, [laughs] I like to scrutinize things.

Um, I don't think feeling powerless and being powerless are necessarily the same thing, and when I started looking into where the 12 steps actually came from, I just-- I found something really fascinating.

So do you actually know where the 12 steps came from? Well, they weren't originally developed as any kind of psychological treatment.

You might already know this anyway, but if you don't, please pay attention.

It's interesting.

Um, they were actually developed, um, or sorry, they weren't developed from any kind of neuroscience.

They weren't created following any kind of like trials or research groups, and they also weren't designed by psychologists who I guess were experienced or had knowledge around behavioral change, and they certainly weren't developed from research into like binge-y, overeaty ki- overeating kind of behavior.

In fact, they weren't even developed for food.

So Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the one that most people associate with sort of 12-step recovery, it began in the US in 1935.