I cannot eat my way through sobriety. I know some people do and worry about weight loss later, but it's really not an option for me. I have successfully maintained a loss of 170 pounds for over five years, thanks to gastric-bypass surgery. I have physical limitations that prevent me from eating everything in front of me in an effort to ignore alcohol.
But I know I need to find a crutch.
My sister has been sober 2 1/2 years, and she's proud of the fact that she never walked into a single meeting, never told her doctors, never reached out for help from anyone aside from her husband. And I am proud of her, too. It's a big accomplishment. Her crutch has been exercise, lots of it, every day. It works for her. It's helped her shed the excess weight drinking packed on, it's gotten her through "happy hour," which was the window of time between when she got home from work and her husband did.
My sister's life, however, is not my own. She lives in a different state, far away from any family, and the isolation suits her very well. Her kids are teens, and she has a lot of disposable income. I, on the other hand, am the primary wage earner in my home, my husband and I share one car, and our daughter is almost 3. There is not the time, money, transportation, nor the child care to allow me two hours a day at the gym. Nobody's fault, just not my current reality.
What I would like more than anything is to have life be my crutch, to immerse myself in the joy of experiencing daily life with my husband and daughter. That sounds like way more fun than overeating, over-exercising, over-crafting or any one of the other compulsive behaviors I could adopt to stay sober. I'm not there yet but I hope to be soon.
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