In OA, you *cannot* completely abstain. You *must* eat moderately.
Yeah. Oddly enough, I'm only a moderate drinker. I don't engage in many addictive behaviors. I can be prescribed pain killers and handle them fine, etc.. But I've always been overweight apart from a few years where I had lost a lot of weight on a diet that may have caused or contributed to significant health problems and was told I shouldn't try it again by doctors (When I gained enough weight back, I tried it again anyway, but so many years had passed that my metabolism slowed and it didn't work anymore). I don't know if I'd say I'm addicted to food or not, but I certainly have trouble dieting and am overweight, so I guess I am to some degree.
I've often thought I might be able to lose weight and keep it off if I could go cold turkey the way people do with alcohol. Like, if my body somehow didn't need some food intake to keep going and I could somehow live indefinitely and be healthy (Unrelated chronic health difficulties aside, of course) without eating, I could clear out my fridge and get out of the habit of picking up fast food and stuff and eating, it'd be easier for me. After a while I'd probably stop thinking about food and there wouldn't be any around and I'd probably still get the occasional craving, but I'd do okay. Maybe I'd go like 6 months on eating and six months off eating. Unfortunately, I can't absorb energy from the sun like a plant, so I always have to eat *something* on any diet I try so that I keep living and don't pass out and such. And eating something always makes me more hungry and keeps my mind on food. It's like telling a stereotypical alcoholic "You must have two beers a day, and nothing else"- and though we just talked about how that may work for a select number of people or with the right medication, we know that traditionally for most alcoholics, it doesn't. They need to just stop drinking alcohol all together. Give them two beers a day and they'll be up to a two liters of whiskey a day by the end of the week.
Once I take that first bite of food I start salivating and my stomach starts rumbling and the "addictive" behavior centered around food kicks in. I'd love to be able to try just not eating a thing for a month- if I could somehow do that in a healthy way. But, of course, the reality is, that's impossible. So, I have a tough time with limiting my food intake knowing that I have to eat something. And that first bite of food each day is like the alcoholic taking the first swig of wine or whatever.
I'm waiting for a pill to come out personally.
I try to watch what I eat to the extent I can (Buying fruit, which I hate, drinking low and no calorie sodas and Crystal Light knockoff drink mixes frequently, doing chicken instead of red meat more often than I used to, and trying for lean ground beef if I get it, etc..), but I have a ton of unrelated health problems and a life that isn't going so great. I want to live forever, or as long as possible, but in the end if I die 5-10 years earlier because of my weight than I otherwise would, I guess I'm going to just have to suck it up and live with that. I got to the point where I couldn't endure the hardcore dieting that always failed for me that I had to keep doing again and again and again. It added too much suffering to a life full of suffering, and it wasn't working.
I got a dog to walk and get more moving around a little more. I try to improve my diet in small ways. But beyond that...
Of course, in my case, I have no wife, and no kids. The only one relying on me is my dog. I'm also poor, financially speaking. And in a ton of pain from various health conditions that are permanent and which I will not go into specifics on here. I think if I had a wife and kids and a good career, I'd probably have more motivation in terms of weight loss. But I don't really have people who I need to make myself extra miserable for, especially since dieting largely doesn't work for me. My chronic health problems, many of which actually kicked in when I was briefly skinny (So not really weight related), and my general personality or whatever, and so on and so forth made it impossible to find someone to settle down with. I wanted to do it and couldn't. So, I want to do the few things I'm capable of doing that make me happy, and if that's eating french fries or something sometimes, that's just what I am going to do. I'm scared of death, but I probably wouldn't be after a few months of an intensive diet that I had to stay on for life.
There's so little left that I really enjoy and can do, you know?
If I had less pain and a good woman and kids and owned my own home and were financially set to where had more cool things I could substitute for food, I think I'd have an easier time with hardcore dieting. I'd also have much more motivation for inflicting all that suffering on myself.
Anyway, long story short, I get where you're coming from. The necessity to eat something to live and be healthy makes kicking food addiction because it takes the option of going off stuff cold turkey off the table. One can't handle it the ways people with drug or alcohol problems most often do. It makes it a harder thing than it would otherwise be, in some ways.
* Disclaimer: I am not saying overeating is the same as alcoholism or whatever. I'm not an alcoholic, so, frankly, I have no idea how hard it is to be one thing versus the other. I only have personal perspective when it comes to overeating.