“It’s not your fault!” screams the ad. It’s the one that urges you to get rid of your income tax liability if you owe more than $10,000, or to get all your credit card debts reduced, again assuming you have at least a certain amount of debt. Of course, reality is that these agencies work on contingent fees and your case is not worth their time unless you’re in the ditch to the tune of at least ten grand or so. Mortgage refinancers also tell you it’s not your fault that you’re in over your head because some greedy lender signed you up on a contract that requires you to pay them back with interest. Well, I’m here to tell you that unless you admit you’re at fault, you have no hope of ever becoming a mature and responsible citizen again.

On the guestbook, and everywhere for that matter, the BFL version of “it’s not your fault” is the confession that “I’m an emotional eater.” Well, earth-to-you-buddy, everyone on the planet is an “emotional eater!” That’s why virtually every big moment is celebrated with some kind of a feast. There are wedding feasts, graduation receptions, funeral lunches, Christmas dinners, Thanksgiving celebrations, you name it! We are hard-wired to do some serious eating around various occasions of either joy or sadness. Breaking bread is part of that passage of life, whatever it is.

Most self-styled “emotional eaters” actually mean that they are somehow made anxious by their family or friends or circumstances, and that they have to eat as a result–even to overeat. This is somehow seen as less of a sin than just admitting that we lack self-control. But, like our friends who ran up the huge debts, unless we get brutally honest with ourselves, we’ll never get free of the grip of overeating.

Every twelve step recovery group, including overeaters anonymous, begins with the self-admission/revelation that “we admitted we were powerless over _____ that our lives had become unmanageable.” And then, “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” These two powerful statements assume ownership of the problem, and set out the first part of a plan to take control of our lives again. When I was drinking alcoholically, I drank with resentment. I brooded and was angry. I was a self-pitying, sarcastic slob who drank because I was so full of fear I couldn’t face real life. Until I admitted what a coward I was, and that my unmanageable life was due to my own fear, anger and self-pity, I was unable to even see that I was my own worse problem. When I made that admission of my powerlessness, and began to probe beneath the surfaces of my own denial, and to confess all those problems, I began to change into a happier person, a more confident person, and a person who no longer needed alcohol.

Am I suggesting that “emotional eaters” are basket cases like alcoholics? Not really. I doubt any of you are morally bankrupt like most alcoholics, but I’ll bet you’re not as happy as you’d like to be either. Nor are you truly free and joyous.

Tell yourself the truth. Tell others the truth. Once you do that, and once you admit that you overeat because you want to, then you’re on your way to getting hold of that problem. And if you don’t tell the truth to yourself, then it truly IS YOUR FAULT!