A Story of Recovery:

Acceptance is Key

My sponsor asked me, “What does it really mean to be a food addict?”

I gritted my teeth and felt a wave of irritation. If my sponsor knew what it meant to be a food addict, then why didn’t she tell me! I hate when people ask me a question when they know the answer. I felt a sense of failure and hopelessness. Why wasn’t I getting it?

I had been in FA for a few months, and the program seemed demanding and difficult. All I ever seemed to do was chop up vegetables, weigh my food, and go to meetings. I had no time for anything else.

My relationship with my sponsor was also awkward and painful. I felt all of my insecurities and fears rising up. I already thought that I wasn’t good enough, and suddenly there was this question again: “What does it mean to be a food addict?” The question kept hanging over my head.

I had joined FA briefly two years earlier. I obtained the food plan from someone and started the program on my own, happily sponsoring myself. A fellow kindly informed me that this was not “doing FA.”  She said that I was merely following a food plan. So I got a sponsor, didn’t make telephone calls, didn’t attend meetings regularly, lost the sponsor, and left the program—but not before miraculously losing 20 pounds!

I weighed around 224 pounds that first time in FA, but my highest recorded weight had been 247 pounds. This loss of weight in my short time in FA was nothing short of amazing, and yet I couldn’t commit myself to the program at that time.

I had ballooned in weight in the early 2000s, after a lifetime of dieting and regaining the weight. Not only did I feel anguished about my weight and appearance, but I felt like there was something deeply wrong with me, that I was not good, worthy, or loveable.

I had a long history of dieting and had gone to extreme measures to try to “fix” myself. I tried counselling, psychotherapy, training as a counsellor myself, and lots of prayer, in an effort to “get well” and feel good about myself. I was convinced that if I could lose weight, my life would be better, and I would feel better about myself.

I thought that food was the answer to all life’s problems. If I could find the right food plan – vegetarian, Fit for Life, the Hip and Thigh Diet, the Zone, the F-plan, for example, it would change my weight and my life. I just needed the resolve to stick to it. And then my negative thinking would undermine me. I had always felt like the underdog, misunderstood, ill used, and unappreciated. I blamed the alcoholism and co-dependency in my family. I had not believed I was loved. As a consequence, I had all these problems.

I worried constantly about upcoming events and what people thought of me. My self-centred, self-pitying self would say, “If you knew what I had to put up with, you would need to eat too.”  Or, “I deserve this food right now. My life is hard enough, I need some comfort.”

This time in FA it took me 11 months to get my 90 days of abstinence. I broke my abstinence frequently around the 74-77-day mark.  I lost my abstinence on day 89 once.  I couldn’t believe it. I was a competitive, high-achieving type of person. Why couldn’t I get the 90 days?  My peers sped on to sharing and service, while I remained unhappy.

I realized that I had to start to look at myself. I had to admit my life was truly unmanageable, and that I was powerless over food. It was humbling to start again at day one. My fellows said I would gain a deeper sense of surrender if I started over. I was not impressed. But you know what? I did experience a deeper level of surrender. Somehow, some way, I tiptoed my way to 90 days.

My sponsor way back when was right. I had not wanted to believe I was a food addict. I did not want to be like the others in FA. I did not want to be a food addict. My head told me I had never been happier than when I was on a diet, although I had been carrying nearly 100 pounds of excess weight.

My sponsor could tell I had not fully accepted that I was a food addict. As a writer in AA’s Big Book says, “When I could admit I was a food addict, I could start to live in the solution and not be stuck in the problem. Acceptance was the answer to my food addiction.”

I became desperate and willing to do what it took to lose the weight. I came for the vanity and indeed have stayed to address the reasons I ate in the first place. My fears have tried to sabotage me, but by showing up for my sponsor calls, calls to fellows, the FA readings, meetings, weighing and measuring my food, and developing a growing relationship with a Higher Power, I have managed to remain abstinent. And I now know and recognize what it means to be a food addict. That’s me.