A Story of Recovery:
Alone with nobody but the food
I found FA when I was lonely, scared and full of remorse about the volume of food I packed away daily. I weighed 284 pounds. Despite my daily vow to stop eating, I could not do so and I was awash with feelings of shame about the staggering volume of food I managed to eat day after day.
I had taken a new job in a distant town requiring me to live apart from my family. I was very lonely. Within days of taking up my new position, I realized how much my new employer had neglected to tell me about my situation, which led to fear.
In the building where my new job was located, there were 26 steps between my office on the first floor and the meeting rooms on the second. I began to have pain every time I dragged myself up those stairs. When I attended meetings, my hips, knees and ankles ached so much that it was difficult for me to concentrate on the topic of discussion.
About six weeks after starting my new job, I reached out to someone I trusted but hadn’t seen for months. She sounded different on the phone – calm and relaxed. She had found FA. She shared that her obsession with food had been totally lifted, which I found very appealing. But then she told me about the daily disciplines of the program, and I wanted nothing to do with it.
My eating continued to escalate. Although I was living alone, most of my meals would have fed a family of four, and I still wasn’t satisfied. I ate constantly during the day trying to numb the fear and loneliness. The constant need to eat sugar and flour products dominated me. The suit I had purchased for my interview six months before – a lovely size 24 – was so tight I could hardly get it on. When I did manage to wear the suit, it was plastered so closely to my body I had to move very, very carefully. The aching in my joints had moved to my fingers, hands and wrists, making work at the keyboard next to impossible. I started to panic and called my FA friend again. She helped me find a sponsor. I had yet to attend a meeting. The closest one was a 2½-hour drive away.
By this time I was truly DESPERATE and I surrendered to FA with all my heart. I went to bed early so I wouldn’t eat something I had not committed, and woke up the next day abstinent. During day two, a roaring headache began. On day four of abstinence I walked up those stairs without discomfort and realized that my hands weren’t hurting me either. Wow! The withdrawal headache lasted a while longer before it subsided. The ache in my joints has never returned.
It was a time of transition for my family and me. I was getting used to the daily disciplines of FA. Although I struggled with exhaustion, I discovered that I could get from one meal to the next abstinently, something I had thought would be impossible. My older daughter came home from university to live with me. She returned to school and my husband and younger daughter finally came to join me.
My husband was irritated with my FA phone calls. How could “those strangers” be of any assistance? He felt he’d been the one to put up with me for all of those years! Why did I need anyone else? My weight was going down, but that had happened periodically during our marriage. I still had a long way to go to get to a normal weight. My husband was not impressed. The next few years were not an easy time.
When my younger daughter left for college, my husband and I were left alone together. The journey as an “empty nester” is the subject of another article. The point here is that it is possible to work this program without complete spousal support. Neither my recovery nor my relationship with my husband has progressed in a straight line, but I am making headway on both fronts.
Fast forward to to seven months of beautiful, clean abstinence. Last weekend my husband and I had neighbors over for lunch. I burned the protein and had no alternative to serve instead. The rest of the meal was fine, but after the neighbors left my husband unleashed his embarrassment over the situation on me. He blamed the “disaster” at lunch on my inability to focus. I didn’t defend myself or argue, as I might have done in the past. Rather, I stood there and heard him out.
When he finished I told him that I had checked the meal just after our guests arrived and the protein wasn’t cooked. I turned up the heat in the oven, set the timer on the stove and then joined the group. I didn’t hear the timer over the music, got engaged in the conversation and as soon as I remembered the oven, I rushed to check. The damage had already been done.
I had already apologized to our guests and my husband when I served the meal. I told my husband again that I was very sorry and that I was trying to let the incident go. I explained I didn’t want the situation to bring back the fear of inviting people into our home that had kept me in isolation for years, a fear I had just recently begun to overcome. He went on with his day and I returned to cleaning up the kitchen.
Fifteen minutes later he was back. He said, “ I want you to know that I did appreciate your effort to prepare a nice lunch. We all had enough to eat and the conversation was enjoyable. I’m sorry I reacted so badly.”
I gave him a hug and said a silent “thank you” to my higher power, thinking to myself, “What alien has possessed my husband?”
The truth is that I am experiencing recovery like I never have before. I feel as though I have been catapulted into a fourth dimension. To paraphrase the Big Book, my recovery is impacting those around me. My relationship with my husband is better than it has ever been. I am so thankful for FA, for my freedom from obsession with food, and for a higher power that cares about me, my weight, and everything I choose to ask for help on, big and small.
As I sit here writing I am 5’8”, weigh 133 pounds and wear size six jeans. The daily disciplines of the program ground me; I can hardly imagine living without them. I feel better physically, emotionally and spiritually than I ever have, and I can’t wait to see where my journey will take me next!