I used to love to swim in the ocean. As a child I spent many years living near the beach and was always happy to go swimming. I liked to dive into the waves, to swim far out and watch the people on the shore. I would stay out there for hours – the sense of floating, of being lifted up by the waves, of swimming with or against the current were all fun for me. As my disease progressed, I went from bingeing and dieting in my teens to gaining 30 pounds and then battling to lose the weight. I discovered bulimia and excessive exercise and spent my 20s and 30s bingeing, throwing up, running 10 miles at a time, and lifting weights for hours at the gym; the weight was managed by these drastic methods. I found FA 10 years ago, but kept breaking my abstinence, and the... Continue Reading
Today I got a call from an FA member from the U.S. who was traveling with family in Europe. It was a call for help. I heard how difficult it was for her to get the food she needed to stay abstinent, to stick with mealtimes, and to meet her family’s needs. I could relate. I could relate so well because I had just recently been traveling in a country where I did not know the language. I stayed in four different hotels over a period of seven days. I had given a printed version of my food plan to each hotel before my trip started and had asked the travel agent to arrange for me to get my lunch to take out, before the daily bus tour started. I had been quite confident. Why should it be difficult to put something that simple into practice? They had it in... Continue Reading
I was searching for a solution to get out of my obese body. I tried injections, ate raw eggs, drank oil and milk three times a day, and went on a grapefruit diet. I tried a wine diet, where I drank one glass of wine three times a day. One last thing my doctor suggested was that I should wire my teeth and have liquid food through a straw. I am diabetic type 2. My doctor warned me I could lose my legs or I could become blind. My mother was diabetic and died at the age of 50. My father was diabetic, refused to have treatment, and died in his 60s. I joined a health club and decided to become a water aerobics fitness instructor. I also taught dance exercise at a College. I lost weight, became more interested in energy healing, and became a practitioner of Qigong massage,... Continue Reading
The bags are packed. I just need to put my toothbrush in my bag before leaving for my first trip to Thailand. I have been in FA for some years now, and I know that the reason I will be able to enjoy this trip to the fullest is because I am bringing my recovery with me. In the past, a vacation was an excuse to eat. I wanted to “reward” myself with excess – excess food, excess drink, excess sloth. I would think: I had worked hard, didn’t I deserve it? On past vacations, I often thought of the new places I was visiting as a good way to diet. I thought that, after all, maybe of these other countries wouldn’t have all the foods I was used to. In my mind, it was always good to have some circumstance that would keep me away from food. Exercise was... Continue Reading
When I entered the doors of FA at 155 pounds, I was broken in many areas of life, not just with food. As the AA Big Book says, alcohol was but a symptom. In the same way, what I did or didn’t do with food was but a symptom of far deeper personality problems that I have had from the get-go. I found FA after talking with someone from another food program I was in, who had been in FA for a few months. She talked about how she found help from the unity and structure of FA, and from FA’s definition of abstinence. She said that the clear-cut directions were helping to keep her abstinent, one day at a time, on life’s good days and bad. My eating began as a little tot, when I was told that I rummaged through open pantries and crawled with anticipation and delight... Continue Reading
