I remember the day like it was yesterday instead of almost 15 years ago, when one of my greatest fears about being a morbidly obese middle-aged woman came to pass. I had been living in constant fear of falling and not being able to get up, with nobody around to help me. It happened at the office restroom. I stood up and was unable to walk or even move. The pain in my knee was unbearable. I was stuck in the stall. All the years of being obese had worn away the cartilage in my knees. I used a cane to walk, but I left my cane back in my office on the other side of the floor. It was mid-morning, and co-workers were in meetings. I waited for someone to come into the restroom. I finally had to shout for help. It was so embarrassing. Everyone was rushing around... Continue Reading
I came into program weighing 293 pounds. I had been obese pretty much my entire life and knew that I was addicted to food. I just had no idea how to live in a world addicted to a substance I needed in order to survive. I had always dreamed of finding enough willpower to be able to eat in moderation, but was never able to do so. When I walked into my first FA meeting, scared beyond words and lacking the belief that I could ever live without flour and sugar even for one day, something resonated with me when I heard that there was a solution and people were living it. I knew I had to give it a shot. I had reached the point where I was thinking about food pretty much all my waking hours, yet still managed to be very high functioning, with a great career,... Continue Reading
I was riding on the shuttle from the San Francisco airport to Santa Rosa in June 2010 when my cell phone rang. It was the unfamiliar voice of a nurse practitioner from Kaiser who asked if I was sitting in a private place. I was alarmed, since I had recently had a breast biopsy. I seated myself in the back of the bus where I could have some privacy when I heard her say the word “cancer,” that scary disease that happened to other people and not me. I was afraid that it might be a death sentence since my mother and two of her three sisters had died of various types of cancer. Because of FA and the good fortune of having just returned from the FA business convention in Massachusetts filled with fellowship, hope, and gratitude, I had a sense that I would be okay. I was able... Continue Reading
I always used to joke and say that by the time I was 40 I would have had all my children and I’d be thin and have a tummy tuck. But I was eating my way up to 238 pounds. By the time I found FA for the first time, I was 31 years old, divorced and lonely, in a new city. I had, yet again, gained back the 40 pounds I had lost in Weight Watchers. I grew up in a warm and loving home where I was told I was good enough, but I never felt it. I coveted the girls in my grade who had flat stomachs and the ones who didn’t seem bothered about never getting enough flour and sugar. It was an obsession for me at a young age to get thin, but diet upon diet only brought failure. By the time we immigrated to... Continue Reading
I try to think back on when I started FA nine years ago. There was an exact moment when I became willing. I was 110 pounds, over 5’9” tall, and preparing a meal that was organic, vegan, and “perfect.” I’d been preparing it for 45 minutes and I couldn’t stop. And I didn’t know if it was enough food to keep me on the planet. This was 13 years after joining another 12-step program for food, and in some ways, I was just as sick and trapped as I had been then, when I went to my first meeting of the other program after a two-day binge on a sugar item in front of the TV. Sure, I wasn’t binging anymore, but my behavior with food was still way out of balance. The thirteen-year journey from that two-day binge to the “perfect” meal that inspired me to join FA was... Continue Reading
