I have a friend who recently moved to Idaho, and she loves to garden. Visiting her in early spring, her enthusiasm made me smile. The beds were prepared, a new sprinkler system was in place and the seeds were planted! I could envision the plethora of veggies and flowers that would enrich her summertime. Now it’s the end of the summer. My grandchildren are back in school, the farmer’s markets are bursting with harvest, and I called my gardening friend to find out how her garden grew. “Well,” she said, “the new sprinkler system is great. The flowers are beautiful and my vegetables grew in a wild, wonderful array. But I do have one problem that I’ll have to address next year.” “Oh,” I said, “too much harvest?” “Actually yes, the little bamboo stakes I found in the garage worked wonderfully for a while; the plants happily entwined themselves around... Continue Reading
Before I came into FA, I was miserable. I weighed 297 pounds. I thought I was crazy, because every moment of my life was consumed with food; it was all I could think about. I looked forward to going to the grocery store, and I lived for cooking and baking. I read recipes whenever possible so I could plan my next cooking binge. Several years before I came into Program, I began to eat “healthy.” I became a nut about low-fat and low-calorie foods, and I bought any cookbook that dealt with this type of cooking. My mom was diabetic, so I also bought diabetic cookbooks and subscribed to several diabetic cooking magazines. The highlight of my life was a trip to the grocery store. I would travel across town to Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s because they carried “healthy” foods. I justified their sugar and flour items as okay... Continue Reading
I began life outside the womb in an incubator, March of 1940. Within my first few years, I was diagnosed with asthma and then with a myriad of food allergies, some of which I still have today. Some of those foods were exactly the ones I wanted because they were the favorites of most kids and thus became my “forbidden fruits.” So what did I do when I was denied what I wanted? I learned to be sneaky—to hide food, eat in the cellar, steal change (and later dollar bills) from my mother’s purse to get my stashes of food. I ate from the leftover dishes in the living room the morning after a party and raided the refrigerator while my parents slept. My mother couldn’t figure out why I was getting sick so much, but it was because I’d eat until I couldn’t breathe. My body changed from a... Continue Reading
As the new year approaches, I am sitting here thinking about this occasion in years past. I always had resolutions, always. Looking back, I now see that they were pretty typical addict resolutions: I was going to quit smoking, I was going to stop drinking (for real this time!), and, of course, this was going to be the year that I was going to eat in a healthy way for the rest of my life—no junk, no sugar (wasn’t so convicted about the flour), and no caffeine. And, I was going to stop throwing up once and for all. When making all these resolutions, I had the best of intentions. I believed that this time it would be different. I would try this, that, or the other approach that I had not tried before, and this time it would work. No thought was given to the fact that it never... Continue Reading
Two months into my new job, my boss sent out an email. He was organizing a dinner as part of the upcoming staff retreat and wanted suggestions from our department for good places to eat. At some point in the flurry of reply emails, I realized that the date in question, still months away, fell on a Tuesday night. Tuesday night is my AWOL (A Way of Life), and this meeting, where we study the Twelve Steps, is a serious commitment for me. I realized it was time to talk with my boss about being in FA. I had already spoken with my sponsor about this issue, as my boss sometimes invites our team to go out and eat lunch together, and I have at times declined. On one of these occasions, when I indicated that I couldn’t eat at a particular restaurant, my boss asked, “What will happen? Will... Continue Reading
