A Story of Recovery:

Changing Inside and Out

At 309 pounds, my highest weight ever, I reached out for help. I was desperate.

I’ve struggled with obsession with food all my life. If I wasn’t eating whatever I wanted and gaining weight, I was trying to control my food with diets and exercise programs. I was always thinking about food—what I was eating, what I wasn’t eating, what I just ate, or what I was going to eat. I ate salty things, then wanted something sweet, then something salty again, then sweet. I took babysitting jobs based on what type of food would be in a house. I tried to hide what I’d eaten. I blamed the children I was taking care of for eating all the snacks. I remember being caught by my mom with food under my bed in high school. I just felt better if I had food around at all times.

I was bordering on needing to buy two seats to fly on a plane. My body overflowed into the seats on either side of me. Being that obese is humiliating. I was so afraid someone was going to complain to a flight attendant and they would make me get off the plane to buy two seats. When I had to fly to California for work, I was totally uncomfortable trying to walk around because I was so fat. I wanted to experience San Diego, but I was limited to what I could do because of my weight. I couldn’t walk very far, my legs would rub together and give me a heat rash, and an old ankle injury would get so swollen that I couldn’t walk. Every time I had to travel for work, I was seized with fear. I tried to get out of work trips, despite the fact that I love to travel!

I found out about FA when I was having a conversation with a colleague about our recovery in AA (we’ve both been sober for 20-plus years) and I told her that I’d just never been able to surrender the food. She said she had a friend who was in FA and sent me the link to the website. I emailed the FA office, asked for help, and they sent me a long-distance sponsor list. I called the only woman on the list who lived in the central time zone. I live in Kansas and we have no FA meetings in the entire state, so I attend AA meetings and do my FA work over the phone with my sponsor.

Getting off sugar, flour, and caffeine was painful. In addition to the mental anguish and feeling vulnerable and exposed, my body physically cramped all over. Each night for two solid weeks, I had to soak in my whirlpool tub just to relax my muscles enough to get to sleep. I never want to go through that pain again.

I have a hard time calling people. I definitely have a disease of isolation. I’m amazed at what my head tells me, Don’t make that call, don’t talk about yourself, hold your cards close, don’t let anyone in, they won’t like you. What actually happens once I reach out is that I feel more able to stick to the program. I feel hope. I feel moved. I feel filled up on the inside, which is amazing, since I’ve always felt empty on the inside. I always feel so good once I’ve made that call or had that conversation. Picking up the phone is difficult, but most days I do it. I’m starting to have some friends I talk to regularly. I’m interested in their lives and they are interested in mine. I ask God for help, and I surrender and make the call.

I’ve lost 57 pounds, and while I have lots more to go, I feel hopeful. Weighed, measured, plain food makes the food less important. That’s never happened. Food was always the center of my universe. I’m grateful every day I have one more day of abstinence. I feel my life changing on the outside and the inside.