A Story of Recovery:
Changing My “Diet Mentality”
I had never heard the term “food addict” before. I discovered it on the Internet, along with the website telling me that there were FA meetings in my city.
I came into FA beyond miserable, and I decided that this would be my very last attempt before I finally resigned myself to a life of hopelessness. I had contacted a willing sponsor the afternoon after attending my first meeting and assured her I did not want to start my food plan until Monday morning. I always started my new diets on Monday mornings.
I was amazed to find that I was still on my new “diet” a week later, but what I had not thought through was the fact that I had a major event coming up the next week: taking my first child to college out of state. Not only did I usually start my new diets on Mondays, but I also waited to start them when I knew I would not be traveling or on vacation in the near future.
What was I to do? Should I go ahead and eat whatever I wanted until I got back? After all, I hadn’t been on this new diet very long. I figured I could just start over once I got back, and I probably wouldn’t gain too much weight, as I was only going to be gone a couple of days. No big deal. I could start again on Monday.
Little did I know, but the saying “God does for you what you cannot do for yourself” was soon to become a reality in my life. I went to an FA meeting with my plan laid out for the trip that was coming up. It had never even occurred to me to discuss any of this with my sponsor. I thought that tomorrow I would eat whatever I wanted, one last time, and start my new FA diet again on Monday, when I returned from my out-of-town trip.
At the meeting, someone stood up and shared how grateful she was that the FA program was not a diet, but a way of living. She began to share how fearful and anxious she was about taking her first child off to college that weekend. Wow, she was describing all I was feeling exactly.
She said she had learned in FA that the food plan and her recovery were portable and that she no longer lived the “diet mentality” of starting and stopping, gaining and losing. She said that even though she could eat out over the weekend, she had decided to pack her food and take her weighed-and-measured meals with her, because she was feeling so emotionally charged.
She went on to share that she had been in the program for three years and had back-to-back abstinence, but that a few years back had been abstinent in FA for a few months and thought she could just eat one time at a party and get right back on the food plan. She didn’t make it back to FA for two years after eating at that party, and she gained a significant amount of weight as a result, not to mention heaping shame and misery on herself.
I knew God was speaking to me through this woman’s experience, strength, and hope. I knew He had given me a new way of living, an answer to a lifetime prayer, and a solution that would work. I wanted what she had. I wanted the gift of freedom from the obsession with food. I wanted a chance to keep my weight off, since I had never ever experienced that. I realized that not only could I maintain my abstinence on the road, but I could do it by still working the tools of the program, no matter where I was geographically. I learned that I could take my serenity with me if I chose to go to any length to keep my abstinence. Even if I felt emotionally charged, I now had tools that would help me deal with those emotions. I no longer had to eat my way through life and all of its challenges.
As I write this now, I am getting ready to head out of state to return my son for his second year of college, and in a few weeks take my daughter, my last child at home, to start her first year of college. I have been abstinent for one year and have lost over 100 pounds. More importantly, I have maintained my weight loss.
Do I feel the emotion of entering a new stage of life? Absolutely! The miracle is that I feel today what I feel. I have learned to feel sad and mad at times, but also glad. I am no longer numbed out or drugged, waiting for another Monday to come and another diet to try. I have taken many trips in the last year, and my program has been right there with me.
What a gift I have been given. I now know that there is no reason or excuse to break my abstinence. At times, I have had to go to great lengths to stay abstinent, but for the most part, when I’ve kept it simple and a priority, it is not a difficult thing to do at all. I am grateful to have the disciplines and tools no matter what is going on or where I am. Thank God for a program that is portable!