A Story of Recovery:

Coping With Chaos

I have had an issue with overeating all my life. Even in Program, I have broken my abstinence several times by eating too much of things. I have had some trouble exercising good portion control when I eat out, although with my sponsor’s help, these last few years have been much better for me. I always ate over stress and chaos before I came into FA. The combination of a stressful job, my drive to be a perfectionist, and poor coping abilities helped me get to 297 pounds. I still have a stressful job, but FA has given me the tools I need to handle stress without food.

My husband and I have recently been doing some home renovations. We had all the interior rooms painted, new blinds put on all the windows, and had some work done in the bathroom. All this has led to quite a bit of chaos and upheaval in the house. We’ve had to move furniture out of rooms, clean, condense, and consolidate. It would have been very tempting to use this time as an opportunity to eat out at restaurants a lot. My food addict’s mind never stops trying to find little, sneaky ways to get ideas into my head. After all, my kitchen was in a total mess. I tried to rationalize that the smell from the paint wouldn’t be a good environment to eat in. If the counters were messy, surely my food would get messy, too, right? I could feel my Higher Power telling me it was not a good idea to eat out every meal for the whole week. I needed to keep my routines and activities as normal as possible. We also didn’t need the added financial cost, as we were spending a good deal of money on the renovations.

I kept thinking of the FA motto, “Don’t eat no matter what, no matter what, don’t eat!” Before the weekend of painting started, I weighed and measured several meals to put in the freezer. It made it very simple to just pull out a meal and eat abstinently, even if I couldn’t always sit at the kitchen table. With the meals already prepared in containers, I didn’t have to worry whether the counters were messy or not.

After over 12 years in Recovery, and maintaining a normal body weight for 11 years, I knew that with the help of my Higher Power and my fellows, I could get through this process with my house changing in appearance, not my body. I had to weigh and measure my activities along with my meals. Now the walls are freshly painted, rooms are de-cluttered, the windows have new blinds, and the house looks great. And so do I.