A Story of Recovery:

Cutting Apron Strings

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 the US from South Africa when I was 14, I had become a binge eater, and the devastation of being uprooted only took my eating to new levels. By my mid-20s I had dieted my way up into the 200s.

Finding FA was a gift. Although I was afraid of giving up flour and sugar, it didn’t seem as overwhelming as the pain I was in. For three years I was abstinent in FA. My disciplines consisted of going to two or three meetings a week and calling my sponsor.

After doing the program half way, I broke my abstinence shortly after giving birth to my son. For the next five years, between two more pregnancies and switching from FA to another Twelve-Step food program, I gained back the 60 pounds I had lost, along with any sense of serenity I had gained.

The addiction came roaring back, worse than ever. Over the five years after I left FA, I used the other program as a diet when I felt weight coming back on. I used any excuse I could find to go astray. I would tell myself that there were no meetings convenient for a mother with young children or that it was too hard to stay abstinent on vacations, birthdays, or celebrations. It got to the point where I would get “clean” for a day or two, then spend the next two weeks eating and trying to get back “on.”

In the meantime, here I was in what were supposed to be the best years of my life. I had a loving husband, beautiful children, and was surrounded by wonderful friends and family, but I was completely miserable and hopeless. I just couldn’t stop eating. I didn’t want my family to see the way I ate, so I kept food hidden from my children and my husband. All I did was eat and hate myself for eating.

Then two things happened. When my last baby was 12 weeks old, I suffered an anxiety attack while we were on vacation. Then I had to schedule a tonsillectomy. I remember thinking to myself, “I’m going to have this surgery and lose weight, but I wonder how long it will take for me to gain that weight back.” I was more miserable and afraid than I had ever been. I was scared that one day my children would be embarrassed by me, and I couldn’t bare that thought.

While recovering from surgery, I started looking up the schedule for FA meetings. Two weeks later, I made the decision to come back to Program.  From that very first meeting, I had hope again. People who I hadn’t seen in six years welcomed me back with open arms. I got a sponsor and got started. My second day of abstinence was my son’s fifth birthday, and I felt relieved that I didn’t have to “negotiate” eating flour and sugar—it just wasn’t part of my committed food that day.

Since that first day of abstinence my life has never been the same. I work my program one hundred percent, all of the time. I’ve gone on family vacations, out of the country, on “girls” weekends, and have celebrated birthdays and weddings.

My weight came off slowly but consistently. More important than the numbers on the scale was the transformation I have had. I no longer feel inferior to others. I no longer feel embarrassed to show up. It has been a little difficult to love my “slim” body, for although the weight came off, much of the skin remained. I never felt really thin because of the excess “apron” I carried around.

Six weeks ago I underwent a circumferential tummy tuck to remove the five pounds of excess skin around my stomach, hips, and back. Although I don’t have the body of a 20-year old model, I am finally able to look in the mirror and say, “I am thin.”  I underwent the surgery because I wanted my outside to match how I was feeling inside. Thankfully, with the support of an incredible family, my sponsor, an amazing fellowship, and a strong program, I no longer want anyone else’s body. I love the body that my Higher Power gave me, scars and all.