A Story of Recovery:
Deli Counter Miracle
Around eight years ago, I found out that I had to undergo surgery. Although considered a relatively minor procedure, it involved general anesthesia, and at 218 pounds, I was really scared. In my mind, losing weight was not even an option, even though I desperately wanted to lose weight. I could not figure out how to put the food down.
After decades of trying a whole variety of diets, I had given up. But I was starting to feeling circulatory problems, like neck tightness and shooting arm numbness. I was bartering with G-d on a daily basis: “G-d, just let me live to see my daughter graduate from college,” I would pray. I knew that something was really wrong. I just took aspirin. There was no point in seeing a doctor, I thought, because I knew what she/he would say: “Lose weight!” Well, if I could have figured out how to do that, I would not have gotten up to 218 pounds on my small frame of only 5’3.”Now I had no choice; according to my doctor, I needed the surgery.
I had my surgery, and when I got back home, I decided that I could not do this anymore. I was really frightened. My surgeon wanted me to take it easy for two weeks, so I did not work. While home, I started doing research on the Internet. I was searching for a solution, something that could help me lose weight. It never occurred to me to search the term “food addict.” That concept was not on my radar.
When the two weeks were up, I went back to my surgeon, who declared that I was ready to resume my normal life. On my way home from the doctor’s office, I stopped off at my neighborhood supermarket. As I walked passed the deli counter, I passed a woman who was talking on her cell phone. I overheard her saying to someone that her friend had lost 70 pounds. Somehow all the market noises seemed to recede, and all I kept hearing in my head was that someone had lost 70 pounds. As I continued to walk up and down the aisles, I kept hearing that message: someone lost 70 pounds. I wanted to go back to the woman and talk to her, but I was too embarrassed, and she was still talking on her phone.
When I finally arrived at the checkout counter, the same woman was in front of me, paying her bill. The words just came out of me: “Excuse me, I overheard you talking on your cell phone about someone who had lost 70 pounds. Could you please tell me what that person did?” The woman just looked at me, and without a word, tore her receipt in half and we exchanged names and phone numbers. She said, “Call me.” She started turning away to leave, and I got scared. I was sure she gave me a phony telephone number to get rid of some strange, fat woman accosting her in the supermarket. I blurted out, “Please, tell me…what did your friend do?”
The woman turned around and asked me where I lived. I gave her my address and she said that there was a meeting. She asked me if I wanted to go, and she offered to pick me up and drive me. Without missing a beat, I agreed and thanked her.
When I got home from the supermarket, I told the story to my daughter. “Mom, you are going with someone you do not know, to a place you know nothing about? If I did that, you would kill me,” she said. She was right. I tried to convey to my baffled daughter that I was willing to do just about anything to solve my weight issue.
That evening, around 6:15 p.m., the woman arrived with her friend to pick me up. They were both very friendly and were trying to explain to me about the “Program.” They were both very new to it. I really did not understand what they were talking about, but they both were excited, seemed happy, and somehow I sensed they were hopeful—the things I was not.
We arrived a little late and sat in the back of the room. A lot of thin people got up and talked about being fat. I could not figure out how they knew! Who told them? I looked around the room, hoping to see some people fatter than me, but mostly what I saw were a lot of thin, smiling people who seemed very religious. My first impression was that I was among a cult—but a very friendly cult.
Not everything I heard made sense to me. Before the break, some people got up who could “sponsor.” Before I knew what was happening, one of the women who brought me to the meeting took me to one of these sponsors, who told me to call her very early in the morning. A lot of people came up to me and welcomed me. I felt somewhat dazed. Someone took me to a table with a lot of pamphlets and gave me a phone list, and other literature. I noticed a cute young girl by the table, wearing cutoff jeans and a little pink top that was tied under her chest. She looked really cute, and I distinctly remember thinking, “Oh, isn’t that nice, someone brought their teenage daughter to help out at the meeting.”
After the break, this cheery group sat down and the meeting continued. I was really surprised to see them let the young teenage girl go up to the front of the room. I was even more surprise to learn that she was a 38 year old, Harvard graduate lawyer, who had weighed almost 200 pounds. After the meeting, I went up to the “young girl” and asked her if I had heard wrong, had she really been that fat? She showed me some pictures of a really fat woman. I honestly thought that was a picture of her mother.
That evening, I felt something I had not felt for a long time, the sparks of hope. I did not get most of what was said, but I remember thinking that there was nothing I heard that I could strongly object to. The Program was free, it did not involve an intrusive procedure or surgery, and when I listened, I realized that it was not a religious program.
All I really hoped for was maybe, just maybe, I could get under 200 pounds. I had not seen the numbers on the scale under 200 for over a decade, and I truly did not believe that I ever would. But that night, after my first FA meeting, I thought just maybe I could live to see 199.9.
G-d has a great sense of humor. My first month, I lost 17 pounds; I was 201. But I could not believe it. I had lost 17 pounds! It was surreal. I decided to stay for another month. After the second month, when I weighed in at 187 pounds, I was hooked. Just maybe I could get down to the 160s. I dared to hope.
In my first year, I lost 100 pounds, but an even greater miracle was that I lost thousands of pounds of “rocks,” as I like to call them, from between my ears. The rocks I carried 24/7 were my disease of fear, doubt, and insecurity. I was constantly afraid, worried, and angry. Usually it was a combination of all of the three. It got me fat, miserable, and literally on my way to self-destruct with food.
Eight years later, I look back on those first few months in Program and feel such humility, gratitude, and faith in G-d. I feel liberated. Today I know that I am a food addict. I know that I could have never done this Program without G-d next to me. And G-d knew exactly where to find this food addict—at the deli counter of the supermarket.