A Story of Recovery:

Food and Secrets

A few food memories

One morning I woke up early and my mother was still asleep. I went into the living room and saw an empty frozen concentrate can with a spoon in it, on the coffee table. I still remember saying to myself, “I didn’t know you could eat that.” I never mentioned it to my mother, so right there I learned about “secret foods” and not talking about them.

Once the mother of a little boy next door, who was several years younger than I, made us each a half of a common children’s lunch item. I wanted a second one and asked him to ask for another one. I was mortified when he told his mother that I wanted another half. The concept of eating secretly became a learned behavior.

To calm my terror of going to the dentist, my mother would tell me that we’d go for a sweet treat afterward. The idea of “treating” myself became a life-long pursuit and it was always about food.

Failure of geographic cure

When I was 11, my parents divorced and we moved from a small Central Valley farm town to the San Francisco Bay Area. I began junior high school not knowing anyone. So here I was, suddenly in a different culture and feeling somehow very ashamed and different for being a child of divorce. I never talked about my father. For the rest of my school career, I came home to an empty house because my mother was working. I was not overweight—yet.

After my freshman year in high school, I decided I was 10 pounds overweight. I bought a little calorie counter book and decided to go on a 1000 calorie per day diet. I lost the 10 pounds in a month and felt great. That was my first and last successful diet experience.

In the middle of my junior year, we moved to the South Bay, mainly because I convinced my mother that she should take a job down there. My ulterior motive was that I was feeling very isolated and unhappy with friendships, and I had the fantasy that my whole life was going to be different when we moved. I would be popular, maybe even have boyfriend.

Well, guess what? It wasn’t any different. I didn’t know anyone, and I was miserable. That’s when my addiction really kicked in full-force. I would buy flour/sugar items at the snack bar, look around to see if anyone was looking, then try to hold the items so others wouldn’t notice what was in my hand. I would go home and prepare large volumes of sugar items and even eat spoonfuls of straight sugar from the sugar bowl.

I ballooned up in weight very fast. I was defensive, angry, and ashamed all of the time, and I’m sure I was hard for my poor mother to live with. She tried to help me by finding a therapist who was willing to charge on a sliding scale. I was totally miserable, but could not stop eating.

I graduated from high school weighing around 170 or 180 on my 5’ 6” body. In college I put on an additional 20 pounds, at one point reaching 191. My life of misery and secret eating continued.

Relationship addiction

A year after graduating, I met my future husband. Somehow I had dropped some weight and was in the 170s. He thought I was beautiful as I was. We were in love, and married about six months after meeting. During those years, for some reason, my weight began to drop and I got down into the 140s on my own. Then I decided to go to Weight Watchers and lost the last 10 pounds. For years I weighed between 132 and 135.

Ten years later, we divorced. I had been frustrated for years about some issues that we couldn’t seem to resolve. Neither of us knew how to fight fair. Our arguments were power struggles where I would walk away hurt, frustrated, and angry. I ended up doing the worst thing I could do to hurt him. I had an affair with his best friend, an alcoholic.

The affair was exciting and thrilling. In one way I felt drunk with power and with my secret. But I was also plagued with deep feelings of guilt over my betrayal. When my husband discovered what I had been doing, he demanded I stop. I refused. After we divorced, I began to realize what I had lost. I was scared and pained and part of me wanted him back, but it was too late.

I got involved with several more substance abusing men before I got it. I saw that this intoxication, with its seductiveness and excitement, was not love, but was a sick and self-destructive addiction.

Meanwhile, after my final such relationship was over, I once again turned to my old friend— food—with a vengeance. I tried my first Twelve-Step program. It worked for a while but I drifted away, as food once again began to dominate my life. I tried the Diet Center, a liquid fast, more bouts of Weight Watchers, and working with a woman who helped me with nutrition. I always returned to the food and became more and more isolated in my binging. I would go to the gym daily, come home and have my Weight Watchers breakfast, and about 30 minutes later, I would be starving and make a large bowl of something while I sat down to watch TV.

Finding a solution

When a dear friend told me about FA in January of 2008 and asked if I wanted to go to a meeting with her, I promptly said, “No!” After years of the pain of failure, I just wasn’t going to put myself through another such experience. But the door had cracked open a bit. I sat in my chair eating all of my binge foods day after day. I told myself I was being a spontaneous free spirit, eating whatever moved me. But as I sat there, spending hours eating in front of the TV, I started to take an honest look at what I was doing. I realized I was slowly committing suicide with a knife and a fork. So a few weeks later, I asked my friend if I could go to a meeting with her.

I went to several meetings, but was ticked off with her because she hadn’t told me that I’d have to stand and introduce myself at my first three meetings. I had planned on being the invisible skeptic. The nice and friendly people kind of ticked me off, too.

But the numbers—the large numbers—really got my attention and interest. Here were people standing up and saying they had lost over 100 pounds and kept it off for a long time. Part of me thought that maybe it worked for them, but I couldn’t imagine it would work for me. I thought I was a special case.

So finally in March, I was desperately willing and got a sponsor. Though I had one break a couple of weeks later, I’m nearing my second anniversary without flour or sugar. In seven months I went from 215 pounds to 135 pounds, and I’ve stayed in that range ever since. (I am 64 and a little shorter now). My blood pressure is normal, and my knees and feet no longer bother me. I’m now on the lowest possible dose of my cholesterol medication, and I have much more energy than I used to have. But beyond that, I have been given back my life. I have much greater clarity of thinking and more order in my life.

I am on Step Eleven in my AWOL and the most incredible experience I’ve had so far was in making amends to my former husband. I was amazed at his forgiveness. I had the most totally honest and intimate conversation with him that I’ve ever had with anyone in my life and it still blows me away to think about it. I realized it might be possible for me to have an honest, open and healthy relationship with someone, even at age 64.

My life is better now than it has ever been. I know all too well that dark place where I lived for so long and I don’t want to go back there.