A Story of Recovery:

No Matter What Don’t Eat

The slogan, “Don’t eat no matter what, no matter what don’t eat,” made no sense to me when I first joined Program. I just couldn’t wrap my brain around this concept. After all, I had to eat my meals, right? So what exactly did they mean by this slogan?

After pondering that thought, I realized that people in FA meant not to eat food that wasn’t committed that day if emotions or boredom sent me looking to see what might be in my fridge or cupboards. Oh, that’s what they mean! But, isn’t that what I’ve never been able to avoid doing before? I mean: That’s why I’m here in FA. HELP!

I (a visual learner) came up with a technique that helped me understand and become more “neutral” around my food:

When I was growing up in Wilmington, Delaware, there was a huge medical center for children with spinal injuries. It was converted from an old estate built back in the times of the American Revolution. The buildings looked like castles, with towers and steeples. The enormous estate was surrounded entirely by a very high stone wall. On top of the stones, shards of very pointy chunks of broken glass were embedded with cement. It looked very foreboding. I often asked my mother why this wall had glass on top of it. She told me that it was to protect the residents of the estate. Anyone trying to climb over the wall would get hurt so badly that they would never make it inside. Hence, nothing could hurt the people within the walls. Wow! That seemed ingenious to me and impressed my young mind very much. I felt that the children recovering within those hospital walls were safe from any danger.

I took that image of this high and secure wall with shards of dangerous glass, and mentally put my abstinent food behind it. Then I imagined that my emotions were on the outside of this wall. I pictured that no matter what was happened on the “emotions” side of the wall—whether I was feeling stressed, bored, crazy, angry, happy, sad, or anxious—that none of those feelings could come inside and make any alterations to my abstinence. I made a strict separation from my food and everything else.

For over seven years of back-to-back abstinence and 90-plus pounds of maintained weight loss, I’ve never come up with an emotional situation that has come in contact with my food. No matter what is going on outside my glass-covered walls, I know my food is safe and sound. I don’t eat—no matter what!