Last year I was reporting on one of the biggest murder cases of the past decade, and I made the most basic of errors: I made an assumption about a legal issue. The assumption turned to fact in my head, and I never checked whether or not it was true. It wasn’t. I reported on the case and so broke the law of contempt. This was the biggest mistake of my career. Bigger than when I was eating addictively and would regularly be late because I had to stop at the drive-thru on the way to work, despite having just finished breakfast. Bigger than when I would spend most of the day in the office toilet, crying. Bigger even than when I was eventually fired for being “rude, abrupt, and causing a bad feeling.” (I was always a joy when I was in the food!) The first I heard about... Continue Reading
The first time I came to FA, I thought I could run the program my way. I had been working a good AA program and had 27 years of sobriety. The only thing that I needed FA for was to lose weight. I learned the hard way that half measures avail us nothing. I did lose weight. I went from 200 pounds down to 130 and kept it off for 2.5 years. I weighed and measured my food, and that was about it. I didn’t think I needed to do the other disciplines because I was different, unique. So I ran my program my way. I didn’t have time to meditate. Sometimes I did the phone calls, if I felt like it. I only went to two FA meetings because my third meeting could be an AA meeting. I couldn’t be bothered reading the AA Big Book, because I had... Continue Reading
I used to get so excited about the holidays. It meant I could do what I was known for—baking. Starting in September, I would get out my collection of cookbooks and find recipes. I’d have my children vote on which things I should make. And of course, I had to search for that one new recipe for the year. And it wasn’t just simple desserts; I made a complicated variety of things and at least one very extravagant dessert. When my sponsor suggested that I should not bake, I ignored her. She was young, unmarried, and had no children. She didn’t understand that baking was one of the ways I showed my love. I put not only the baking ingredients into that batter, but also, and most importantly, tons and tons of love. And so I baked. It was very difficult. I had to have one of my children in... Continue Reading
I found FA through a tortuous route that took years of self-discovery. I had weighed well over 200 pounds for 20 years, my body felt as though it were seizing up into an inflexible mass, and I despaired of ever again being below 200 pounds. I could not take another day in my life. I grew up an optimistic child in an optimistic family. Even though we moved a lot and my parents were separated for three months out of the year, they maintained their loving attention to their three children. I had an attraction to sugar from the time I was just two years old; my parents had to hide sweets from me. When I was in first grade, I stole money from my piggy bank to buy forbidden sweets and hid in a vacant lot to eat them. I don’t remember having enough sugary food—there was always a... Continue Reading
I became a member of FA right after my gastric sleeve surgery. It had finally dawned on me that if I was letting someone put a knife to my gut, that maybe I had an issue with food. By my six-month post-operative appointment, I was well beyond the goals my surgeon expected after a full year. I had reached the weight the doctor had as my long-term goal. I had healthy blood-work results and had achieved the ability, unusual for such a recent patient, to eat only three times a day in the ample amounts suggested by my FA sponsor. My surgeon was floored. “Well, we can’t have you show up to the post-op support group meetings. You’ll give my other patients unrealistic expectations!” (I passed him an FA brochure and told him about Program.) My doctor then asked if I was done losing weight. I said that even by his charts,... Continue Reading
