I am a 24-year-old food addict in recovery from overeating, under eating (more “attempting to” than actually sticking to it), and intense bulimic behavior. It started when I was as young as five years old, when I thought I was fat. As I grew up, I couldn’t even make a phone call to a stranger. I would freak out and create a dramatized story about someone finding out that I was worthless and dumb. I had great fear of what other people thought of me and had very little self-esteem. I spent my days eating, drinking, and throwing up. I couldn’t talk to adults because I thought they were superior to me. In my part-time jobs while attending school, if a customer asked if I could help find a product, my mind would go straight to self criticism, and I would think to myself, You’re stupid, you don’t know how... Continue Reading
Here are my thoughts about how I make conscious contact with G-d during the day. I am only a new believer in a higher power, which I do not call G-d, but I feel awkward during my day talking to “it,” or whatever it may be. My belief in a higher power has emerged only since I began FA two-and-a-half years ago. Through participation in an AWOL, I have just begun to think that there may even be a higher power. Before this, for over 50 years, I was a committed, contented, devout atheist. Now as I have tried on this budding belief in a higher power, I am awkward in talking or otherwise communicating with it. (I hope I am not offending anyone by my referring to it as “it,” but not knowing how to define this higher power, it is the best I can do.) During my day... Continue Reading
During one of the sharing sessions at an FA meeting, I heard someone say that she was in the right-size body until her mid-forties, and when she put down cigarettes, she took up food. Oh, I said to myself, what did I put down when I picked up food? All of a sudden, it dawned on me…my husband! Yes, in my mid-forties, when I divorced my husband, I gradually picked up food to quell the gnawing feelings of emotional insecurity, now that I felt I was alone in the world. What a revelation this was for me! I’d spent several years counseling women on adapting to various transitions in life, like divorce, and I thought I had made it through that rough patch myself. However, I used food to treat myself on Friday nights when I felt lonely and, when I was feeling celebratory, I ate and drank wine. I... Continue Reading
Me, a food addict? Are you kidding? If you had told me just five years ago that I would soon be addicted to food just like an alcoholic is to alcohol, I would have thought at the very least you had a few screws loose. First of all, I wasn’t fat! Far from it, I was a skinny teenager and had even tried to gain weight for several years. How could someone like me be a food addict? By the age 19, I could no longer ignore my frightening loss of control over my eating. Why did I eat so much that I was sick and bloated, often stealing other people’s food and eating in secret? My eating habits had always been a bit strange, but now I was out of control. Day after day I would repeat this desperate behavior. I could not seem to control myself. As my... Continue Reading
I had a debilitating case of the “when, then” syndrome. When I lose the weight, then (fill in the blank)… I will find my husband, land the job of my dreams, have a large circle of amazing friends and wonderful memories. I kept waiting and waiting, without changing any of my behaviors. Not surprisingly, the weight didn’t fall off, and happiness didn’t show up on my doorstep. I’ve heard in FA that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I definitely felt insane. I was 26 years old, 288 pounds, very unhappy, and in poor health. My resting heart rate was 160. I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without being winded. I could no longer cross my legs without having to hold them in place. I tried to avoid, at all costs, going places or attending functions where I... Continue Reading
