At 58 years old, I believed I had no choice but to die of obesity. I knew I would have a heart attack or a stroke and, if I were lucky, it would be fatal. Or I would eat until I exploded. There was no other way out. I walked into an FA meeting late and sat in the last row, nervous and hopeless. As I sat in my seat the woman next to me gave me a smile. I don’t remember a lot that was said at the meeting but I remember that smile. I felt welcome and at home. I might not remember what was said, but I know I heard hope in that meeting, hope that I didn’t have to die from food addiction, that I had another choice. I learned of another meeting the next night and I committed to someone that I would go. That... Continue Reading
I am 71 years old, and for most of my life, I was thin. When I was in my forties, however, it seemed like all my clothing sizes suddenly started getting bigger and bigger, and I could not understand why. People told me that when you start getting older, your body changes, but I went from a size 10 to a size 22 and I didn’t think it had anything to do with my eating habits. I had been doing the same thing for so many years, and all of a sudden I started gaining weight, so I resigned myself to the idea that life just changes with age and I had better accept it. I worked at a company that loved to give dinners and lunches as rewards for doing a great job. It was always greasy food or flour and sugar items that I couldn’t resist. I never... Continue Reading
My top weight was 138 pounds, about 30 pounds over what I weigh now. The miracle is that I have maintained my weight for 15 years, without over-exercising or having tons of therapy. I thought that if I figured out why I ate, I would stop. That never happened. I ate because I am a food addict, it is that simple. I see that I have had lots of life events that I did not have to eat over. Life’s challenges have been as simple as coming outside to a flat tire, and as devastating as getting fired from my job. Living through the process before I actually got fired was very uncomfortable. I remember calling my sponsor one day at work crying, feeling like I was worthless. She asked me “are you doing your best?” I said “yes.” So she gave me my marching orders. “Go to work with... Continue Reading
Before FA, I would have asserted I was an honest person. I’d have bet money on the fact that I was more honest than those around me. If I received too much change at the store, I gave it back. I never said anything behind someone’s back that I wouldn’t say to their face. Yup, I was honest. After seven years in FA, a few AWOLs, and other Twelve-Step work, I now see the brutality that went with that honesty. It is true, if someone gave me too much change at the store, I would give it back, but that went along with an “honest” appraisal of the store clerk’s intelligence. I may not have used the word “idiot,” but there was no doubt about my message. I loved my husband enough to tell him all the things nobody else would say to his face, and was just as brutal and... Continue Reading
Before coming into FA, I once went 11 days without a shower…in the middle of August! At the time I weighed 176 pounds and could not care less about my appearance (or body odor, for that matter). I was so broken that I couldn’t mentally will myself to take a shower, but also I didn’t have any clean clothes that fit me because I had recently gained so much weight and didn’t have a job to pay for new clothes or a trip to the laundromat to wash the ones I did have. And I was homeless and living with my mother who is a hoarder and had 50+ shampoo bottles in the shower of the squalid home we were sharing with her active alcoholic companion. My life was definitely unmanageable: all of these various reasons for not showering for 11 days may seem disconnected, but they were... Continue Reading
