I remember one Christmas holiday when I left the San Francisco Bay Area and headed north to visit my family in Portland, Oregon for 10 days. As chance would have it, Portland had its worst snowstorm of 30 years that December, and I was there in the middle of it. A white Christmas; how exciting for this California girl! I’d been abstinent for eight months, and the world felt alive to me again—the temperatures, the smells, and the colors were vibrant. I clearly remember the coziness inside my mom’s sweet little yellow house, which was surrounded by banks of snow. From inside, with heater blasting, we snuggled up to read books under a down, throw-blanket on her couch. One day we donned snow pants and boots to walk a mile to the local coffee shop, where we drank hot tea and played a board game. Later that day, when my 3-year-old nephew... Continue Reading
I didn’t know what a food addict was. I thought I was weak willed, maybe even a child of a lesser god. I wasn’t the type of addict who hid food; if I had it, I ate it. I once bought a mailbox—the kind you find in the country on a post—and put a lock on it so I could hide all the foods I obsessed over. I gave my husband the combination, and he was strictly instructed to lock up his favorite foods, which of course were flour and sugar items. I thought it was a perfectly good solution for my problem. In hindsight, it was a desperate attempt to control my eating. Who but a food addict would need to lock away food from themselves? When I thought about the word “addict,” I thought about my former father-in-law, who hid beer all around the warehouse in which my... Continue Reading
I was able to make it through my first Christmas holiday abstinently, but what was harder for me was the time after the holidays. Thank goodness a long-time member had warned me about this. Now I am just as mindful after the special holidays and occasions as I am during them. Every occasion is just another day, in terms of my food, and celebrations can be special solely for the gift of abstinence I receive by working this program. Certainly the days leading up to that first Christmas, and the various events that I attended, were uncomfortable. I got through it all by gritting my teeth, smiling false smiles, making lots of phone calls, and using every FA tool offered. The smells brought back memories of the happy-time feasts at my grandparent’s house and the excitement of the night before Christmas and Christmas morning. I’ve always associated food with feeling... Continue Reading
Looking back to when I entered into that threshold that is the first 90 days of FA, three-and-half years and one-hundred-thirty pounds ago, I can say that I never want to go down that painful road again. Coming off of flour and sugar was so hard for me that if I knew then what I know now, I would have taken time off from work and stayed at home for a several weeks! I was an emotional basket case, to say the very least. My feelings were a roller coaster of never-ending ups and downs. My mood was completely unstable. I was extremely rude to those closest to me. Mostly, I regret my behavior towards my coworker and friend during that time. Putting it simply, I acted “holier than thou” toward her because I had found recovery from food addiction and she had not. In my early days in Program,... Continue Reading
I first came to FA weighing 215 pounds. I was a complete mess. For over six years, I had one foot in FA and one foot in the food. I would think: Am I really a food addict? Do I really need to go to these lengths? Is FA really the solution to my food problem? I saw myself as different from all the other food addicts in the rooms, which exempted me from having to do what they did. No one had ever binged on as much food as I had, no one felt a food craving as intensely as I did, and no one had the hard life I had, which entitled me to eat. I had some periods of abstinence— 90 days a few times, six months a couple of times, and 11 months once, but invariably the self-pity and that strange mental twist would lead me... Continue Reading
