A Story of Recovery:

The “Perfect” Meal

I try to think back on when I started FA nine years ago.  There was an exact moment when I became willing.  I was 110 pounds, over 5’9” tall, and preparing a meal that was organic, vegan, and “perfect.”  I’d been preparing it for 45 minutes and I couldn’t stop.  And I didn’t know if it was enough food to keep me on the planet.   This was 13 years after joining another 12-step program for food, and in some ways, I was just as sick and trapped as I had been then, when I went to my first meeting of the other program after a two-day binge on a sugar item in front of the TV.  Sure, I wasn’t binging anymore, but my behavior with food was still way out of balance.  The thirteen-year journey from that two-day binge to the “perfect” meal that inspired me to join FA was like the horror movie in which the victim thinks they are running from the aggressor, but are actually running toward the aggressor.  I wasn’t able to outrun my addiction; it just took a different form.

Before FA, I’d tried everything to feel better.  I’d journaled for decades, meticulously followed every suggestion in self-help books, exercised obsessively, gone to spiritual centers, and tried my hardest to obtain joy and peace through eating the perfect food.  Many of those things helped for a while, or even changed me in positive ways, but then the novelty would wear off, and eventually I’d end up face down in the food or locked in a battle of control that just made me sicker.

In FA, I heard people speak about their dreams coming true in recovery, dreams that they hadn’t even identified in their addiction, or had given up on years or decades before.  I got a sense that there was something that could work for me in FA. I wanted what people in FA had, and I could see a lot of healing taking place in the rooms.

For me, emotions would come up in the meetings.  It felt good and right to let feelings arise, pass through me, then dissipate: “up and out” I heard it called.  I listened to every CD I could get my hands on and called some of the speakers whose stories moved me the most—back then, the CD’s had the speakers names on them.  Many of these fellows with long-term recovery lived on the East Coast.  I felt grateful when returned my calls and shared their experience, strength, and hope with me.

Eating the food was challenging at first and can still be challenging at times.  If I’m having trouble with my food, often it is a signal that I need to work the steps around a situation in my life.  Because I’m active, my food plan had to be massive for me to gain weight.  I wasn’t used to eating when I wasn’t hungry, except during a binge, and I revolted, having break, and then another. Over time, however, I was able to let go.   And now I’ve been abstinent, one day at a time, for a number of years.  I hope I always remember that “perfect” meal.  It ends up it was “perfect” for me, because it got me to FA!