A Story of Recovery:

Truth in Numbers

I am 5’9”, 63 years old, currently weighing 132 pounds (59.9 kilos), and three weeks short of 30 years ago, I let go of 55 pounds (24.9 kilos). This story is actually about the Memorial Day 11 years ago when, at the suggestion of two sponsees in another program, I walked into my first FA meeting and was immediately taken aback by the clarity and transparency of the talk around food. 

Although I believed flour and sugar had not really been a problem for me, in accordance with the First Tradition, I surrendered them. I was also asked to have a Higher Power and I had already chosen mine from a line in a 1982 Richard Attenborough movie, “God is truth.”This belief seemed to align with the admonition on page 58 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous to be honest if I wanted to recover. However, after completing two AWOL’s (A Way of Life, a study of the Twelve Steps) and “getting down to causes and conditions,” I was having some challenges around certain issues which I wanted answers for, and yet could not find the experience, strength and hope I needed with my fellows in FA (we were only 4,000 strong at the time, worldwide).

My sponsor pointed out a line on page 76 in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, which states, “If that degree of humility could enable us to find the grace by which such a deadly obsession could be banished, then there must be hope of the same result respecting any other problem we could possibly have.” He said I was being “rigidly righteous” in demanding that FA have all the answers, and that the third and fifth traditions do not say that we have an answer for anything except food addiction−ouch!

So I wandered off with “God is truth” and found the answers I needed to heal. I have shared the answers with my fellows, after meetings, and at other appropriate times with people who have shared questions or experiences.
I have found the real lasting beauty of FA, for me, is in the daily writing of the food plan and the use of the digital scale to weigh and measure. For 19 years, I had used a food record in my daily tenth steps, but the intentionality of the food plan gave vigor, verve and vitality to my daily surrender. My scale is my altar now, where I admit I am powerless over food and that my life is unmanageable. It is the central focus of my kitchen. One of the places I wandered taught me that “God is in the numbers.”

That is perfectly true for me as I see exactly 6.0 0z and 4.0 0z coming up on my scale throughout the day. It is important to note that this recovery is not just for me. God did not give it to me to keep for myself. I presently make five phone connections per day. That is well over 50,000 people I have had the opportunity and privilege to serve and carry the message of my Truth, weighing and measuring, the food plan and the ancillary spiritual information than many of my sponsees have needed to find peace, not only around food, but with themselves and their fellows.

I raised a daughter by myself and she has only seen her dad in a right-sized body for her entire life. My fiancé can’t imagine me fat. Most of my sponsees are younger, and they get to see someone in their sixties who is thin and strong.

Finally, in the fourth tradition of “not taking myself too damned serious,” I got to bike through Vietnam and Thailand this last year. Twenty percent of the weight load was my digital scale. Can’t leave Truth behind.