A Story of Recovery:

Waving My White Flag

What was wrong with me? As far back as I could remember, I just wanted more of that snack, more of that treat. I can remember starting to notice that other kids didn’t seem to stare at food like I did. At the theatre I couldn’t even focus on the movie once my favorite movie treats had been eaten. All I kept thinking about was how I could get more.

As I went into adolescence and my body began to change. The weight began to show up and everyone could see I had a problem. I was plagued with thoughts of how different I was from everyone else. I had no will power. Other people had it, but not me. I thought: shame on me.

As I became a young adult, my food obsession began to grow. I needed more and more food to cope with life. Food was my best friend, always there for me. It became my comfort, my escape, my everything. It helped me hide out. If I was upset with someone, hurt, or offended, I ate. If I was afraid or worried, I ate. If I was happy, I ate. It was my natural reaction to life. I could find any reason to justify my eating, and my life became smaller and smaller. Soon my life was all about eating and avoiding people and places. Food was my drug. It had consumed me and “what should I eat?” became my everyday pursuit. I wanted food more than I wanted life. I lived to eat.

I don’t know when my best friend, food, began to betray me, but it did. It seemed like overnight there was no longer that certain food that could calm me or make me feel better. It was taking increasing amounts of food to try to fill that hole, that void, inside me and now there was never enough of it. It was scary.

My weight was at an all time high of 238 pounds (I’m 5’4″ tall). I was starting to have terrible heartburn and feared a heart attack was around the corner. My Dad had always told me I was just like him, and he was very overweight when he had his first massive heart attack at age 42. He teased me that if I kept eating like he did I would also have the “big one.” He would laugh, but I would stare in fear, only to turn to more food to try to calm my anxious thoughts.

The weekend of my 50th birthday, I babysat for a friend’s 5-year-old daughter. As we were driving to my house, she asked, “How old are you?” I said, “Well, I’m turning 50 on Monday.” She replied, with her childish truth, “Wow, you’re almost dead!” I remember that Monday, on my 50th birthday, thinking, “I wish I were dead. I am so sick of my life. What is there to live for? I’m fat and I will just get fatter and fatter. All I do is eat and dream of the magic diet, only to fail again and again.

So I decided to clean out my closet of all of my clothes with tags still on them that were too small, clothes I had never worn. I was resigned to just being fat and happy at a size 22. I thought I would just accept myself as I was. My new commitment to accepting myself as fat and trying to be happy lasted about a day. The problem was that I just couldn’t stop eating, which meant my weight was continuing to climb. With the ongoing obsession and addiction to food came health challenges and more misery and depression, less life, and more hiding out.

Then my husband told me that I had to get a job, after I had not worked for 22 years, so then I had the stress of finding work. I had the overwhelming task of finding the confidence to apply for work and also buy something to wear other than black sweat pants and T-shirts. (I had quit wearing make-up long ago.) The irony was that all this did was to turn me to more food, misery, fear, insecurity, and hopelessness. I felt more shame and condemnation for being such a loser. I could not think clearly. How was I going to get out of this hellhole I was now trapped in?

I went to the Internet in search of a Twelve-Step program. I tried a food-related Twelve-Step meeting a couple of times, but there were only a few people there and it seemed like a “misery loves company club,” as they were all overweight. I had also seen FA on a Website and decided to try it one time. I thought of this as my last-ditch effort. I would go to one meeting. I told God on the way there that I would do whatever they wanted for three days and then I would quit. I thought I might be relieved to think I had tried everything there was and then I would no longer have to keep searching. I thought I had just three days and I was done trying and beating myself up over another failed diet. Three days to freedom from dieting, trying, hoping. This was my last attempt, I would raise the white flag, my addiction would win, and I would accept being fat forever. I knew this was not going to work.

My three days has turned into almost three years of abstinence from flour, sugar, and quantities, and abstinence from self-pity, misery, hopelessness, shame, and condemnation. I learned that I have a disease. I came in with a lot of pain and, thank God, the memories of all that pain keep me close to my disciplines, my fellows, and my God. I am in recovery and no longer seeking relief or a quick fix by turning to food.