I came into the program nearly 10 years ago at age 26, and I weighed about 200 pounds. I’m thankful to have been maintaining a 70-pound weight loss for the past, gosh, about nine and a half years. It took me about six months to lose the weight, and then those inevitable painful months of trying to lose those last few pounds. But I’m very thankful that this is a spiritual, mental, and physical recovery because if I had just come in and lost the weight as I had in the past, I’m sure I would have been too frustrated and just left if it had just been a diet program. So at 26 years old, the picture for me was that I was in about $12,000 debt.
And I was eating all the time anyway, even when I knew I couldn’t afford to be going to the grocery store at those hours of the night, and mainly after work. I got to 200 pounds, obviously over time, but it meant eating a lot of food. You don’t just get to 200 pounds overnight. So it started when I was a kid growing up in California, being a little bit overweight. I hated those words my whole life, a little bit overweight. I come from a family where just about everybody was 20 to 50 to 60, 75 pounds overweight. So it was sort of the norm in my family, but I did not feel normal. My mom was overweight, and my uncle had a lot of health problems as a result of his obesity. So I sort of saw the writing on the wall. But as a young kid, I felt more obsessed with my body than I did about my weight, specific body parts.
I was very self-centered at an early age, focusing on me, me, me, and my body. Interestingly enough, my dad got an offer to move to Europe. So my story is that we moved every three years of my life, not from a military family, just because we got transferred. So I lived the life of an expatriate kid. And as an expat kid, I wanted American food, even though I lived in Switzerland, where there’s plenty of good, sugary, and flowery foods. They serve it morning, noon, and night and in between. To me, it was considered healthy, especially if it was a foreign food. Somehow, flour and sugar, if they were foreign, French, or Swiss, were healthy. I can tell you, I did not eat it in a healthy way. We were also served wine at restaurants. It wasn’t unusual to have a glass of wine at home, but at home, the picture looked like this: I was resentful when we passed around the casseroles, and I didn’t get the exact crunchy part I wanted.
I had an older brother who got that piece, or my dad got the biggest piece of starchy thing going around the table, and so I knew something was wrong with that. The other things that I felt growing up were intense loneliness. As I mentioned, I had one older brother who was very successful and didn’t necessarily want his little sister tagging along, so I was very much a tag-along and a bit of a tomboy. I felt rejected a lot and
When I came to recovery, I saw that that really didn’t have anything to do with my family. And I had this disease really early on, which I think was already having me feel these feelings and have these voices in my mind telling me a lot of negative things. So a lot of people call it low self-esteem. I call it food addiction and a mental illness. Constantly feeling good things but looking for the bad. That was my story a lot of the time. I played soccer. My dad coached my team. I still feel like I didn’t get enough attention. I was in drama and sports, and I felt like I wasn’t good enough. So was a common theme. When I would get frustrated on the soccer field, I couldn’t wait until halftime when we got the food, but it was some kind of healthy food, so then I couldn’t wait until the game was over and we got the stuff in the packages, especially the sweet, juicy drinks that came in those packages with the straws. I can remember very well what those taste like today. And I remember these powdered drinks and just having them. So much powder was left at the end of the glass, and it was just like scooping it up with a spoon. just wanted that rush of feeling in my mind. It just took me away from the negative feelings about not playing well enough. I was too big and too fat, and I didn’t get to play the position I wanted. Why did my brother run faster? Why did that girl over there look better in her soccer shorts, and she had skinny thighs, and that one over there got to go on a really nice vacation and spend lots of money. So, I was comparing myself also a lot early, early on, whether it was when we were living in Switzerland, comparing myself to other people’s wealth, or coming back here. And more focused on living in California and what the Beach Girls’ bodies were like. So whenever I felt lonely, food was there for me. And some of the things I think aren’t normal are that I would sneak food and go into the kitchen. And I’d hear my mother’s voice saying, ” Who’s in the kitchen? So right there, I knew it wasn’t right, but I would do it anyway. And I would hope that my brother and my dad would get the blame. So I remember how the magnets snapped shut on the cabinet doors in Switzerland. I remember how they snapped shut in California. And I remember the shame of going to my grandmother’s house, knowing she had fresh-baked goods in the tin and waiting till everybody was gone and going in at night to go to the tin of the freshly baked goods that she had made, all because I was addicted and because I was nervous about being around my grandmother. I was comparing myself to my cousins. I was uncomfortable about family dynamics, and the only real thing that could take that away from me was that escape, know, escape into food. As I got older, the escape turned into needing more and more amounts of food and needing more and more amounts of partying and escapism. And I also just felt that increasing shame about the way I was eating. I felt guilty about the way I was eating. So I just stacked guilt upon guilt upon guilt. One of the things we did as a family on Sunday mornings was make these big homemade breakfasts involving an iron and lots of sweet stuff all over it. And it was sort of a bonding experience for us. So there was a lot of bonding and showing of love with food. But still, I didn’t feel satisfied when it was over. I felt angry when the meals were over.
And I especially felt angry when somebody got more than I did, and also that the bond was over. I felt like I didn’t relate to the family unless I was really eating with them or we were going on a trip. We went on a lot of road trips as a family, especially when we were living in Europe. I was very blessed to see all these castles, cathedrals, and battle sites. But I was the type who wanted to stay in the car, and then when we got there, I was going to get some sweet treat when we got out. And depending on the country, I knew what it would be. And I was a little picky about my food, wanting carbohydrates smothered in fat. That’s basically what I ate, white and yellow. Maybe a little red sauce on there. So I was getting loaded up on carbohydrates very early on. The weight started really demonstrating itself on my body, or this disease started demonstrating itself on my body, around puberty. I was very tall, very fast. I developed and looked older than I was, and started getting attention from older guys, and again, feeling ashamed and feeling guilty about it, and feeling really scared. I come from a really prudish family, and that’s a blessing in some respects, but I compromised my integrity, and I felt guilty about it. So what did I do? I went out and ate. We had sporting events and swim meets where you had to bring food for your quote-unquote secret pal. We’d draw names, and you had to bake, cook, or buy something. And the coaches would encourage us, like, don’t bring sugar, you’re just gonna get a sugar high, or you’re gonna get in the pool, and you’re gonna be burnt out by the time you get in there, and you’re not gonna swim a good race. So here I was, size 14, embarrassed to get into my bathing suit for the school swim meet. Guys were sitting there watching, was holding my stomach on the diving block and thinking I can’t wait to get that home baked stuff that my secret pal brought and if she forgot which happened I would be again, I feel those feelings of anger unusually strong anger and I was the type who flaked out, was the type who forgot to make something for my secret pal so I would just go to the snack bar and gee while I was at the snack bar I get a couple bars for myself. It didn’t matter if it was 8 a.m. before school or 9.30 at the brunch line. You better believe I was in that brunch line. And I don’t know that I was like all the other kids at the brunch line. was, you know, 20, 30 pounds overweight, ashamed, just praying the cute guy didn’t see me or praying that my friends didn’t see me going back, looking over my shoulder. Why? Nobody was watching me. So I had these negative feelings, this paranoia, feeling like a camera, like a video camera was following me around, this utter self-centeredness. Either everybody loves me, or nobody likes me.
So that feeling of having learned later in this program that I’m an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. My parents split up when I was in high school. I was a sophomore, and I went back and forth between my mother and her new husband, my stepdad, and my dad and his new wife, my stepmom. So I felt really out of it, like I didn’t belong anywhere in the family. And I felt like that in the world as a food addict. Plus, having lived in Europe, speaking a foreign language, coming here, having funny-looking clothes. And I felt like, okay, well, I’ll try to lose weight to fit in.
And as soon as I lost weight, I would get accolades and attention. I’d get attention from family members and people at school. And then something funny would happen, people would get jealous. And I was such a people pleaser, because I felt like I didn’t belong. I wanted everybody to like me all the time. That as soon as somebody got jealous, I thought, well, I don’t want to do that then. And then I would inevitably put the weight back on. I tried Joni Greggen’s workout in the mornings. I tried Jane Fonda’s video at night.
I remember losing a bunch of weight one time and a soccer coach saying, ” You look really great, but my attitude was so bad, and I was so angry all the time that he benched me. So this is definitely a mental illness that has nothing to do with being thin, meaning thin is not well, as they say. So that proved to be true for me. I remember one time gaining a little weight, and my brother, who is two and a half years older, I think he was a senior in high school, saying, ” Yeah, I weighed 160 pounds. And I thought, I’m not telling him how much I weighed, because I remember it was 162. I was horrified that I weighed more than my brother. So that was a dance for me, size 10, 12, 14, 10, 12, 14. It was a good day if I could fit into a 10. I tanned, I tried going to tanning booths, and I remember going to the frozen food places thinking that was healthy, and I would just be mesmerized, which topping, which topping, which topping is going to do it. I couldn’t decide which topping to put on something that was going to fix me. And then I would pick one, and I’d pick two, and I’d mix them up, and I’d be like…
Darn it, I wish I had gotten the other one; that was the wrong one. Nothing fixed me. Food did not fix me. The boyfriend did not fix me. Alcohol did not fix me. My family couldn’t fix me. And finally, my mother said, ” Hey, do you want to try therapy? So I’m in California, right? Northern California. All my friends are in therapy, sure, why not? And I had my first experience going to a therapist. Meanwhile, I was a peer counselor at school, a doctor, a therapist, a pro, all my friends.
So, another very strong part of my history is taking care of others before myself. And that is a constant lesson I’m being taught in this recovery, is to take really good care of myself. I didn’t know back then I was a food addict, a very sensitive person with a delicate nervous system, but absolutely I was then and I am now, but I’m ultra, ultra sensitive. So I go to the therapist’s office, spend $100, and cry and moan about this going on and that going on, and my boyfriend this and my family that, and not talk too much about being fat. I talked about being suicidal. I talked about how I wanted to die. I’d have fantasies about wanting to die, about driving my car into another car. And from the outside, people wouldn’t know this. I got a car when I turned 16. Granted, it was a hand-me-down car, unlike the cars in the parking lot at my school. And again, I would compare myself and not be able to see the fact that I got a car. That’s what this addiction did for me. But I continued to see therapists throughout college. I went off to Boulder for college, and I gained a freshman 15 and a freshman 30. And my college roommate to this day is one of my best friends and says, ” Yeah, I remember you would keep going back to the line. So that was a really humbling experience hearing. I think my disease really took off at that point. I was very glad to be away from home and independent, but I was constantly worrying about money. Now, mind you, I’d had my first job, beginning in junior high, as a babysitter, I’ve had to go back and make amends to homes where I babysat because of all the food I took out of their house and ate. And I remember one woman, when I asked for a raise, looked at me like, “Well, we’re already giving you this much per hour, and you’re eating a lot of our food.” It’s what I thought was going through her mind. But I think she didn’t want to give me the raise because she knew what I was eating. Her out of health and home. You know, the one and a half year old couldn’t be doing that. So then I progressed to working at a cafe in a department store. So, I would use my store discount to buy clothes and get myself into debt. I think I had a credit card at 18. And feel ashamed and embarrassed and insecure and go into the walk-in refrigerator and pray nobody was about to come in. I wasn’t literally praying at that time. But in my mind, I was thinking, I hope no one comes in right now and sees me eat. I’d go on my breaks, and we’d get free food and food you had to pay for as an employee. And I didn’t pay for that food. And I was stealing. I could go back and make amends for that, too.
So there are many times when I felt like I could handle this, I could do this. It’s the lies that this disease would tell. I’d be on a job thinking, making money, I’m going to be okay, I’m going to pay off this debt, and I would feel insecure and like that’ll take away those feelings, and then I would wind up with some clothes I didn’t really like all that much because I couldn’t fit into what I really wanted, and then stop at the food court to get food because I was so disappointed. I ate over being disappointed in a big way. Disappointment was a common theme, alongside loneliness and insecurity. So these jobs were not perfect either. I didn’t feel like I was getting the attention I wanted there either, given my insatiable appetite for it. And I learned in this program that people will disappoint us. We’re all human. Nobody is perfect. I was constantly looking to boyfriends, professors, and bosses to make me feel better and give me praise. And when I’d get a good grade, I’d call home, and I wouldn’t get the praise that I wanted. And even if I did, I would think, well, that wasn’t enthusiastic enough. So, never enough. That’s how I know I’m an addict. I have this disease of more, more, more because it can always be better, richer, thinner, smarter, faster, and as an addict, I think a lot of that just helped me self-destruct. I graduated from college, chalked up a boyfriend who did cocaine, he dealt it out of his fraternity house, and chalked up a relationship with a guy who went into rehab for drugs and alcohol. And at that point, I had heard about 12 Step Recovery, which was sort of bold, with a mecca for that at the time, it was in the 80s.
A lot of inner child work was very, very popular, and a lot of therapy wasn’t abnormal or unpopular to be in therapy. couldn’t afford it, so I was on a sliding scale. And again, I would just go to the women’s office and say, I think I might be schizophrenic, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. And finally, I started getting panic attacks. So when the anxiety attacks came, I would go into the health center and say, ” Is something really wrong with me? They would ask me my name, the date, and if I know who the current president is. And I thought, they are really thinking I’m crazy. I was crazy about the food, and they said, “Did you eat?” What are you eating? And I remember telling them, well, I’ll swim fast, and I’ll throw a piece of fruit in there and blend it. Like my roommates, I really appreciated that at 6 a.m. I shared a room with two other girls in a sorority house, and that didn’t fix me either. And they were calling the CDC, saying, ” Well, gosh, what’s in there? It was very new at the time. And all I was eating was that and carbohydrates. And they just looked at me like, ” You need to be feeding yourself better. So I went on the MacDougall diet. I tried being a vegetarian. was a 200-pound vegetarian. So there’s plenty of carbohydrates out there for vegans and vegetarians alike. And it didn’t matter whether I was a vegetarian or not. I was an addict, and so I could not stop, even though I thought I could many times. And now I’m not a vegetarian, and I eat healthy, and I can, by the grace of this program, a food scale, and God, stop after graduating from this.
In relationship situations and food dilemmas, I lost weight again, and I experienced the same experience as before. I joined a 12-step program for food recovery, and a lot of the people were overweight. When I had success, they got jealous, and I felt like an outsider again. So I inevitably got the lonelies and felt disappointed, and what did I do? I turned to food. I also tried the geographic cure of moving over to Europe, having grown up there, and I moved to Germany, where I barely. I did speak a little bit. So the way I would get to work is I would take one bus, then a subway, then one bus, and then walk. And I can’t even name how many bakeries were on the way. So I was spending a dollar here, three dollars there, and looking at them like, ” How do you say that one? How do you say that one? I knew how to say those names by the time I lived there, you know, several months and then i would buy bags of things that i had to shell on the way on my walk of the comp one credit leaving a path behind me and i felt so lonely over there the loneliness only multiplied and here back home they were saying always in that need our daughters living europe of my friend lives in germany is not cool and i was over there with four to six hundred dollar phone bills going to deeper debt lonely wishing i was my family who i thought so-called didn’t really want to be close to and that’s why i was over there I found myself drinking and finally went into recovery not only for that food program but also for alcohol addiction. So I really learned the concept of addiction there, and I remember feeling so frustrated. Why don’t they have something like this for food? And my mother would even say that, well, you have such success in this program, why don’t you try it when it comes to your food problem or your weight problem? I’d call home, and my family would say, how’s your exercise going? And I’m thinking, I don’t have an exercise program problem, I’m crazy. I’m at a business meeting at work. Everybody leaves, and I’m sitting there in the conference room thinking, ” Are they gone yet so I can eat the leftover food. And then I would think, I’m not going to eat it, I’m not going to eat it, I’ll be okay. Dousing my coffee with creamer and with all this sugary stuff, going back to my desk, and then thinking at three or four o’clock in the afternoon, it’s still in the conference room, isn’t it? I bet you that food’s still in there. So I had a preoccupation with food that took away from my work and my time sharing with my family. I remember one time I was at home, visiting relatives in California, when an aunt came to visit. We were in a line, and I cut in front of her to beeline it to the buffet table, and somebody called out my full name. And I remember thinking, what? I just wanted to get to the table. But really, on the inside, deep down, a little, still small voice in me was saying, I’m sick. So embarrassed. I knew that was wrong. I was so uncomfortable with the feelings that I just wanted to get to that food now. Yeah, patience wasn’t something I had when it came to getting my food. So the behaviors just got worse in the sense that I tried chewing tons of gum to keep the weight off. I tried exercising. I tried smoking cigarettes. I could smoke in my office there. And it was such a gross feeling. I would take the first few drags and think, wow, I’m cool, this feels good, I can smoke in my office, wow, or before when I was still drinking, okay, aren’t I cool at this bar? Oh, I only smoke when I’m partying. And then after a couple of drugs, it would just taste so bad in my mouth, and it was just that way with food. It had stopped working. I would take a few bites, it would be so good, and I’d think, oh, this is really helping me. Thank goodness I’m eating this, or I’d be eating something really bad over here. And then it would be like mush in my mouth. It would be like chewing something that didn’t even taste like anything anymore. My gums would start to hurt from the sugar. I would cut the parts of my gums from biting on stuff that was too hard and pasty. And that stopped working, too, just like the cigarettes. And by the way, the cigarettes never kept me thin. Gum didn’t keep me thin. It just gave me a lot of gas and helped me feel really uncomfortable. And I was totally addicted to the sweet. I was totally addicted to that sorbitol and NutraSweet. And I was addicted to that NutriSweet dating way back to the 80s when I was drinking that Crystal Light, pictures of it for myself, rationalizing that, well, it’s not sugar. I was drinking liter bottles of Diet Coke, thinking, honestly thinking, if I drink a liter, it will help me be thinner. I thought diet food would make me thin, so I’d eat more of it. I thought a diet drink would make me thin, so I’d drink more of it. And my family, and my mother in particular, would say, did you just have a Diet Coke? They would see me spin around like a top. And no, when I got really hyper, I’d either eaten something or had a bunch of caffeine. So I used caffeine as a drug to feed my addiction. And I would work till 7, 8, 9, 10 p.m. to try to get more done, more done, more done, more of that more disease. And really, what it was is that I was so lonely. I had this gaping spiritual hole that I was trying to fill with food and all those other substances. And they felt better. They felt better. Instant gratification felt good. I wanted something instant. I didn’t want the wait to feel better; I waited three days for the discomfort to go by or waited a month until I felt better. I wanted instant weight loss, instant gratification, and to feel good now. That’s another way I know I’m an addict. So when I feel lonely, I wouldn’t want to leave work. It would be the vending machine, and I was just waiting to have a conversation. So I’d go over to the vending machine and look what was there and think, I’m just going to buy gum this time.
Oh well, actually, I think I had this for lunch. It’s pretty low-calorie, so I can have that thing in the wrapper after all. And it’s kind of healthy because it has a few healthy components. If I look at the calories and the fat content on it, it’s a math equation all of a sudden. Was I thinking about my job? No, I was thinking about the vending machine. Was I thinking about how I can have a more productive weekend? How can I have a relationship? No, I was totally preoccupied with food. I counted calories, I counted fat grams, I had a binder, I counted fat grams of green beans, of cans of green beans.
And I would rationalize why. It was a crazy mental exhaustion. It was just the process of mental exhaustion. The obsession got worse over time. So by the time I was 26, I had been in several false programs, and I had been spending time and saying to friends, “Hey, you want to go out to eat?” Even though I’d already eaten, I was spending so much money that I went further into debt. And I had a boyfriend over in Germany, but I had moved back to California and felt those lonely feelings, didn’t want to go home because it reminded me of being afraid to go home as a kid. I used to balance on my handlebars, something frozen or some kind of food I could eat, with one hand dangerously on my bike without holding the handlebars. I used to do the same thing in a car. I’d be driving the car, my knee dipping something into something else. I’d have wrappers under the backseat, and I’d have gum wrappers filling up. Stuffing the ashtray. I would go to places that were like a day old, cheaper by the dozen, or cheaper by, get three for one. And I remember one time being so ashamed, I was driving on the freeway and just started crumbling them out the window, thinking, well, it doesn’t count because I didn’t eat all of them, I didn’t eat the whole thing, and I threw the rest out the window. That’s a lonely existence. It was almost like I was talking to the food in the car. I was alone, feeling so alone. I tried spiritual aspects, I tried different organizations. I tried going to women’s empowerment retreats. I spent $600 to fly to Wisconsin. I was going to one or two women’s groups a week. I was going to the body workers. I was going to a financial counselor. None of it got me out of debt. None of it got me thin. And I still felt really alone. So finally, I gave up. And I thought, I can do this part myself. I’ll just go to some meetings, but not these food ones. And I felt hopeless is the bottom line.
192 pounds, and then I went again to my doctor and said I’m still having these panic attacks, I feel like I’m having a heart attack. What is this feeling shooting down my arm? And they said, ” Well, we’ll give you antidepressants if you can get enough sleep, get exercise, and do something you like for two weeks. So, news to say, I could not accomplish any of those things. I could call my boyfriend every night before I went to bed. I was 26 years old and slept with a teddy bear, that’s the kind of insecurity I had, and she wouldn’t give me the antidepressant medication. So what did I do? Fine. Waited a couple of months and went to another doctor. At that point, I waited even longer, and he said, “There’s a pharmacy downstairs.” And he just wrote me the prescription, and I walked around with that prescription in my purse, burning a hole in my purse, thinking, that’s not going to fix me. I just know it’s not. I know I have a deeper problem. I heard enough information from therapy, from all these 12-step programs, that I knew something deeper was going on and then finally i called the hotline and said it was the over eaters hotline actually and i said i need help and the meeting down here haven’t been in a while so i waited until it was the end of the sales quarter at work i had made some money and a commission check and thought now i can get better that was always the case kind of like waiting for monday for a diet now that i have all these ducks in row i’ll go get better but it was like a merry-go-round i just wanted to get off i felt like the world was a merry-go-round that kept spinning and spinning and spinning, and I just wanted to get off. I couldn’t figure out how to get off. I felt like if I got off, I’ll get fired. If I get off here, my family will be mad. If I get off there, my boyfriend and I won’t work out. If I get off here, I won’t be able to do whatever it is I want. know, instant gratification. If I get off completely, I won’t have my food. That’s the bottom line. I was willing to weigh and measure certain things, but even when I was in a food program, I could only abstain from sugar for six months. That was the longest I’d gone and I only lost about thirty to forty pounds. So I didn’t feel comfortable being, quote-unquote, comfortably overweight. I didn’t feel comfortable weighing twenty pounds too many. So I called this hotline, and thank God, somebody gave me the number of someone who’s working the program the way we do today. And I went to my first meeting with a big chip on my shoulder. Like a twelve-pound times twelve, a twelve-step chip on my shoulder from being in another program and I was, but the small voice inside me was saying, ” You know, I’m really scared. This might work. And, thankfully, that just barely overshadowed the voice saying, “run, get out, don’t do it, I just want to eat.” So I stayed, and I learned self-respect and respect. F.A. earned my respect. God broke me down and humbled me, and I learned how to get on my knees. And I remember the first day, the morning I got up, after weighing and measuring three meals a day, after saying i can’t go back to him and that i don’t have the money can’t afford it i can afford to go to the movement by uh… sixteen but i don’t know that point i need to go back to for a business trip but i couldn’t buy a thirty dollar skill it can’t take my life so i went about it and then i would measure my food that day and the next day when i woke up and got my knees and hadn’t eaten in between meals had not a snack i mean snack was just part of a vocabulary a snack to me equated healthy back healthy felt some hope. But I would get so many of those voices that would say, really I can do this, I can do this myself, you know, let’s try it. And I didn’t completely surrender. That’s what it was. I was afraid to surrender. I was afraid to surrender to a sponsor, I was afraid to surrender the food, I was afraid to surrender the caffeine, the cigarettes. And so I remained very angry. I was losing weight, but I was very angry. And thank you, guys, for losing weight, because once a month, when I get on that scale and see that number go down, I said, ” Okay, I’ll stay. I’m going to stay in this program then. I’ll stay one more month, or I’ll stay one more day. And I was very preoccupied with work, and finally, what happened was I disrespected my sponsor every day, and didn’t call her on time. She finally said, ” I think it would probably work for you to be with somebody else. I got somebody who didn’t come from California originally, and somebody who came from New England originally. She really had a strong program and set the foundation for my recovery. She taught me to be on time; I had to literally put a Post-it memo sticker on my clock.
It’s a get-up, get-on-your-knees call on time. And I wanted to hit snooze all day long. I didn’t have discipline. Could I look like I did? Worked all, look how hard I work. Am In’t disciplined? But the truth was, I was really lazy in the areas that needed attention. And that’s what I’m over and over in this program. When it comes to the basics of weighing, measuring my food, of having the groceries in the house, of getting to my meetings 10 minutes early to greet people, and of calling my sponsor on time, none of those things were part of my conception of what was important. So my priorities were really messed up. My priorities were looking good, feeling good, having a lot of money, and having Prince Charming come and save me. Escape, escape, escape. And I love the part of the big book that talks about how good reality is. I had to hear things like that to understand it. I wouldn’t believe you if you said, ” It’s really okay, reality is really good, balancing your checkbook feels great. I didn’t balance my checkbook; it took me time and a program to get started. 26 years old. I remember telling her, finally, my sponsor, that is, that I was in debt, and her saying, just weigh and measure your food, just weigh and measure your food. And it’s true: so many of my life’s problems have been ironed out just by weighing and measuring my food, because it got too uncomfortable to go to the shopping center every Friday when I felt lonely. Instead of going to the shopping center, I went home and felt lonely. Just try feeling lonely. So I’d be lonely. And I’d wake up the next day, and I wouldn’t be lonely anymore, and it was okay. I can make a phone call and not be lonely. I could pray and say, God, be with me. I am lonely. Take this away. And that’s dissipated over time. It’s so nice not to be in debt. It’s so nice to know what’s in my checking account, to check that balance every day, to be more disciplined, and to have the courage and the humility to say, “My sponsor, I really want to buy this.” Is this OK? Or I bought this. Is that OK? Or do I need to return it? And to ask about my food, how can I be more honest about it? How can I stop messing around with this food? Here’s how I’m preparing it. I just wanted more. I was so scared that I thought more food would fix some kind of work problem or relationship problem. Ultimately, what happened to me is I was in quiet time, hearing all sorts of things, and the awareness was that I’d kind of already known, but I was like, no, no, no, no, no, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear it. And one of them was, I think, that the relationship you’re in isn’t working out for you. And I’d known that for years. I was just too scared to do anything about it.
But for the first time, I believed that if I wasn’t in a relationship, I might not eat. I might be okay with leaving this relationship now that I’m in this program. This was the first program where I’d gone through life situations, difficult conversations, bridal showers, and weddings. I remember being asked to be in a wedding before I got into this program and just being horrified, like, what do I do? I can’t fit into that dress. And having to go to the tailor, order a size 18, and then be told, “Well, you have to order a size up” because really it’s going to be smaller. And then taking it in, which meant, well, really it was still a 16. And now, you know, how to go through being a wedding abstinent. It was such a different story to be able to do it. I had that face, this little tiny inkling of face, and it worked. So I remember calling after breaking up, reaching out to fellow FA members, and just saying, “I don’t know what to do.” I’m so scared. I haven’t been through life without a relationship in four years. What do I do?
So I learned how to make my higher power my higher power instead of relationships, food, cigarettes, and work. And it’s just been a process for me. And it still is a daily process. And a lot of things that helped me were slogans like “one day at a time” and “easy does it.” Easy does it in your mind. Ask God for help. Ask God to shut off your head. Relax. Ask God for help to relax on the inside. That’s a wonderful one for me. And I learned a lot of things in the program. I went to Hawaii on a business trip where I had succeeded in terms of sales numbers, and we all went as a group, and I wound up coming back and breaking my absence. And the truth was, I was not honest while I was in Hawaii. I was ladling on the dressing and eyeballing with I don’t know whose eyeballs, know. Not, God help me, way I measure my food with your eyes. And so I did have to go back to day one, and the way I went back to day one was I had been listening to tapes, F.A. tapes, like these, which were really wonderful, especially.
In the early days of F.A. in California, when there were not enough people to qualify every week, one person said, “Well, I started eating, then I stopped, then I went back to the rest of my meal and finished it later.” And I justified it, thinking, well, I’m at a bridal shower, and they’re going to open the presents, and I don’t want to be a pest, and finish the meal over here, so I’ll just wait till they’re done with the gifts, and it be that long. And there was a voice inside me that said, ” Call your sponsor, ask for help, call someone. And I was so into people-pleasing at the time, I thought, “I don’t want to bother her, and I don’t want to look different.” And so I learned the hard way, and let me have, let me tell you that when people say, ” I have done it for you, they mean it because what came up for me after that experience was not having to go back to the food, thank God, but where all those voices of, well, I can handle it. I’m going to leave this program. I can’t believe this. This is so strict and so, so impossible. So if you’re new to listening to this, it’s not impossible. It’s impossible to do it on my own. But with God, this program, the fellows, and the humility I needed from that experience, I can do this. Anything is possible with God. So, I really don’t recommend it. I really recommend being honest and being careful when going out. Going out to eat is not something I savor anymore. It’s something I ask God for help about, and I have had to, you know, on birthdays, I’ve experienced things like that. Say to my sponsor, “What do you think of this restaurant?” And learn the hard way. Whoa, okay, not that restaurant? Okay. Because it doesn’t give me peace. And what’s attractive is peace. What’s attractive is being relaxed. So I can’t stand up here and say in July I’ll have 10 years of abstinence. By God’s grace, I’ll have 9 years of abstinence, which to me is just phenomenal considering when I came in and heard people were a year abstinent. How’d they get a year? How’d they do that? One day at a time. It’s the same. It’s just a new level of recovery. I’m so thankful to be in an AWOL and to learn more about why I ate, some of the things, like guilt and self-centeredness, and learning that I’m not a bad person, I’m just a good person getting better, but with a lot of defects, that everybody’s got them. I can talk about them with people; I don’t have to take care of everybody else in the world now; I can call and say, “I need help.” And that’s been a really hard thing for me to do in this program, just learn those three words. I need help. Call up people and say, I need help. Get on your knees and say, “God, I need help.” Help me. And getting the help is such a relief. Trying to be in the world is not a relief, and that’s not where the serenity is. So I continue to get a lot of gifts from this program, and some of the biggest have come through during tough situations. My beloved grandmother passed away, and I got to be there, and you better believe I had my little cooler with my meals in the hospital, and I thought, gosh, am I going to go down and have lunch? I went and had lunch, then went upstairs to her room, and she was still around and got to be there; she passed on, and got to have my dinner that night, thinking, wow, I’m present for this? And you better believe there are a lot of tears involved with grief. And I was crying. And I was feeling feelings that are really uncomfortable for an addict or any person. And I didn’t have to go back to day one. I knew nothing was worth day one. After going back to day one, I went through the death of my uncle, who died of adult-onset diabetes from poor health and not taking care of himself and being his only niece, sort of the apple of his eye, and missing that, I didn’t eat. I went through thinking I’m gonna go work in the fashion industry, that’s gonna fix me, and I’m gonna meet Prince Charming, and I’m gonna pursue this great career, and then getting laid off and not eating. My ego bruised? Absolutely. Was my pride hurt? Definitely. But did I go back to eating? No. And that is because of this program and because I had guidance from a sponsor and that is because I waited to do things until I’d been through AWOLs and gotten a deeper connection with my higher power and part of that was living in New York City and going through September 11th and going home, walking home with complete mayhem and thinking you know if this is because they told us there nine planes it’s not you know whatever they thought it’s nine planes and we’re all terrified obviously and getting home and thinking why didn’t I just stop at one of these Starbucks? Why didn’t I just stop at one of these places? That is God. I can’t believe I’m thinking, “get home, have your abstinent meal”-that’s all I know. Everything else is going to work out. And going to bed those first two weeks with those planes over my head, terrified. And talking to my sponsor and hearing her say, ” Those planes are protecting you. God is protecting you. It’s gratitude that changes my attitude. I’m thinking about the positive that comes from this program because, as I said, I come from a place of negativity. I come from pessimism, or looking at what’s wrong, and things not being enough. This program is helping me see that’s a tragedy, that’s a terrible thing that happened, but I didn’t eat. And I can be a walking example of, think you have a reason to eat? Do you think you have a reason to eat? That’s an excuse. Somebody died? I’m sorry, don’t eat. You went through September 11th? I’m sorry, don’t eat. There are people here who will hug you. There are people here who will support you.
But they’re not going to tell you, yeah, that is a rough thing, maybe you should eat. They’re not going to say, ” That’s hard, I understand you broke your abstinence. They’re going to say, you have a disease that’s going to kill you, and you’re going to go through these feelings, and you’re going to be OK as long as you eat as much of your food, and you pick up that phone, and you do service. So call those people back from other countries and from across the country, and get the support you need. I more recently went through the sudden death of my cousin in a car accident.
My sponsor points out to me that there’s been a lot of death, and I think, I don’t want to say that about my family, I don’t want to say that about my life. But when I’m humble and really see things as they truly are, yeah, there have been some things that have gone on in recovery that have probably been worse than when I was younger or in the absence. My parents’ divorce was very traumatic for me at age 15, but other than that, you know, I led a pretty charmed life. I compared myself and tried to tell myself it wasn’t so great, and I wasn’t as rich as so-and-so and I didn’t have the good looks like so-and-so, and oh, I’m so tall, and oh, poor me. But the truth was, there were a lot of things that went down in my life in recovery that were harder to deal with. And I know that God was carrying me, and I know that God said, “Okay, we need you to be in recovery now because there are going to be some things where you’re really going to need help.” And flour, sugar, and something in a bottle or a package really can’t take away any of those experiences or any of this pain. It just passes. It just passes over time, whether it’s a relationship issue or a financial issue. And being laid off, guess what? I just kept taking my sponsor’s suggestion of plugging away, of pounding the pavement, of going online, of looking in the newspapers and getting a job, any job. And through that process, I realized I wanted to come back to California to be closer to my larger fellowship. It was really wonderful to help open meetings in New York City, co-lead an AWOL, and see the growth there. But I really missed being around my larger fellowship and around my family. So that’s recovery, the fact that I want to be around my family. And I let go of the idea of working in fashion and asked God and my sponsor for help with what to do next. And I wound up doing a job that required me to pray every day to be the best worker bee that I could be. And I do that now. All the time, I pray for humility because I hear that’s the ticket to long-term abstinence. And I think that’s what I recognized somehow. God had me realize when I came into FA that this is a long-term abstinence program. I could actually be abstinent for years and years, and it made sense to me because I thought, how come all these alcoholics can stand up and say, I haven’t been sober for 40, 50 years? Well, I cannot have flour and sugar and survive. So if I stay humble and I keep weighing and measuring my food and get on my knees morning and night and in between if I need it, and if I make my connections over the phone, if I read my 24-hour book and my Just For Today card every morning, and write a gratitude list every night. All those old feelings of depression go away. All those, I don’t have anxiety or panic attacks anymore, thank God. After some of those experiences in my life that I described, I felt those feelings of depression again. I thought, wait a minute, what is this? Why do I have this? I’m in recovery. The truth was, I was scared, tired, and angry. I lacked acceptance. So my spouse just said to read the acceptance page every night before bed.
And I still do that now, and I think about which person, place, or situation is going to be nice when I’m reading that page, and sometimes I’ll think, yeah, boss, yeah, family oh yeah money oh yeah um… single-hood or person x y z or situation in the world and i can just see that okay if i accept this and try not to play god then i will uh… be so much lighter and i’ll have peace and i’ll be less likely to reach for something a substance of some kind and food to fix me so it’s really nice to be in a thin body it’s nice not to have to take tagamet to be tested for ulcer. I remember all those scopes checking me for ulcers, thinking I was way too young to have an ulcer. I’m so thankful that some of the pre-diabetic problems I had, which were not found until I was thin, didn’t progress into diabetes later. It’s incredible to me that I’m this young and having these problems. I go to doctors, I talk to my sponsor, is it okay to take this? What do you think of that? So many of the issues have gone away just from being abstinent. So, physical, mental, and spiritual recovery and learning that it’s not about perfectionism. I do my tools. I do weigh my food. But being spiritually perfect, that’s a daily journey that’s starting to be fun. Learning to be more patient, tolerant, and kind comes from wanting to do it. I want the help today. I want the recovery today. I want to keep growing. I like being thin. I like the physical recovery, but I still want the spiritual connection to deepen. And it helps me in my relationships. It helps me to be a better worker. And it gives me a sense of purpose to do this kind of service, thank you.