When I was asked to speak today, I went to look for my pictures and couldn’t find them. I had to go back and look at them, and it was really hard. After I got my 90 days, I didn’t want to look at those pictures. I went to where we kept them, opened the box, and it was so painful that I grabbed the first few fat pictures and closed the box. That’s what I used for years.
My husband got into the program later, and one day he called me and said he was looking through the pictures and had some really great fat pictures of me. I don’t know why he was so excited, but I felt grateful, and I used those pictures for years. Recently, I don’t know what happened, but I couldn’t find them. So the other day, I had to go into the box and look again. I stalled for a few days because I didn’t want to face them. I finally sat down and went through a bunch, and it was horribly painful. I was 150 pounds heavier than I am today. I had two young kids, and everything in the pictures revolved around food. Even when we were hiking in the mountains of Northern California, everything was centered on food. I played a lot of tennis, and in my mind I thought I was thin, but looking at those pictures was painful.
I called my daughter, who was downstairs, and asked her to come up and pick three or four pictures. She looked at them and said, “Oh, Mom.” She didn’t even remember me looking like that.
I’ll go back and start my story. I started in 12-step food programs in 1981. I got abstinent, as they defined abstinence, and lost weight. I was about 20 pounds heavier than I am now, and I thought I had arrived. I stayed in the program for about five years. Then I met my husband, fell in love, and we got married. I thought he was a normal person, but on our first date, he told me he had just lost 100 pounds on a medically supervised liquid diet. I didn’t know the name “food addict” at the time, but I knew we probably shared the same problem.
While we were dating, I was still rigid with my food. I ate certain kinds of food at certain times. I remember us rushing to a restaurant once because I had to eat a certain thing by a certain time. When we sat down, he asked, “Is it always going to be this way?” And I thought, I’ve been in this program five years, I can loosen up. That’s when I began changing my food plan. I started gaining about 10 pounds a year.
Growing up, I was one of four kids, and I was the fat one. My brothers and sisters weren’t overweight. There was a lot of focus on my weight. My father and grandmother were very bothered by it. I was always being worked on—offered prizes, toys, trips—if I could just get my weight down. As soon as I met a goal, I’d start eating again. I wasn’t trying to be bad. Even when I was three, four, or five, before I even had the ability to think through choices, I just wanted the food. My siblings wanted it too, but I was the only one who showed it on my body. My mom would hide treats in the freezer, but we all knew. As soon as she left the house, we’d raid it, but I was the only one who got fat.
I was teased a lot. I never felt like I belonged. I thought if I could be thin, everything would be okay. I became the jokester, the class clown. I floated among different groups—the smart kids, the troublemakers, the cheerleader crowd—but never fully belonged to any of them. A teacher once told me my grades were okay “for me” because I wasn’t as smart as my siblings. I remember thinking, forget her. I studied really hard and got straight A’s the next semester. Then I thought, okay, I proved it, and I went back to getting C’s. I could do it, I just didn’t have the focus.
I went to a private girls’ school an hour away. The summer before high school, I planned to lose weight so they wouldn’t know I had been fat, but I didn’t lose the weight. Again, I tried before college. I lost a little, joined a sorority, and still felt awful. The night of the ceremony, I walked across the street to see a childhood friend in another sorority. She took one look at me and knew I was falling apart. We skipped the parties and went out to eat and drink, just like in high school.
I always thought my life would start once I was thin. I graduated, got my first job, and none of them worked out. I always felt I didn’t belong, so I’d quit and move on. That’s how I ended up moving from Southern to Northern California. I got a job, didn’t like it, quit, and realized I still hadn’t unpacked boxes from two years earlier. I thought, if I leave again, I’ll have to move east, where it’s cold, and I didn’t want that.
Someone told me I was really messed up and handed me a therapist’s card. I couldn’t imagine my family knowing I was in therapy—they thought that meant you were crazy. But one day I quit my job, went home, and didn’t know what to do with myself. The card was on my coffee table. I called and started seeing that therapist. For two years, I tried to get off food, drugs, and alcohol. She eventually said she couldn’t work with me until I stopped using, and we made a wager: I had to quit everything for six months, or I would agree to go to a 12-step program. I said, “You’re on.”
I left that appointment and went straight to a birthday dinner in my honor. I started eating and drinking immediately and completely forgot the promise I’d made three freeway exits earlier. By sunrise, it suddenly flashed back into my mind. Tears poured down my face. I left the party, went home, and cried for days. A business acquaintance called and said she knew of a meeting in an hour and would meet me there. That was 1981, my beginning in 12-step recovery.
I went to Overeaters Anonymous and had five years of abstinence. That’s when I met my husband. But after we married, I started eating again—five or ten pounds a year. I had my first baby and gained 70 or 80 pounds. I went back to meetings but couldn’t get abstinent. Another food program formed, and I tried that. I would lose weight, get pregnant again, gain it all back, and then could never get abstinent again. I sat in meetings for years, sponsored by almost everyone, and always eventually let go. One night, I said, “God, I’m done,” left at the break, bought groceries, and ate.
I just kept getting fatter. I wore size 24, and they were getting tight. People from the rooms would talk to me, and I would tell them I didn’t want to hear it. I thought, I have a good husband, great kids, and a little food problem. I’ll just be fat forever. I was in denial. I’d catch glimpses of myself in reflections and nearly die inside. I’d push those images out of my mind and only consider myself from the neck up.
Then I got a blood clot in my leg. I thought it was a pulled muscle. A massage therapist took one look at it, called my doctor, and he told me to go to the hospital immediately. They admitted me and tried to thin my blood. The doctor came in that night, looked at my chart, and said, “We can’t get your blood thin. I don’t know if you’re going to live through the night.” He said it in front of my kids.
My daughter fell apart. She jumped into the bed sobbing uncontrollably, soaking both of us with tears and sweat, begging me not to die. I kept saying, “I’ll try not to die tonight,” even though I knew I was powerless. Finally, I said, “I promise I won’t die tonight,” just to calm her, even though I had no control.
They eventually got my blood thin, and I went home four or five days later on many medications. My bedroom was upstairs, and the kitchen was downstairs. Even with all that fear and knowledge, when the family left the house, I would get out of bed, go downstairs, get food, and eat. I loved my kids dearly and still couldn’t stop. I thought, how selfish can you be that you can’t stay alive for your children?
I sent for the medically supervised liquid diet brochure that my husband had done, and I sent for the gastric bypass brochure. I hid them because I didn’t want anyone to know. Months went by. Finally, one Monday after the kids went to school and my husband left for work, I sat down and read them completely. Both cost thousands of dollars. One removed body parts. And in both cases, I would eventually have to go back to food, and I knew how that would end.
I called a woman who had come into a 12-step food program with me back in the ’80s. I told her what I was doing. She asked if I was ready. I said I didn’t have any hope left. She said there was a new program now, with a Saturday morning meeting, very early. She said they were serious, not chatty, and I’d better be on time. She told me to go, and if I liked it, get a sponsor at the break. I said okay. She asked if I wanted to know the name. I didn’t care.
I went to that first FA meeting on November 1, 2003. It was dark out, the day after Halloween, and I thought life couldn’t get worse. I walked in with my head down, sat in the middle, and didn’t want anyone to talk to me. I have no idea what they said. At the break, a woman with purple hair raised her hand to sponsor. And I thought, why not? You’re here, just go get the purple-haired lady and have her be your sponsor. So I did, and she was so nice. I walked up, and she said, “We’ll get you started.” She took a piece of paper and said, “This is what you’ll eat,” and she wrote it down for me. She told me I could go to the store and buy it that day. She was so nice. I looked at her, thinking, you’re crazy—just hand me that piece of paper and I’m out of here. But she was so nice. She told me to write my food down, call her, and tell her what I was going to eat in the morning. I thought she was completely whacked, but I had no alternative.
I sat through the rest of the meeting, grabbed the piece of paper, went to the store, and bought some food. That night I wrote something down, and I called her the next morning. I had no hope or faith that it would work, but that’s what I ate that day. The next day, I called her and did the same thing. I went to meetings. I fought everything—the three committed meetings a week. Why do we have to do that? I’m in other 12-step programs, and I go to a lot of meetings, but not necessarily three.
She was new to sponsoring. She’d say, “I don’t know. I’ll have to check with my sponsor and get back to you.” I think I almost liked pushing her around. I questioned everything. She’d scurry off to ask her sponsor, and I’d get a few more days doing what I wanted before she came back with a message about why I couldn’t do that. Nothing made sense to me, but I kept staying abstinent. I didn’t understand the rules and regulations, but I stayed abstinent.
At the end of the first month, I had lost 18 pounds, and that got my attention. I hadn’t lost 18 pounds in years. Even with Atkins and Weight Watchers, I could only get a few pounds off. The 18 pounds got my attention, so I kept going, but I wasn’t doing the tools. She kept encouraging me to do them. I’d think, why? I don’t know. The next month, I lost 15 pounds. I had 33 pounds off in 60 days, and that really got my attention. At the end of 90 days, I had lost another 15 pounds, so I had 48 pounds off in 90 days. I thought, This is impressive.
The other thing was that no one noticed. I remember telling my husband, “I’ve lost almost 50 pounds, and no one noticed.” He said, “Oh, honey, when you’re as big as we are, you’ve got to lose 70 or 80 before anyone notices.” I remember that really hitting me. I was in denial that I was that big. I kept going.
As I kept going to meetings, I started to hear things. I’d hear people who did all the tools. They sat in the front row, did their quiet time, read the left-hand and right-hand pages of the Big Book, and got on their knees in the morning. I thought, I’m never going to be one of those. I thought there was a food plan, and then separately, someone like a Marine drill sergeant invented all the tools. I didn’t see any correlation. I thought I had a food problem. I didn’t know I had a mental and spiritual problem and an inability to get along with other human beings.
That’s the most important thing I’ve gotten out of this program. As I started telling my sponsors—I changed sponsors a couple of times—when I didn’t want to do the tools, they would tell me why it was important and encourage me. I started using the tools. Today, I do every tool every day to the best of my ability. I know it’s only by doing the tools that I can right the ship. I need them to keep the sails up and keep going. I have to say what’s going on with me, because I am filled with fears, doubts, and insecurities I never knew I had. I thought I just ate a lot. I didn’t know I ate over every feeling because I couldn’t walk through situations without eating. Those feelings are still there, and I have to talk about them.
I have to talk about every insecurity and all my anxiety. I have to talk about every fight I have with my husband in detail so I can look at myself and learn what I do in relationships. The little boy in those pictures graduated from college last week. I’m blessed. I’ve loved my kids since they were born, loved them in their teenage years. He’s moving to Cincinnati to follow his love. When he told me, I cried. I was so thankful he’d gone to college in California, because I thought maybe he’d stay here. I had that dialed in, I thought. Then he fell in love with someone who lives in Cincinnati. I cried when he told me. He said, “Mom, are you mad?” I said, “No, I’m just processing. You’re doing exactly what you need to do. Are you in love?” He said, “I think so.” I told him what being in love was like for me. He said, “Yeah, that’s kind of what I’ve got.” I said, “So you want to play it out?” He said, “I just want to see where it’s going to go.” I said okay, hung up, cried some more, and then prayed.
I thought, God is big enough to keep my family close, no matter where we live. That is not the way I used to think. Before, I would have manipulated or cried for weeks. Now I know he’s doing what he needs to do. We talk about it. He has some job prospects in Cincinnati, and I’m helping him with the plan. I encourage him. That’s not how I would have reacted a long time ago.
I still have the same husband I married back in 1988. I think I would have blown up that relationship if I hadn’t been in this 12-step program. I need to learn all the time how to deal with people, because even falling in love like I did—madly in love—over time, people bug me. I start to see defects instead of assets. But when I take time to remember what I fell in love with, he still has every one of those assets. When I focus on the assets, that’s what expands. When I focus on the problems, they grow and become overwhelming.
I’m grateful for the life I have today, and I know it’s not a food problem. The only way to stay away from the food is to do every tool every day, and to talk about all the little ghosts and goblins inside me with my sponsor so she can guide me and help me walk through life without fear and anxiety.