Episodes

This transcript is produced by Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous, also known as FA. FA is a program based on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is free and open to anyone who wants to stop eating addictively. The following is one FA member’s story of recovery. The opinions expressed here are those of the individual member and do not represent FA as a whole. If you are new to or uncertain about FA, we encourage you to listen to several stories to learn more about what the program offers. Hello. Welcome to the qualification meeting. I’m a food addict from Florida, and I will be the leader for this hour. I’m so grateful to be here. I had to call my sponsor before this started because I said I forgot my share. I’ve heard so many shares, I forgot my own. She said no. She’s heard me hundreds of times. I didn’t forget my share. Let’s see. I’ll start from the beginning. I grew up in San Francisco. I’m sixty-nine years old. When I grew up in San Francisco, we didn’t have TV. My mom didn’t drive a car. She never learned to drive a car. My parents were older. I had a brother. We lived in a walk-up flat, and my dad was a blue-collar worker. We had a very simple life. I remember being afraid most of the time. Afraid of my dad, afraid of life, afraid to go to kindergarten. I remember that really distinctly. But I

This transcript is produced by Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous, also known as FA. FA is a program based on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is free and open to anyone who wants to stop eating addictively. The following is one FA member’s story of recovery. The opinions expressed here are those of the individual member and do not represent FA as a whole. If you are new to or uncertain about FA, we encourage you to listen to several stories to learn more about what the program offers.  I’m nervous, so I guess that’s good. In the Big Book, it says I’m supposed to talk a little bit about what I used to be like, what happened, and what I’m like today. I hear a lot of times in meetings, “what it used to be like, what happened, and what it’s like today,” and it took me a long time to realize I was the “it.” I thought food was the problem, but then I realized the problem is when it gets into my body. Something happens to me differently. I can’t eat flour and sugar the way other people can. I don’t know what it is or why I have it. I just know I’ve got it. That’s where I finally had to get to, accepting the fact that I’ve got it. It doesn’t matter if the world understands it or not. The fact is that I have it. When I came into this program, I

Hello, welcome to the qualification meeting. I am a food addict from California, and I am your leader for this hour. After a moment of silence, will you please join me in the Serenity Prayer? God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. So, I’m from California and really happy to be here. I am definitely a food addict. I definitely qualify as a food addict, and I will tell you a little bit about myself, what it was like, and what it’s like now.  I come from Massachusetts originally. I now live, I’ve been in California for about 35 years, and I’m originally from a small New England town, and food was my primary drug. I ran from myself by eating food. I was always looking for something out there, further beyond me, and my head was always spinning. I was a very unhappy child. I didn’t think I fit in anywhere I went. I didn’t fit in with my family. I thought I was adopted. I remember my mom showing me my birth certificate, and I still didn’t believe it. And I looked just like my mom, but I thought she just picked a good kid who looked like her. But I was just so different from my family. And sitting with all that unease and that sensitivity and that just not feeling a part of, I had to do

I am a food addict from California.  I am so grateful to be alive in this body today. I had the honor of eating breakfast with someone yesterday who reminded me how to remember what it was like and why I’m here. So I spent some time this morning in quiet time thinking about what brought me here to FA, and I’m glad that I did, because after being here for about 14 and a half years, you just get used to being in a 120-pound body. You get used to having a job, being able to wake up in the morning, taking a shower, brushing your teeth, flossing your teeth, eating on time, getting along with people, loving your husband, having your kids come to you. That was not my story 14 and a half years ago when I came to FA. I want to share a little bit of what it was like for me growing up with a very high-strung, very hyperactive, very nervous disposition. I had a lot of fears. I remember feeling as though I didn’t fit in as early as five years old, looking over my shoulder, wondering who was watching me, feeling as though everybody was watching me. I kind of moved through my house thinking and acting as though there were cameras in the walls watching every move I made, waiting for me to make a mistake. My parents loved us very much, but they had their issues. My father had OCD,

Hello. Welcome to this qualification meeting. I am a food addict from Tennessee, and I am your leader for this hour. After a moment of silence, will you please join me in the Serenity Prayer? God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Well, I am a food addict, and as far as I know, I was born a food addict. I’m not somebody who got heavy after I quit smoking, or got heavy after I got married, or after I had babies. I’ve had an issue with food for as long as I can remember. My parents will detail the things I did with food when I was two years old. I waited until the family went to sleep at night, and I snuck into the refrigerator to eat. And when I got through eating, I played. That means I smeared it all over everything, the floor, the cabinets. That was the beginning of my journey with food addiction. I did not come into this program realizing that I was a food addict, but the truth is, I believe I was born a food addict. I don’t remember a time when food wasn’t an issue in my life. When I say issue, we had quite an episode at the dinner table every night. I had a real aversion to certain smells, textures, and colors in food. But if it was

This meeting is being sponsored by the FA New England 12-Step Committee for the distinct purpose of creating tapes for the 12-Step Committee Tape Library. Those who wish, please join me in a moment of silence and the Serenity Prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. I am a very grateful food addict in recovery today. I am grateful to have this opportunity to share what I was like when I first found this program, what happened when I came into it, and where I am today. And there is just a myriad of miracles that have happened in between. But to give you a little bit of background about my life and where I come from, I’ll start where I grew up in a small town in Vermont. I have an older brother, five years older than myself, and then I came along. My dad, as far back as I can remember, was an active alcoholic, but he was a supporting alcoholic. He brought a paycheck home on a regular basis, and we had heat in the house and food in the refrigerator, and our needs were met. There was always a lot of tension in the household, especially when we knew it was time for my dad to come home. We never knew whether he was going to come home in a pleasant mood or not. And it all

I’m so grateful to be here. I’m grateful to know that I’m a food addict and that there’s a solution for me. I didn’t know that when I came into these rooms, which was in May of 2001. I didn’t know what a food addict was. I’d never heard of it. All I knew at that time was that I used to call myself an alcoholic with food. Because I knew that once I took that first bite, I couldn’t stop. I like to say that I was a fat kid, I was a fat teenager, and I was a fat adult. And I thought that was going to be my future, that I was just going to be fat for the rest of my life. I was 37 years old when I came into FA. And in that time, I’ve been maintaining a 133-pound weight loss. And that to me is amazing. When I first came into these rooms, I had no hope. I was suicidal. I don’t know if I would have actually done anything about it. I was too afraid to actually do anything about it. But I was certainly depressed and considered suicide and thought about ending my life. At 37 years old, I thought my life was over and why bother? If anything had happened, I would have been just fine. And I can say that today that is not true for me. I have hope today. I have a life today like I didn’t

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,

What I can talk about with my disease is that it started at a young age. I remember being a very young girl and I was overweight as a young girl and I battled weight my whole life with this disease of food addiction. I remember that when I was young, food was just so, so important to me in my life. I remember eating large quantities of food.   And I remember feeling different about myself, as though I didn’t quite belong, and lacking confidence. I lacked the ability to get along in the world. And those things I remember going on inside of me from a young age in fear. You know, it was always wrapped up with fear. I was afraid of people. I was afraid to try new things. I was just afraid, afraid to make friends, afraid people weren’t going to like me.   And I felt like I had these strikes against me. My first one was that I was different. My size was different. I was overweight. I was a chubby little girl. I got made fun of when I went to school. I had to have clothing made for me because it was too expensive to go into Lane and Bryant’s, which was the only store in Boston that sold the Chubbette clothes. And I had an aunt who could make clothes. They weren’t clothes that really were for little kids. I stuck out like a sore thumb because of my size,

I’m from Geneva, New York, and I’m a grateful recovering food addict. Glad to be here today. I talked my family into getting together with some relatives in Boston, partly so I could participate in this qualathon. I’ve always wanted to be at one. I don’t know why I wanted to make a tape because now I’m nervous, but I think it’s a good service. I wanted to make a tape because all the years I’ve been in the program, I’ve been so grateful for the tapes that everybody else made, and I just wanted to add my service to that, to the tape library, because it’s very crucial for those of us who are in outlying areas. We really need these tapes because we don’t have enough speakers in our own areas.   I’ll start with statistics. I’m 51 years old. I grew up in Minnesota when I was young, and now I’ve been living in New York State for about 10 years, which is great because now I live within a day’s drive of Boston, and I love to come back here whenever I can to connect with all my dear friends from the beginning days when I started in the program.I was at my top weight in my early 20s. The pictures I’m passing around are from my early 20s. It’s a little hard to recognize me because I’m older now. I’m grateful that it’s been a long time since I’ve been overweight. My top weight was

This meeting is being sponsored by the FA General Service Office Literature Committee for the distinct purpose of creating tapes for the tape library. Those who wish to, please join me in the Serenity Prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. I am so grateful to be here today and to be abstinent and to be in the company of like-minded people who are also finding a solution in Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous.  We’re at the 2004 business conference, and I will start with my numbers. I am 45 years old. I’ve been abstinent in this program, by the grace of God, for 10 years. My highest weight was 212 pounds, and I weigh about 125 today. A lot has changed in the last 10 years over the course of my recovery. And I want to tell you a little bit about what it was like, what brought me into the doors of FA and what it is like now. The way I describe my disease of food addiction is as a disease of fear, doubt, and insecurity. I lived with fear from a very early age, long before I remember starting to gain any weight. When I was a little kid, I remember being afraid of what was under the bed, what was in the closet. I was painfully shy. You know, it’s funny when I get up and

Hi everybody. This meeting is being sponsored by the FA New England 12-Step Committee for the distinct purpose of creating tapes for the 12-Step Committee Tape Library. Those who wish, please join me in the serenity prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I have to go back to my childhood because I have a long story to tell. I’m 70 years old. So, at 70 years old, I have to go back a long, long way. And I think I first remember at the age of approximately seven or eight years old. I don’t remember anything before that. And I came from a dysfunctional family, and I didn’t realize that until I came into Program. My mother was a…today, I guess I’d call her a food addict, but in those days, she just liked to eat. And my father would like his little “cup of tea” before dinner, but I couldn’t call him; they didn’t call him an alcoholic in those days, either. My family consisted of my mother, father, and I had an older brother, plus myself. I was always told what to do as a child. I could not do anything for myself. I was just a little guy that was around and not even seen most of the time. I was a scrawny little kid, and I was picked on by bullies. I think my