Episodes

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

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. All right, well, I want to begin my story by saying that I am a food addict, and I think that is probably the most important thing I can say about myself. It has defined my life, and when I think about where I was as a young child, I know I was drawn to food very early on. I’m not sure if I was born with a propensity for that, but I can remember early on in our family at holidays and Christmas getting up early and running downstairs at five or six in the morning and going for the sugar, the sugar stuff that was ready for me. It was kind of like, okay, it’s legally okay to start eating sugar at six in the morning or five-thirty in the morning. I was more excited by that than by what the holiday was about or even by other gifts. It was always what party was going to happen and what food was going to be served at that party. And could I get involved in making it? And if I could get involved in licking the bowl or licking the spatula. It wasn’t that I wanted to do the work in the kitchen. I just wanted what was in the kitchen. I think food served as comfort to me. I think

Hello. Welcome to this qualification meeting. I’m a food addict from Florida, and I’m your leader for this hour. After a moment of silence, would you 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. Well, I’ll just start with my numbers. I was born in 1940. People were still suffering from the Depression, and food was important. I was fat, always, always. My highest recorded weight was 256 pounds, and my last weigh‑in was 110. I hover between 108 and 110, somewhere around that area. I’m a great‑grandmother, proudly, and I’m a widow. I have two diseases going on in my life today. One is food addiction; one is multiple myeloma, which is blood cancer, and I treat them both the same way: I eat right, I exercise, I have support people that I go to, and I’m a very, very happy individual. I could really sit down right now. I was heavy all my life. As I said, we had no money when I came from Virginia, and my father had two grocery stores. I had to buy my clothes in Woolworth’s because that’s what we could afford. Food was plentiful, and my grandmother would always say, “Eat everything on your plate, because children in Europe are starving.” I could never figure out how, if I ate everything on my plate, that would help them.

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. Oh gosh, it’s so great to be standing up here. I really feel honored to be sharing, and I feel so grateful to be a food addict in recovery today with a solution. And to come to a conference like this with so many people who are so hungry for the solution of food addiction is just beyond me. To be at the FA conference and to see all these people that want what I want, which is to never, ever have to go back to living the life of just wanting to get the food. All I’m going to do today is share a little bit about what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now, and hope that I can reach somebody, and remember for myself where I come from, and hope to God one day at a time that I never go back there. So, to give you a little bit about my history, I don’t know that I was necessarily “born” a food addict. All I know is I was pretty normal weight-wise when I was growing up. I was very active in sports, was active in a lot of different things, and I was always very picky about what I was eating. I was definitely, definitely picky. I was always a very plain eater. And around

Welcome to this qualification meeting. I am a food addict from Idaho, and I am your leader for this hour. I’ll start off with my numbers. My top weight was about 165, which is relatively lightweight for FA, but still food addiction. My current weight is about 120. I’m five foot four, and I feel like my numbers don’t really tell my story, and my pictures don’t tell much of my story either. For me, the story is really in my eyes more than my body weight. It was like the light was gone. I used to joke that the eyes are the windows to the soul, and I liked to keep the drapes firmly drawn. I did not want anyone to know anything about me because I hated myself so much that I believed if you knew me at all, you would be just as disgusted and appalled as I was, and want nothing to do with me. A lot of this disease, for me, was about self-hatred and deep unhappiness. I didn’t like being fat either. I wasn’t massive, but at 165 I was pretty solid. What really tortured me was the mental side of this disease. I wasn’t a food addict from the start, but it certainly developed into food addiction. I didn’t even know what food addiction was for many years. When I was a kid, food wasn’t that big of a deal. I always loved food, but it wasn’t everything to me the way it

Welcome to this qualification meeting. I’m a food addict from California, and I’m your leader for this session. It’s good to be here today. Earlier this morning, I was thinking not about what I wanted to say, but about some of the things that have happened in my life that brought me here. I’ve had my fair share of calamities, and I also had a wonderful childhood. I think about how many of the things I once thought were bad turned out to bring good into my life, and this is one of them. Not speaking today being bad but simply being here is a very good thing. I was raised in Southern California in a beach community. I lived with my mother and father and was the oldest of three children. I felt loved and adored. I was told I was beautiful. I was apparently a very active child. I didn’t sit still, and I don’t know if I had some form of ADHD, but I was always running around, skinny and content. Then I reached a stage where a few things happened. Around the age of 11, I started changing from a bean-pole body to a curvier, more voluptuous body, which was very uncomfortable for me. Everything started to stick out in different ways, including my nose, which I was always self-conscious about. I remember feeling disconnected from my body, like this isn’t who I am, but it’s me, and I didn’t understand what was happening. At the

This meeting is being sponsored by the FA general service organization for the distinct purpose of creating recordings for the FA CD library. I’m really excited to be here. This is the fourth FA conference, and I’ve been lucky enough to attend all four. This is definitely a little overwhelming, and I’m really excited to be doing this service. I’ve been on my knees a few times in the last half hour and done a few other things I typically do when I’m nervous, including noticing that I’m very cold. My stomach is going a little crazy, but that’s just what happens to me. I have fear, doubt, and insecurity, and it all goes with being a food addict. I’ll start with the basics. My numbers. I’m 32 years old. I came into the program four and a half years ago, and it will be five years in December. I came into the program at 214 pounds. I was actually 220 the week before, but I’m very clear that when I stepped on the scale after coming into the program, it said 214. I had tried another one of my little diets before actually coming into the rooms. My current weight is about 172. My highest weight of all time was 260 pounds. My lowest weight after coming into the program was around 166, and I started looking a little too thin, so I gradually came back up. For the last four solid years, I’ve stayed within about two or