I am food addict from California. I came to FA about seven and a half years ago. I first heard about it when I was living in Alaska, where I was raised. I had no idea at the time that I was a food addict, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. A few days later, I joined in. Today, I’m going to share why I think I’m an addict, why I qualify to call myself a food addict, what happened, and how life has changed.
My parents moved to Alaska from upstate New York when I was two. I was the youngest of three, and we lived in Anchorage. I started being aware of food thoughts early in life. My dad had a wholesale business, and sometimes he’d come home with big quantities of items we didn’t normally have. At that time in Alaska, there wasn’t a lot of fresh produce, so if he brought any home, it was a big deal. I loved that. I loved big quantities of things. The idea that I could have as much as I wanted felt magical, and I tried to recreate that feeling many times.
My food addiction showed up in different ways. Sometimes it was about big quantities, sometimes about something special and small. In third grade, I became friends with a girl whose family made sugar products. She would bring samples to school. We convinced the teacher to let us put our desks together, and I was in heaven. We’d plan when we’d eat each sample. At each other’s houses, we’d make blender drinks, and pouring them evenly mattered so much to me. I never wanted to feel shorted. Food felt special, and having friends to do food things with felt even more special. I can pick almost any grade of elementary school and remember a food associated with my friend at the time.
There was also a lot going on in my internal life as a kid. Normal things and some unusual things I never talked about. I look back and see now how scared I was. In third grade, we moved into a house that wasn’t fully built yet, and I was terrified of it. I would check every possible hiding place in the bathroom—behind the shower curtain, in cupboards, even lifting the back of the toilet lid, even though I knew no one could be in there. I never talked about it. After those moments, I wanted to calm down or feel comforted, and food was always available. Then, once I could bake and cook, I could manufacture comfort for myself.
As I got to high school, college, and adulthood, I used food in whatever ways I could. Food was something to look forward to, something to comfort myself with, something to bond over, and a gift I loved giving. My sister once said my love language was food, and she was right. I remember when someone stole my credit card, and a store saved it for me. The only way I could imagine thanking them was by bringing food. I couldn’t even think of anything else.
I became known at work for coming up with fun food breaks. But underneath, I wasn’t maturing in ways people normally do. For example, I would avoid basic responsibilities like laundry. In high school, I’d throw clothes in my closet and then dig through dirty laundry on game days, trying to patch nylons with nail polish at the last minute. Feeling unprepared and faking it became normal. I never talked about what was going on at home, who I liked, or what I feared. I kept everything inside. So I would eat.
I’d also fantasize a lot—about boys, about commercials I saw—and kept that inside too. When I finally started dating, I had no guidelines and no sense of healthy boundaries. I would compromise myself, feel uncomfortable, but not ask for help. Not asking for help was a big part of my addiction—fear, doubt, insecurity.
I wasn’t maturing, and I didn’t know what to do with my discomfort except eat. My top weight was during my freshman year of college, probably in the 150s. I loved going with girls from my dorm on what we called “runs” to the row of fast-food restaurants. We’d go in pajamas, bonding over food. There was a kid who was a good runner, and we’d challenge him to run and get us something and return in six minutes. It was fun to bond over food.
I came to college with a whole fantasy identity—backpack, tent, guitar, hiking boots—an independent Alaska girl. But by the end of freshman year, I felt frumpy and uncomfortable, and I blamed others for it. I didn’t realize how many times I had compromised myself. I began to sense that something about the way I ate wasn’t working.
My sophomore year, I read the book Sugar Blues and stopped eating sugar. The weight came off quickly. And that pattern continued my entire life: every time I needed to lose weight, I stopped eating sugar. And because most sugary things also had flour, that went too. I’d lose weight fast, stay off it for a bit, then think I didn’t need the rule anymore, and the weight would return. Up and down, five to twenty pounds at a time.
I later joined a 12-step program for other issues. That’s when the denial around food began breaking down. I started developing a relationship with a Higher Power, and I couldn’t lie to myself as much. A woman shared about chewing gum the way she drank alcohol—hiding it, hoarding it, panicking if she ran low. I realized I felt the same about an institutional-sized bag of something I kept in my desk drawer. If it got down to a third, I’d panic. I always needed a backup at home. Hearing her talk helped me recognize how strange my behavior was.
I also started noticing the connection between uncomfortable feelings and heading straight for the drawer. One time, I handled a work call badly and immediately reached for food. I wrote long lists of questions to ask myself about hunger. I tried to analyze whether I was truly hungry. I wanted logical, healthy solutions. I shopped at natural food stores, cooked healthy meals, and convinced myself food wasn’t a problem because it was “healthy.” But I was still using it like a drug. I could make a big pot of something low-calorie, but eat a huge amount of it.
I was married then, and I thought my husband was the one with the problem. I didn’t see how my food addiction affected the marriage. A typical Saturday: I’d wake up with energy and intentions to organize my life, but I didn’t know where to start, didn’t have the discipline, felt overwhelmed, and would bake instead. Then I’d eat what I baked, get tired, take a nap, and the day would slip away. It was a way of avoiding responsibility.
One Saturday, while I was baking, he took the bowl I was using, filled it with water, and put it in the sink. I couldn’t believe he would do that. It felt like a betrayal, as shocking to me as an affair would have been. That was the day I left him. I thought it was his fault. Years into FA, I realized I was the alcoholic—but with food. He was doing what spouses of alcoholics are described as doing: pouring the booze down the sink. I didn’t see my part in the deterioration of that marriage.
I tried to control my eating in other ways. I did the Weigh Down Workshop three times. The idea of eating only when hungry and stopping when full seemed logical. The problem was the wiggle room. I always pushed it. I’d know exactly when I was comfortably satisfied, but then the arguing would start in my head: maybe one more bite. Most of the time, that bite pushed me over the line. Others would say I was a perfectionist, and it didn’t matter, but I knew I was using food to withdraw from life.
One day, I called a friend I hadn’t talked to in a long time. She said she was doing a new 12-step program called FA. She described calling a sponsor every day, talking to people in Boston and London, getting her kids up early, getting things done, getting the house clean. That part attracted me. The weighing and measuring sounded strange and not at all natural or healthy to me at the time. But after we hung up, I noticed a spring in my step. I hadn’t even realized how long it had been since I’d felt hope. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I remember being in my kitchen that Sunday afternoon and thinking, wow, there’s a spring in my step. I hadn’t even noticed the lack of it before. It felt like hope. I hadn’t realized I was without hope until I felt it.
I called her back with more questions. She had only been in the program 30 days and felt inadequate answering my questions, but she kept giving me information. Another mutual friend sent me a packet—20 Questions, brochures, Connection magazines, a sheet of people who could help find a long-distance sponsor, a gratitude newsletter. During that time, I kept thinking about it and asking questions. I kept feeling that hope.
At first, I didn’t think this could really be for me, but I had questions. I called her back the next day and asked more. She had only been doing it for about 30 days, and I could tell she felt inadequate because she kept suggesting I talk to a mutual friend who knew more. That friend had originally been from Boston, moved to Alaska, then returned to Boston, discovered FA, and when she went back to Alaska, she told this woman, who then told me. Despite all this, she had many answers to my questions. She said she also thought weighing and measuring food was weird at first, but now it made sense.
It was so helpful to share my questions and doubts and hear her validate them while giving me more information. She even sent me a packet with the 20 Questions, brochures, connection magazines, a list of people willing to sponsor long distance, and copies of the “Gratitude in Action” newsletter.
During this time, I was praying, asking God if this was from Him and to show me. Meanwhile, I had some bugs in my house. I had bought different types of flour that were supposed to be healthier, and I had so much stored in my living room that three kinds of bugs appeared, even larva along the ceiling creases. I had to get rid of all my flour products. These events, along with memories and truths about food, helped me realize this program really was for me.
I called people from the sponsor list and started before officially having one. I decided to eat three meals a day with no flour or sugar. The first day, I woke up at two in the morning to eat my first meal, then at seven for my second, and at eleven for my third. I realized it wasn’t just about the food plan—it was also breaking the snacking habit I had maintained to manage my addiction.
A few days later, I got a sponsor. She told me to attend three AA meetings, get on my knees each morning to ask God for an abstinent day, read the 24 Hour a Day book, take quiet time in the morning, thank God at the end of the day, read the two pages of the Big Book, and call other FA members. At first, it seemed like a lot, but I devised a system to remember and practice it right away. I knew that surrendering my food to a total stranger meant opening my life fully, including areas I had kept private, mostly my thought life, doubts, and fears.
Following these steps, I went to AA meetings and realized I could relate, even though they were about alcohol. One man talked about wanting to drink someone else’s unfinished drink—I related more to leaving half a sweet on a plate. Their kindness helped chip away at the denial I had built, convincing myself I was above the struggles others faced. I began to notice patterns in my hunger, like being hungry around four o’clock, and learned to apply the tools my sponsor suggested, like making a call to a fellow member.
I realized that taking quiet time helped me calm down after stressful situations or mistakes, and learning to slow down was essential. I had been trying to pack as much food into my day as possible, and I did the same with activities, overloading myself. My sponsor helped me manage my time realistically, so I wasn’t so tired or stressed.
Traveling to meetings in California and attending conventions exposed me to fellowship, showing me the importance of relationships and letting people see me. Over time, I recognized I had been isolating myself emotionally, not just geographically. Allowing others to point out things about me that I hadn’t seen has been a blessing and central to my recovery.
In summary, the key for me has been humility. I don’t need to maintain an identity as a tough or independent person anymore. I get to be one among many, essentially a child of God. Measuring food is a way for me to practice humility, ensuring I don’t use food to cope with normal life challenges. My journey has been about peeling away layers to grow and be healthy, one day at a time.