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 the age of 14 is when I started thinking a little bit about my weight, and I went on my first diet right before my sweet 16. Growing up in Los Angeles, we always laugh about it when I go back home, that you have to weigh in in LA. You have to make sure that you’re at the perfect weight when you go to LA. And a lot of my friends were doing Weight Watchers, and for me, it was really a social thing. I decided I wanted to do it with my mom, and we went to a Saturday Weight Watchers meeting, and the woman said to me, “I’m sorry, honey, but you’re not 10 pounds overweight, so you can’t become a member of Weight Watchers.” And that is really where I remember the whole thing starting for me.
When she told me I couldn’t join, it was kind of like, “What! I can’t join, I’ll show you.” I’m going to go out and gain those 10 pounds and come back. I want to be a part of this. And that’s when I remember the whole thing taking off, of the battle with my weight, up and down, up and down. I was definitely a yo-yo dieter, and I was always on a diet. I may not have been following the diet. I may have been bingeing my brains out, but I was really on a diet. I was supposed to be on the diet. So, I never remember having freedom from food from the time I went on that diet. It was constantly on my mind, and I was in and out of it, up and down in weight.
My top weight that I remember was about 155 pounds, and I’ve maintained about a 40-pound weight loss. I’m about 115. And it is just beyond me that I don’t binge today. It is just beyond me. I cannot believe that it’s been seven years since I haven’t gone into the food, and I’m so grateful for that.
So much of my story is about looking good on the outside. I just wanted to appear that everything was fine on the outside. And so I did everything in my power to make it look to you that everything was fine with me. And what that meant was making sure I was in the right social club, hanging out with the right people. I wanted to surround myself with the beautiful, smart, “popular” people because I thought that if I surrounded myself with those people, then I would just get lost in that crowd, and I could become one of those people without having to really say or do all that much.
I had an older brother who really paved the way for me in high school, and I came in, and I was just so full of doubt. I was filled with fear and insecurity, but I never really verbalized that to anybody because I had this kind of buffer because he was two years older than me. He was on the basketball team, he was doing great, and I just walked in there as the little sister and used that as a mask for myself, of just hiding behind that.
Everything was so dramatic for me. I felt like it was so important that I get involved in this, or so important that my resume say that. And it was not because I was interested so much in learning about this topic or whatever the issue was. It wasn’t so much that I was interested in it. It was what it was going to look like to everybody else. And for me, it took me to crazy places of never truly wondering, what do I want to do with my life? What college do I want to go to?
I did a lot of things. I studied abroad. I just followed what the mold was. I’ve said for a long time that I followed the etiquette of what they say you should do, and I never met who “they” are. I don’t know who they are. I don’t know who set the standard in my life, but I followed that template. And for me it meant going to high school, and it was so important that I become a cheerleader, and I had to be on the homecoming court, I had to have this boyfriend, and I had to go to a UC college and study abroad and be in a sorority, because if I did all of those things and my resume looked a certain way, then I felt like I would be enough.
And it just never felt like enough. I remember those feelings of fear, doubt, and insecurity were so strong inside me that if I could show you my resume like a tangible thing, then maybe you would think I was okay. I can remember going to parties and feeling like I did not want to be there, and I would show up anyway, and I would end up going home, and I would be bingeing my brains out.
I definitely had my favorite corner stores that I frequented often, and it makes me laugh a lot today when I go back home, and I’m like, oh my gosh, they went out of business. Of course, they went out of business. I got into recovery. I feel like I kept those places in business. But remembering the feelings of bingeing and the aftermath of it, I remember the sweat. I felt like I had little sweat beads on my face. It was like it was coming out of my pores. I would binge so much, and I had my rituals, just like I feel a heroin addict has their rituals with heroin. I definitely had my rituals with food.
And it was so destructive to getting anywhere further in my life, really getting somewhere further. As I said, I did fine on paper, going to the schools, having the right friends, doing those things. I did fine with it. But growing inside, it just stunted me so much.
Gosh, I really want to remember what it was like when I was out there in the food. And I remember eating so many flour products that I felt like my bones were aching. And I had my eating buddies for sure; absolutely. I can remember thinking, when I didn’t have my driver’s license, who can I call that’s going to want to go to this place with me? And not think about wanting to be in their company, but where can I go to get the food, and who’s going to go with me, or who’s going to drive me there? And then once that was over, it wasn’t like, oh, cool, what do you want to do now? It was like I just wanted to go home. And it wasn’t about just wanting to socialize with the people.
And it just blows my mind how I enjoy people today. I love being here at this conference and staying up until the wee hours just talking without the food or the frozen yogurt run or whatever. That’s what it was all about for me.
As I got more caught up in the food, I did not want to openly admit that I had a problem with anything at all. I always wanted to make believe that everything was cool in my life. And like I said, I never openly admitted that I had a problem. But you can’t really hide when you’re up and down in weight. There’s only so much you can do. I tried everything. I did Nutrisystem. I did Weight Watchers. I did the tanning salons. I tried growing out my hair, wearing it curly, wearing it straight, wearing the lines horizontal instead of vertical, or whatever I thought was going to hide. I definitely had my uniform of stirrup pants, long sweatshirts, and sweatshirts tied around my waist. And it was just torture, torture, torture, waking up and thinking, what am I going to wear today?
We went on a family trip in high school, and I had just done Nutrisystem. I was as thin as I had been in quite some time. And I read in the OA literature that we drew the drapes, we hid, and we ate. And that is exactly what I did on that trip. I think I wore my little bikini for maybe five whole minutes before I was face down, back in the food, and just the humiliation. I was sharing a condo with my brother, and I remember we bought food for the week, and my brother was 6’3”. And when we were growing up, on one side of the counter, he had his weight-gain powder because he could not keep weight on to save his life. On the other end of the counter, we had my Nutrisystem or Weight Watchers scale or whatever it was. It was just completely different struggles of whatever it was, and I could not accept that I was not how I wanted to look. I wanted to look a certain way to fit this part that I was working so hard to get to, and I just couldn’t do it. I could not do it.
I went to that first OA meeting, and I looked around, and I thought, what are these people talking about? And I could not get out of there fast enough. But I was so miserable on that trip to Hawaii, and having been so thin, and that was so telling to me that thin was not well. I could be in a thin body, and I was still running around crazy, and I ended up face down in the food.
Then I finished high school, and I was just up and down, up and down, trying all the different diets. And then I went away to college. And I remember that when I started struggling again, I did Nutrisystem again in college, and I remember lugging in that white trash bag of powdered food. And it’s so funny because I wasn’t just making it in the dorms. It smelled up the whole dorm. But I made it because it was so important that when I went back for the reunion, when people came back the first time from Christmas vacation to high school, I had to be in a thin body, because I had gone back at Thanksgiving or something, and I was just huge, and I was so embarrassed. And I had to get that weight off, and I was willing to spend a hundred dollars a week. I don’t know where the money came from for the food or the diet, but somehow I was able to get that money and go on those diets because it was so important to me, or to get the food when that was so important to me.
I remembered the meetings my dad had told me about, and I ended up finding another OA meeting when I was a sophomore in college, and I went to it for a very short time. I heard about different things that people did, and I looked around, and there were a lot of heavy people there just commiserating with one another, and I knew I didn’t want that, but I didn’t really know what else to do.
I asked one woman a little bit about her food plan, and she told me she ate three meals a day with nothing in between, and why don’t I come to her house, and she’d tell me a little bit more about it. She ate the entire time. Her meals were three a day with nothing in between, but there was no weighing and measuring or anything like that. So I kind of gave up.
At that point, I had decided, for no other reason than I thought it would just look good to tell other people, that I was going to go live in Europe for a year or so. So I went off to England for the year, and I literally stayed there because I didn’t want to admit that I wanted to come home. There were times in college when all I wanted to do was come back home, and I couldn’t do it because I didn’t want to look down on myself, that I couldn’t stay there, that I just couldn’t be successful there. So I stayed. And I did have some wonderful experiences, but when you’re in the food, it is hard to really experience those things. Doing all these things for the wrong reasons, as I said, was about looking good to other people and was not enjoyable.
I came back from England and had one more year of college. I finished college and had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I thought it would be cool to go to graduate school. I thought that would look good. So I moved to Michigan, and that is when my disease really took off, where I was really just sick and tired of being sick and tired, of being in and out of the food, up and down in weight, having tried everything. I was so sick of it.
I heard there was an OA meeting on campus, and I went to it, and these are the words that stood out for me, “Find somebody who has what you want and ask how it was achieved.” At that point, I was strictly there for the vanity. I didn’t want anything other than a thin body. So I looked at the woman sitting next to me. There were literally three of us. It was a lunch meeting. And I looked her up and down, and I thought to myself, I don’t care if this woman just got out of an insane asylum. I don’t care if she’s mentally ill. I don’t care what is going on in her brain. She’s got a thin body, has a smaller butt than I have, and thinner thighs than I have. I want what she has.
And that’s when I said, “What is it that you’re doing?” And she said to me, “This is what I’m doing. Here’s a food plan. Call me in the morning.”
I struggled so hard thinking, if I do this food plan, there is no way I’m going to have a life. And I took the poll of the few people I knew in Michigan at that time, which was very few, and they confirmed, no, you will not have a life if you do something like that. Absolutely not. So I thought, yeah, they’re right. And I tried to call that lady, but she wasn’t around. So I thought, well, the type of person I am, I definitely come from being a people pleaser, wanting to make sure everybody’s okay, and I wasn’t about to not call her and be rude in the morning. So I called her pretty much to say, thank you, but no thank you. That’s kind of crazy.
But I really thought about it. If I didn’t just have that conversation with her, what was I going to eat? There were so many times that I waited until three o’clock in the afternoon. I would try so hard not to eat anything until three o’clock in the afternoon. And three o’clock in the afternoon would come, and I’d be smacked back down in the food, having to get what I needed to make me feel okay.
I never understood the concepts of fear, doubt, and insecurity because the hardest thing for me in this program was to be at step one and admit that I needed help. And that’s what kept me, for so long, that’s what kept me out of these rooms.
And learning about it being a disease, I really thought I was okay. I went to graduate school to become a social worker, so studying all about that, I thought you have to have these components to have an eating disorder. I really thought that. And I thought, no, that doesn’t equate with me. I had a loving family, and I had this, and I had friends, and all of these things, so I couldn’t have an eating disorder. But I knew I had a problem, I just didn’t want to admit it. It was just so hard for me to admit.
But I did finally ask this woman for help. I would call her, and she’d ask me what was going on for me, and I’d think, nothing. What should I eat today? I couldn’t get in touch with the idea that I had feelings of fear, doubt, and insecurity. And I started to open up. She helped me lose the weight, and I stayed with her for about six months. And then she moved away.
And I thought, cool, she’s away, I’m thin, I’m done. And I stayed on the outskirts of all the meetings. And this was in OA. I went to meetings when I wanted to. I connected with people when I wanted to, but there really wasn’t a commitment. And that is one of the reasons I feel so grateful to be here at this conference today, because standing up here sharing my story, coming to this conference, having been at this conference two years ago, I am in this program with two feet. I am 100 percent submerged in this program.
And in my life, I was in soccer, softball, piano, and clay class. I did everything, but I didn’t commit to anything. I was a jack of all trades but master of none, absolutely. I could not commit to anything because I always thought, what else is going to be better? I was all about there’s something else out there that’s better.
And when this woman moved away, I continued to weigh and measure my food for the most part, but I wasn’t really thinking about a higher power or any other components that make my program what it is today. I just didn’t have that.
And then came a time where I was thinking, you know what, great, I’m thin, and I’m still full of fear, full of fear and insecurity. I’m miserable. And right then, right when I needed it, a woman moved from, I think she moved from DC, and she was my age, and she’s the person who brought the FA program to Ann Arbor, where I was living. And I asked her, would you sponsor me? And I remember her saying, I’m not sure. I want to see how willing you are. And I just thought, ew, that’s just sick. What do you mean, how willing am I?
And she shared with me that she got on her knees, she committed to three meetings a week, all these things she did that made up her program. And I thought to myself, you know what, I’m thin, but I want more. And that’s when I became willing to do the things that she said that helped her so much in her life, to become the person that she wanted to be.
And I left there when I got it. But when I got home that night, I thought, why am I willing to do this? I have a thin body now. And I’ve learned, like I said, that thin is not well, and I absolutely have a disease of fear, doubt, and insecurity that manifests itself in food. And that was just my first reaction to life, as they say.
So really asking somebody, when they say find somebody who has what you want, it was all about first and foremost somebody who was thinner than I was. And then it turned to, wow, somebody who has a way of living that is working for them. And that has been the most amazing thing in here.
So much of this program is threefold in nature, as they say, that it’s a physical, mental, and spiritual disease, and that I have a reprieve from it a day at a time as long as I’m willing to do the things that have been suggested to me. And I did not want to have a God in my life. That was not something that I came in here for. I came in here strictly to lose the weight.
And that has been the biggest process for me. So much of my recovery has been a process, because as much as I admitted to the fear, doubt, and insecurity later, when I came in here I was so full of fear and insecurity that there was no way I was going to have a life if I weighed and measured my food, if I huddled in the corner with a bunch of other food addicts and talked about how to weigh and measure, chop my vegetables, get to my meetings on time. I thought, how is that going to give me the life that I’m striving so hard to get to?
I just didn’t get it. And today, oh my gosh, it’s unbelievable to me when my sponsor would say to me, just weigh and measure your food, do the basics of this program, put your food on a scale, get to your meetings on time, do service, and I guarantee you your life will get better. And I was willing to do it, but I was so scared that it was not going to get me the life I was working so hard to get to.
And I think about when I was in high school, and when I was where I wanted to be in high school, not inside but on the outside, which today I want my insides and my outsides to match. I want that more than anything, to be comfortable in my skin and to be the person that I’m showing you on the outside that I am, to feel that way truly on the inside. And this program has absolutely helped me to get there.
And it’s with the help of a sponsor, an absolute mentor in my life, that I am so grateful to have somebody that I can call and share the queasiness that goes on in my head. I can just let it out and talk about it, about things that go on in life that most people would think, huh, you’re talking to somebody about that? It is just the biggest gift in my life that I can share whatever is going on with somebody who knows me so well. And to have somebody that I’ve been sharing this stuff with for years now, who really knows me and helps me get to the next level, and wants me to only get better is just absolutely such a gift.
So, with the help of the fellowship to watch people grow, that’s where I really learned about having a God in my life. It wasn’t people say that you watch things on TV or there’s a miraculous thing that happened, and I was struck with thinking there’s a God. What happened for me was I tried Weight Watchers, I tried Nutrisystem, I tried all the different diets, and I could lose the weight for a little bit, and then I would always put it back on.
When I came in here and was given a similar food plan to what I was eating on Weight Watchers, when I was weighing and measuring my food in Weight Watchers, and then somebody said, why don’t you just act as if you believe that there’s something bigger than yourself out there, that is when I said, oh my gosh, I was doing that. I was acting as if I believed that there was something greater than myself, and I was weighing and measuring my food, and the weight didn’t come back on. That was when I said, wow, I’m starting to believe that there is something out there bigger than myself that can help me to do this.
Today, absolutely, not only do I believe in God, I want more of a relationship with God than anything, because that is truly what helps me on a daily basis to trust that one day at a time, no matter what comes up, that I can walk through it and I don’t have to eat ever, ever again. That is such a gift in my life.
And like I said, it was such a process for me. And I really see that they say that God doesn’t give you anything until you can handle it. When I was in regular OA, just weighing and measuring my food, I got to a point where I was setting my alarm clock five minutes before I had to get up, and I would just lie there. And this was in regular OA, and I was reading the literature about having a spiritual part of my life, and I would look at the ceiling and say, I don’t know what this is about, but I read about it, and I heard about it. And I started slowly to establish a relationship with God.
And then I came into FA, and they suggested I sit quietly for 30 minutes and really build a relationship with God. And I was more open to doing something like that because I slowly but surely had that in my life.
But today I am blown away by the miracles that have happened, first for people who have gone before me, because I am such a person who is all about tangibles. I need to see the proof before I’m willing to jump in. So thank God for the people that went before me that I could say, okay, she was scared, she did it, she’s getting the desires of her heart, why not just try it? I mean, I had nothing to lose. And that’s exactly what I did. I just tried it.
And I was willing. I was fearful about becoming, as we say, a bozo on the bus. I didn’t want to just be another person who was willing to do this program. But when you get desperate enough, and you want recovery, I was like, fine, I am willing to do that.
And I just dove in. I really did. I dove in. I got a sponsor, that same woman from Ann Arbor, and I was really willing to put this program first. I actually wanted to come back to California, where I grew up, but I was in an AWOL in Michigan. And I remember hearing a tape when I used to drive to work, and this woman was saying that she and her husband were building their dream home, and she was in an AWOL, and she was going to wait to move in with him when her AWOL was over. I could not press eject fast enough. I thought, are you kidding me? She’s going to move to her dream home after her AWOL when her life is happening right in front of her?
Today I absolutely understand that. Today is five weeks since I’ve been married. I really thought about, actually I didn’t have to think about it, the conference was going on and I thought, absolutely, I’m going to get married, I’m going to have my honeymoon, we’re going to be settling in for the first few weeks, and then of course I’m going to come to this conference because I know that I would not have what I have in my life today if I was not abstinent, if I did not have a God in my life, if I did not do service, if I didn’t show up and one day at a time do what I have done for the past seven years. I just wouldn’t be where I am today. So there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to come here.
Just being at this conference and hearing all the changes and seeing people and being a part of different fellowships from living in Michigan and when I go home to Los Angeles and watching that fellowship grow up and being part of watching the Northern California fellowship grow up around me is just unbelievable, to see all these changes and the people that come in and their lives changing, and getting to share my own experience of how my life has changed through this program is just so, people say that you’ll have a life that is second to none, and I really feel like I’m living that.
But what I was saying before (I got sidetracked), was when I was in high school, I was on the outside living the life that I wanted to live, and I didn’t have a doubt in my mind that one day I’d get married and I’d have kids and I’d live happily ever after. That was just my mentality. But something happened for this food addict, that I was stunted in my growth. And from that time when I thought those things to basically now in my recovery, I just missed the boat. Like nothing was happening. I was doing all these things, but I was not growing as a person.
And I feel like I would never be where I am today. Even though I thought I would get there somehow by manipulating the system or doing whatever I needed to get there, I thought that I would get here. But now I see in hindsight, if I didn’t have this program, I would never, ever be where I am today.
It’s just amazing to me how I can fool myself, and it’s such a big part of my story about the manipulation, that I would manipulate the system to get what I wanted, and I thought that it was so great at the end, like yes, I got there. And those are the things that I really feel like I ended up eating over because I felt so terrible that I wasn’t honest. Or it was so important to be on the Dean’s List in school, so I would do whatever I needed to do to make sure that my grades were going to be where they needed to be. But then I’d end up feeling terrible, and then in the long run I’d end up eating, and then in the long run I’d end up getting fatter. And it was just a cycle that I could not get out of. I just could not find a solution out.
The only thing that is my solution is this program. When I first came in and heard people talking, I remember thinking, great, so what do I do to get thin? I hear that you lost all this weight and you’re thin now, so what is it that I’m supposed to do? And I just didn’t get it.
And that’s where I think for newcomers, just keep coming back and jump in if you really think that it’s something, if you have a problem with food. Go ask somebody who has what you want and ask how it was achieved. And I don’t have to figure it out anymore. All I have to do is stick around, keep doing what I’m doing, give service, ask people who have gone before me how they got to where they are, be honest with my sponsor, and really let her in. And they say that to keep what you have, you have to give it away.
And to have sponsors that are hungry for this and to give service to them, they say it’s a selfish program. It is definitely a selfish program. I want to give this away so that I can keep what I have and just keep getting better.
I hope that I painted a good enough picture of what it was like for me in the food, of just battling, feeling like I had so much to give but my life was so small and always about where I was going to get the next thing that I wanted, how I was going to get the next outfit that was actually going to fit, and to wake up in the morning and to be able to wear the same thing that I wore the last season, and hearing people say that they had to get a new pair of jeans because there were holes in their jeans, not because they outgrew their jeans. It’s just so awesome.
And I did not come here to make friends. As I shared with you, I did not want anything that was part of a 12-step program. I just thought that that’s what my dad needed, but there was no way that I was going to need this. And it’s so funny how God works because when I let go and I just let whatever’s going to happen happen, the friends that I have made in these rooms, like I said not coming in here to make friends, it is just unbelievable, the connection that I have with other women and to have them show up in a way for me, just having gotten married, the way that they showed up for me, but the way that they were on this whole process, whole dating process of me saying, no guys, I’m not ever going to go for this. This is just a crazy way of living and all of this stuff. But when it’s supposed to happen, it happens.
And to have those relationships and those connections is just amazing, because when you’re in the food, the only phone calls I was making were to my friends saying, I did it again, you guys. I did it again. And I would make lists. I would literally make lists of all the food that I had put in my mouth the night before.
And I remember this not that long ago, when I was in high school, the guy that I was dating was very active in sports, and he had decided that he was going to stop smoking pot, go to the gym every morning, and get really active and make sure that he was doing really well in sports. So he would call me in the morning and say, I’m not going to smoke pot today. I’m going to the gym before school. And I would say, okay, this is what I’m eating today. And we would check in with each other at the end of the day, and he would say, I went to the gym. Did you eat what you said you were going to eat? It was so rare that I ever said that I ate what I did, that I stuck to what I was going to eat.
But it’s so funny to me that when I came into these rooms, it was suggested I write and commit my food so I didn’t have to think about it for the day. It’s like I did that by myself, but by myself it didn’t work. But with the help of all the tools in these rooms that I learned, like I said, having a sponsor, having committed meetings, weighing and measuring my food, doing service, getting on my knees, reading the Big Book, the AWOLs are something that has just been so amazing for me.
They say that you need to have a personality change in order to continue to grow. And like I said, I didn’t want a personality change. I thought I was doing just fine. I just thought I needed to lose weight. But through the AWOLs and through getting honest and talking to my sponsor about things, I see, yes, I have to let go of certain things. If I want to change or if I want to keep what I have, then I’m going to have to change. And that has been an amazing process.
But first things first is just getting the basics down. That’s what I needed to do, to just put down the food and to get to step one, because that was the hardest thing, to just open my mouth and admit that I was a food addict and that I really needed help was the most difficult thing that I did in these rooms. And then putting down the food and going through all the other things that led to being where I am today.
So I’m just so grateful to be here and so grateful that I was asked to share, and I want to keep coming back. There is so much more to get, and I know that I will never be done, but I also know that I’m one bite away, and I can never, ever take this for granted. Hearing about people who have years of abstinence, that it just takes one slip or getting too cocky or thinking that I have it licked or losing humility, I could be back there in a second, and I don’t know if I could ever come back. I don’t know if I’d ever come back to these rooms.
But I just know that I would never be the person I am today without this program, and I want it, and I want it to keep getting better. And going away on my honeymoon and not having meetings for the week, I thought to myself when I got back, it is so amazing to me that I didn’t think like, now I have the guy, and here I am on my honeymoon, I’m here in Hawaii, and I don’t need those meetings or I don’t need this. But I thought if I let go of that, my life kept getting better. Why would I want to stop here? I want it to get better. I want to see what’s in store for me.
Because I know that there’s no way, I’ve never, ever seen anybody come up to a meeting and say, my name is so-and-so and I’m a food addict and I was miserable when I came in here and now I’m worse off. I’ve never heard that. I’ve only heard it just keeps getting better. So I know that I am on this road one day at a time for the long haul.
And just like I said, I just want to continue to stay humble and ask God for help and use the tools of this program to keep being the person that God intends me to be. And it’s so weird sometimes to even hear myself say that because it’s not where I was coming from, it’s not what I wanted, but the tools that I thought were so ridiculous that were up on the wall that we saw today, keep it simple, one day at a time, just for today, all those things are just the most amazing things. The simplicity of just sitting and saying this Serenity Prayer and just turning things over and just waking up a day at a time, saying if I can weigh and measure my food, then I know that it’s going to be an okay day.
And where I came from, when somebody first told me that if all you do today is weigh and measure your food, then you’ve had a good day, I thought no, you don’t know where I come from. I need to accomplish all these things to be a good person. There’s no way that just weighing and measuring my food is going to be enough. And you know what, some days it has to be enough. It just has to be enough.
But the more days that I have behind me where I weigh and measure my food, the more I’m able to see that I can do more things as long as I stop and ask God for help and check in with another food addict and make those calls and connect with other people and take a second to quietly remember where I come from, then I can do more and more.
So I’m just going to continue to do that and continue to come back to these conferences and watch people grow and change and have babies and get married and watch people’s true hearts’ desires come true and remember that I never, ever want to go back to the food and feeling like I have to have that. That feeling is something that you can’t really explain.
It’s like some people told me on my wedding day, when my closest friend said, you cannot imagine what that feeling is like on the day that you’re out there. And I remember after our first dance I was just loving it. I was having the time of my life. And that feeling I had was like no food, no drug, nothing inside of me could ever, ever take away the feeling that I had in recovery, abstinent, really watching the things that I wanted to come true in my life coming true. And to be able to walk through that is just such an amazing feeling. It’s so true. You can’t explain to somebody who’s struggling with food what abstinence feels like.
My sponsor told me time and time again, if I could just paint you a picture, I would just paint you a picture. And I would hold on so tightly like, no, you don’t understand. I don’t know if this is going to work. I don’t know if this is going to work. But when I look in the mirror and I see that the weight is off and that my life is changing, why wouldn’t I just trust that? Why wouldn’t I trust the people who have gone before me that this program is going to work if I take those suggestions?
But it’s just so scary to turn that over and to trust that this person has their best intentions in mind for me and that they’re going to help me get to the place where I’ve always wanted to be, that I was trying to get to on my own, manipulating the system, hiding out, stealing food, getting caught, having roommates ask me, I just made this, where did it go? And they were leaving for the day, I thought they forgot about it, and I ended up eating it, but they ran home to get it, but it was gone because I ate it so quickly.
Those are the memories that I have to remind myself of, how humiliating those times were and what it was like to be up and down in weight all the time. And to think that for the past seven years I’ve been in a thin body and a saner mind and having a God in my life and really seeing that this is a disease of fear, doubt, and insecurity that I absolutely don’t want to go back to, that I will just keep showing up, keep being humble, keep being honest, keep asking God for help.
And thank you so much for letting me keep coming back and letting me share my story today.
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.