I was near my top weight when my oldest son was married in 1998. I was nearing my goal weight when my youngest son got married. The dresses that I wore are metaphors for my life before and after recovery. Wedding #1 Shopping for a dress for my oldest son’s wedding was a painful experience. I knew that my future daughter-in-law needed to know what color I had chosen in order to continue with her planning, but the whole prospect of looking for something to fit me had me paralyzed. Here I was, near my top weight of 293 pounds, and I couldn’t even stand the pain of looking in the mirror. How many times had I faced a rack of clothes in the plus-size section and known that I was going to look hideous in any one of the things that I tried on? The hopelessness of selecting something... Continue Reading
The term, “Keep it simple,” mocked me as I felt the sizzle of heartburn announce that my latest concoction of herbs and spices was not agreeing with my stomach. My program encourages simplicity and neutrality around food. However, it seemed when I put down sugar, I picked up salt—the other “white stuff.” While my food was always abstinent, I made sure it looked and tasted good. So when I cooked, I would shake on the seasonings with a generous hand. After a visit to the doctor, he confirmed that I had acid reflux disease. It was probably an outcome of my years of binge eating that took me to 276 pounds. Now that I have come into FA, lost over 100 pounds, and am eating good food, I somehow did not expect to deal with the consequences of my past eating habits. My body seems happiest when my food is... Continue Reading
Self-care sounds great in theory—bubble and pedicures; but in real life, self-care is dealing with life on life’s terms, even when those terms are in the form of a world-altering pandemic. My history, along with binge eating, is one of negativity. Alcoholics Anonymous states “[The grouch and the brainstorm] may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison.” For me, the “brainstorm” includes fear, negativity, anger, and self-pity and whole host of other character defects. This is not to say I never venture down those paths—I am human; however, if I engage in negativity for too long, it will lead me back into the ultimate poison–food. I don’t have TV, but I have become very selective of the media sources I read, and I have also pooled all my work emails related to the pandemic so I can read them at set times during... Continue Reading
It’s been a year and a half since I began FA. I’ve let go of 125 pounds and my life is much different, but I still remember how I dreaded making outreach calls. This was my attitude: I just knew I didn’t have any information that would be helpful to others, and I couldn’t imagine that others would want to have their lives interrupted by me. It was like pulling teeth to force myself to make the calls. I was stuck in a sense of self-sufficiency and isolation. However, I followed my sponsor’s advice to 1) invite my Higher Power along for the calls, and 2) to adopt the revised attitude that I might be surprised at how well the calls would go. Then I started to see the beauty behind our tool of outreach calls. One day, I was getting ready to go on my first business trip after... Continue Reading
Before I was abstinent, the idea of ever getting free from food was as impossible and unlikely as hitching a ride to the moon. I was never very interested in food as a child, but got the idea that I was fat and ugly and should get thinner. So as a teen, I got into starving myself. This progressed to starving and bingeing, then dieting and bingeing, then being unable to diet or control my eating by the time I was 25. Whatever I was doing with food, whether I was under 100 pounds or more than 300 pounds, my thoughts were never far from the obsession about it. FA broke the obsession. I handed my food over to the scales and a sponsor. I fought the FA Program for 10 years. I got abstinent a few times for a few years, and twice lost a large amount of weight... Continue Reading
