Halloween at an elementary school is always a magical, yet chaotic, day for teachers, but I’ve been teaching for over three decades, so I expected the commotion. The halls were abuzz with excited children parading their costumes for each other. Even the adults were encouraged to join in the light-hearted frivolity and many were in costume for the day’s activities. I was already at work when I realized I hadn’t packed my fruit for the noon meal and I would have to find fruit somewhere in the school. I was on a mission. The usual places where food is commonly found bore no results, so I gave up. I decided to text my sponsor to tell her that I was going to give it to God and not have a fruit with my lunch. That’s when I saw my colleague dressed as Maleficent, the evil villain from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.... Continue Reading
Twenty years prior to walking into an FA room, I thought I found “the solution” to my food issues: a custom food plan that I concocted as part of my nursing capstone project. It was based on my successful weight loss experience with Jenny Craig and my research on the food pyramid. For my 5 foot 2-inch height, it involved a 1,500 calorie plan for weight loss and an 1,800 calorie plan for maintenance. The 1,500 plan involved two fats, two meats, two milks, two fruits, three veggies, and four grains. Each exchange equaled 100 calories. If you used less calories with, let’s say a veggie (20 calories), this gave me license to use the rest of the 80 calories on something else I wanted, like junk food. But this disease is progressive. Over time, my food plan devolved into all exchanges being junk food, with multiple daily caloric intakes... Continue Reading
I am Susan and I am a food addict. I am just stunned and amazed at the difference that FA has made in my life. I remember when I was a teenager going on a band trip. I was very socially awkward. Being on a bus with all the other kids was especially difficult because there was no place to hide the fact that I didn’t know how to talk to my peers. I would often pretend that I was sleeping or reading, and that would be my excuse to myself as to why I wasn’t talking with the other kids. I was very ashamed of my near-muteness. I read and “slept” all the way from Oregon to Canada and back. I was a big pretender– fine on the outside, lonely and ashamed on the inside. Somewhere around my early twenties I went on a camper road trip with my... Continue Reading
On Leap Day, I heard an ad for Leap of Faith Day so I took a leap of faith. That leap was to attend a meeting of Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous which I had previously read about in a health magazine. My thinking bounced between “I’ve died and gone to heaven” and “I may have just joined some sort of cult.” Pouring through my head were the “I’ll never be able to” and “This sponsor lady! Just who does she think she is telling me this?” There were times when I would think to myself as I made the dreaded calls to her, “I can’t do this!” My first month or so in FA was a nightmare of kicking and screaming in my head. I lied, cheated, broke, and was sure I was one of those people known as constitutionally incapable. But the fat was melting off which gave... Continue Reading
I didn’t have a choice before. When a craving would hit, I had to eat. Period. There was no pause, no phone call, and no strength to fight it. I ate, and then the food took me always to the same pit of despair. A horrific cycle of binging, laxatives, cleansing, and then more binging would take over. Once I came into FA, I had hope that there was another way. I got abstinent and found a new way and a new sense of peace. After a year or so, when I was no longer experiencing the intense pain of addictive eating, I started to get complacent with my tools. I told myself that I was very busy with other things and had very important things to do. I didn’t share this with my sponsor or my fellows. Then followed the rationalization that eating a little extra something wasn’t that... Continue Reading
