"In all probability, we shall never be able to touch more than a fair fraction of the [compulsive overeating] problem in all its ramifications." - Alcoholics Anonymous, page xxi (last paragraph of the forward to the second edition).

Although originally written about alcoholics, this statement is so much truer for compulsive overeaters.  I look at the people around me and I see so many who belong in program.  I've heard it said that everyone belongs in at least one program - the question is finding their drug of choice.  It takes only five minutes on any webpage to see the obsession people have with dieting and their weight.  So much money and energy goes into eating disorders and their ramifications.  There is so much suffering. 

When I think about how many cities have next to no OA presence, I am horrified.  The other week my usually packed Thursday night meeting was next to deserted.  One person shared that she was horrified to see that there were so many empty seats.  Just a casual stroll through a store suggests that there should be people pounding down the doors to get recovery.  Yet this program is only touching a small fraction of us.

I can only stop and pause and be insanely grateful that I was chosen to be in these rooms.  Really, I can only see the hand of God in moving me into OA.  I never would have found my way here on my own.  It took quite a few nudges to get me into the room and quite a few more nudges to get me to stay.  The life that recovery has given me is so much richer than I ever imagined it could be.  My feelings are deeper, my connection with my son is deeper, and my awareness of how my actions affect others is deeper. 

But for the grace of God, I'd still be quietly eating myself to an early, lonely, unfulfilled death.  When I see an obese person walk down the street I'm filled with a simultaneous sense of sadness (I once was told that every pound of fat is really a pound of pain) and relief that I get to be one of those people that doesn't have to let the pain rule my life and determine my future.

Newcomers. . .

The May 4th Voices of Recovery quotes The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous:  "All who have experienced the pain of compulsive eating and want to stop are equally welcome here."  It goes on to tell the story of a woman who came to the meetings fighting the program.  "I had no desire to refrain from compulsively eating.  Instead, I wanted to diet.  I did not take the suggestions seriously.  Tradition Three illustrates the reason for my inability to grasp this program.  I wanted the weight loss and even the pleasure of it without having to earn it first.  Today when I watch newcomers struggle with the program as I did, I try to show the same compassion and acceptance as those before me."

I remember my first day in Overeaters Anonymous.  I came into the rooms believing that I didn't need the program - I was fine.  When the woman who shared told my own story, I was shocked.  But I decided to sign up.  She'd lost all her weight so clearly whatever these people were selling worked.  I asked her to sponsor me at break and felt I had put a check in the box to have them wave the magic wand that would fix me.

She told me to read from the Big Book, and I read Bill's Story and put the book down again.  Not only did I not relate to the story, but I figured that all the Big Book contained was a collection of people's stories.  Why would I bother reading about a bunch of alcoholics when I could sit in a meeting and hear people tell me about their own stories of recovery - and on topic, too!.  I was already sold on the program, just get to the good stuff!

That sponsor told me to write down three things I loved about myself every day. I thought it was the dumbest assignment in the world.  And yet when I sat down that night I couldn't think of a single thing.  Everything I loved had a "yeah, but. . ." attached to it that was a disqualifying factor.  I eventually found myself on the phone with another woman I'd met in meeting, sobbing because I couldn't find anything to love about myself.

Eventually I was able to identify a few items - I have a set of freckles on my leg that looks like a happy face; I always have a flower painted on my big-toenails; and I have three freckles on my foot that make a straight line.  Each night I came up with three new things - sometimes it was that I loved a dish I cooked, other times it was that I loved knowing how to knit.  But each time I failed to understand what the point of this exercise was.

Every time I asked that sponsor why we were bothering with this (get on with the wand waving, already!) she told me we were working on my first step.  She asked me to identify trigger foods, so I started cutting out things like soda and coffee.  Eventually my "abstinence" was to not eat French fries, doughnuts, or drink coffee and soda.  Yet I still binged on sweets and snack foods to my heart's content.  So after three months I decided I was wasting my time and left program.

When I came back I decided I could do it on my own.  For the first two months back in the rooms I was back to my original "abstinence" - still binging away - and I decided that I could identify my own trigger foods.  Since my first sponsor didn't "do anything" for me, I'd sponsor myself!

But through this all, I was just as clueless as that woman was.  I wanted the results without the work.  I didn't want to surrender to another person.  I didn't want to work the steps.  I didn't want to change my life.  I just wanted the magical fix.

But there is no magical fix.  There is a miraculous one - but that requires work to attain. 

It wasn't until after I'd gotten another sponsor, surrendered, and gone through my first step that I learned what my first sponsor was doing:  she was trying to show me that my life was unmanageable.  She was waiting for me to notice just how hard it was for me to find things I loved about myself, and she was waiting for the light bulb to click that maybe, just maybe, whatever it was I was doing to run my life wasn't working.  But because I never left the disease, I never was able to see what she was trying to show me.

Today's reading was a good reminder of just how much I struggled as a newcomer, and just how much I need to show compassion to those still suffering from compulsive overeating.

Do You Know Who You Are?

I watched an episode of Grey's Anatomy that posed three questions.  The patient was a man who had been paralyzed from neck down in an accident.  The doctor was asking if he wished to be taken off of life support as he would never be able to live without machines to breathe for him.  To confirm that he wished to be taken off of the machines he was asked three questions:

Do you know who you are?

Do you know what's happened to you?

Do you want to live this way?

It shocked me just how appropriate these questions were for a compulsive overeater.  Really, for any addict.  Before program the answer to all those questions was a resounding no. 

I didn't know who I was.  Indeed, I spent nearly every waking moment trying to avoid figuring that out.  I ate, I drank, I played excessive video games, I read, I did anything and everything to not think about who I was.  

I didn't know what had happened to me.  I woke up one day and I was 305 pounds.  Sure I saw myself getting larger and larger, but somehow it still snuck up on me.  I kept expecting that tomorrow would be different - tomorrow I'd find the will to change.  Tomorrow I'd eat healthy and exercise.  I'd suddenly know how to act and be like other people.  But tomorrow never came.  So I got a gastric bypass.  I lost the weight but it came right back on.  And again tomorrow never came.

The only thing I knew before program was that I didn't want to live this way.  I couldn't live this way.  I was hopeless.  I was desperate.  I was completely unwilling to surrender my life and will to the care of a power greater than myself.  It took the complete and total annihilation of my willingness to live before I was able to put down the reigns and hand over control. 

That day I waved the white flag and got a sponsor.  That's when the miracle happened.  How different today is.  I went from 305 pounds down to the 169 pounds I weighed today (and I'm still losing).  I went from a size 24 to a size 10.  A size XXXL to a size M.  I went from constantly depressed and angry to a genuinely happy, optimistic person.  My life has never been better.

I now can confidently answer all three of those questions with a yes.  I discovered that the answer was surrender.  Sweet, simple surrender.

Why Sponsoring Yourself Fails and Facing Relapse

After a span of 15 months of solid abstinence, I slipped.  I have plenty of excuses for why it happened.  I was exhausted.  I was distracted.  But the fact remains that my 2-year-old son left part of a cookie on the floor.  I was cleaning up the assortment of cheerios, pretzels, fruit snacks, grapes, and other detritus he'd dropped on the floor that afternoon when I picked up a piece of cookie and popped it in my mouth. 

Had it stopped there, I may have salvaged my abstinence.  But once the cookie piece was in my mouth the curious insanity set in.  "It's already in my mouth, I might as well eat it."  We all have moments where we pop a food item in our mouth unthinking.  When this has happened to me in the past, I have spit out the food item and told my sponsor about it.  Well this time I was between sponsors - meaning I was my own sponsor.  I'll give you a hint - sponsoring yourself doesn't work.  Because you see, as my own sponsor, I told myself, "It's already in your mouth, you might as well eat it."

It was a slippery slide from there.  I bought my boyfriend a box of doughnuts.  My son took one and was done with it.  Well I wrapped it in a napkin and threw it away.  In a weak moment, I figured out that I had enough calories left in my daily budget to eat that doughnut.  Since it had been carefully wrapped before finding its way into the trash can, I figured it was fair game to eat.  Never mind that my baseline abstinence is no flour, no sugar, no compulsive eating behaviors (i.e., eating off the floor and pulling items out of the trash can).  I counted that as an abstinent treat because I budgeted for it in my calories.  I hadn't felt triggered by the cookie, and that doughnut hadn't set me off on a binge, so clearly I could handle flour and sugar again.  But to be safe I wouldn't eat any breads or salty treats - that might not go over as well.  I was the man who believed it safe to drink whiskey with his milk from the Big Book.

The next thing I knew, a few days later I went to the store and purchased six more doughnuts.  I budgeted them into my calories but wound up eating them all in one day.  So instead of a calorie cap for a day, I started using my calorie cap for the week.  I ate all six doughnuts, but now I was struggling to find a way to control my calories for the week.  Well then I started to look at my "average calories on plan" - this is something in my calorie counting application that tells me how many calories I typically am over or under budget per day over the span of my tracking period.  Now I figured as long as I averaged out being under calories I'd be fine.  So I bought and ate a dozen doughnuts over the course of two days.

When I got on the scale I discovered that in three weeks I had managed to gain eight pounds by steadily eating up the calorie deficits that I'd spent three months accumulating.  It was time to face the music.  I knew that my abstinence had been broken and I was in relapse.  So I did what any compulsive eater would do.  I went to the grocery store, picked up about $50 worth of binge foods, and took them home.  My son sat with me as I ate two Twinkies, a Hostess cupcake, a store made chocolate chip cookie, and about 9 Oreos.  (While eating I discovered they no longer tasted that good, much to my disappointment.)

It was then my son's bed time.  I got up to give him a bath and discovered I felt buzzed.  Being an alcoholic, I used to laugh when people described getting a buzz from food, but I honestly felt like I'd been drinking a bottle or two of wine.  I had a strong buzz.  I got sober when I got abstinent, so the two had always overlapped.  Now I knew that I was feeling that sugar high people spoke about.  I was high and I hated the feeling.  I gave my son a bath feeling completely numbed out and disconnected.  It was like life had lost its color, and I didn't want any more of that feeling.  I spent so many days wishing for sweet oblivion while I went through the pain of writing my fourth step, and here I was with that sweet oblivion and I discovered there was nothing sweet about it.

So I put my son in bed and proceeded to throw out the rest of the binge foods.  I then picked up the phone and asked someone to be my sponsor. 

When I first came into program I was suicidal and so desperate for help that handing my life over to the care of my sponsor was an incredible relief.  This time I wasn't holding the weight of the world on my shoulders.  I was living my life working the steps.  I was doing daily 10th steps.  I was praying and meditating.  I was saying the serenity prayer when things got difficult. What I wasn't doing was being honest with myself.  As soon as that honest appraisal happened, I did the most amazing thing:  I picked up the phone and used my tools.  I surrendered without the feeling that the world was crushing me.  For this gift of willingness I can only thank my Higher Power, because with my pride there is no doubt in my mind that I didn't surrender on my own.  I heard in meeting tonight that when we stop listening to God's whispers, he starts throwing bricks.  God had to throw skyscrapers before I came into the rooms and got abstinent.  Yet somehow I listened to the whisper over the roar of the food.

One of the horror stories we "grow up with" in program is the story of the person in relapse.  When you go out, you never know how long it's going to take you to come back in.  The fear of relapse is what kept me from acknowledging it for so long, because I had a fear-driven belief that relapse meant that I would gain all my weight back and more.  I'm down 135 pounds from my top weight.  That is a long road of pain and heart ache that I saw stretched before me.

Those stories gave me the idea that relapse was a creature with a mind of its own.  I would be hijacked by my disease, helpless to stop the weight gain.  I'd lose everything I'd gained in program, and gain everything I'd lost whether I wanted to or not!  And yet I have four days of abstinence.  The food speaks to me, but when the food talks to me, I talk to my sponsor.  I make outreach calls.  I do readings.  I go to meetings.  I am doing all those things I did before relapse when the food got loud.  And I am ending each day abstinent.  I will admit that I want to go back for more doughnuts.  That's fine to say and fine to feel.  But I don't have to act on those feelings and thoughts.  As long as I let myself be guided by my Higher Power working through my sponsor, I can choose abstinence.

Today's For Today Workbook posed the question:  "When has believing in the possibility of being abstinent enabled me to stay the course to better times?"  The answer is: today!  When I first got abstinent my sponsor told me that I didn't have to worry about tomorrow or next week or next year.  All I had to worry about is today.  For today, I can do anything.  So when the craving for that doughnut hit me, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and whispered to myself: "Not today.  Maybe tomorrow, but not today."  It was the mantra I used before relapse, and it worked just as well today as it did then.  The anxiety, the panic, the craving settled down.  Because I don't have to worry about tomorrow.  I believe I can follow my meal plan today.  I can't tell you about tomorrow or next week or next year, but for today, I can be abstinent.

A friend of mine with over twenty years of abstinence once told me that he really only has one day: today.  And for today, I've discovered that I can believe in abstinence.  I don't have to surrender to relapse.  I'm a compulsive overeater.  I am powerless over food and my life is unmanageable.  It is the first step, and it's just as true day one abstinent as it is day 500 or 5,000.  I can't. God can.  I think I'll let God.

Step One, Question 1, Page 1

I think it's time I take the plunge and start writing on the first question in the workbook.  It has been sitting on my desk, open to that page, for weeks.  I will begin working the steps with my sponsor this week and I have some time before bed to do a bit of work, so here goes nothing (or perhaps, everything)!

1. "In OA we are encouraged to take a good look at our compulsive eating, obesity, and the self-destructive things we have done to avoid obesity - the dieting, starving, over-exercising, or purging."  Here is a First-Step inventory of my compulsive eating history.

A lot of my early compulsive eating is blurred by the haze of the sugar high.  Or perhaps I should say "glaze".  I remember not being allowed sweets because my mom was worried about my weight.  It wasn't consistently enforced, though.  It was like her own warring opinions on whether she could eat sweets spilled over into what she permitted me to eat.  But here are a few compulsive overeating memories:

I would sneak into the pantry when people were busy/sleeping/away to steal food.  My favorites were fruit snacks and granola bars.  The best was the "Fruit O's" from Costco - fruit snacks in a huge container from Costco.  I knew I could take one or two of those a day without being caught.  Granola bars were another love, but I knew I had to take those slow.  I would take one bar a day.  There was a very strict order to how I ate my closet foods: 2 Fruit O's, 1 granola bar, 1 of this, 1 of that.  It depended on what we had at the time.  Gold fish had to be smuggled one handful at a time.  If the container went missing I would get caught and I'd either get lectured or in actual trouble.  The number of items became just as important as the theft of the food and it's consumption.  No matter how much or how often I smuggled, I always wanted more.  It called to me and I craved it, but I knew I had to wait until the next day or they'd notice the food was disappearing too fast.  Thankfully my brother was assumed to be the one doing the eating.  Eventually he hid the food in his room to keep me out, which upped the stakes.  I only could sneak in maybe once a week to get the food then.  Even now, when I go to fast food restaurants, I find that I get a list of foods I want: 1 of A, 1 of B, 1 of C, 1 of D - the ordering of the food is part of the ritual, even when I ordered far more than I could possibly consume.

I remember being excited about the food come the holidays.  It was the one day I knew my mom wouldn't chase me about how much I ate - until the car ride home when both parents would scold me in front of my brother.  I would make the obligatory round of hugs and then settle next to the appetizer table.  I would eat non-stop until dinner.  Then I'd eat a plate of two of food at dinner, maybe sneak back for more appetizers.  Then I'd get one of everything offered for desert, after I snuck in plenty of cookies, fudge, and whatever else was sitting out for deserts.  The sad truth is: I can't remember much about the holidays other than eating and hoping my parents weren't watching how much I was putting into my mouth and body.

In elementary school I used to offer to put anything people wanted to give me into my yogurt to eat it.  I wanted the food, so even if they put tuna salad in my cherry yogurt, I'd take it.  Mostly it was things like Oreo cookies [yum] or half eaten sandwiches.  I ate anything people wanted to throw out.  I never fished in the school trash cans [although I did in the kitchen trash can at home] but I was a mini garbage disposal for anything and everything no one wanted.  My friends eventually started bringing extra food for me.

In college I remember thinking constantly about food.  Classes were the things I did between meal times.  I loved the cafeterias because I could get as many plates as I wanted, and if I went alone I didn't have to worry about anyone following me.  Mostly I didn't think about people watching me eat then. I was out of the sight of my parents, which to me meant I was out of the sight of everyone.  I frequented the vending machines in my building - I think I stopped on the way to and from every class for something, usually those little doughnuts.  Once I had a car, my food adventures were usually in the form of 4 or 5 large meals a day at fast food as well as the dining halls.  I went every Tuesday to a Thai food restaurant where I ate until the point of pain.  I also always had snacks in my room to nibble on between meals.  This part is a bit fuzzy, because I didn't pay a lot of attention to what I was eating when.  I have always been a grazer so I had meals I paid attention to, and meals where I just grazed along without paying attention to what I was eating.

In grad school I think I lived on pizza, sub sandwiches and chips, and fast food (including an awesome fast food Italian restaurant that had cheese covered baked lasagna that I would eat with garlic bread sticks - carb heaven hell.) I ate huge quantities of food, including in the middle of the night while studying.  I would go to IHOP, order 2 or 3 meals and eat it all before I left.

After grad school I got the gastric bypass stomach surgery, which severely limited my ability to binge.  They literally sewed off part of my stomach and rerouted my intestines.  So once I was recovered enough to eat normal foods, I would still go to the restaurants and order all my food.  The ritual was still in place.  I just ended up throwing out most of it.  I would eat a bite or two of everything and make myself ill, but I would do my best.  I often grazed on my meal all day long - one monstrous breakfast-lunch-dinner mishmash of a meal.  Eventually I managed to eat back on most of my weight since there was nothing that caused the infamous "dumping syndrome" for me. 

When I joined OA, I had gained back some - but not all - of my gastric bypass weight loss.  I gave up certain "trigger foods" but binged freely on the others.  It was retaliatory binging.  I took away french fries? Then doughnuts it was!  I took out doughnuts next, then I went to those little fruit-jelly filled pies and cookies. Eventually I gave up and went back to before.  Then I came back and tried it again - with the same results as before.  Before I started with my current sponsor I had a two week long binge that was pure hell [described here]. And I haven't compulsively overeaten since.

Now to move on to the memories involving restricting/anorexia/bulimia:

These three were always lumped together for me.  I remember in second or third grade hearing my mom talk about how she dieted as a kid: hard boiled egg for breakfast, and she kept lunch and dinner each under 200 calories.  So I did the same.  It stunted my growth and I stopped growing at age 10.

In sixth grade I started the anorexia.  I would skip every meal I could get away with.  It was not that hard to get away with: I would tell friends that I was eating at home, and family that I ate with friends.  No one paid attention to what I ate at school, so I didn't have to worry there.  Sometimes I ate at school because I liked the food, but it depended on the day.  I think it got bad when I was between sixth and seventh grade, actually.  During the summer months.  When I had to eat dinner with my family, I'd squirrel the food into my cheeks and spit it out into napkins [because I wasn't smart enough to think that people would notice].  I just pretended it was gristle.  My mom wasn't inclined to feed me sweets, so that was never a problem.  When I couldn't get away with the gristle ruse, I'd rush to the bathroom and spit out the food in my squirrel cheeks.  My parents obviously knew what was going on but chose to do nothing about it.  Eventually my friends at school held me down at lunch time and force fed me.  Once I was eating it seemed that this phase of my life had ended.

Bulimia became something that popped up intermittently with my binges.  I can't really remember much about the bulimia, except that it took me a while to figure out how to make me puke since my gag reflex isn't very sensitive.  After my weight loss surgery I was lucky that as soon as I overate I would need to vomit.  So the purge just took a few extra bites of food and out it would come.  I often used that route to get more food, but sometimes it was a way to clear the binge.

Eventually I would alternate as an adult between binge, purge, and restricting days.

Compulsive exercising hit me around eighth grade.  I wanted to be skinny so I signed up for every sport my school offered, including cross country.  Later I ran for the love of running, but at first it was all about the burning of calories.  In grad school I exercised five to seven days a week as a means of telling myself that I was working on my weight and clearly it wasn't my fault that I was fat.

I can honestly say I've tried just about every diet over the years:  calorie counting, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, South Beach, Atkins, HMR, Liquid Only, Slim Fast, Lean Cuisine, not eating after 6/8/10pm, skipping breakfast, eating no breads, eating no dairy, eating no red meat, vegetarian, alcohol only, eating no pasta, eating no snacks, eating five small meals, etc.

That First Step's A Doozie

The speaker at my meeting this evening talked a lot about the steps.  He expressed something that resonated with me: he couldn't start the program until he was willing to take the first step.  Of course, he was referring to the actual First Step: We admitted we were powerless over food - that our lives had become unmanageable. 

While in a step study meeting focused on the Sixth Step (were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character), one speaker stated that we are always ready to have the consequences of our defects removed if not the defect itself.  We cling to our defects like treasured friends.  So too do we cling to the notion that we are not compulsive overeaters.  We may want to have the symptom removed - our excess weight - but we are often not ready to admit that the excess weight was brought on by our powerlessness over food.

I have heard the road to recovery begins when you take that step into the door of your first meeting.  But the fact remains that recovery simply will not happen until you are able to admit that there is something you need to recover from.  As the Big Book says, "Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely." (Page 58)

I walked into my first meeting to be moral support for a friend.  A very clever friend who knew exactly what I was even if I didn't know it myself.  At the end of the meeting, I was able to declare with absolute certainty that I was a compulsive overeater.  I marched up to the speaker and asked her to be my sponsor that very same meeting.

The problem was, I didn't necessarily believe that I was powerless over food, and I most certainly didn't believe that my life was unmanageable!  I had done quite well for myself - or so I believed.  All I needed was someone to help me with a food plan and to give me accountability.  Then I would lose my weight, keep following my food plan, and not need to worry about silly things like meetings.  You see, I had it all figured out.

Every time I asked my sponsor when we would start doing step work, she would tell me that we were: we were working on the first step.  I would protest, "but I already admitted I was a compulsive overeater."  She would just smile and tell me to trust her.  So for months I was performing exercises designed to show me that my life was unmanageable.  I just didn't realize that was what we were doing. 

The exercise that caused me the most pain and suffering was so innocuous that I never suspected what I was in for.  I was told to perform one simple task: write down three things you love about yourself every day.  I rolled my eyes at this task, but when I sat down that first night to write down my three things I was in a quandary.  I couldn't think of a single one!  So I tried to go through my laundry list of achievements.  But no matter what achievement I looked at, I found a way in which it wasn't good enough.  I should have done better.  In the hour I sat there, I turned every last accomplishment I'd ever had into a personal failure, right down to my first place trophy for my seventh grade basketball team's undefeated season.  (Yes, I was digging that deep to find something to be proud of that I could love about myself.)  After running out of accomplishments, I then went to tear down every aspect of my physical appearance, from my wild curly brown hair to my big ugly feet.

That was the moment I made my first outreach call to a woman named Diane.  Looking back I almost feel sorry for that poor woman.  As soon as I verified who I was speaking with I broke down into a loud wailing sob and announced "I don't love anything about myself!"  It is to her credit that she didn't even miss a beat.  I can't remember what she said that day, but it was apparently exactly what I needed to hear.  After getting off the phone I sat down and came up with my three things I loved about myself.  1) My purple sparkly toenails (I usually have my toes painted).  2) The three freckles on my left foot that form a straight line diagonally across my foot.  3)  The way my wrists pop and I can make little popping sound music with them.  The next day, the cluster of freckles on my right leg that look like they could make a smiley face if you connected the dots was at the top of my list.  Of all my accomplishments, these were the things that I could identify as something I loved about myself.

Not once during the time with my first sponsor did I ever reach a point where something about my personality or my accomplishments was found on that list.  Yet still, I didn't see that my life was unmanageable.  I left program ten pounds lighter but no better off emotionally.  I got married.  Had a baby.  Lost the baby weight while nursing.  Then within a matter of months gained almost all of it back.  To put this in perspective, I weighed 230 when I got pregnant. I weighed 290 when I gave birth. I weighed 220 when I stopped nursing 6 months later, and 250 when I went back to OA 3 months later after having been completely incapable of keeping that weight from coming back.

Yet still, I wasn't ready to let go.  I thought to work the program on my own, and for two months I was able to maintain a personal abstinence while not getting any healthier mentally or emotionally and while only losing five pounds.  I realized I had to do something.  So I sought out my current sponsor and asked her to take me on.  As I discussed in my earlier post (here), I allowed myself to go off the deep end. 

I can remember the exact moment that I realized both my powerlessness and the unmanageableness of my life.  My husband and I were in Honolulu.  We had just eaten dinner and were walking back to our hotel.  I was quite full, but we had discussed getting Coldstones on the way back from dinner.  I didn't really want the ice cream, but seeing as how we'd already said we were going to get some I didn't feel up to backing out.  So I walked into the store not wanting the ice cream.  I ordered the ice cream - and not the smallest size either - thinking I would rather not have the ice cream.  Then, I proceeded to finish that ice cream while still thinking I don't want this.  I didn't enjoy the ice cream, I didn't want it, but I couldn't stop myself. I ate it anyway.

That night I stared up at the ceiling, unable to sleep, and thought.  The middle of the night is a terrible time to be alone with my brain.  I realized that I was going to die unless I could find some way to stop eating.  As the Big Book words it, I was finally licked.  That night I waved the white flag and knew hopelessness and despair like I had never experienced before.

I had finally taken the first step.

Chapter 1 - Bill's Story - page 1

"Here was love, applause,war; moments sublime with intervals hilarious.  I was part of life at last, and in the midst of the excitement I discovered [food]." - page 1

Growing up I remember my mother's valiant efforts to teach me reasonable eating habits.  Considering that she had her own issues with food, this was more a situation of the blind leading the blind.  Not that she is a compulsive overeater by any means, but she has had a conflicted relationship with food as long as I can remember.  Food was her great love and her great enemy, as she often showed with her almost religious dedication to exercise and dieting.  There wasn't a fad diet or crazy medicine she hadn't tried to help her fight what she saw as her own personal battle of the bulge.  That she never got beyond what someone might call a "normal" weight never mattered.  It was the fear of obesity that rode her back like a pitchforked demon.

So it was with a sense of wonder and awe that I discovered my first weeks in college that there was no one watching me.  No one cared what I ate or didn't eat.  I could binge on Fruit Loops for dinner and no one would even blink!  I had a cafeteria with a wealth of junk food round the clock to cater to my whims and fancies.  I was an adult with my own choices and mistakes to be made, and I discovered food in all its glutenous glory.  I slept at insane hours, shirked my classes as it pleased me, ate what I pleased, spent time with whomever I pleased - I was free at last.

That first semester I gained my freshman fifteen and then some.  I was out the gates and heading headlong into disaster with a smile on my face.

"I was very lonely and again turned to [food]." - page 1

All my life I have had a feeling that there is some part of me that's missing.  It's this gaping hole inside that I have tried to fill with success, love, excitement, sex, food, and even pain during my stint as a cutter. 

I can't say I've gone more than a week without some love interest or another since I was fourteen years old.  In those times when I didn't have some romance to moon over I was despondent.  I would starve myself, vomit up whatever I ate, and exercise like a fiend until I finally attracted a new boyfriend.  And then I would wait until the new rush passed before finding someone new, wait until the new relationship was a guarantee, and then leap between boyfriends.  I stayed with men I was no longer interested in so I would have someone there until I found the replacement because the thought of being alone was too terrible.

When I had my son, I felt like that missing piece had been filled and said "ah ha! This is at last the source of my problem!  I was missing my baby and never even knew it!" With that I promptly quit OA and went on to live my life as a normal person. But nine months later I was back in the program again.  My son does fill my life in ways that I never dreamed possible, but the fact remained that when he was in bed that gaping chasm would open up once more to swallow me whole.  Then I would turn to food once more to help comfort me.

But during those times when I didn't have someone to distract me from the loneliness I would eat and eat and eat.  I would go to multiple drive-thrus, ordering huge quantities of food until I had enough to feed a reasonable person for days.  I would even order extra drinks so that people at the restaurants would think I was ordering for multiple people.  But something tells me that a nearly 300 pound woman ordering multiple burgers, fries, onion rings, and deserts plus a few drinks wasn't going to fool them - especially if they happened to see the three other bags of fast food sitting on my other side.

So I picked food to be my solace all the while hiding away in my lonely little apartment so no one could see me eat away my loneliness.  The bigger I got, the more I turned to food - relationship or no relationship - to ease the emptiness inside.  Even after having had a gastric bypass I'd order food like before and then eat it slowly until all of it was inside my stomach.  I was never able to gain back all my weight, but it wasn't from lack of trying.  I would eat to the point of vomiting, clear my stomach, and then eat again in an unending cycle of binge and loathing. 

I would hate myself before I even started the binge, dread the feelings of misery that would result as I took each bite, but was completely powerless to stop myself. So even as I ordered the food I felt that sense of dread and self-hate, and wished I could just stop those words from coming out of my mouth.   But it was like I was a horrified passenger, along for the ride in my own personal never-ending nightmare.

"I fancied myself a leader . . . . My talent for leadership, I imagined, would place me at the head of vast enterprises which I would manage with the utmost assurance." - page 1

Feeling ugly as a child, I had to find another avenue for self-worth.  To that end, I focused on education as my key to making my family proud of me.  I was blessed that in high school and even in my undergraduate years I was able to excel in honors courses with little hard work.  It was the best of all worlds, bringing me accolades with little real effort.  By the time I decided to go to law school, I saw no reason why this should change. 

Of course I was wrong.  The thing about being at the top of your high school class is that you are the best in your little pond.  There has been no sorting of the students to give you real competition outside of your honors and advanced placement courses.  Then you arrive at college where in theory you are with the top students from high schools around the country.  But then you finish undergraduate studies at the top of your class and believe yourself to be one of the best and the brightest.  And you are.  You are selected for a top law program in the nation and you go there expecting to glide through that program as effortlessly as before.  Except there's one hitch.  You're now among the best of the best in the universities. 

This is a rarefied group where you are no longer a unique snowflake - you are just like everyone else.  And then the real sorting comes down to who is willing to work the hardest, because everyone is of about equal intelligence.  Those who are willing to make the most sacrifices are the ones who will win out in the grade pool.

So it was that after my first semester in law school I discovered that I was in the middle of the pack and in dire need of a place for my first summer internship.  These are already difficult positions to come by - all firms expect you to find something, but no one wants to hire you!  And I then realized that I was no longer a special snowflake, and my intelligence alone was not going to get me to the top of anything.  Unused to having to work hard, I floundered and I began to drown.

My ego took a deathly blow, and with it so too did my waistband.  While I had gained ten pounds from stress that first semester, in the next two years I would go on to gain another sixty pounds.  I went to grad school wearing a size fourteen and left wearing a size 24. 

The bigger I got, the worse my job prospects, and the worse my job prospects the bigger I got.  I tried crazy diets, all liquid diets, medically supervised diets, you name it. Nothing seemed to work!  I dieted and exercised like a fiend, and I don't really recall actually breaking the diets.  I could have sworn that I was giving it my all - exercising what I thought was herculean willpower.  But nothing helped.

I can still remember the day I went to the doctor at age 24 and heard that I would be dead by age 30 unless I got bariatric surgery.  I was reactive hypoglycemic and had what they called Metabolic Syndrome X.  Even if I was able to control my eating, my body was so broken, they said, that I was going to be unable to sustain meaningful weight loss without surgical intervention.  So it was with great remorse that I researched and ultimately had a rou-en y gastric bypass.

Preface - xxx-xxxii

The Doctor's Opinion

"These men were not [eating] to escape; they were [eating] to overcome a craving beyond their mental control." - pg. xxx

A lot of people associate binge eating with emotional comforting.  But I found, especially when the cravings were hitting me bad, that it didn't seem to be any particularly emotional or stressful time that was causing me to eat.  This was not the "I just got dumped" ice cream binge.  I tried to find justifications for the eating - I worked hard today so this is my reward, or I didn't get a lot of sleep so I'm eating to make up for being so tired, or I'm eating because I'm bored.  But the reality often was that I was eating because I constantly was thinking about food.  It had nothing to do with what was going on around me, but everything to do with the fact that I woke up thinking about food and spent the whole day fantasizing about what I was going to eat.  Then when it came time to eat I couldn't pick what I was going to eat so I ate it all.  Sometimes I ate to spite my parents, or to reward myself.  Often I ate even when I didn't want to because I just couldn't seem to stop myself!

"There is the type of man who is unwilling to admit that he cannot take a drink.  He plans various ways of drinking.  He changes his brand or his environment." - pg. xxx

I think for a while this was me.  I used to say I didn't have an eating problem - I just needed to try a different diet.  Once I got on the right diet I would stick to it and I would lose the weight and there wouldn't be a problem because if I gained a few pounds I'd just hop right back on.  But that's just not the case.

"There is the type who always believes that after being entirely free from [compulsive eating] for a period of time he can take a [bite] without danger." - pg. xxx

This was me after my first stint with OA.  I remember that after having had my son, I thought I was fine. I was losing weight while nursing and instead of thinking about food all day I was thinking about my baby and about how badly I wanted to sleep.  I thought I was cured!  Whatever chemical defect caused the binging was clearly fixed now that my body had "reset itself" with the pregnancy and I could live the life of a normal person again.  Yeah right. 

"Then there are types entirely normal in every respect except in the effect [food] has upon them. They are often able, intelligent, friendly people." - pg. xxx

This is probably me now.  I understand I have a problem.  I understand that I need to stay away from compulsive eating behaviors - I just can't do it alone.

"This phenomenon, as we have suggested, may be the manifestation of an allergy which differentiates these people, and sets them apart as a distinct entity.  It has never been, by any treatment with which we are familiar, permanently eradicated.  The only relief we have to suggest is entire abstinence." - pg. xxx

This is the cruel joke of food addictions.  You can live without alcohol.  You can live without nicotine.  You can live without heroine or cocaine or meth.  But you can't live without food.  I once thought I would be fine if they could just feed me through an IV. That would be perfect, or so I thought.  I'd never have to worry about what I ate and I would always get the exact nutrition I needed.  Except that isn't going to work.  Abstinence in OA terms is such a varying concept from person to person.  I heard a speaker say that their abstinence is reporting their food truthfully in an email to their sponsor.  Another person has a list of items he cannot eat.  My abstinence now involves eating a specific meal plan every single day.  There is no one "entire abstinence" that we can sign on for and be fixed.  All we can do is try our best to pick our sponsor and pick our abstinence and hope it makes a difference for us.

"He had lost everything worthwhile in life and was only living, one might say, to [eat]." - pg. xxxi

I found that when I was heaviest into the food I would isolate myself from the world.  I wouldn't talk to people, I wouldn't accept invites to events.  I would get food and sit in my room eating all day long.  I'd play video games or read books and try to shut out the world.  I wouldn't get dressed most days, and often would not even shower because then I'd have to see myself out of my baggy sleep shirt.  If I didn't see myself getting fatter, then there wasn't a problem.  I was an ostrich with my head in the sand, and my day involved eating and those things I had to do between meals.

"From a trembling, despairing, nervous wreck, had emerged a man brimming over with self-reliance and contentment." - pg. xxxi

This is the hope.  I am still that trembling, despairing, nervous wreck.  I am so anxious about my body and my weight and my food and my abstinence that I am a complete mess.  I want to be that self-reliant and content person.  I keep hoping and hoping that I will get there.

Preface - xxvii

The Doctor's Opinion

"We doctors have realized for a long time that some form of moral psychology was of urgent importance to [compulsive overeaters], but its application presented difficulties beyond our conception.  What with our ultra-modern standards, our scientific approach to everything, we are perhaps not well equipped to apply the powers of good that lie outside our synthetic knowledge." - xxvii

Had you asked me ten years ago if there were problems of health that medical science could not resolve, I would have said "no."  Even psychological problems could be solved through medication - or so I thought.  And I considered psychiatric treatment to be within the scope of medical science.  I figured that if there was something medical science couldn't cure today, that we would eventually find a way to cure it in the future.  And it is true there is a possibility that food addiction will be curable later on.  They are already making vaccines against nicotine and methamphetamine, maybe they will create a vaccine against whatever goes on with our brains as well.  But right now, this problem is not something that medicine can address - not that they haven't tried.

I remember the first thing my doctor did was try increasing my thyroid levels up slightly above the normal range.  When that didn't work, they tried giving me tablets that would curb my appetite.  Eventually when that didn't work, they gave me tablets that would bind to fat molecules and help me not absorb everything I was eating.  When that made me sick, they sent me to a nutritionist who gave me an insanely detailed diet involving weighing and measuring every bite of food - when that didn't work for the high school student I was at the time, they then tried signing me up for a personal trainer and exercise program.  Again that didn't work.  I have tried everything from a measured carbohydrate diet, to a no carbohydrate diet, to a low fat diet, to Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers, and even a liquid diet.  When nothing could help and I just got worse and worse, the doctor told me that I needed bariatric surgery.  I was reactive hypoglycemic and developing insulin resistance.  I was told that if I didn't get that surgery I'd be dead by thirty.  So I got the surgery and it didn't help.  Well, it didn't help much.  I was able to keep off a whopping thirty pounds.  That's it.  Of the over 100 pounds I needed to lose I was able to keep off thirty.

But I find the phrasing to be the most interesting part of this quote:  "moral psychology" and "synthetic knowledge."  Saying that the psychology involved in finding abstinence is "moral" in nature bothers me.  It suggests that there is something amoral about people who have addiction problems, and that just isn't the case.  We may have moral issues, but not by virtue of having an addiction!  Again it goes back to the nature of the malady being both physical and spiritual in nature.  If it were a purely physical or purely psychological or even purely spiritual problem, a solution would be far easier to find.  Referring to the medical science as "synthetic knowledge" is also fascinating. 

The practice of medicine is called a practice because it is more of an art than a science.  We test our medicines on people in a vacuum.  At least, as much of one as we can create.  There are always those people who are more sensitive or less sensitive than others.  And while there is a range of "normal" for locations of anatomy, not everyones heart is in the precise same location as everyone elses heart.  Sure the general location is correct, but it is the details that differ.  So anything we say we "know" about the body really is this artificial notion based on statistics and averages, as opposed to specifics.  The phrase "synthetic knowledge" seems to address both the imperfections of our medical knowledge - and imperfections of our ability to actually apply that knowledge to individual cases - and the fact that most of our remedies involve putting a foreign substance into our bodies.

"Of course [a compulsive overeater] ought to be freed from his physical craving for [food], and this often requires a definite hospital procedure, before psychological measures can be of maximum benefit." - xxvii - xxviii

Again it is the notion of mixing medicine and spiritual healing.  But I read this and wondered what exactly this would involve for a compulsive overeater.  There are bariatric surgeries, but that isn't exactly necessary.  Would this "definite hospital procedure" be the equivalent of our food plans?  Or are they referring more to the detoxification portion of weaning an alcoholic off of alcohol.  Considering that this was written in the 1930s, I'd be curious to learn what kind of hospital treatment that alcoholics received.

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Normally I should do five pages, but there is so much that called to me that I'd be up all night if I tried, so I'll return tomorrow for more!