Getting Honest

A STORY OF RECOVERY FROM FOOD ADDICTION

Getting Honest

Perspectives on Recovery

men in recovery, struggling

My wife had prepared and weighed my salad and said, “Here ya go.” It was time for me to add […]

My wife had prepared and weighed my salad and said, “Here ya go.” It was time for me to add my salad dressing. Earlier that day, the dinner I had committed to my sponsor included eight ounces of salad with one tablespoon of vinegar and oil for a fat. After measuring and pouring on my fat, I opened the refrigerator door and grabbed a bottled dressing and poured some on my salad, telling myself, “Nobody will know; it doesn’t matter.” My wife uses other things on her salad that I, as an abstinent person, would not; but I sprinkled some on my salad anyway and ate more by hand.

Over the years, I would do this time and time again. My dishonesty would mask itself but, being a man of integrity, it would always come back to haunt me in guilt. I would go to meetings where my fellows would speak of stringent honesty and it would just get to me. Eventually, I would have to confess to my sponsor and to the fellows in the group, “I’ve done it again, blown my abstinence.” For so long, I told myself, “This is the way it’s going to be for me. I’m not perfect, I make mistakes, I just need to accept myself.”

It’s just so crazy that, after 20 years in Overeaters Anonymous (OA), three years in 90-day OA, and now three years and three months in FA, I am finally 90 days abstinent. I’ve watched people come in and get this blessing from day one and lose half their body weight. I’ve seen them calm down and begin to smile, right before my eyes.

I’ve heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. Thank you God, I have stopped that insanity cycle, for today, and I realize that I don’t have to have that little bit of extra food. I was always so fearful and immensely insecure when I had to say that I’d broken my abstinence again. Now, I can be perfect with my food commitment.

I am so grateful for the loving people in this program, who didn’t say I couldn’t come back. Instead, they told me that today is a new day, that if I humbly ask God, he will help me, and that I just needed to keep coming back until the miracle happens.

More Stories

Weight Lifted

FA has taught me that in order to stop eating addictively, I have to face things I feel badly about. With the proven guidance of the Twelve Steps, I realized that I needed to make things right with my parents and my sister and her family. In the past, my self-centeredness never took a break. When I lived with my parents, I stole dessert mixes out of my mom’s yearly food supply and ate the jars of food she spent many hours canning. I ate specially prepared desserts and home-cooked meals and gifts meant for others. I snuck boxes of

Truth Be Told

I sat on my sofa and pressed the phone to my ear. I was angry. It was, one more time, hard to focus on a 90-minute telephone AWOL with FA members who have arrived at Step Two in this committed FA Twelve-Step study group. I have to choose a telephone AWOL since I am far away from any live AWOL meetings. I can’t wait for this call to be over. The abstinence is great, but these people are talking about insanity. It seemed as if everyone wants to be the most insane, sort of like an insanity competition. Do I

Atheist in Recovery

I weighed 270 pounds; my weight was rising quickly. I wouldn’t have called myself depressed, but I certainly wasn’t happy. I resented my family and felt that I had given up my dreams of being a writer and an intellectual in order to support my family, financially and otherwise. At any given moment, it seemed the only things that could make my life bearable were eating, watching movies, playing games on the Internet, or reading. I hated exercise, but that was the only thing slowing my weight-gain. I knew I couldn’t keep up the daily 5 a.m. boot camp much