I came into Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) when it was 90-Day OA (Overeaters Anonymous) for one reason only—to lose weight. At 5’2” and 200 pounds (about 91 kilos) at my heaviest, I thought if I could only lose “a little” weight, everything would be great. The rest of my life was fine, thank you very much. Denial was working!

Never having been to a Twelve-Step meeting before, this program was nothing more than another diet and I had a lot of experience with diets. You name it, I tried it. From the time I was a teenager, I had been on one diet or another. Weight Watchers, Diet Workshop, Cambridge Diet, Slimfast, cabbage soup, grapefruit, Atkins, counting calories, low carbohydrate, diet pills, shots, hypnosis, acupressure, and on and on. Almost every diet worked the first time I tried it, but once I lost a little weight I went back to eating the old way and I was in trouble. The weight came back on in a flash and I could not stop eating.

I was searching for the magic bullet—a way to eat my brains out and be thin. I never wanted to stop eating, especially flour and sugar. Flour, sugar, fat and salt were the mainstays of my daily eating. My thoughts were consumed with food and everything related to it. Was I going to eat today or was I going to be “good?” Was this a diet day or a fasting day? How long could I put off eating? What was I craving? How much would I allow myself today? Which stores was I going to stop at? Could I get someone to go to a restaurant with me? Of course, I couldn’t go alone! What recipe was I going to make? Was I going to bake? And on and on it went. My brain never shut off. I was obsessed with food and everything about it.

Today I know flour and sugar are drugs for me, but back then I had no idea. No one had ever told me I had an allergy to flour, sugar and quantities. No one had ever suggested I might be a food addict. I had never heard the words food and addict in the same sentence.

Freedom today is knowing I am a food addict. I am allergic to flour, sugar and quantities, plus a few other personal binge foods. They are drugs for me. Weighing and measuring my food gives me a freedom I never had. I was always craving whatever it was I wasn’t eating. I couldn’t wait for whatever diet I was on to be over so I could start eating “this” or “that.” Most times the diet was over long before the weight ever came off. Especially once they started making diet frozen sugar products or diet desserts. A whole box became a serving.

The difference for me today is that FA is not a diet. It is a way of life. As soon as I stopped eating flour, sugar and quantities, the cravings disappeared. Unfortunately, that was not on the first day I came into Program. It took me several years to finally put the food down, surrender and start working the program as it was meant to be worked. I got out of the driver’s seat, stepped to the back of the bus and let my Higher Power drive.

Thank God I didn’t leave Program during those first few years. Something kept me here. Today I know it was the grace of my Higher Power. When I started getting down on my knees morning and night every day, asking for an abstinent day in the morning and thanking God at night, I got what I asked for. I started using every tool daily, not just the ones I wanted to use. I wrote my food down every night and I didn’t change it on a whim.  I surrendered my cookbooks, baking pans, baking ingredients and everything I had used to “play with my drugs.”

I got to the place where I wanted to be abstinent more than I wanted to eat. I wanted recovery. I wanted what those who were abstinent, especially long-term abstinence, had. Not only was my body changing, my mind was, too. The constant noise in my head started to shut off. My life started getting better and, oddly enough, everyone in my life was getting better. All because I put my food on the scale and did what I was told. I didn’t know how it was working, but I knew it was.

I joined an AWOL (A Way of Life, a study of the Twelve Steps.) I worked each step as it came, one step at a time. I walked through my fears and found there was nothing to fear. I discovered that everything I ever needed was on the other side of my fear. I completed my first AWOL and my life got better. I found recovery and I craved more and more.

I don’t take this program for granted. I treat it as if it is the greatest gift I have ever been given, because it is. I work this program as it is suggested to me. I don’t try to rewrite the program according to my wants or desires. This program has changed my life. Every relationship in my life is better. It’s a program for those who want it, and I want it.  I’ve tasted recovery and I want more of it.