When I came into Program, I weighed 187 pounds. I had been overweight since I was nine years old, and although I always wanted it to be different, I really couldn’t see how it would be. I long ago figured out that diets didn’t work.

I grew up in an abusive household. It was crazy, violent, and strictly religious. My mother, though, was my angel. She was almost a child herself; she had me when she was 16. She did her best to care for us under my stepfather’s repressive regime. My brother, sister, mother and I were all being abused by him. When I was nine, I woke up one morning and my mother had gone. She couldn’t take it anymore and fled, fearing for her life.

I don’t remember being fixated on food before that time, or being self-conscious about my weight. Maybe I was, but maybe, as people say, I was born an addict. I only know that I defiantly became one, and that from the age of nine, until 99 days ago, much of my energy was consumed by eating, or thinking about eating.

In my mid-teens, I lived with my mum and her new husband. I would get home from school and cook myself a full meal, and then have another one when my parents got home. Food was always a big thing. We never had much money, but there was always enough to buy a bar of something sweet.

I always enjoyed eating quickly. My ideal would be a bowl of savoury food, cut small or mashed up, ready to gobble up with a spoon. I liked the feeling of my throat being full until I was almost choking. I would eat with the TV or radio on, never being present for my meal.

For a long time, as a result of the abuse, I didn’t have much feeling in my body and so I could never tell when I was full. In fact, I spent my teens trying to be as numb as possible, using alcohol, smoking pot, and taking pills. In time, one by one, I managed to give those things up. But with food it was different.

By my twenties, I was getting healthier. I faced my past with regular therapy, and I reported my abuser to the police. I wrote a book about my experiences and got it published. I achieved so much, and yet at every single meal, I would make the wrong choice for myself. I would always overeat, every time! Often the food I was eating would have been healthy, had I eaten normal amounts of it, but I’d sit down and eat a whole pot of something from the health food store. Holidays with my family were physically painful. I couldn’t help dipping my hand in tins and boxes of sweets until I literally made myself sick.

It wasn’t until a few months ago, at the age of 32, that I began to think of my eating as addictive. I always figured that I ate a lot, and that it was understandable because I had experienced a hard life.

By the time I was 30 years old, things started looking up. I’d fallen in love, was living in a beautiful home, and was being encouraged by my partner to pursue my dream and write a novel. And yet, I still overate at every meal. Life wasn’t hard anymore, but I couldn’t put the food down. As much as I loved my partner, I sometimes wished he’d go out so I could eat the way I liked to, in private.

As my relationship with my body slowly healed, I began to be able to feel the damage I was doing. Every night in bed, my stomach hurt from being full, and I felt despair because I knew I would do the same thing the next day.

I calculate that there were about eight days between my first thinking, “I’m a food addict,” and seeing a flyer for FA posted to a wall in a café. I went along to a meeting, and joined the programme shortly after that.

It has been a very, very difficult time. At first I battled with cravings, then worse… I battled with having to feel my emotions. But there’s some energy that’s keeping me here, even as I kick and fight. There’s a steadying hand that seems to know what to do. I’ve lost 23 pounds and gained some lovely new friends. And best of all, when I go to bed, I feel clean and present, not weighed down with sugar, flour, and guilt. I used to know what the next day was going to bring. Now anything could happen.