There are many things that I am grateful to have lost since stopping eating addictively. I am grateful to be without the depression that I’d experienced most of my life, the regular anxiety and crippling fear, and 38 pounds of excess body weight, to name a few.
More than anything, I am happy to have lost the voices. When I was trapped in the cycle of addictive eating, the voices in my head were so loud: “Eat me! Eat me! Just this once. You know your willpower will break eventually, so you might as well eat it now.” Sometimes these phrases would repeat over and over in my head like a chant until I gave in and ate. After that, different voices would chime in: “You are such a loser, “You’ve amounted to nothing,” and “You are hopeless, you might as well kill yourself,” were some of the things the voices said. Sadly, I believed that most of what I heard in my head was true.
This summer, my family went to a major league baseball game. My younger brother, age 10, had never been to an MLB game before. It was so exciting. He was thrilled by the perfectly manicured, bright green field, and he was excited about the players. He was excited about the food. And, oh, was there food! The food vendors came walking up and down the aisles peddling their items. As they did, they’d shout, at full volume, the name of what they were selling: “Flo-ur! Get your flo-ur here!” and “Sug-ar! Sug-ar! Four dollars each…sug-ar!”
Well, it had been some time since I’d been to a baseball game, and I’d never been to one during the one year and eight months that I’d been abstinent. I was surprised that the food was everywhere and in such abundance. Even more surprising was that, amazingly, I did not have the desire to eat it! I had eaten my weighed, measured, committed abstinent meal at my dinnertime and I was done eating for the night. I knew that eating the baseball-stadium food was not an option, so I did not let myself entertain the thought of what those foods used to taste like or be like, not for a moment. For a food addict like me, that would be playing with fire. Some of those foods used to be my favorites. I couldn’t afford to fantasize about my drug.
While I was sitting there in the stadium with my younger brother, Dad, and step-mom by my side, on that beautiful summer night, something miraculous happened: I enjoyed the baseball game without food or drinks. I could pay attention to the game. I could call a pitch as a ball or a strike before the umpire’s decision was shown on the scoreboard. I stood up to do “The Wave” with the crowd and sang, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” I could pay attention, enjoy myself, and have fun. I sat under the bright lights and whispered, “Thank you. Thank you so much, God, for this. Thank you for my family. Thank you for my priceless abstinence.”
And then I heard it again: “Su-gar! Su-gar! Get your…Su-gar here!” And I said another prayer, “Thank you God that those loud voices are not mine today!”
At least the voices yelling about the food would stay behind when the game was over; I don’t have them stuck in my head anymore. That is freedom. And I owe my freedom from the food obsession to the program of FA, where I learn from showing up for my fellows, my meetings, and the suggestions given to me by a sponsor, who gives me her time as a gift every day. Finding FA was like hitting the grand slam of a lifetime!