In the few months before my first night in FA, I was full of good intentions, even asking God to help me to be “a good girl” throughout the day. I told myself each day that this was the day when I would begin to eat moderately—only when I was hungry. I reasoned that if I only ate when I was hungry, I might lose weight. As I was half-retired, working only mornings, I would come home, have a nap, and wake up around 3 p.m. ravenously hungry. The piddly crap I had eaten at lunch was long gone. Then I would walk up to the snack drawer, where we kept an arsenal of food that would have landed any squirrel in heaven. I would stand there and say to myself, “Okay, this is the point where I need self control. Help me God.” But my stomach would be rumbling, and the all-too-familiar voice inside my head would say, “Oh to hell with it.” And I would chow down.

I kept thinking that the only solution for me would be to go to prison, where I could be fed three square, balanced meals per day, without any snacks. Prison! I was that desperate. A part of me knew that I needed a regimented system, where I would be accountable to others for my food. It didn’t help me to make promises to myself—I didn’t respect myself enough to keep those promises. I loathed mirrors, shied away from all cameras, and hated myself for what I’d become. Didn’t I have two trim parents and one sibling who never had weight problems? Heavy and burdened with guilt and self-loathing, I’d sunk to lows that I had seldom touched in my life.

And, as for my promises and pleas to God, I have always known that God gives me a choice. But, the choice I always vied for was the “oh to hell with it” voice that I later came to understand was the addict in me speaking.

One day I bumped into a woman I hadn’t seen in 18 months.  She was half the size she’d been when I had seen her last. I asked a mutual friend of ours what her secret was, and she said, with joy and pride for her friend’s success, “Why don’t you give her a call, she’s starting a group here in town.” Despite the evidence before my very doubting eyes, it still took me two weeks before I had the nerve to call her. I knew that calling her would likely put an end to my daily orgies that helped me endure those late afternoon hours of hunger and cravings.

When I finally called the woman, I felt not the restriction I expected in my heart, but rather a liberating freedom. I thought, “This is a solution. I can, with God’s help, end this misery.” The meeting was the next night. My husband and I jokingly called our last meal before the meeting, “the last supper,” where we splurged on drink, fats, and starchy products—the only way we knew how to celebrate. I was acting like someone on death row. I honestly felt that my life was about to end.

I went to my first FA meeting with trepidation in my heart. I weighed 205 pounds. I didn’t want to see anyone I knew as I walked down the steps to the meeting in the church basement.  I was deeply ashamed to be resorting to an AA offshoot to help me address my weight problem. AA was just for addicts and losers, I thought. It was in desperation that I walked into that first meeting. But when I walked out, desperation had evaporated in the light of liberation.

When I got home the night of the first meeting, with a food plan in hand, I fell down on my knees to pray, something I hadn’t done since I was a young teen preparing for confirmation. Was it easy to kneel down to pray? No. It was physically painful, since arthritis and inflammation had taken permanent residence in my knees. It was emotionally painful to feel embarrassment when my husband saw me prostrate. But spiritually, it was a breakthrough.  Tears came to my eyes as I started to pray. I knew that it was God’s will for me to be in a healthy body. I cried and the release was so powerful.  Finally I felt some hope. My faith in the program was immediate. After all, hadn’t I met two wonderful people there who together had shed 300 pounds in the last two years, and kept them off?

In the past three months I have lost 30 pounds. I am at a weight that my husband has never seen me at before. He has reminded me on several occasions of how great l look. He also tactfully commented on the fact that I had stopped snoring. Instead of needing 10 hours of sleep per day, I was now functioning quite well with 7-8 hours, never needing a nap. And those difficult afternoon hours were filled with activities that I now had energy for—landscaping around our new house, sewing, filing my papers, and paying bills. These were activities that I didn’t have the energy for back in my food days. I also used these afternoons to make my outreach calls.

Today I am liberated from the hopelessness I felt before Program. I am liberated from having to decide on the spot what I am going to eat and free from the voice in my head that wanted me enslaved to my impulses. Does the voice still speak and tempt me to cheat or break my program? Yes. I am still having all kinds of food dreams, where I dream I had a break and still say, “Oh to hell with it”. But I wake from those dreams in relief that they weren’t real. I can hardly believe that today I have 91 days of abstinence in a row. What a miracle! Thank you God for leading me onto a path where I can make healthy choices and be supported in those choices by a loving, caring, experienced community.