It took me nearly seven months to get my first 90 days of abstinence. I came into FA desperate for help, but not for help with my weight (213.5 pounds and growing). I was resigned to being fat and was even resigned to being unhealthy. But I was not prepared to be crippled, to die, or to leave behind my two little children. And I was not willing to continue to abuse my children with my frustration, hopelessness, and rage. I wanted to change, but I didn’t know how.

I ended up at an FA meeting. I was late, shy, and I sat in the back of the room, cringing and covering my face with my hands. Too much of what was said in the front of the room resonated with me and made me uncomfortable. But while I knew very little about FA, I was sure that I knew enough to know that I didn’t want to do the program. Yet I came back the next week and the week after that. I would binge after each meeting, frightened by what I heard, afraid to hope, certain that I could never be one of those normal-sized people in the front, talking about change and about having a life second to none.

I gave up flour and sugar for three weeks. I promised myself that I would try the whole program if I started eating sugar again. I started eating sugar again, but I didn’t start the program. However, I kept going to the meetings and continued to sit in the back and listen. I truly believed that it couldn’t work for me—no way.  I was not ready to put down the food, the food that anesthetized me from the pain in my life.

Meanwhile, things in my life continued to deteriorate. My insomnia and my health were getting worse and I was screaming at my children more. Then one night, screaming wasn’t enough, and I threw a book against the wall. My eight-year-old screamed and threw a book against the wall herself. I shut myself in my room crying and promising myself that this would never ever happen again. The very next morning, I threw a chair.  That was it. I had reached the bottom. In that moment, I received the “gift of desperation.”  I was willing to do or surrender anything so that I might never do that again, so that I could get off this horrible path that, sooner or later, would cause me to raise my hands against my own children.

That night was the meeting. At the break, I left my corner in the back and walked up to one of the people who had spoken often and said, “I need help. Can you help me?”  And she did. When I spoke to her, my sponsor, I clung to her every word as a drowning person would cling to a lifeline.

After a few days of abstinence, I started sleeping. With sleep, everything got better. But about two months in, my self-will began to assert itself and I started to make little adjustments to “improve” my program.  Of course, I kept these adjustments to myself. I had a little black bag of things I was not sharing with my sponsor. Before I knew it, I was having dinner with some friends and was really distracted by their food. Instead of making a phone call, I thought to myself, I got this. That is the last thing I remember before finding myself face down in the food. I ate for six hours straight that night.

The next morning, my sponsor said we needed to investigate how this had happened. Over the next few weeks, I told her lots of things. I even told her dirty little secrets I was planning to take to my grave, but I didn’t tell her about my little black bag of secrets—I was willing to tell her anything, anything but those. And they continued to fester and poison me so I could not get clean around my food. It took about three weeks before I finally came clean. It was horrible to admit that I had been lying. It was awful to be that raw, that exposed, and that honest. But afterwards I felt as pure as clean, clear water.  Being honest meant that I didn’t have to think about food. I didn’t have to worry about food. No more debates, no more grey areas. If I had any questions, I asked my sponsor. I have learned that abstinence is not having to worry about my food anymore—at all, ever.

I had one more small break of abstinence, which I thought was no big deal. Then I realized that I was planning to keep it to myself. But I knew it was a break and I knew that if I wanted to continue to feel pure and have the freedom around food that comes with the honesty, I could not afford to keep a black bag of secrets from my sponsor. I immediately picked up the phone and talked and talked to my sponsor. I felt liberated, delighted to be starting again, delighted to be clean.

Two weeks ago I got my 90 days of abstinence. Every break, every mistake I’d made over the preceding months just further convinced me that I belong in this program and that this program is the only solution for me. As this has become clear to me, my body has shrunk, hope has grown, and what I had believed to be impossible became a reality. There I was, a woman standing at the front of the room talking about change, hope, and about being on the path to a life second to none.