When I came to this program over 12 years ago, I was a “free spirit.” I was (and still am) a freelance musician, with places to go and people to see. I didn’t want anything to hold me down from being able to get up and go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I wanted to eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I didn’t want to do my laundry or clean my home. I never wanted to make plans with friends, in case something better came along.
Well, nobody was more surprised than I was how I took to the structure and discipline of the FA program like a duck to water. I wasn’t too keen on weighing and measuring, because I was sure there must be a more “natural” way, but I was willing and full of relief. For the first time ever, I didn’t have to figure out if I had eaten enough or too much. I just ate what was in front of me and my sponsor said it was right. I loved writing down my food, because that meant I no longer had to spend untold hours in front of the refrigerator trying to figure out what I felt like eating, only to give up and spend more money in some fancy restaurant or take-out place. I enjoyed taking quiet time first thing every morning. I had always wanted a spiritual practice, but hadn’t the foggiest idea about how to go about that.
Before FA, I was fat and proud. I couldn’t figure out how I got fat, because I thought I didn’t eat that much. It was within my first couple of weeks in FA when my personal myth of not having been a person who “ate that much” got shattered. It was also during that time that the true nature of my obsession with food was revealed to me.
I had never had to sit through the discomfort of a food thought before. In my disease, if I got a food thought, I acted on it. I didn’t rest until I got that food. I missed whole mornings of classes during college, hunting for the magic food that called to me. I shopped for ingredients meals that would fix a wounded relationship. It was all in the name of “taking care of myself.”
As you can imagine, life is uncomfortable when your head is constantly full of food thoughts. I often share at my meetings that I was not an “instant neutral” around the food. But I clung to the tools my sponsor had given me. I ran up my phone bill (there was no such thing as unlimited long distance then), and I asked God for help. I had no experience in asking God for help, but that’s what she told me to do, so I did it. Sometimes I said, “God, please help me through the next 60 seconds without eating.” The 60 seconds would pass, and I had something to be grateful for.
That’s how it started for me, one minute at a time. The minutes added up to hours, days, weeks, months, and years. I still need to keep things one day at a time. In 12 years, I’ve had my share of bumps and bruises, and I know that all I have is one day. What a gift to have a chance to remember those first 90 days, where I learned to keep it simple and find freedom in discipline.