Before FA, Thanksgiving meant one thing: food. As a kid I did not understand the appeal of Thanksgiving foods, but that didn’t stop me from overeating along with everyone else. Growing up, I was overweight, and by the time I graduated from college at 22, I was 206 pounds (about 93 kilos). Since I wasn’t a fan of the main course dishes, the desserts became a larger and larger part of the holiday excitement for me. As I got older, I began to enjoy the recognition I got from making complex, intricate desserts. I remember taking helping after helping of leftover sweets for days after the meal. If it was there, I felt a compulsion to get rid of it, by eating it myself! It called to me, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. 

When I got to graduate school, I started trying to control my weight. I became vegetarian in a vain attempt to control my food, so my mom added a non-meat dish to the meal to accommodate me. While she was making an extra dish just for me, I would leave her cooking at home and go to the gym to work out for as long as I could before we ate. I would fight my desire to have dessert, but I always had to have a little bit, which incited the craving for more. I was calorie counting, so I fought my urge to binge and the leftovers seemed to last forever. It was torture. 

I remember my first Thanksgiving in FA because I was so scared in the days leading up to it. What would happen? How would I feel? My family set the holiday meal at 3pm, so I talked with my sponsor, and we decided I would have my weighed and measured meals before and after the rest of my family ate. What would I do during the meal? I talked about it on my outreach calls. One person told me that when she sat with other people while they ate, it helped her to remember to look at their eyes and not their plates. Another told me that she took advantage of not eating and made it a point to get up and get people what they needed, like water refills or more napkins, while her family sat comfortably eating at the table. 

When the day arrived, I was surprised. I woke up to have my weighed and measured breakfast, and I realized it was just another abstinent day. I made plenty of outreach calls that morning before my family members arrived. I had my weighed and measured meals as planned, and during the holiday meal, I appreciated the time I had to talk to my family members and to serve them when they needed things from the kitchen. I was able to be truly present with them, because I wasn’t thinking about how much I could eat or when dessert was going to come. I weighed and measured my next meal from leftovers while I was helping to put things away, and I ate my dinner at an appropriate time.

For my first two years in the program, holiday meals were always at 3pm. As I got a healthy distance from the food, these holiday meals got easier and easier for me. I enjoyed having the time to spend with my family and I didn’t mind sitting with them while they ate. In the years since that first Thanksgiving, however, another member of my family has come to FA, so now we have our holiday meals at normal meal times. We cook abstinent dishes, which the family loves, and non-FA folks take care of the holiday treats. More importantly, my Thanksgivings are now about gratitude and not about the food. I am grateful for my abstinence, for my family, and for the new life I have in FA!