Food Addicts In Recovery Anonymous

Nineteen years old, 245 lbs., and completely out of control with food, I could not get it together to apply to colleges, get my driver’s license, or even get out of bed. Lonely and depressed, “eh, whatever” became my mantra. Even after losing 100 pounds in Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA), I still treated my program as a diet. When I started to put weight back on, I got honest and became serious about recovery. Since then, I have grown up in FA. My professional and personal lives have flourished. I’ve handled jobs with increasing responsibility, met my husband, moved to a new state, and bought a house. Today, I live in gratitude – sharing this program with others as it was so generously shared with me.

On the outside, she would light up a room with smiles and positive energy. A competitive athlete who also had a penchant for traveling the world, her life looked like a dream. On the inside, however, she was plagued with deep insecurity and anxiety from a young age. When poor body image crossed paths with always wondering if she would ever fit in, she began to exercise excessively to make up for the large quantities of food she was consuming. She looked great in a bikini but was binging her way around the world. She was miserable while training for marathons because she was so busy obsessing about food, constantly baking for friends, and wondering why others loved her when she didn’t love herself. Only in Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) did she see the extent of her exercise bulimia. She committed to recovery in FA and finally took the time to find her true self. In FA she found love, first for herself, and then with a life partner. After facing fertility issues, their daughter was born – something she had never dreamed would be in her future. Today her life is lived in gratitude and service to others, giving back what she has so generously been given.

Fueled by willpower, high moral standards, and determination, I successfully controlled my weight for extended periods. However, by my early twenties, my eating was out of control and I was overweight and hopeless. After each 10,000 calorie binge, I would curl up in bed crying in pain and swear this would be the last time, knowing I could not stay stopped. I tried therapy to deal with my overeating, but never told my psychiatrist the quantities I ate. Yoga, meditation, running, working out at the gym, and acupuncture could not stop me from eating food from the trash and bingeing in café restrooms. Only when I admitted total failure and became willing to follow the clear suggestions of my Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) fellowship did I experience relief in the form of recovery. What keeps me in FA after years of abstinence? A life of self-reflection and sanity is far better than living in the emotional and physical misery of food addiction. (Recorded Live)

Over time, she went from being a picky eater, to an under-eater, to an emotional eater, to a binge eater. After getting sober in another 12-step program, her eating got completely out of control, and she realized she was still practicing a lethal addiction. To control her weight, she trained at the gym at 4am, spent money on herbal concoctions, and listened to subliminal meditations. After joining the military and facing regular body weigh-ins, she risked losing promotions. When she found Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA), she experienced success, but she left the program and got back into eating addictively. When she returned to FA with a new focus on honesty, commitment, and the 12 Steps, her journey of recovery evolved from “I have to” to “I want to.”

I’d heard about Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA), but at my first meeting, when I didn’t see anyone who looked like me, I assumed no one there would understand my culture. I had gained and lost 50 to 100 pounds over and over again, and kept trying diets, extreme exercise, weight loss gurus, positive affirmation coaches, and bulimia. I even had a high-risk lap band surgery. Nothing worked. I was so full of self-hatred, I called myself “the lap band loser.” When I met another Person of Color who assured me that if they could do the FA Program, so could I, miracles began. No one in FA asked me how many miles I ran or if I counted calories; they asked me what I was grateful for. Today, I can be honest about who I am, inside and out. I have a sponsor, a host of friends, and a Higher Power who loves me. Most importantly, in FA, I am learning to love myself. (Recorded Live)

Battling the war with food and dieting for 20 years, this African-American woman was constantly looking for anything on the outside that could make her feel better on the inside. An overachiever, she could work highly demanding professional jobs, shoving down caffeine and sugar. On weekends, she holed up at home in her bathrobe, ordering takeout and feeling suicidal. Nothing at the grocery store or in a restaurant was enough. No food was bringing her freedom – only more pain. When she found herself losing the ability to make sound moral judgments, she got scared. When she went to her first Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) meeting at age 25, she found a simple, straightforward program that included talking to long-time FA members, reading the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and prayer. Living an amazing life today, she knows that only a powerful program of recovery can beat the disease of food addiction. (Recorded Live)

Diabetes ran in this Black woman's family, so she understood that amputation, blindness, heart attack, and stroke were real dangers as long as she continued to eat addictively. Nevertheless, she was stunned when her doctor prescribed insulin for the rest of her life. In recovery, she found a new way to approach eating and food that supported rather than destroyed her health. Healthy and insulin-free today, she takes great joy in sharing her story so that others may also recover.

She was intensely driven by obsession with self and the perfect body. Dieting left her miserable, with the perennial question, “What do you do after the diet?” Once she found her way to Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) years of misery ended in a flash, and she now has the resiliency and capacity to deal with life that she never had before.

Se pasó años buscando una solución a su sobrepeso, sin saber que era adicta a la comida. Repetía patrones familiares poco saludables. Su crecimiento en el programa fue lento hasta que pudo dejar de mentirse a sí misma y a sus seres queridos. Es una historia de transformación, de vivir en la sombras a vivir con integridad.

At work, with a file cabinet packed with food, he created concoctions at his desk. After work, he hit the vending machines. Expensive diets, gadgets, subliminal audiotapes, metabolism boosters, weight-loss programs; nothing helped until he heard, “Just go to an FA meeting.”