Written Text Qualifications

Hi, I am [Anonymous], a compulsive overeater and I weigh and measure 3 meals from the Greysheet and DENMW.  I got abstinent on May 6, 2001.

I have a hard, long struggle with this disease.  For those of you who know me personally going back to the NY rooms I must admit, when I am strong, I am strong, and when I am weak, weak.  My biggest obstacle is the voice in my head that continually pops up and says, "Join the normal ranks of women and experiment with a new eating approach."  The other obstacle that has gotten my head in a funk, is the shame I felt w&ming with colleagues in public etc.

Anyway, the short version of why I am in GS today.
I was normal with food as a kid.  In fact, I fit in, was smart, even attracted lots of guys but I always felt different/superior and inferior at the same time.  I started dieting to lose 5 lb.  in high school.  I started isolating and reading Adele Davis books and reading sad poetry.  I started taking Modern Dance and growing sprouts in my closet in my bedroom.  Although I wasn't bingeing or starving yet, I was lost in a world of food, exercise, and depression.

I lost about 20 pounds and exhibited anorexic behavior.  I would eat about 200 calories a day.  I pulled myself out of high school because I was "too mature" for everyone else.  Shortly after my parents separated, something in me snapped and I remember my first food binge.  I ate and ate and ate and ate and the next day woke up thinking, "It is OK, I just won't eat today."

Well, that was the day (I lived in NJ then) I said good-bye to any type of normal relationship with food.  I was obsessed with food and weight from that day on.  My world and self-esteem collapsed.  All I thought about was dieting, losing weight, and being thin.  Every event - learning to drive, going to college - was shadowed with where I was with the food.  I failed my driving test having binged the night before, did terribly on SAT's even though I was a straight A student Honors because I binged the night before, etc.

My anger became outrageous.  I was sent to therapist/specialist for years and years searching for the answer to my anger and my bingeing.  I always thought I knew more than them.  I never got better.  I started drinking more and eating less, and those were the times I lost weight and thought I was getting better.  I read self-help books constantly and searched for the philosophy that would change me.  I graduated college after "anorexing" myself down to 90 lb.  freshmen year and up to 135 at graduation.  I never had one date in college.  I was a nutrition major.  Food and weight consumed me.

I got a great job when I moved back home.  I interviewed at 135 lb.  and by the time I showed up for the job I was 180 lb.  bingeing.  I alienated myself from friends.  I was always the pretty, thin one and I don't dare let anyone see me now.  I looked like an aging unkempt housewife.  Once when out with my Dad, the people at my table thought I was his wife, frump-pot that I was.  I was 21 years old.

I knew it wasn't about dieting.  I would sign up for a hospital program or weight watchers and not even be able to make the diet for a whole day!  I plopped $800.00 down in 1982 (probably would be $1500 today) and never did the diet for one day.   I was sent to Fair Oaks hospital for testing for lithium.  I was seeing psychiatrists twice a week.  I hated myself - I couldn't shower without pounding my body with self-hatred.

I moved to NYC and found out about OA.  I left the best job I have ever had because I was too good for them.  This was 1983.  I hated the 12 Steps at first but I was drawn to find out what all these people were doing coming back day after day.  I learned so much by being open.  In 1984 I got abstinent and my life started to change.  Abstinence was a loose version of committing food.  Somehow, someway, still drinking, and eating sugar I abstained for about four years from bingeing.  I would go to GS meetings for their positive pitches but thought everyone there had incredible willpower to diet.

I got married and started eating again.  I was smashed at my wedding.  I later binged on the wedding xxx that you are supposed to keep and freeze forever.  I fell into my usual pattern of finding some author or group that would tell me I could eat whatever I wanted if I figured out my feelings before I picked up.  My version of that was to eat and journal about what I was feeling, hoping next time it would be different.

I had spent years upon years in therapy reasoning my eating and never could stop when the urge hit.
Why do I believe over and over that this time it would be different?
I tried macrobiotics this time, going to OA meetings where eating was OK if you were working the steps, eating fat-free crap.  Everything worked for a couple of days.  Then smack down into the food again.

I finally went to a GS meeting in 1990 feeling I do this or die.  Needless to say I had little career skills built up, although in light of what just happened.  (I would like to say in an aside that I was a teacher/calligrapher and did do some work for Windows On The World and their renowned wine school.  I was pulling out my stuff yesterday and see that I had a talent and skill that I let go very readily.)   I walked into Greenwich House in 1990 and got abstinent.  I was elated.  The GS as given to me by my sponsor was NOTHING like the sheet of paper I had stared out and thought was a diet.  That has been my motto in life.  I size things up, judge them, and they could be totally different than I thought.  Contempt prior to investigation.

That abstinence was about passion for the GS.  I ate and met with GSers all the time.  I adored the food plan and loved the community.  But about a year and a half into my abstinence, I was at a large party.  I had a fruit at dinner.  I w&m'd my dinner but when it came time to pull out the fruit, I couldn't do it.  It seems so silly now but my thoughts are the things that can cripple my recovery.  So I kept waiting and waiting until I finally ate the fruit in the car on the way home - a good hour or so later.  I woke up with so much guilt and didn't connect with my sponsor that morning.  I just felt the nagging question.  I remember so clearly.  You mean food can kill me?  This is ridiculous.  And I tortured myself to prove that I could eat and not die.  And so I did.  The voices to not do GS are relentless.

It only took about 2 months for me to suffer enough and get back to GS with a new resolve.  Moving along.  About a year and a half later I moved to Florida, where there was no community.  I started one, didn't work, and put a lot of time into recovery.  I eventually met people, got a job, searched for a religion, searched for my perfect career/hobby, and was diving into depression again.  I hid w&ming from my coworkers.  I started lying in my personal relationships.  I wanted to drink and there I was after 4.5 years GS abstinent.  I was trembling in a restaurant and decided not to w&m.  So I didn't and that night I had 2 glasses of wine in a restaurant.  And since then I had been in a relapse.  That was 1997.  I have come back to GS several times and the most time accumulated was about 140 or so days.

When I came back this time, I had my daughter, about a month old, and I vowed that if I ever ate again, I would die.  I felt that - I barely could keep up with life and if I were eating I would fail totally.  I managed to "control" my food for a couple of weeks (eating sugar of course.) and one day I started in about 3pm and was up until 4am still eating and sneaking and stuffing it in.  I live in a small apartment and I had to hide food all over so my husband wouldn't see.  I was up around the clock with my daughter so all the waking hours I ran to the food.

I turned over my food the next morning.  I have w&m'd since that day and have faced many No Matter Whats - mostly in my brain - to keep abstaining.  Exercise magazines are like a drug to me.  Looking at perfect bodies slip me into false thinking.  Wanting to be normal will always plague me.

There is nothing like the serenity I feel when I am facing God each and every time I use a scale, cup or tablespoon.  I do cup my food.  I find that more peaceful.  We have a meeting here again; sometimes I sit there alone.  I did stay sober since May 1998.  I divorced in 1998 and am now married to a recovering alcoholic.

I never understood the word ONE as I do now.  This is truly one meal at a time for me.  Sometimes one second.  My biggest No Matter What is the fantasy that one day it could be different.  That absolutely has to be smashed.

IDGS NMW
Anonymous
Boca Raton, Florida