Written Text Qualifications

I am [Anonymous], a compulsive eater.  Today I weigh and measure three meals a day off the Greysheet, write them down and call them into my sponsor.  I do this without exception, and abstinence is the most important thing in my life today.  It wasn't always like that though.

What It Was Like

Only through being abstinent can I see things for how they really were and are.  I grew up in a family that had no boundaries.  My dad is a 'rage-aholic'.  My mom is a raging co-dependent and chronic dieter.  I never learned how to deal with life on its own terms because they never learned.  My parents had no faith in a Higher Power, but they had fear of a Higher Power.  Every good thing in life was chalked up to the fact that something terrible was going to happen in the near future.  We never enjoyed the moment.  Every bad thing that happened was because we were "sinners" and did something wrong to be punished by "God."  I learned that life was built on regrets of the past and the doom of the future, not about living in the moment.

The first time I can remember using food to comfort myself was when I was in second grade.  I was supposed to go on a picnic on a Saturday morning with some friends and was waiting for them to come by and pick me up.  Well, they were about an hour or so late, and I was starting to feel rejection and sadness.  I was so looking forward to this picnic because my friends were what made me.  Without friends I was nothing.  I played the tapes about how I must have deserved it for some reason in my head and started crying.  My dad didn't know how to deal with his own feelings, so when his child was having feelings, he certainly didn't know how to deal with that.  So he said the phrase that I know a lot of us have heard:  "Stop crying, or I will give you something to cry about."  So what did I do?  I proceeded to go in the kitchen and eat my lunch that I was going to eat for the picnic.  The food was there to comfort my sadness.  Food would never run away from me.  Food wouldn't abandon me.  Food would love me.  Or so I thought.

Well, an hour or so after I ate my lunch, my friends finally showed up.  Problem:   I don't have my lunch to take on the picnic.  Dad is furious that I ate it.  Friends are angry because they came all the way over, and I am not ready.  Never mind the anger and abandonment I was feeling because my friends were 2 hours late.  Eventually my dad made me another lunch, and I went on my picnic and proceeded to tell them how sorry I was for causing all the trouble.  I told them how stupid I was for that.  Forget asking them why they were late.  I had such low self-esteem that everything was my fault.  Well, I ate my second lunch to drown my feelings of self-loathing and regret for eating the first lunch.  That is the story of my eating:  eating today to forget about the eating I did yesterday.

One of the first bad body image experiences I remember that really affected me was when I was in sixth or seventh grade.  I had a friend who had an older sister who was just out of high school.  I thought she was very pretty, and I was just beginning to be attracted to girls.  I had a crush on her, so her opinion was the most important thing a person could say to me.  One day I went over to his house and his sister was there.  I had taken my shirt off on my walk over there.  She saw me and said something like "Look at those love handles."  I asked my friend what that meant.  He said, "It means you're fat."  She started arguing with him that that is not what she meant, and he was saying that it was, too, and blah, blah, blah.  By that time, I wasn't paying attention to them.  I was just going over in my head that she just told me I am fat, and that was the most crushing thing that she could have told me.  My father would call me a "fat slob" all the time, and it never had the effect that her comment had on me that day.  From then on, I was conscious of being fat.

Food was my best friend after that.  It would never tell me I'm fat.  It would just comfort me and let me forget that I was fat.  The power that food has to make one forget is amazing!
I continued to eat.  I continued to gain weight.  I continued to get physically, emotionally, and spiritually sicker.  I was over 200 pounds, stuffing my emotions, and had no faith in a Higher Power.

I had a point in my life where I thought I found an answer.  I was about 17, and I lived about 12 miles from where I worked.  My parents were tired of taking me into town all the time, so I had to find a way to get to work.  I got a bicycle and started riding to work and back.  I was taking a shower one day after work and noticed that I had lost some weight.  I hadn't changed any of my eating habits so what could it be from?  It dawned on me that it must be from the bike riding.  So, being the compulsive person I am, I started riding 30 to 60 miles a day.  Rain or shine, I was out there riding.  I could continue to eat if I just rode my bike enough.  Especially if I binged.  I remember riding in an ice storm because I felt I had eaten too much and I was fat and needed to work it off.  But that was all I knew at the time.  I was fairly skinny and that is what made me a human being.  The only way I knew how to get that was to ride.

I met my wife when I was 18.  We knew each other from a mutual friend.  We started hanging out together and going out to eat together.  We eventually started dating and we got married when we were 22.  She was my eating buddy.  I found the perfect life partner.

By the time we got married, I had stopped compulsively riding and was starting to gain weight again.  I had also made a career out of my compulsion.  I became a chef.  I learned how to make all the food I loved to eat (and lots of it).

I have tried other ways besides compulsive exercise to control my weight.  When I was 22, my wife and I went vegan (no animal products).  That worked for a while.   But they make vegan X food.  I still ate as much as I was before.  So when something came up, whether it was stress, anger, fear, happiness, sadness, or just plain boredom, I turned to the food.  That was what life was like for me before coming to Greysheet.

What Happened

When I was about 26, I went to my doctor to get some regular blood work done.  When I went to get the results of the blood work, the doctor asked me if I was drinking.  I hadn't had a drink in about 4 years at that time so I told him no.  He told me my liver enzymes were elevated and my cholesterol was very high, much too high for a man my age.  The food was just like alcohol in my body.  I was causing damage to my liver just by the way I was eating!  He told me to lose some weight and watch what I eat.  I wasn't ready to give up eating the foods I was eating.  Food was still "fixing" my feelings.  I wasn't willing to give up the food even though it was killing me.  This went on for about 5 more years with the doctors telling me that I needed to lose weight and change the way I ate every time I went to see them.

Another big thing happened with the food and me.  It stopped working.  I would eat to change the way I felt.  One day, I was eating to fix myself, and when I was done, feelings were still the same.  No matter what I did, I couldn't change the way I felt with food anymore.  I was angry at the food for not fixing me.  It let me down.  The food didn't love me anymore.  I would be so disappointed every time I went out to get my favorite X-rated food.  I took it out on everyone else, too.  It was everyone else's fault, not mine.

When I first met my wife, she had been doing Greysheet.  But by the time we started dating she was runnin' and gunnin' again.  One day she told me that she was going to go back to Greysheet.  I was angry and frustrated with this.  I was losing my eating partner.  I told her that I wasn't going to do it, but I would support her if she needed it.  I noticed that she started losing weight so I started doing Greysheet too.  The problem was, I was doing it on my own.  I wasn't calling my food into anyone, I wasn't going to meetings, and I wasn't working any Steps, that's for sure.  I was soon back to eating X-rated foods before too long.  The only thing that eating Greysheet food did for me at that time was help me lose about 40 pounds.  But I gained that back within weeks of starting to eat again.

It wasn't until I was willing to give up the food that I really got into the program.  It is often said that this is a program for people who want it, not for people who need it.  Not until I was willing to surrender, not until I was willing to let go, not until I wanted a new way of life did Greysheet start working for me.

What It Is Like Now

By the grace of my Higher Power I have 15 months of back-to-back Greysheet abstinence.  Through weighing and measuring my food I'm learning to have boundaries around food.  I have learned how to deal with the feelings that have come up, now that I am not eating, through working the 12 Steps.  I am learning how to use some spiritual principles, instead of acting out my character defects.  I learned that even though I lost 60 pounds, I still saw myself as fat.  It wasn't until I started practicing loving myself and accepting myself for who I am that I learned to let go of the weight.  I am powerless to control my weight.  So I let my Higher Power and my sponsor do it for me.

A friend of mine says that he is here by "God's grace and mercy" and that this does not confuse him.  I used to wonder why he said this.  I understand why now.  I also believe the same thing.  It is only through grace that I am here today.  I have a loving Higher Power in my life today.  I can hear my Higher Power today.  It talks to me through the people that are in my life today.  I try to do my Higher Power's will today.  Today I try to do what I need to do to be responsible, not what I want to do.  There are a lot of things I want to do but, if it isn't my Higher Power's will, then I don't need to be doing it!

I have some wonderful relationships in my life today.  I love my wife more than ever.  I feel we have an honest relationship today built on trust and communication.  We talk more now than we ever have.  I am learning to set healthy boundaries with her and others in my life, and through that it makes my relationships with others stronger.  I never would have thought by letting the people I love know how I feel that it would make our relationships stronger.  I am learning my limitations today and learning to be humble enough to let people know them, too.  Today, I love myself thanks to Greysheet, the 12 Steps, and my Higher Power.

On April 18, 2006, [Anonymous] celebrated five years of back-to-back GreySheet abstinence!