Shades of Grey - Spring 2001 Issue

This is where the recovery process begins.  This step talks about how we must make an admission of hopelessness, and how difficult that is for some of us.  There are those for whom it is difficult because of our egos.  We are high functioning people in other areas of our lives and we can’t say we are helpless.  After all, aren’t we very accomplished in...?  I was one of these folks, and it wasn’t until I had been completely defeated by this disease, when I couldn’t go but any hour or two without my substance, that I finally surrendered to this simple program recovery.

There are also those of us who have been abstinent for a while and we become too comfortable with our abstinence.  We forget about the fact that we have a disease.  We forget that the life we have is a gift of abstinence.  We reduce our meeting quota.  We reduce our complement of sponsees.  We have a life!!!  I am also one of these.  I need to constantly remind myself that my life is a gift of this program.  It is very special and very precious.  It is also very delicate and requires great care to maintain it.  I have times when this is hard and I am grateful to my many program buddies who remind me that we all need each other and that I will never be cured.  I can only arrest this disease with the constant practice of this beautiful program.

Gary G., New York City, N.Y.

My abstinence is three weighed and measured meals a day from the Grey Sheet with nothing in between but coffee, tea or diet soda.  Thanks to my Higher Power’s grace, I have been abstinent since May 30, 1981.  Abstinence is the most important thing in my life without exception.  Without abstinence my relationships with people and with God are so much less because my focus is on food or dieting.  In all circumstances of life, I consider my abstinence first.  My abstinence has upheld me during my life’s problems and crises.  There have been times I have felt that my abstinence was a life raft in the storms of life.

I try to safeguard my life raft in many ways.  Meetings keep me in touch with my reality.  Meetings show me the cunning, baffling and powerful voices with which my disease can speak to me.  As I listen to pain in the voice of a newcomer, I remember my pain.  It is so easy to be removed from my pain and to become overconfident.  When I see someone return to Greysheet having gained 100 pounds and hear that there was not another answer out there, I am reminded that abstinence is "the easier, softer way."  I always say something at meetings, even if only to identify myself.  I don’t want to be a member who never speaks, who never feels a part of the group, and who goes back out to eat.  I volunteer to lead meetings occasionally because I need to hear my own story.  I need to share my life’s experiences so that we may all live free of the slavery to food.

I always have a sponsor.  I commit my food in to my sponsor every day at our agreed upon time.  I am open with my sponsor, telling her what’s going on in my life and how I feel about it.  I call in any necessary food changes.  Any question about my food is always brought to my sponsor.  I can make decisions about my sponsees’ food, but I am powerless over my own food.  I need to turn those decisions over to someone else, usually my sponsor.

I sponsor people.  I arrange my schedule so I can give an hour each morning to take their calls.  I get together with them individually other times as needed. I try to be available to them.  Listening and talking to my sponsees is like having another meeting each day.  They keep me connected.  Without this connection, my head starts telling me that I must be the only person who has to do this with food.  Without this support, I might begin to believe that I am becoming "normal."  This lie would be the beginning of the end for me.

I prepare for situations with food.  If I am going to a restaurant I call ahead.  Sometimes I pack all my food for a weekend retreat so I won’t have to focus on the food being served, but on my spiritual life.  I plan, shop and cook my food for a week at a time, so I will have what I need on hand.

Danger lies in believing the untruths my disease can tell me.  The Big Book tells us:  "Show him the mental twist which leads to the first bite of a binge."  What are these lies and mental twists?  Just one won’t hurt.  I’ll eat today and get right back on.  This food is healthy--I’ll just substitute this and not tell my sponsor.  I’ve measured long enough, surely I can tell how much to eat by now.  I don’t have time for meetings.  I can do this without a sponsor.  These sponsees take up too much of my time.  Without staying connected to GreySheet, to my sponsor and sponsees, to my Higher Power, to all of my program, I can begin to listen to these dangerous lies.

God has provided many turning points in my life.  The first came when food brought me to my knees and I said, "I can’t do this (dieting) any more.  I will just buy some fat clothes and give up this fight."  In that same month, someone introduced me to GreySheet.  The second came when I realized that I had more to learn than how to follow the Grey Sheet.  I heard someone say in a meeting, "I am trying to give up control."  I could not understand this.  I thought I was supposed to be in control of my life and almost everyone else’s!  The slogans, "Let go and let God," and "One day at a time" had a lot to teach me.  The Serenity Prayer showed me a new way of life - a life in which I was not in charge!  Another turning point was when our teenagers rebelled and I felt my world fall apart.  Again, I was brought to my knees, finding that I was powerless not only over food, but over other people as well.  When my husband’s 95 year old grandmother came to stay in a nursing home near us, I experienced another turning point.  It became so clear to me that I was not going to be able to live forever.  That sounds silly.  Everyone knows this.  But I had not made it a part of my life.  I was working and living at such a fast pace.  I was not appreciating the beautiful, simple things in life.  I began to slow down, to pray more and to work less.  I decided to retire from working full time.  Life is too short!  I realized more and more the health benefits of abstinence.  I came into GreySheet to be thin.  I stay abstinent because it gives me so much more.

In March of 1999, I broke my right femur attempting to ski.  This was a turning point in changing my self sufficiency.  I am a person who found it difficult to ask for help.  I was the helper.  I was the one who took all the responsibility.  I was the one that others asked to help them.  When I came home from the hospital, my sponsor and one of my sponsees met me at the airport and stayed with me until my husband could drive home.  Someone from my church or from my GreySheet group came to see me, brought me food, or called me every day.  GreySheet members drove me to and from meetings twice a week.  Life brings turning points.  When I find that, again, I am powerless, another turning point has begun.

My abstinence is a gift that I receive new each day.  I am abstinent just for this day.  What a gift!  What a treasure!  I am free of the mental and physical slavery to food!  I suffer none of the health problems overweight has caused to so many members of my family!  I have the benefits of a support group in all my life’s trials!  I continually learn a new way of life!

Kay H.
Austin, TX

I weigh and measure three meals a day without exception from the Greysheet, commit them to my sponsor and I don’t eat in between no matter what.  Just for today abstinence is the most important thing in my life.

Recently in a Self Expression and Leadership Seminar that I’m attending I had an unusual experience.  The seminar leader was going over details such as when we would break for meals.  We would have our lunch (dinner for me) at approximately 5:00p.m., and we were to go with four people we did not know.  A list of restaurants in the area was given out.

Since self expression was what we were here for I raised my hand and informed the leader that due to a medical condition I had brought my own dinner and would not want to make anyone feel uncomfortable with me eating it in a restaurant.  No one seemed to mind if I pulled out Tupperware in the restaurant so I went.

When we returned she asked me what I did with my food.  I told her about Greysheet.  It seems that her best friend has been abstinent for seven years and that she had tried it for a short time.  To say that she was impressed with my abstinence is an understatement.

Later, after doing several exercises, we were asked how we felt.  I said I was awed by some of the others and felt less than.

Here’s where it gets good!!!

With me still standing in front of the room she proceeded to tell over 70 people about me being in Greysheet.  We explained that it’s a Twelve Step program for food addicts--like AA for drunks--and that I was abstinent for over two years.  She said that she had tried it and knew how hard it was--yadda, yadda.  Next over 70 people started applauding and several asked me if I would talk to them.  Thoughts were flying through my mind:  She broke my anonymity.  She didn’t mean any harm.  She thought what I did was so unbelievable that she wanted everyone to understand what a big deal it was and that it takes an extraordinary person to do it.  Should I call her on this?  I stood there not knowing what to do or say.

After mulling this over for a while and not reacting in a negative way, my decision was to just accept what happened as God’s way of using me to help those who seek it.  Who am I to question his methods.

Judi B., New York City, N.Y.

Marathon Mary here and I am a compulsive overeater.  I weigh and measure three meals a day off the Greysheet.  I write them down.  I commit them to my sponsor.  I don’t eat NO MATTER WHAT.  Abstinence is the most important thing in my life today and I am abstinent today by the Grace of God and the fellowship of this community.

Thank you all for being part of my life.  Today (April 25th) is my fifth anniversary of back to back Greysheet abstinence.  What a gift it has been.  No matter what I have experienced in the last five years good or bad, I was told simply just weigh and measure your food and whatever you are experiencing will pass as long as you don’t eat no matter what.

"Just weigh and measure your food" means for me working my program which starts by putting my food on a scale and in a cup, making my phone calls, going to meetings, reading my Twelve and Twelve, Twenty-Four Hours a Day book, the Big Book, As Bill Sees It, etc..., doing service, sponsoring, the whole nine yards.

Today and every day, I live in Step Three; I turn my life and my will over to the care of God.  It works for me, thank God.  I have a relationship with God, which is beyond my wildest dreams.  In How It Works it says, "God could and would if He were sought."  So, I seek God in all my thoughts and deeds and then I listen and I hear the answer and I have learned to trust the answer.

So a Big Thank You to this wonderful and diverse community.  I certainly could not have done it without all of you.  Believe me, I never thought I would run a marathon again in abstinence because I was always soooo tired.  But, as with anything in abstinence, there has always been someone who has gone before me to show me the way and yes it can be done.  One of the incredible gifts for me as I celebrate five years is that the people who had five years when I came in are celebrating double-digit abstinence, which gives me an incredible amount of hope.

Marathon Mary B.,  Passaic, N.J.

Hello, My name is Judy.  I am a compulsive overeater.  I am counting abstinent days and at this writing I have been abstinent 30 days.  I weigh and measure three meals a day off the Greysheet.  I write down my meals and commit them to my sponsor.  I do not eat anything in between meals no matter what.  Abstinence and my Higher Power are the most important things to me.

I have struggled with weight problems my entire life.  There have been times when I did not leave the house for days and got out of bed only to eat or go to the bathroom.  At such low point binges I totally detached myself from the reality of how I was gaining inches by the minute.  I was wearing stretch pants.  When reality and life would set in and I would have to put my street clothes on, I would experience a surge of shame at how I could not get on my clothes.  I literally had binged myself out of a size or two in days.

Now that I have been introduced to Greysheet abstinence I want to embrace it for life.  I feel totally understood at the meetings, including the phone meetings.  When I hear others qualify and they relate where they have come from they could be talking about me as well.  I am committed to eating off the Greysheet and I truly believe that I am vulnerable for life, that at any time if I am off my guard I am one bite away from a binge.  I also believe that being off sugar and starch is the only way for me because it is so addictive for me and I am so sensitive to it.

Prior to learning about Greysheet I had been on Weight Watchers.  Aside from having to pay every week, and paying if you are over goal weight, the program does not give you structure.  It does not acknowledge how dangerous and addictive it is to "play games" and to tease a food addict by saying you can eat anything if you count points.  When you walk in the entrance they have displays of books all with pictures of foods rich in carbohydrates, starch, and sweets.  They even sell their own food products rich in starch, as well as frozen desserts.  When you go to weigh-in they have their own candy bars right on display for sale.  I have found their foods addictive.  I find the concept to have a little of the poison a dangerous game to play, and I was never satisfied just to have a little.

Before learning about Greysheet, without realizing it, while attending the other meetings, I was practicing my own abstinence the only way I knew, because I desperately wanted to lose the weight, and this was the only way I knew how.  I would eat structured meals with mostly vegetables and salads, and stayed away from addictive food.  I lost l20 pounds that way and became a lifetime member of Weight Watchers.  I have kept off the weight for a year and a half.  But I was struggling alone and did not fit in and was starting to put the weight back on.  (Most people at Weight Watchers do put the weight back on-- some participants keep coming and paying but are always hungry and cannot lose and do not understand why.)

Luckily for me a loving friend led me to a Greysheet meeting and it has been a fit from the start.  The burden is lifted for me.  I am no longer misunderstood and struggling alone.  Now I do not have to worry about the food I eat every day or have anxiety about whether I will start to binge, or whether the weight will creep back on.  In abstinence I have already gone down a pants size and I have the guidance and structure for my meals that I had need.  When I commit the food to my sponsor I eat every morsel without guilt because all the food I eat is what I committed to my sponsor.  I do not consider this temporary but know I am in for the long haul of life.  I already have heard meetings qualified by veterans in it for a quarter of a century.  It is good to be part of this group and to know it is not odd to have people grateful to have it for years.

Judy B., Forest Hills, N.Y.

I’m Janie, a compulsive overeater who has struggled with food and weight for most of my life.  I’ve recently learned to live and eat in a healthy way and have maintained a 27-pound weight loss for the past three years.

Today, I am five feet tall and a very fit 98 pounds.  I run competitively in 5K races and take home first place ribbons in my division.  I don’t say this to brag but to emphasize that there is hope even for a serious binger and faster like myself.  Looking at me, you would never guess that I have an eating disorder.

My problem with food first surfaced at age thirteen.  I can recall feeling isolated and lonely when my family moved to different area of the city.  Away from my friends, I sought comfort and companionship in food and began sneak eating sweets and whatever I could find in my parents’ kitchen.  Growing up in an upper-middle class Jewish family in Indianapolis, Indiana, food was a plentiful supply.  At family gatherings, I’d refuse to eat if in a fasting cycle, or would stuff my face with leftovers when no one was around.  I tried Weight Watchers, but could even binge on the permitted "unlimited" vegetables.  Mostly, I lost weight through fasting (once for 30 days), but I would always return to my old familiar friend--the food.

The bingeing and fasting continued throughout high school and on into college, where at the University of Arizona I discovered compulsive exercise.  I’d eat a gallon of ice cream, among other things, and would swim 50 to 75 laps and/or run to work off the calories.  It never worked, because I ate so much before and after I exercised.  I also abused laxatives and for one summer subjected myself to the horrible orange and cherry-flavored liquid protein.  After graduation, I moved to Los Angeles to find work in the entertainment industry.  Seeing all the beautiful, thin people, I craved to look the part, but instead my weight climbed even higher.  I couldn’t stop eating.

One painful episode in my eating career serves as a continual reminder of how powerless over food I have been.  I was an intern at the Pasadena Star News and was assigned to cover the Emmy Awards.  Dressed in a black-sequined dress, I stopped at a health food store a few miles from the event and stuffed myself with "healthy" snack food.  All the while, my dress was becoming tighter and tighter.  I can still see myself interviewing David Letterman back stage in the press room, while all I could think about was how fat I felt.  At the same time, I was consumed with thoughts of gorging at the post-Emmy parties.  How sad that my food obsession kept me from being fully present for that once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Always interested in the "quick fix,"  I finally hit my bottom in l979 when I took 90 laxatives to lose 20 pounds by the weekend, when an ex-boyfriend was due to visit.  He never showed, and I ended up at the UCLA emergency room, dehydrated from overdosing on laxatives.  No thinner for the wear, I started seeing a therapist who suggested I go to 12 Step meetings.  At my first meetings, I felt at home immediately and was relieved to discover I was not alone.  I wasn’t a glutton simply because I could not control my eating.  I had a disease.

Since then, I have had various periods of freedom from my food obsession but my real recovery began when I learned, through the program of Greysheet, a more disciplined, food-specific offshoot of 12-Step meetings, that I have an allergy to all grains, sugar, and alcohol.  I abstain from those substances and today have no desire to binge, nor do I crave foods that are not on my food plan.  I eat three delicious meals a day, all weighed and measured, with nothing in between except sugar-free beverages.  I accept and understand that my "too full" thermostat was broken long ago.  To stay toned and fit, I exercise daily, combining running and weight training.

For many, myself included, eating has deep emotional and psychological roots that aren’t as visible as tight-fitting jeans or a protruding belly.  But the media chooses to focus on celebrities and their battles with the bulge such as on actress Alicia Silverstone, who was thin in "Clueless" and heavier in "Batman and Robin."  Other celebrities openly discuss their weight, but few have found healthy ways to shed pounds.  Roseanne chose surgery when her weight skyrocketed to nearly 300 pounds, and Emmy Award-winning actress Camryn Manheim of TV’s hit show "The Practice" claims it’s okay to be fat.  "If art is supposed to imitate life, why do they want all the actors to be thin?" says Manheim in Radiance: The Magazine for Large Women.  The media is equally dedicated to uncovering anorexia in celebrities.  For instance, Calista Flockhart, star of "Ally McBeal," has been the brunt of numerous remarks about her low weight but vehemently denies any anorexic leanings

I do not consider myself "recovered," but I do thank God every day for being relieved of my food obsession.  I am grateful that when I wake up each morning I am no longer hung over from the previous night’s binge.  I can wear the same clothes I did the day or week before.  I look "normal" but know I will never be neutral around food.

With Yom Kippur "fast" approaching, we atone for our sins of the body and spirit.  Forgetting all that, many will end their daylong fast by gorging at sundown.  Indeed, the Jewish holidays are as rich in traditions as they are in rich food.  I, however, do not fast.  I did enough of that, and it was only a set up to binge.  Judaism teaches us that the body is a soul’s house.  I respect that philosophy and don’t abuse food or my body.  My problems have not disappeared just because I am thin.  As the saying goes, "thin is not well" but I am learning to deal with life and not use food.  One day at a time.

Janie, address unknown

Due to many factors, including the overwhelmingly busy schedules in the lives of staff members, and to the lack of articles to publish, Shades of Grey has not been published since the Spring 1999 issue.

Articles that appear here were originally slotted for issues in 2000, and the Shades staff apologizes for this gap in continuity.  Our intention is to begin again to publish quarterly, as we have done since the newsletters’ inception in l987.  In order to maintain this schedule we need to ask you, members of the Greysheet community, to continue to provide us with articles chronicling your experiences with getting and maintaining abstinence, as we define it.

No experience with abstinence is too small.  And it is these experiences that carry the message of hope.  Please support Shades of Grey by writing yours down and sending them to:
Shades of Grey
P.O. Box 6807
FDR Station
New York City, NY  10150-1921

Or email to:  lindadmidisland@aol.com

The Editors