At a young age, I was completely focused on food and how to get it. Gaining weight by third grade, I went on my first diet – with my mom! By twelve, after a painful friendship breakup, I was binge eating and purging in secret. In college, despite quitting drinking, smoking, and pills through sheer willpower, bulimia was a battle I simply couldn’t win alone. College amplified my struggles; the affluence of my peers left me feeling inadequate, and my father’s death during my sophomore year led me to more unhealthy behaviors and depression. Feeling completely ungrounded, I found daily tasks difficult, and my life was truly unmanageable. I spent my days literally going from dining hall to dining hall, eating my way through the pain. A turning point came when I heard a recording from a recovering alcoholic that mirrored my story with food and how I ate. This realization led me to Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA), where after several starts and re-starts, I am grateful to now have over 20 years of abstinence from food addiction. This freedom has transformed my life, allowing me to leave grad school (the right decision!), start a business, share in a wonderful marriage, and embrace motherhood thanks to a profound change in my attitude. Through my recovery in FA, I have found a spiritual path, a peaceful foundation, and a life I never could have imagined.

Despite growing up in a home full of love, this budding food addict was in a cycle of sneaking, hiding, and shoplifting food from as early as age six. She came to learn that no amount of love could have prevented her food addiction and no amount of love could have cured it. Her parents and siblings were moderate eaters, and they tried to help curb her addictive behaviors around food. She had dreams of waking up thin, just for a single day. As an adult, her husband was her “eating buddy”, and their social life – dinner parties, holidays, and vacations – revolved around food. Despite turning to nutritionists, doctors, a hypnotist, commercial diets, and intense exercise, she still ended up weighing over 290 pounds. The real turning point came with motherhood. At that time, the physical and emotional toll of her food addiction had relegated her to a role on the sidelines – a spectator in her own life. Then she found Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA). There, meetings gave her a place to share secrets she had never told before about the way she ate. She heard hope for a better life. She got started with an FA sponsor and lost 160 pounds. It is now ten years later, and she hasn’t seen those numbers on the scale since. Today, she knows she is not alone, and she is no longer living life on the sidelines.

I am a 73-year-old Asian-American woman from New England and, I can promise you, I’ve quit almost everything I’ve started in my life except for the Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) program. I found FA at thirty-three and have benefitted from this program for more than half my life. By 11 years old, already consumed with fear and worry about my weight, I plunged into extreme restriction with week-long fasts that left me undernourished and dizzy. By 15, I started to binge and watched the weight pile on in just a few months. In college, I hid my eating, leaving campus by bus to find stores and restaurants where no one would recognize me. I fell into a depression that left me unable to shower, comb my hair, or brush my teeth. Feeling hopeless, with nowhere to go, I found FA and learned how to ask for help. This program taught me how to walk through my fear and become willing to trust in a power greater than myself. First, we put down the food, then we do the steps, and then the changes come, one day at a time. I am truly thankful for my wonderful life of gratitude, service, and freedom from food addiction.