A Reason to Celebrate
I
sat at my parent’s dining room table to convinced myself that was true. But in that celebrate Thanksgiving Day. With my meeting, people remembered how they ate right hand, I reached for a third serving before recovery and talked about it in public! of dessert; with my left, I popped open the FA people were like me, and I’d never heard top button on my black polyester pants to re- anyone talk about eating the way I did. lease some of the pressure from my 340Five years after that first FA meeting, I got pound body. My stomach ached and I abstinent and started my recovery journey. struggled to inhale, but I could not stop eat- My fellows supported me in releasing my ing. After all, doesn’t everyone eat themselves deadly, intimate relationship with food and out of their clothes on Thanksgiving Day? grabbing on to FA with both hands. Day by Though it was Thanksgiving, that wasn’t the day, my sponsor and fellows taught me to rereason I was eating myself out of my clothes. member how horrible it was to be unable to I didn’t need a holiday celebration as a reason stop eating, even though it was killing me and to eat, it was simply something I did. By the devastating my life. They taught me that I time I reached 340 pounds, I was eating more couldn’t stay in denial. They gave me tools than 8,000 calories a day. There was no cele- that were way more effective than that third brating, only misery. Food became my most plate of dessert. They gave me hope. intimate relationship and it almost killed me. This most recent Thanksgiving, I sat around The problem started a half-century ago. As the table with my family and celebrated. I’ve a child, food was my favorite thing. In less kept off 190 pounds for the last 10 years. On than 20 minutes I could eat entire baskets, that day, I didn’t eat multiple servings of huge boxes, or bags of foods meant to last my fam- portions. To my family’s ongoing surprise, and ily for days. I was an outgoing but very inse- my delight, on Thanksgiving Day I ate the cure kid and food was my confidence. same way I’d eaten the previous day, week, Sixteen years ago, when I walked into my month, and years, and I focused on the peofirst FA meeting, I heard people say things I ple. At the end of the meal, I clasped my was embarrassed to even think. I binged daily, hands in gratitude for another Thanksgiving stole food, ate spoiled food, and erased these in recovery to visit with my family. And that from my memory like they never happened. is an amazing reason to celebrate. I often reported, "I haven’t eaten all day" and I Pam D., Texas, US
14
November 2022