My Story: Enough is Never Enough is Enough

My name is Sarah, and I’m 43 years old. Here are some things that are true about me: I’m a mother, a wife, a writer, and I work full time. I am also a compulsive eater who binged, starved, overate, and dieted for most of my life, until almost four years ago when I joined Overeaters Anonymous.

I recently wrote my story for an eating disorder anthology and I want to share an excerpt here. I hope to expand on it in coming months.

My earliest memories are of wanting more and never getting enough, of furtive delight in an unexpected treat, of sneaking and hiding food, of knowing I wanted more than I should want, more than other kids wanted. So while I have also struggled with restricting and forms of bulimia, my overeating began percolating at a very young age.

I don't remember what costume I chose for Halloween most years. I remember only candy--the effort to acquire and eat as much as possible. There was never enough. I snuck extra, stealing from my two younger brothers and from the candy we gave out at our own door so my own stash would last longer.  

But it never did--friends at school were still dipping into theirs weeks after mine was long gone. There were always those kids who would complain that their candy had gone stale, that they didn’t get to eat it before their Easter basket came on the scene. I envied and hated those kids, but also pitied them. Didn’t they know how good it feels to hide under your bed and eat until you couldn’t think about anything else? Should I tell them what they were missing out on?

 

My family ate healthy food at meals, and we weren’t allowed to buy sugary cereals or cookies or chips; instead we had carob and brown rice and broiled chicken. The exceptions to the strict health food in our cupboards were when we were sick. My mom would buy me Breyer’s Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream on the way home from the doctor’s office, and I could eat and eat with no judgment or hiding. It was safe and cozy and lovely to be the only kid at home with her, snuggled on the couch with treats and rare parental attention. White mint chocolate chip ice cream still reminds me of love and safety and attention.

I wasn’t fat as a kid despite all my bingeing--I must have been active enough. I was solid and strong. Pictures of my elementary-school years don't show a willowy child, but I was far from overweight. I was not aware of my body as good or bad until fourth grade, when a friend's mother told us all to suck in our tummies while we waited in line for a slide at a water park. I was horrified. It had never occured to me to hide my stomach, but I took it as the gospel after that. That one comment was all it took for me to turn my attention to my body and its failings. I don’t even really blame that mother--clearly my mind was fertile ground for her poisonous ideas.

 

Babysitting introduced a new world of food sneaking and binge eating. If the house where I was babysitting had any good food, I would put the kids to bed as early as possible and eat as much as I thought I could get away with. One of the families had big, Costco-size boxes of 500 mini York Peppermint Patties in their cabinet, and I would eat 20 or 30 or even 50 at a time, hiding the wrappers in the trash or taking them home with me, stopping only because I was on the verge of throwing up or was afraid my theft would be noticed. The houses that didn't have candy usually at least had chocolate chips in their baking cabinet. I never drank their booze or had boyfriends over. I only ate.

The summer before I started 9th grade, I was sexually assaulted on a “date.” Most of the therapists I’ve seen have connected this early betrayal of trust to my weight and body issues; the theory is that women put on weight to avoid attention and keep themselves safe. I suppose there is something to that, but it’s never done me much good to spend a lot of time looking at the “why” of my eating disorder. Since I was very small, I have eaten when feeling anything, good, bad, bored, sad, excited, nervous. I have eaten to numb myself out and feel nothing. So sexual assault is part of my eating disorder story, but it’s not my whole story. I would have this disease even if I’d never been assaulted.

I started hating my body, really hating it, in high school, even though I was still a normal weight. I thought I was repulsive, hideous. If a boy didn’t like me, I was sure the reason was my body.

Freshman year of college, away from home and knowing no one, I was so depressed, I stopped eating and lost weight, the only time I have reacted to depression in this way in my life (usually I overeat when depressed).

I often got so hungry that I was shaky and nauseous, and hunger made me feel virtuous and noble. I loved the asceticism of it, the denial. It made me feel powerful and like I finally gotten control of my appetites. This was my first experience with restricting. It lasted all of freshman year, until I fell in love.

The summer after freshman year (when I was 19), I started dating the man who is now my husband, my parents split up very suddenly.

I was keeping it together at school and helping out at home on weekends while my mom slowly fell apart, but the next three years of college were marked by total out-of-control bingeing and a significant weight gain that stayed with me on and off until about three years ago. I ate sugar all day every day, with almost no healthy food. I felt tire, depressed, and anxious all the time.

After college, my boyfriend's mom lost a lot of weight at Weight Watchers, and I decided to follow in her footsteps. I lost 60 pounds at age 22 and started to feel better about my body. I couldn't believe it, though, when instant happiness didn't follow in all other areas of life: I was still having problems with my boyfriend, I was still having anxiety attacks, and I was feeling totally unfulfilled by my first job out of college.

I got within two pounds of goal weight when I got married at age 28 and then immediately gained 11 pounds on my ten-day honeymoon.  

(This is where I pause to apologize for the specifics on weight. While we owe a great debt to our founder, Rozanne S., her story with new weights mentioned in every other paragraph makes me fairly nuts. I'm trying to give just the highlights here.)

A miscarriage, a pregnancy that stuck, and postpartum depression all landed me up nearly 100 pounds from my wedding weight by the time my first child turned one. .

From 2005 to 2015, I tried Weight Watchers a dozen or more times. I severely restricted calories. I did triathlons, I tried exercising four hours a day. I tried over 40 diets, some of which worked, many of which mimicked anorexia under the guise of a diet plan. I ate 500 calories a day for 40 days and took the hormones of pregnant women, weighing in every day with the goal of losing a pound per day, and taking a laxative if I hadn’t met my daily goal.  I tried “intuitive eating.” I did Whole 30 and the Mediterranean Diet and South Beach and Atkins. I did Couch to 5K, Jillian Michaels, and a sprint triathlon. I bought more than 20 self-help books about dieting. I did therapy, both alone and with my husband. I watched the Biggest Loser while eating Ben and Jerry’s in bed, wondering how I could get on the show and if I could ever let myself be weighed on national TV. I worked to heal from sexual trauma. I took baths and drank tea and meditated; none of it ever worked for long.

Meanwhile, I was eating, eating, eating. My favorite binge foods were from 7-11 or CVS--nothing fancy for me. I wanted cheap volume. I’d pretend I was buying for a party, pretending to wonder if the kids would like this candy or that candy better. I’d drive through McDonalds and order three meals and say brightly “I hope this food stays hot til I can get it back to the office for all my coworkers!” Was I ever fooling anyone? I skipped my 10 year and 20 year high school reunion because I couldn’t bear for people to see how fat I’d gotten.

I have lost more than 50 pounds three times in the last 15 years. I have lost 20 pounds at least a dozen times.

In 2015, I turned 39 years old and had a turning point that changed my life, hopefully forever.

I was at the heaviest weight of my life (about 260-270) and was desperate to get my weight under control before I turned 40. I wasn’t focused on improving the quality of my home life, sanity, marriage, or work (frankly, I didn’t think it was that bad--HA!); I focused only on wanting to be thin. I resolved to bring all my willpower and dieting experience to bear and started dieting over and over again.

I tried every diet that had worked for me in the past, and for the first time in my life, I couldn’t string two days together. None of the diets that had worked before worked for me now. It was because I was almost 40 and had a bad metabolism! It was because I hated my job! It was because I had a genetic predisposition to fatness! It was because my husband didn’t help out enough around the house! I just could not lose even a single pound. All my years of successful dieting and restricting failed me.

That summer, as I lay on the beach one day with my family in an old-lady swimsuit that covered up the body I had always considered hideous, I read a memoir about Overeaters Anonymous (Passing for Thin: Losing Half my Weight and Finding Myself by Frances Kuffel) and a light bulb went off. Finally an approach that addressed what I begun to think of as my addiction to certain foods.

I went to my first meeting a week later in August of 2015, and I was terrified. Something in me knew this was different, that it wasn’t a lark that I’d try and then reject. I was expecting a huge room of people where I could disappear and hide in the back, the way A.A. is depicted in movies. But there were six or seven people sitting in a circle when I arrived, and they welcomed me in to sit in the circle with them. I eyed them critically--some were fat, some were thin. They were all older than me. What could these people possibly teach me? The thin people wouldn’t understand me, and the fat people didn’t have any help for me.

But I sat down and listened as they read from a book and shared. I cried on and off through the whole meeting. These people were sharing--and laughing??--about the topics I found most shameful and secret in my life. Even my husband and closest friends had no idea how much I hated my body and just how much I ate.

The people in that room talked about hiding and stealing food, binge eating in secret, eating from the trash, vowing over and over again to lose weight and being unable to do it. I was pretty sure I’d found my tribe. They also talked about what they’d done to get over those behaviors, but I didn’t listen to that part. I was so overwhelmed by what they’d done in their disease. I always thought I was the only one.

After the meeting, an older woman named Anne (ok, she was more than “older,” she was OLD!) came over to hug me--which I hated! I did NOT want to hug anyone, least of all this handsy woman who talked about God’s love and had a button on her walker that said “Higher Powered.” My inner thirteen-year old was embarrassed for her.

Anne said, “I hope to see you again tomorrow!” Tomorrow? I’d never gone more than once a week to any weight loss group before!

That afternoon I got a text from Amy, one of the thin, beautiful women in the group just saying hello and that she hoped she see me again. She didn’t ask me what I was eating that day, what I weighed, what my plan was. Just a gentle welcome and encouragement to keep coming back. She didn’t seem to want anything of me or have any expectations of me.

I did keep coming back. OA recommended that I go to six meetings before deciding whether it was for me, and that’s what I did. People started to text me to check in. Most of all, I wanted the thinness that some of these people had, but I also started to want the serenity and peace they had around food and their bodies (As they say, “Come for the vanity, stay for the sanity!”).

 

About five years before finding OA, I had read a book called Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp, a recovering alcoholic. She described her love affair with alcohol and her efforts to give it up despite feeling she’d die without it. She shared stories that were so familiar to me that I could have written them, only I’d done them with food, not booze. She hid bottles around the house, as I’d done with food. She’d polished off a half-full bottle, only to replace it and drink the new one down to the same level, which I’d done with ice cream. She lied to everyone about how much she drank. I was reading my story, and it planted a seed that perhaps I was addicted to sweets the way she was addicted to alcohol.

Receptive to the idea of food addiction, I gradually began asking people how to get started. I was encouraged to start with giving up sugar (more on how I came to this in a future post).

On August 18, 2015, I gave up recreational sugar and alcohol, and I haven’t had any since.

Giving up sugar was hard but not impossible. I had a lot of support from people in OA, and I mainlined OA podcasts and reading material the way I used to mainline candy and baked goods. I still ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted--chips, sandwiches, huge portions of anything that didn’t have sugar in the first four ingredients. I lost 10 pounds almost immediately.

Gradually, I started to want more of the program the way I’d once wanted more of the food. I got a sponsor, even though I basically thought OA was a cult and was incredibly skeptical and eye-rolly about all the God stuff.

My first sponsor was Anne, the old lady from my first meeting! She taught me gentleness. As I tightened up my program and had slips along the way, she would say with genuine love and affection, “Congratulations! This slip is wonderful news. God is reminding you of step one, that you are powerless over food.” I despaired over any perceived imperfections, but she delighted in them as a direct message from God. I told her I had to beat up on myself or I’d get too lazy, and her response was, “Well, how has that worked for you so far?” She encouraged me to experiment with being as kind and loving to myself when I screwed up as I would be to a beloved child or elderly relative.

For a while, Anne was my higher power--a symbol of unconditional love and acceptance, no matter how fat I was, no matter how much I ate, no matter how much of a screwup I was. She always took my call no matter how bad my day had been, which became a powerful metaphor for what I needed a higher power to do. She was also the first person in my entire life who knew what I did with food. And she liked me anyway. She even loved me.

For awhile, I was counting days of abstinence, but I would have a slip on day 29 or day 59. It was clear I was self-sabotaging myself before hitting major milestones. I complained to an OA friend (Amy, the same thin beautiful woman who’d texted me after my first meeting) one day that I was so frustrated to start back at day 1 again. She said, “we ALL only have one day. The person in the room with the most abstinence is the person who woke up the earliest. You have to take this one day at a time.” I stopped counting days, steps, calories. Counting anything, it turns out, makes me crazy.

I should pause to say that eating plans are very individualized in OA. The program itself doesn’t recommend one plan. Many people give up sugar and flour, but not everyone does. Some people snack, some don’t. Some weigh and measure, some don’t. It’s a matter of working with your sponsor, your higher power, and sometimes a professional nutritionist to find out what works for you. We all have different flavors of this disease, and my abstinence could kill you and yours could kill me (check out the pamphlet called the Dignity of Choice for more on OA food plans).

I have gone back and forth with food plans. I have weighed and measured and not. I’ve added to my abstinent list. I’ll go into more detail on all of these topics in future posts.

Based on all my experience, I will share this: every time I have cut something from my food plan motivated by a desire to lose weight, it has backfired on me. Every time I have made a change motivated by a desire for more sanity, it has worked.

Fast forward to nearly four years in OA. I am maintaining a healthy weight, meaning that all my labs are fine and my knees don’t hurt, but I am a size 12/14, not the size 4 I always wanted.

I don’t hate myself. This is a miracle beyond any that I could have imagined, and in many ways, body acceptance has been more important to me than weight loss. In a meeting last summer, someone who looked like me shared that she wore a bikini to the pool, and I gasped internally and thought, “Wait, hold the phone! Are people who look like us allowed to wear bikinis? Will people die or kick me out of the pool?”

I decided that not only was I allowed to wear a bikini at my age and size, that if I didn’t wear one, I was letting the patriarchy win. If you’d told me five years ago that I would be at peace with my body at size 14 and wearing a bikini to the pool with a bunch of skinny suburban moms, I would have called you a liar. But I do it, and it feels great. This is a miracle for someone who has spent as much time hating their body as I have. I feel some odd degree of shame at admitting this, like I shouldn’t get to feel good about myself until I get to a weight that would qualify me for a Sports Illustrated swimsuit shoot.

I hear in meetings and on blogs to either be abstinent and skinny or eat whatever I want and have fat acceptance. It turns out that what makes me feel the sanest is to be abstinent AND love my body however it settles out when I’m not eating like a maniac. I reject the false dichotomy of skinniness and fat acceptance.

My food plan has changed a lot over the years, and I’ve had some leaps forward and some setbacks. I’ve done it all with the help of a sponsor. Actually, I’ve been through four sponsors for various reasons. The rule I have is that I am fired from making decisions about my food plan and I need to get help from someone else.

I try to use peace of mind as a goal rather than weight, so when I’m deciding if I will eat something or not, I ask “will this bring me closer to or further from peace.” I no longer ask if if will bring me closer to or further from my fantasy size.

This is a full-scale peaceful revolution inside my head and my heart.

I haven’t said much about God. I believe in God, mostly. Usually. I have a lot more to write about God. I’ve actually come to truly believe, as the Big Book states, that spirituality is the secret sauce of this program.

One afternoon after months of trying to get clarity, I had an image of God come to me--a grandmother tree, old and wizened, who loves every single thing about me like a good grandmother does, but who will tell me the truth--with compassion--when I fuck up. She does not cause bad things to happen in the world--she cries when people starve or hurt each other. She wants the very best for me.

Coming to terms with a power greater than myself has been an integral part of my program. Sometimes I can’t summon up any real faith and the best I can do is know that if there is a God, I’m not it. That seems to be enough.

Here’s what I think I’ve done that’s helped me over the last few years in OA: I took it slow. I’ve always had a sponsor. I’ve worked the steps four times in almost four years (controversial! Some people think you work them once and then live in 10, 11, and 12). I’ve made many of my amends (but not all of them). I sponsor other people. I do service that requires me to be at meetings even when I don’t want to go. I keep coming back and attend at least two meetings a week, and often three or four.

The list of what I do to stay sane and sober has grown over time--my first few months in OA, all I did was go to meetings and allow people to care for me.

You can start where you are and develop over time.

I have wasted a lot of time wanting to do things as well and as spiritually as people who have been in the program for 20 years. My challenge has been to learn from those people but not to hold myself up to their standard.

Here’s what I’ve done “wrong” in this program: take my will back approximately one million times per day, nurture petty resentments, pursue weight loss at the price of sanity, exercise all my character defects regularly and with enthusiasm, overeat even with abstinent foods, lie to my sponsor about what I’ve eaten, refuse to pray and meditate even when I know it helps me, decide over and over that I know more than everyone else in this program.

However,  I believe today that all of my “mistakes” are not really mistakes at all, they’re just my humanity keeping me humble and keeping me coming back. This program works via osmosis through the butt. Put your butt in a chair in a meeting, and the program will gradually start to work on you.

I am not a believer that “half measures avail us nothing.” I believe half measures avail us a little relief, but that true neutrality around food takes a lot of work and faith and surrender.

I now know that abstinence is about much, much more than pursuit of a certain weight or body type. It’s about being the best person I can be so I can help other people. That sounds so cheesy, I can barely stand myself! But it’s true. It’s about being present in my life instead of obsessed with food and weight and fat. It’s about snuggling with my husband in the evening instead of sending him away so I can eat in secret. It’s about modeling for my children that it’s safe to feel feelings, that we can survive and that it always, always, always gets better in the end. If it doesn’t feel better yet, I’m not at the end.

I’m not at the end of my eating disorder either. I consider myself recovering but not recovered (again, controversial! If any Visionaries are reading this...we will get into it eventually!).

I haven’t had a single day of starving or bingeing in three years that approaches anything like I did before, although I have still eaten too much or too little at times when my feelings just become too much for me.

My disease is one of extremes, of always wanting more and often taking less when it comes to food, sex, money, attention, and time. Working a 12-step program of recovery quiets the insatiable, critical voices in my head, one day at a time. Now when I want more, it’s more peace and serenity. I never thought it was possible to have the freedom from food and body obsession that I have today. I’m so grateful.