I was a typical-sized kid, but I never felt like it. Even as a child, my thoughts about food and my body were relentless. For years, I searched for relief. I tried diets, bulimia, over-exercising, and eventually gastric sleeve surgery. Just a few hours after I got home from the surgery, I was uncontrollably chewing food and spitting it out for fear of bursting my stitches, devastated that I couldn’t stop. While I was raising my children, my food addiction stole precious moments from my family. My days were spent isolated in my car with food, consumed with negative self-talk. I lived with constant shame and self-loathing. When I first came to Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA), I found abstinence and hope. But my addict mind convinced me to go back to the food. I knew I wanted to be abstinent, but I just couldn’t do it until I was rendered yet more desperate. When I finally returned to FA, I came back with willingness. I was welcomed with kindness and the simple words, "We got you." For the first time, I understood that I wasn't just treating my food or my weight; I was recovering from an illness of the mind, body, and spirit. Today, with nearly nine years of continuous abstinence and more than 100 pounds released, I've raised my children in recovery, walked through divorce, sold and bought a home, grown personally and professionally, and learned to face life's challenges without turning to food. FA taught me the difference between feelings and facts, how to ask for help, and, perhaps for the first time, how to love myself.

I found Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) at 48, after dieting my way up to 360 pounds. Today, I have maintained a 200+ pound loss for over 18 years.

My weight struggles began in childhood. In third grade, my worried parents put me on diet pills; by fourth grade, I weighed 157 pounds. My mom, who was the county school nurse, told me I was the largest kid in the entire school district. Food was restricted at home, so I stole money to buy snacks, growing bigger as my weight became my whole identity among my siblings.

Nothing worked – not the pills, not commercial diet plans, not a trip to the doctor, where I was told I was "morbidly obese.” As a young person, I took that to mean I was a “morbid beast.”

College brought more isolation – eating all morning in bed, late-night vending machine runs, failing grades. On planes, I had to pretend the seat belt was fastened, and I once rode an upside-down roller coaster without the restraint fully secured because I was too ashamed to admit it wouldn't fit around me.

I convinced myself I'd be single forever (though I later found a wonderful husband). Everything changed when, at 295 pounds, I had a daughter and realized she deserved a living mother. I found FA, terrified but willing to do whatever it took. My first 24 hours without flour or sugar became another, then another. I found freedom I'd never known, with quiet in my head, peace in my life, and real recovery at last.

I was born into poverty in the Jim Crow South, the oldest of five children, in a home marked by food insecurity and violence. As I grew older, flour and sugar products became comfort, companionship, and protection from trauma, loss, and pain. My father lived with schizophrenia and spent much of my childhood institutionalized. My mother could not provide emotional safety, and I learned to stay silent and hide my pain, even as I was bullied and struggled in school. I entered adulthood already shaped by secrecy and deprivation. After high school, I became pregnant, started my first job, and finally had unlimited access to food. At 22, I married a gambling womanizer whom I thought I could change, and we had two more children before the marriage ended. Tragedy compounded tragedy: my young, seven-year-old daughter was killed by a car, my ex-husband died by suicide months later, and I simply wasn't emotionally available to my surviving children. By the time I reached my forties, my eating was out of control. I cycled through diets, compulsive exercise, pills, and laxatives, always ending up where I started. The turning point came when I was diagnosed as prediabetic, and I could no longer pretend that food wasn’t harming me. I had served as a hospital chaplain and had seen amputations because of diabetes; I didn’t want that to be my story. When I walked into my first Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) meeting, I knew I’d found where I belonged. Now, as an octogenarian and grief counselor, I know recovery is about far more than food. It is about spiritual healing, rigorous honesty, accepting help, and discovering the freedom of surrender. Recovery has given me clarity, dignity, and peace. Today, I no longer use food to numb out or escape. I live one day at a time, supported by the FA program, a Higher Power, and a community that holds me accountable with grace.