I am a 100%, eat till I die, straight up over eater
I came into program at 24 and I'm now 29. So yeah I'm young and I guess in that way I'm really lucky. I also started in my disease really young too, like right around my birth. So in that way, maybe not so lucky. Although I do believe most of us, with rare exception, are born with this disease, not everyone's mother say's "you breast feed more than other babies." I feel really grateful though because I never have to question whether or not I'm a compulsive overeater.
I am a 100%, eat till I die, straight up over eater. Wha Wha! Here are some cute little examples. I ate guacamole with my hands at like 13. I had contests with my cousin on who could eat the slowest and I always lost. I ate nachos in my dorm room and cried when friends where mean to me. I wanted nothing in life but to be thin but couldn't help but to be fat. I gained 20 pounds before prom because I couldn't say no to the guy who asked me. If I didn't eat "on time" I would want to choke everyone around me, alright sometimes I still do this. If I went out to party or to go dancing it almost always ended with greasy food. I was the only person who lost weight in college because the cafeteria was only open three times a day. I ate nothing but health food primarily but was still overweight. If a party had a food table, I did not have a night that was not filled with enormous mental obsession. Oh and the fact that all day, every day, my thoughts were consumed with weight loss and food. I couldn't wait till I got skinny so I could rub it in everyone's faces but in the same breath I would be salivating over what I was gonna eat for lunch or laying into a bag of something salty.
Don't get me wrong I wasn't a shut in. I had moments of relief, just like the Big Book says, followed always by still worse relapse. And I had a life, a pretty big one. Can't even imagine how big it would have been with out this disease. And I considered myself happy. I really did. But there was always that thing that I couldn't conquer. That thing that made me feel like crap about myself. And with my career goals and school I was always slightly under achieving, I couldn't quite reach my potential. I always thought it was my weight but now I know it was my disease.
I came in to OA knowing I didn't have anymore fight in me. I felt like when I first got into program they could have told me to stand on my head, sing "I'm a little teapot" and then run outside naked screaming "I'm a compulsive overeater and my life is unmanageable!" at the top of my lungs I would have done it…easily. And that is called willingness my friends, and that's where I was at. I didn't care if I was going to be really big my whole life and keep going up the scale, which I'm not anymore, I just didn't want to be insane when it came to food. I had surrendered to being fat, which I'm not anymore. I just felt like completely and utterly powerless over food. It got me, I was done.
The problem was I was making food/skinny my higher power. Man what a horrible, unreliable, non-reciprocal, selfish, empty, hollow, mean, worthless higher power! Giving myself entirely to the idea that "skinny would solve all my life's problems" and to food, which is an inanimate object basically, was a really good set up for loneliness and a hole in the heart the size of a football stadium. You see I have this hole in my heart and filling it with those two things and it was not working, in fact it was only making it bigger. And as the Big Book says I had a "spiritual malady" that only a better higher power than that could fix.
So that's what happened when I finally found program. I claimed to be atheist but food was my God so that couldn't really be true. So anything to replace food in that position would be better. And I found a higher power that was on my side and I worked my steps, and I'm going back around again now. And I have to say, I LOVE program! I love the meetings, I love being around peeps who really, truly, get me. I love my deep friendships that I've made with fellows. I love the totally un-judgmental support. I love that I don't have to be absolutely filled with fear and anxiety most of my day. I love that unlike most people, I have a solution and a playbook for life, which I really did need. My body and mind tell me to eat when I have any feeling, so I need to work a really strong program to fight back. And most of the time I do. Today I can say, with pride, that I am really grateful to be a compulsive overeater, and I want to say to anyone reading this, "welcome to overeaters anonymous, welcome home."
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