Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Just know and I'll speak more loudly.
Let's all begin with the serenity.
Grant me the serenity should change the things I can wisdom to know the tick of this one hour workshop is anorexia. My name is Kristen and I'm a compulsive overeater and I am the only leader of this so loosely the format but I'm going to for an allotted and then I think we're just going to let everybody share if we have time and the session is being recorded I don't know how much and the workshop will end at 5 and you guys are more than welcome to just share from your so in an effort to try to stay focused and like really I've really asked myself so many questions about how I gained recovery it just like it seems impossible to me even now. Even though I've been abstinent for over 10 years and have there's a time in my life where I just never and although my main who at that time was bulimia I also went through times of IU to the point of very detrimental to mine. But I started becoming bulimic at 14 because I read a magazine and thought it idea I'm going to do that.
I was a figure skater growing up and don't want to get into like my mother talking about my mother a lot but there were just a lot of messages my body how much better of a skater I could possibly be away as much as I did.
So I ended up in rehab at 17 for bulimia and for a time stopped the aspect but by the time I left there I was secretly so nobody knew Everybody thought because I had lost this incredible amount of weight everybody thought wow, she's recovered got all sorts of accolades and probably didn't do many and I was excessively exercising but I I went on to college which was a very dark time in my life because a lot of the time there was spent in my dorm. It wasn't even a dorm room really because I went to community college. It was more like an apartment and lonely. I didn't have a good relationship with parents and a lot of the time was spent didn't take care of my self self. I didn't take care of my apartment. My life was a complete mess and she gained tons of weight even though I was still bulimic.
I couldn't even be good at bulimia any kind of like how I felt which is like demoralizing in itself. Like even though I'm bulimic I'm blowing up Like a balloon.
It was so lonely, so dark and so desperate. There were many times, why am I even here? This is no life.
And off and on I, over time in my entire twenties were a shambles. Then I slowly added more items on top of my already shambled life. Like cocaine, the miracle drug from.
And then cigarettes, I mean everything. I dialed everything onto it, thinking, if I do that, I won't eat. So for me, alcohol was less about escapism and more about if I drink a glass of wine, maybe I.
But then, as you guys, anyone who's been in that scenario knows, eventually whack a mole takes overwhelms and you can't control any of it. And anymore that's where I was. And finally just I got pregnant when I was 32. I was sick up until that point. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, thing that ever happened to me, I was like, oh my God, I can finally just eat the person that I'm praying for and I don't want to mess this up. So I ate and it was good.
And yeah, I gained a lot of weight, but I was also pregnant, so it didn't feel terrible and it felt like I was eating for somebody else. I was able to maintain that thought process for a little while after having my baby, but then I came back because I didn't have a program, didn't have a solution. I wasn't sober at that time. Finally decided to get sober when I was 39 and I went to rehab again, got sober and I thought, okay, again to start, I'll kind of wrap it up in my, like I'm sober and I'm eating in a healthy way. That'll be kind of my program.
So I latched onto the AA program and the 12 steps and I rigorously. And as soon as I got out of rehab, rehab had these wonderfully prepared healthy meals. And as soon as, most immediately I found myself at these sort of low calorie frozen yogurt shops located around the LA area because that's where I was living at the time I was living in la and I was like, wow, you can have a lot of yogurt for not a lot of calories. This is the miracle I've been looking for in my life.
And hopefully not giving anybody in this room any ideas because it wasn't a good idea, it was a terrible idea.
And it got to, it wasn't taking in a lot of nutrients. I was eating a lot of frozen yogurt and meanwhile trying to like go white knuckle my weight. Not gonna gain weight, but I need to binge and. But I can't. Like how am I gonna do this?
And finally one day, the day came where I ate too much, I felt too full and I. And that was probably one of the worst decisions. Well actually looking back, it was as it led me to where I am right now. But so actually it was a great decision.
But I urged and then I could not stop and I was shocked because I thought it was, oh, I'll just do it this time. And then all the way things were. Well, that's not how it went at all. It got to where then young children and I was binging and purging secretly trying to hold my life together and.
And I felt so desperate.
I knew AA had worked for me in the 12 steps and I knew that there were OA meetings within a five minute drive that they met six days a week at 7:30 in the morning. It was perfect because I was off in the morning.
So I could do that and go. Pain. And that's really the key for me because I don't really do anything to change unless I'm in pain. The pain I'm in has to be greater than ever. I seem to be gaining over here. So at that point it was more painful for me where I was than whatever was covering up over here.
I just decided, okay, I'm going to make this commitment. I'm going to start meeting every morning. And it was a meeting where every single meeting it was the same group that met.
So every single meeting we started off going around the room identifying ourselves disease and 30 days. And so I sat in that meeting.
What I felt like it was demoralization.
Every single day for a year, days a week, I sat in that meeting. Hi, I'm Kristin. And demoralizing. But in the end it's actually probably because I A year, a year had gone by this woman who I recognized from the meeting but she wasn't a regular but she that day. And she came up to me after I recognized her from aa, but I hadn't seen her at a lot of OA meetings.
She came after the meeting. And so someday you're gonna have to make a decision by what she had said. And I decision was that that she was talking about I was gonna have to. And she said someday after you binge, no matter how much food you consumed, you're gonna have to make a decision that you're not gonna purge. You're gonna have to do that no matter how uncomfortable you are.
That seems Like. Like I'm gonna die if I make that. It's the first day.
I'm sure I don't have to tell anybody how bulimia can be and how physical attacks. I really thought I was going to die and get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. And I would feel my heart. My body was under so much. And I really, truly was afraid that my kids were. And I.
I did not want to be that mom.
My goal was to be a better mother than my mother ever was to me. And that decision that day. And I stuck with that decision.
That's my bottom line. Abstinence.
And I was binging. And so when I think of the.
You know how the big book says willing to go. And I think what the big book is really talking about is finding a higher power in any length to higher power.
But it's also willing to go to any length.
And that could mean so many things. And for me it meant the willingness to be willing to gain weight and not binge or not purge. I didn't know how to not binge yet. I had to take it one step at a time. I had to know if others were judging me. I knew what I was doing. Nobody else was living my life. Nobody else has to be in my body what was right for me.
I did. And this is scary for some people to hear. I did gain 40. I eventually let go of the 40 and learned according to what my body was and to eat for health rather than emotion.
They go to any length to design a completely new way of living. And it's an insect as long as you.
Day by day. Actually I can't believe that was 10 years. Here I am sitting in front of you. Is possible if I can do it. And that's what urged me to want to lead this meeting. And I urged up to lead it because the woman that led it last year, she really inspired me to do that this year. Woody had signed up. So she did let me do that this year and love to hear from you.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: Anyone who would like to share. We could either go around the room or if you just want to read.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: I'm gonna go there. I'm back to where I hate it.
The fact that I was gonna and really waste. I came to Ohio putting on weight about 08.
But I didn't want to go. Now I think of it as into Weight Watchers and it felt like there's just a wrong. I started going to. I didn't. I would get so anxious. I couldn't sit in the bed. So eventually I married and suddenly I don't even know how it happened. And the way it all came to a head is I was going to doctor called instead and I said no that can't be true. I'll let you have your surgery. So I was in I called people in the program and I got a new sponsor and chat rice cake and then so she said well you're not willing Then I had another person oh that can't be the answer. I just left a meal and think it's a good you know you had a heavy meal yesterday of being made fun of and here I am and even barely had breakfast.
You know you have a lunch oh I just want to be here among you. I couldn't get lunch that somebody would say that so I don't get any of that. I have a very.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: 15 more sort of there are things that I hear over a that people sort of grapple with and and I think a lot of people like like well where's the plan is the food plan so this is not a diet or how exactly am I going how does this differ from anything else? I think like some main plan what exactly is abstinence and how do I have as most of us kind of think of what God is is what the the whole big book of AA is written to help people find a power grade it says it in there I don't know the big book by heart but in one of the pages very specifically it is written phrase to help you those definitely big huge obstacles for me atheist family there are it wasn't even like frowned upon if you even to agnostic in any way if you were even questioning oh like is there something greater than myself well that's only dumb people something like that. There was so much stigma for me coming in to try to how am I ever gonna find the higher power is the one thing I need and a food plan.
The what is abstinence?
Me what I really tried to do with a really well as you heard my bottom line as long as I don't purge I am abstinent. But it doesn't mean my eating was perfect or that I maybe have something fundamental to my health. But over the 10 years that I've been abstinent like when I first went I was shopping in the little Debbie aisle and today I would never even going near the little Debbie aisle.
I mean for so many reasons I can't even you know and and not one of those reasons is because there's so many other Reasons I don't want it.
It's not. There's nothing for me in that aisle. I heard somebody in AA once say there is nothing for me in a convenience 11 is like the addiction one stop shop business in there. If I'm not buying gas outside, I have no business walking into that store. Sewers, you guys, I don't know if you have a sewers or 711 or any convenience farm all over. I have no business being in there.
So my absence has changed. I definitely have made it so that I'm not constantly. I have my bottom line abstinence and at first I was like oh, I can't have sugar, I can't have flour, I can't have this, I can't have this. And the restriction became so intense and that's why today my abstinence doesn't look like restriction. It's far from and it is all encompassing. And I really try not to to say I can't have this and I can't have that. This. It's more like getting me closer to health or further away and is it going to be.
How is it going to make me feel?
I know that sugar doesn't mean I never eat sugar because never say I can't eat sugar. But I have a certain medical condition so that takes a huge food group off the table. That's been very helpful and that's my own personal thing.
And that is one thing I found I use which takes other foods off the table. But I only realized that because I started every time I binged. I looked at it like now I know what it is. I learned that even if it was like one step forward, f steps back, moving forward and then the higher power is very much wrapped up in hard for me to explain but I found great power in going outside, being outside if I have like I'm stepping outside.
So helpful to me.
And that's when I get a sense of something much greater than myself and oh do I want to live in accordance with does an all loving power want me to be wrapped up in a tiny room thinking about or does this all encompassing love want me to be out and living and experiencing and like being here and helping other bull and like all dog and like I don't know there all of those things that you can imagine that someone loving would want for you? And so to me that's a higher. That's how I define my over here.
I don't know we have. We still do have.
Oh do you guys have questions or
[00:19:09] Speaker B: want to share over here? Or something like, I don't want to do this over here. And it's me. And so for me, it's like, thank you. I like. I like what it was for me since.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: Oh, let's do it. Let's do it.
