As the oldest child in my family, I learned to take on the responsibility of caring for others, setting my own needs aside. My father often rewarded me with fast food. In college, isolated from family, I walked a mile every night to restaurants seeking comfort. Even as I climbed the corporate ladder, I felt inadequate and continued using food to manage my anxiety. After my father's death, I put my mother first. For over a decade, I cared for her while frequenting every drive-thru near her assisted living facility. My adult life may have looked successful from the outside, but I continued struggling privately, and I used food to cope. After years of trying to manage on my own and reaching 224 pounds, I found Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) and heard my own story reflected back to me. What I discovered wasn’t a failure of willpower, but an addiction that required help beyond myself. Through sponsorship, meetings, and the Twelve Steps, my obsession with food lifted, and the excess weight disappeared. Now, passing my 14th anniversary in FA, life still brings challenges, but I have a roadmap for navigating them. The structure of FA has given me more freedom than I ever had when eating whatever I wanted. One day at a time, I live in gratitude, thankful I accepted the opportunity to live in recovery rather than remain stuck in addiction.

I came into Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) in 2019 at 193 pounds, 5'7", convinced I would be the one person the program wouldn’t work for. I didn’t even believe I was a food addict, just someone with a snacking problem. But my life told a different story. I grew up in Venezuela, waiting for my mother to leave the house so I could steal food from the cabinet and then throw the wrappers over the wall into the neighbor’s yard. I loved visiting my aunt, who had a central vacuum system, so I could eat sweets and then quickly discard the wrappers into the inlet valve hole in the wall. As an athletic teen, I became so obsessed with how I looked that I stopped eating, carried a calculator, and allowed myself no more than 300 calories a day. When I felt dizzy, seeing little sparkles of light, I thought that was a sure sign that I was losing weight. After many diets, and finding that starving myself wasn't sustainable, the pendulum swung to the other extreme, and I began consuming enormous amounts of food, bingeing until my sisters didn't recognize me. My back hurt. My joints hurt. I didn’t want anyone to see me, and I stopped showing up for my own life – avoiding plans, canceling commitments at the last minute, and feeling overwhelming guilt. I eventually lost my job, and food was my only way of coping. In a moment of desperation, I Googled “food addiction" and discovered FA. I found a meeting that was walking distance from my house that had been there for the past 20 years! I arrived feeling skeptical and broken, ready to argue. Instead, I borrowed my sponsor’s faith, I lost 60 pounds, and more than that, I lost the obsession with food. I learned that you don’t even have to believe that it works. You just have to do it – faith comes later.

For most of my life, I never thought I had a food addiction. I believed my struggles with weight were simply the result of genetics and environment, a lottery I had lost. I came from a family where many people were larger, food was central to everything we did, and at 5’9”, I assumed my size was inevitable. For most of my adult life, I weighed over 300 pounds. Even as my health declined, my denial only deepened.

That denial shattered in 2008. What I thought were slightly swollen ankles landed me in the hospital with heart failure. My heart rate climbed past 225 beats per minute. At 47 years old, paramedics chemically stopped my heart – twice – trying to reset it. In the back of that ambulance, I was terrified. At the hospital, I weighed in at 373 pounds.

Still, I didn’t understand food addiction. I lost some weight by watching my sodium, but the obsession never left. In 2010, after being given a birthday cake and later eating the entire thing alone in a closet, I asked the universe for help, specifically for someone I could talk to about my food. Soon after, I was led to Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA). When I made the call, I finally heard that sugar and flour are addictive substances. At once, everything clicked – the mental obsession was paired with a physical craving.

I joined FA on April 28, 2010, weighing 302 pounds, and I have lost over 150 pounds. With my doctor’s guidance, I’ve come off 18 different medications. I no longer need a cane, which I once relied on at age 49. I no longer have sleep apnea or high blood pressure. I restored my relationships and financial standing, and I’ve gained a life beyond anything I imagined. Today, I live with freedom, purpose, and gratitude, one day at a time.