129. Borrowed Faith

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.