Addiction comes in many forms depending on where you are in your life. The symptoms of addiction can manifest as early as childhood. This would be the case for Heidi. Heidi began her eating disorders at a young age starting with anorexia and moving towards compulsive eating later on in life. Heidi starved herself down to 20lbs underweight for her height, receiving accolades from her mother for doing so. This only lasted for so long. The obsession to eat took over her mind, and the undereating soon turned into a compulsive eating behavior. It soon became her answer to anything. Whether she was joyful or in pain, her response was to eat. Off and on, as some addicts do, she replaced her food addiction with sex, but the food was what brought her to her knees, and it was what she always went back to.
Heidi was married for the first time and recalls the reception with embarrassment but with clarity about her problem. As the family was being taken out for dinner, her cat jumped into the wedding cake. Forlorn but resigned that she could not serve the cake to her guests, she went out to celebrate. Upon her return she secretly ate the cake she would not serve to her attendees. Her desperation mirrored the behavior of an addict. Yet Heidi was not yet ready to face her symptoms, let alone the underlying issues. The compulsion to eat ballooned her to her highest recorded weight of 382lbs. A sneaking suspicion that her husband was actually gay did not help the self-esteem of the overeater, and things got worse.
“Fifty percent of my thoughts were on food,” she explains. “When I was at work, the vending machine was all I could think about.” At this point there were very few scales that could measure her weight, her feet hurt constantly and she had to have an MRI on her knees. Following a divorce with her husband Heidi realized that it was time to seek help. “I am dying here,” she recalls saying. “I need some instruction on how to live my life.” She began seeing a counselor at an eating disorder clinic. Her counselor informed her that she may be a compulsive eater and that attending support group meetings may help her find the solution she was seeking. She began going to meetings once a week, and she worked on a diet. She was not following the plan outlined in her 12-step program. She was only attending meetings, as it seemed to be the thing to do at that time, and consistently found that she had nothing in common with the people in attendance.
Heidi lost 60lbs, but she found that very quickly the wheels just came off, and she was right back to her old self. She was finding the need to always have something, anything, in her mouth. Heidi commented to me about how difficult being a compulsive eater is. She mentioned that eating is a necessity in life. An alcoholic and/or a drug addict can have clearly defined lines as to what to do and what not to do, to an overeater abstinence is as follows: Refraining from compulsive food behavior while maintaining a healthy body weight. These can all be pretty subjective. The line that an overeater must toe is riddled with frustrations and uncertainties. Heidi was beginning to see the crux of her dilemma, and so with that first step she surrendered.
Today her life is flourishing. With 5 years of abstinence under her belt she applies the 12 steps to everything in her life including her marriage. “I don’t wanna act like it’s perfect, but it’s solid.” Her husband attends support group meetings of his own with the understanding that sick people attract sick partners. Both realized that healing was important in their lives, and they had found that in the 12-step process. Heidi has lost 100lbs and continues to focus on her weight loss and insists that it doesn’t happen overnight but that it takes time. Her current diet consists of three meals a day, a snack and nothing in between. She doesn’t eat foods where sugar is higher than the fourth ingredient and for a while she avoided bread. With the work that she has done, she has slowly incorporated carbohydrates back into her life.
As she continues to grow in recovery, Heidi understands how important it is to continue to spread a message and has shared her story with Heroes In Recovery to help shed the light on the many faces of addiction. We all suffer, yet there is a solution.