to put a behavior down for one day or a half hour. Be willing to take direction.
Direction was one of Katie’s stumbling blocks. Sponsors insisted on synchronizing watches and calling (at five a.m. in her case) on the dot. Call a minute late, and she’d hear she was “taking her will back,” which is the opposite of willingness.
In the end, she said, “It’s a fucking cult. I couldn’t join the step studies because I smoked and drank Diet Coke. You can’t take antidepressants, and I was never thin enough for them. You’re either with them or not, and no matter how much weight I lost, there was always something wrong about me.”
After two years of FA, in 2002, the gang mentality had stripped Katie of her fragile sense that she was good enough to belong, pushing her into another of her notorious depressions. She went back to her beloved cakes, feeling bleak and without faith, “like sitting in a dark room with a lead jacket—the one they put on you at the dentist for X-rays—and the room just keeps getting smaller and I just keep getting bigger.”
Worsening her depression were the teachings of the Rooms, which can throw a lot of blame on the addict. Her FA group was intolerant of relapse—consider the browbeating being a minute late for a phone call engendered, and you’ll have an idea of how backs turn for breaking abstinence. I had an acquaintance in FAA, another very strict recover group, who lost her day count over using a tablespoon of the wrong soy sauce. 22
“It’s a criminal act to be fat or ‘in the food’ or ‘struggling with the food,’” Katie blogged on her own site, Mrs. Beasley Says So. She was frozen out of the group. To admit to an outright binge risks losing one’s sponsor and being shunned by other members. They’re more frightened of the same thing happening to them than they are sympathetic to relapse. Speaking as a serial relapser myself, one becomes wary of consistently burdening a group with the announcement of three days or twenty-seven days of adherence to a food plan, or the redundant plaint of being unable to get abstinent. That self-consciousness itself can drive those most in trouble away.
Relapse along with weight gain was the worst crime Katie could commit. “My friends in that program, and myself included, have had to hate fat,” she added. How could “recovery” from compulsive eating occur when, through group-think, you turned your back on what you have been most of your life? It encouraged self-hatred, and Katie always lived on that edge. Three years of bingeing, crying, therapy, and raging later, Katie warned others, “Don’t hate yourself into weight loss. It won’t work, it won’t last, and please love yourself into acceptance. Don’t be afraid of Fat Acceptance. Embrace it and don’t deny who you are.”
I must interject that not all recovery programs, or all FA groups, encourage such fat phobia among its members. The Stepfords have always taught me and others to thank God for our fat, which was very possibly a life-saving, albeit inadequate, reaction to situations we couldn’t otherwise have borne.
At the same time, how many relapses come from losing a lot of weight—enough to shop in misses’ departments and be asked out on streams of dates—but not enough or, in some cases, an uncomfortable amount of weight?
In her first weight loss, when Katie reached 160 pounds, she was thin enough for economy class, designer clothes, and boyfriends, but when she got to 160 pounds, a size 10, a decade later, a group of women who had never been weighed on a loading dock scale deemed her still fat.
The more Katie lost, the more bewildered she was by the choices, possibilities, abilities, and changed dynamics with her colleagues, family, and friends. Black boatneck sweater or ivory muslin blouse? Should I change jobs or go after a promotion? What do I do with all this energy? The gauntlet of classic exchanges that are both flattering and insulting become
Direction was one of Katie’s stumbling blocks. Sponsors insisted on synchronizing watches and calling (at five a.m. in her case) on the dot. Call a minute late, and she’d hear she was “taking her will back,” which is the opposite of willingness.
In the end, she said, “It’s a fucking cult. I couldn’t join the step studies because I smoked and drank Diet Coke. You can’t take antidepressants, and I was never thin enough for them. You’re either with them or not, and no matter how much weight I lost, there was always something wrong about me.”
After two years of FA, in 2002, the gang mentality had stripped Katie of her fragile sense that she was good enough to belong, pushing her into another of her notorious depressions. She went back to her beloved cakes, feeling bleak and without faith, “like sitting in a dark room with a lead jacket—the one they put on you at the dentist for X-rays—and the room just keeps getting smaller and I just keep getting bigger.”
Worsening her depression were the teachings of the Rooms, which can throw a lot of blame on the addict. Her FA group was intolerant of relapse—consider the browbeating being a minute late for a phone call engendered, and you’ll have an idea of how backs turn for breaking abstinence. I had an acquaintance in FAA, another very strict recover group, who lost her day count over using a tablespoon of the wrong soy sauce. 22
“It’s a criminal act to be fat or ‘in the food’ or ‘struggling with the food,’” Katie blogged on her own site, Mrs. Beasley Says So. She was frozen out of the group. To admit to an outright binge risks losing one’s sponsor and being shunned by other members. They’re more frightened of the same thing happening to them than they are sympathetic to relapse. Speaking as a serial relapser myself, one becomes wary of consistently burdening a group with the announcement of three days or twenty-seven days of adherence to a food plan, or the redundant plaint of being unable to get abstinent. That self-consciousness itself can drive those most in trouble away.
Relapse along with weight gain was the worst crime Katie could commit. “My friends in that program, and myself included, have had to hate fat,” she added. How could “recovery” from compulsive eating occur when, through group-think, you turned your back on what you have been most of your life? It encouraged self-hatred, and Katie always lived on that edge. Three years of bingeing, crying, therapy, and raging later, Katie warned others, “Don’t hate yourself into weight loss. It won’t work, it won’t last, and please love yourself into acceptance. Don’t be afraid of Fat Acceptance. Embrace it and don’t deny who you are.”
I must interject that not all recovery programs, or all FA groups, encourage such fat phobia among its members. The Stepfords have always taught me and others to thank God for our fat, which was very possibly a life-saving, albeit inadequate, reaction to situations we couldn’t otherwise have borne.
At the same time, how many relapses come from losing a lot of weight—enough to shop in misses’ departments and be asked out on streams of dates—but not enough or, in some cases, an uncomfortable amount of weight?
In her first weight loss, when Katie reached 160 pounds, she was thin enough for economy class, designer clothes, and boyfriends, but when she got to 160 pounds, a size 10, a decade later, a group of women who had never been weighed on a loading dock scale deemed her still fat.
The more Katie lost, the more bewildered she was by the choices, possibilities, abilities, and changed dynamics with her colleagues, family, and friends. Black boatneck sweater or ivory muslin blouse? Should I change jobs or go after a promotion? What do I do with all this energy? The gauntlet of classic exchanges that are both flattering and insulting become
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