By Keighla Schmidt, Staff Writer

“I’ll have one large pizza with the works.”

“I’d like to take the family meal for four home.”

“We’ll do the buy one Blizzard get one free.”

“Oh, all these family-sized packets of junk food? I’m having a party.”

Lies.

All her life Sue lied about food.

“I ate. I ate. I didn’t feel anything. I just ate.”

She eventually tipped the scale at 309 pounds and when a doctor wrote “morbidly obese” on her chart Sue knew just how to handle it.

“I thought ‘You stupid doctor. What do you know?’ … Then, I stewed over it and I ate.”

The pizza, she ate that all on her own, every crumb. The KFC family meal meant to feed four, Sue ate enough for three. The free Blizzard wasn’t for the friend waiting at home – there was no friend; it was Sue’s. There was no party on Sue’s social calendar, the only people she had plans with were Ben and Jerry.

“It was like heroin. People who do heroin have rows they line up and they sniff. For me there were rows of Oreo cookies. I would eat a whole row. Then I’d see there were two more rows in the package waiting to be eaten. I’d go back and eat them.”

That was Sue’s life. Food. Lots of food.

She got out of a 19 year marriage to an abusive husband. She lost her six-figure salary job and took a job in rural Minnesota in an attempt to dig herself out.

“I was the outsider from the big city who was trying to change everything. I was alone. I started eating and I could not stop … I was a 24-hour eating machine.”

Her job, while it paid well, was not working out. She missed her home in Scott County. The rural country life wasn’t for her.

So, she quit. She packed up and moved back south of the river and claimed a room in her sister’s house.

“I still ate. But then came the concealing. I hid it. I would go to that restaurant with blue and white – Culvers, and order a large shake. I’d drink the whole thing on the way home and then I’d hide it in the garbage when I got there.”

She knew something had to change, but the holiday season was coming up. There was Thanksgiving. Then Christmas. Then New Years. What was a girl to do? Start dieting right in the middle of eating season. Nope, not Sue.

Instead she researched going to Tijuana, Mexico to get gastric bypass surgery.

“It’s cheaper there.”

She even had a plan with the doctors south of the border that included staying in a high-end hotel post surgery and Mexico’s top- notch ‘round the clock care.

“Oh, I had it all planned out.”

As she was eating her way through life, Sue tried to break into the real estate business. She went to school and became an agent. Unfortunately, her timing was off. The market was dropping fast and there was no money to be made.

“It was February. I had open houses and I couldn’t sell anything.”

Her sister was out of town and Sue was feeling down about her new career path. To bury the pain she ordered herself a large pizza.

“And I ate the whole thing. I couldn’t remember eating it. I went down to take another slice and there were no more. I ate a whole pizza and had no recollection of it at all. I knew then there was something very, very wrong and I needed help … that was my turning point. I call it ‘The Pizza Incident.’”

Of course Sue had tried Weight Watchers. And fad diets. And starving herself. And exercising incessantly.

“That would work until I would see something I want or I’d weigh in and have a good week. Then I’d go out to celebrate and I would eat.”

During the hippie years as well as glory days of Madonna, Sue had heard about and even gone to Overeaters Anonymous (OA) meetings.

“I had gone to a few meetings and I thought they were all nuts.”

So, she decided not to worry too much about her weight, after all no one said anything to her. Her friends or family didn’t approach the topic of her expanding waistline and she didn’t divulge in that area of her life.

“Oh, no no no. No one talked about it.”

There was an elephant in the room.

“I could barely fit in a plane seat, I was at the end, the very end, of the seatbelt. I wore a size 4X. I’d buy anything that fit. It didn’t matter what it looked like. If it fit I wore it. There was no fashion.”

That was true for all but one friend … who happened to be a member of OA.

“She was the one person I could be honest with.”

She agreed to go to a meeting with her friend.

“It changed my life … It was by a higher power that my life changed.”

Unlike a trip to Tijuana, OA did more than cut her stomach capacity down.

“It’s not the food – it’s the life issues.”

From there things changed. Big time.

OA is modeled closely after the successful Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) structure: open and anonymous meetings, discussions, a sponsor, the Serenity Prayer, 12 steps and perpetual recovery.

“If you look at the AA book and take out the words ‘alcohol’ and ‘alcoholic’ and replace them with ‘food’ and ‘compulsive overeater,’ that book is me.”

For nearly three years Sue has gone to two meetings each week.

She follows the “H.O.W.” method – Honesty, Openness and Willingness. Sue said it’s a strict plan that requires a lot of accountability and an approved meal plan. A doctor or dietician must create a plan and Sue is held to it. At the top of every morning Sue calls her sponsor to go over her meals; every morsel that goes into Sue’s body is weighed and measured now and there is no sugar or white flour.

If Sue tells her sponsor she’s going to have a banana during the day and realizes she’s out of bananas and wants to swap it with an apple – she has to have it approved by her sponsor.

“I’ve lost the privilege to make that decision. I’ve proven at 309 pounds I’m not capable of deciding what I can eat.”

While the menu may appear to be restricting, Sue said the opposite is true. OA has changed her life drastically and for the better.

“There is so much freedom in that menu … The obsession is gone. Ben and Jerry’s no longer calls me in the grocery store. Whereas before, Ben and Jerry’s would just be the appetizer. Cookies? Pfft. Who cares?”

Pounds did start falling off. Sue is down from a 4X to a size 16 pant and a large shirt – the same size she was in high school.

She doesn’t obsess over her weight as she only gets on a scale about once a month, but Sue said she looks and feels like a different person.

“I can say that now, I couldn’t say that before.”

Sue admits her path was not an easy one.

“But the program works. Once you decide you’re ready and you want to make the change, things happen. You change.”

For her, leaving pizza behind was hard.

“I remember thinking ‘I’ll never eat pizza again.’ I had to change my way of thinking. I started thinking ‘I’m not going to have pizza today. That doesn’t mean I won’t have it tomorrow, but today I won’t eat pizza.’”

Her life, she said, is now literally one day at a time.

“We don’t know for sure that tomorrow will be here. And yesterday is yesterday. It happened and there’s no way to change it. Today I can do things right.”

A large component of the program is the reliance on a higher power. In the 12 steps, the third step makes clear “God” is a deity to which members assign their own name.

“We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. ‘Him’ is a place holder. ‘God’ can be God, Allah, Yahweh, Mohammed, Mother Earth, the power of the group. It’s whoever you say it is, but it’s whatever is stronger than you and helps guide you.”

This year OA celebrates 50 years. A large convention is planned in Los Angeles in August, but no special events are set locally. However, there are local chapters and meetings throughout the metro area nightly.

To find a local meeting go to www.overeatersanonymous.org.

Grounded around anonymity, dedication, reverence to a higher power and peer support it’s grown from a three-woman get together in California to a nonprofit organization spanning 75 countries.

Now, there are approximately 54,000 members.

Around the group, it’s well known “the only requirement for OA membership is a desire to stop eating compulsively.” There are no fees and no creed, race, age or gender restrictions. Which is how Sue said it should be.

“Compulsive overeating doesn’t discriminate.”

While “overeating” is in the group’s name, eating issues don’t limit to just overeating as anorexic and bulimic people also seek relief in OA.

Sue said being one of many success stories that comes from a group celebrating it’s golden anniversary says more about the group than about her.

“It works.”

Which is why she agreed to anonymously share her story – to protect herself from embarrassment, but also, to help others.

“I know there are so many people out there who are struggling with weight. They need help. This is free and it works.”

She urged people to attend local meetings. Newcomers won’t be expected to divulge their life story if they aren’t ready.

“It’s open and it’s safe.”

Even if people from the meetings see each other outside the meeting, or see neighbors at the meetings, members can feel safe there won’t be shame.

“Just come and try. There’s nothing to lose.”

Nothing but weight.

 

Keighla Schmidt can be reached at kschmidt@swpub.com.