Welcome to the recovery from relapse meeting. Today is Tuesday, the 27th of August, 2024. We welcome Ria B, who came to OA in 2002. It's originally from New Jersey, but now resides in Israel. And it's my pleasure to turn the microphone over to you Ria. Go ahead. - Hi guys, how are you? Hope everybody's well. I'm Ria, I'm a personal grader of Bolemic. Forgive me, we made some family plans today. And I ended up at the beach. So I hope you can hear me. Can everybody hear me, okay? Okay, good. I moved away from the water. So, and of course, while I'm speaking, I'm getting a text from my son's friend, whatever. This is my life right now. Anyway, September 1st, my kids go back to school and then I'll be human again. All right, so my name is Ria, I'm a personal grader of Bolemic. As was said, I got into this program in 2002. And I was 19 years old when I went to my first meeting. So I'll tell you a little bit about what it was like for me as a kid. And then I wanna give some focus to the relapse that I went through. So, hold on a second, you have that? Yeah, there we go, okay, good, price is averted. Sorry about that. All right, so. So, Kevin, I believe. You have my pictures, do you mind putting those up? Thank you so much. Okay, so if you look at my pictures, if you look in the top corner, that's me as a little girl. I was a pretty typical looking kid up until I turned around eight or nine. So you'll see those pictures kind of caddy corner with it. The earliest home video of me is of compulsively eating. I don't know if you guys want some foods on this meeting, but basically a cold sweet substance. And I kept grunting at my parents to give me more. And that's basically the same behavior that I engaged in for the next 19 years of my life. I was always an anxious kid. I always felt uncomfortable in my own skin, uncomfortable around other people. If you told me that I had some sort of like neurodiversity happening, I would, you know, you were probably right. And I just learned to mask it by being super funny and super social. And plus because I was overweight from a young age, I really tried to compensate for my weight with a big personality. So anyway, we can put, we can take the picture down for a minute. So, as I said, I used compulsive eating as a way to deal with anxiety, discomfort and loneliness as a kid. I didn't have a lot of friends in school. In fact, I didn't really have my first real friend until I was in sixth grade. So about 11 or 12 years old. And I developed the habit of eating in the morning, eating my lunch, you know, earlier in the day, begging from other kids, stealing from other kids, taking from the garbage can, then coming home and having snacking all the way and then having dinner and then sneaking up and down the steps to eat. And that was how I lived. That's what I, and at the time, I genuinely believe that maybe that's what I needed in order to survive 'cause it always felt very difficult and intense for me to be in the world. So, so that's what I did. And that's why I became obese as a kid. And my parents, God bless them. You know, my mother grew up in a home where you needed to be thin and pretty and, and she never shamed me. It was never anything like that. But I think her fear of me being isolated and alienated and unhappy caused her to start taking me to diet places. And, and I also wanted to lose weight. So I can't, you know, she never forced me. It was more just, you know, this, let's take care of this problem that you have. And so I started paying ways, you know, 10 years old. And I found over and over that I could go and possibly stick to the program for a little while, but it, it didn't stick for very long. I didn't realize then that introducing certain substances into my body kicked off a phenomenon of craving. And that even if I eat food that was quote unquote on the program, if it triggered something in me, I would be able to stop. And there was one time my mom and I went to one of those pay and wait programs. And we bought all the food for the week. And the distance between that place and my house was about a mile and a half, two miles maybe. I had finished all the desserts for the week by the time we got home. So I think that was a good indicator that this was not gonna work. But at that point, I didn't really have any other choices. So I continued and I felt defective every time I failed because plenty of other people did this, why couldn't I lose weight? And of course that shame caused me to eat more, which caused me to gain more weight. I don't need to tell you the story 'cause you probably know it. But anyway, so when I was around 14 years old, we had a few things happen that really I think was when I crossed the line between me, using food and needing food to survive. Hold on, I'm speaking on a meeting. I'm speaking on a meeting. Anyway, so I'm literally speaking on a meeting right now. Yeah, I'll talk to you in a minute. So sorry guys. Anyway, so when I was 14, the year I was 14, I lost a friend to cancer who was my age. I lost a friend to AIDS, family friend. And then when we were here visiting Israel as a family, we lost a friend in a terror attack. And I didn't really have tools to deal with that at all. I was only 14 and I didn't understand any of it or how to process it. I didn't, I wasn't raised, I was raised with a traditional religious upbringing, but we weren't religious people. There was no talk of God in my house. So it all just felt way too intense to process. And so what I did was it was Passover at the time. And so I just ate the crackers that we eat on Passover, slathered with stuff and basically like mainline that until we were able to leave because I was terrified. And around that same time too, my father decided to become more religious and it caused a lot of problems in my house. So my parents were having marital problems and it was just a really intense time. And that I think was when I crossed the line to using food as my survival, not just using it as a survival tool, but like cannot survive without it. However, I was still overweight, and being an overweight girl in the 90s was not fun. You were supposed to look like Kate Moss and I looked like four Kate Mosses. And when I was 16, oh, excuse me, around that year, when I was 14, my mom and I went to go stay in a diet and fitness center, which was considered like the, I called it like fat celebrity rehab, which was like where all the fat stars went to lose weight. And we lived there for a month. And they gave us our food on trays like prisoners. And they sat us through in like these seminars that taught us how to eat and caloric intake versus metabolic output. Excuse me, lowered caloric intake increases metabolic output. Like eat less, exercise more, and you'll lose weight. And like, you didn't have to be a genius to figure that out. I was 14 and I already knew that. My problem wasn't that I didn't know better. I think most of us have a very good education in nutrition and diet by the time we get here, 'cause most of us have tried to lose weight so many times or control our eating so many times. And I remember asking the person, the professional there like, okay, but I get what you're saying, but like what if I can't not eat this thing? And she said, just don't eat it. And I was like, oh, I'm in trouble. I'm in trouble because these professional people don't even get that not eating it is not an option. I say this all the time. This was a multiple choice question and don't eat it is not one of the answers. One of the answers is eat it now, eat it later, hide it, eat half of it, and throw it up. You know, not eating it is not happening. It's just a question of when it's getting eaten and how much at that time. So anyway, that was when I felt like, you know, they say in the big book, the doors have held closed on me with a clang. That's when I really felt that. Like I went to the top specialist and all they could give me was just don't eat it. Like I'm in trouble. So by the time I was 16, I weighed about 250 pounds and I'm 5'4", so that's pretty big. And at my school, there was someone who had, I guess was a recovered bulimic who came in and talked about her experience, which we're gonna assume was to deter people from binging and purging. But when I heard it, I was like, that's a genius idea. Like if I purged, then it won't stay in my body and I won't gain weight. And so right out the gate, I mean, I'm an overachiever, right? So like within just a few months, I was binging and purging eight, 10 times a day. So the point where I couldn't eat anything without making myself throw up afterward, because I got so uncomfortable with the sense of having food in my body. Long story short, there was a lot of, there were some interventions. There were, you know, the fluffy emotional appeal, frothy emotional appeal, excuse me, begging me to stop. And so I stopped, but when I stopped, I was so angry because I felt out of control. And then when I finally got to college, I was like, all bets are off. I'm on my own now, I can do what I want. And I went down to a really, to a really bad place. And I don't remember how I heard of OA in the first place, but I did find out that there was a meeting down the street from my dorm. And for some reason, I was willing to go to it. And like I said, I was 19 years old. I was a, let's see, junior in college. And I walked into this room and was completely confused because there were, out of the, let's say, a dozen people in that room, I think I was the one or two only people who were actually fat. And they had this poster on the wall that said God like four times. And I was like, I'm going to ignore that, oh. And nobody was talking about food. There was no scale, there was no food, there were no stickers, there was not, I was just so confused. But then somebody in the meeting said, hi, my name is so-and-so and I'm a compulsive over eater. When I heard those words, I felt like a light bulb go off over my head like, oh, there's a name for this. If there's a name for this, then that means it's a thing, which means that he understands what I'm going through. And so even though I didn't fully understand what was going on in this program, I knew that these were my people and I had to just keep coming back here. So that's what I did. I did that for two years and I listened and I didn't follow directions, but I was willing to just keep showing up because I liked knowing that there were people who got this. And then after two years, I went to a meeting where there were people who had what I wanted and the wires crossed right in my brain and I realized that if I have what they want, maybe I should do what they do, which at the time was work a very structured weight and measured food plan. And that's what I did. I got abstinent and that was in March of 2004. And I genuflected at the altar of the scale, both for my food and my body. And I lost the weight and I was thin for the first time in my life. And I was surprised that when I got thin, and I mean, too thin. In fact, Kevin, can you put the pictures up again? Thank you. So if you look, there's a picture in the bottom left corner with me and my mom. And if you'll notice my collarbones are sticking out a lot, that was my lowest weight. And at that point, I had stopped menstruating. I've got, I bruised a lot. I was cold all the time. But I was well now because I was thin, right? But I was surprised when even though I wore a size two, I was rageful and anxious all the time. Like worse than I ever was when I had food to use as a buffer, I didn't get it. And I kept botching up relationships and was angry at people. I had no peace and I was unhappy and uncomfortable. And I finally went to someone who had recovery in the 12 Steps through the big book. And I was like, listen, I think that I'm Abstynan. I'm stark raving Abstynan. But if I continue like this, I'm gonna kill myself because thin was not well for me. I needed a spiritual experience. I may have looked like a normal person, whatever that means, but I certainly didn't feel like one. And so this person took me through the big book, the 12 Steps through the big book. And I started to begin getting involved in the big book community and it changed my life because I realized that this isn't about how I look or even how I eat, it's about how I live. And so for the next 15 years, I really stayed dedicated to that. I really stayed dedicated to working the big book, staying focused on that. And at the same time, never fully letting go of the body obsession because obsessing about how my body looks is because I can't eat compulsively when I feel like I can't control my external circumstances that's the one thing I feel like I can control. So that's where my brain went to. And I'll come back to that in a minute. Anyway, around 15 years of abstinence, I went through a major trauma in which like with no warning, my family and I, I lost my job, my family and I were thrown out of our house. It was just completely unexpected and there was a lot of injustice and a lot of unfairness, a lot of betrayal. And it just, it was really bad. And I was, I could not let go of the resentment because I was doing everything right. I was abstinent, I was working a program, I was being honest and the internal deal that I made with God was, okay, if I play by the rules and I do everything I'm supposed to, then nothing bad's supposed to happen to me. Mind you, I had already like lost my mom to cancer during that time, but I was just kind of chalked it up to, okay, this is the natural course of life, but like serious injustices like this were not supposed to happen. At least they weren't supposed to happen to me. And I held onto that for four years and at the time I was also working full-time. I have five children, four of whom lived with me full-time and working full-time in an office. And I started to rest on my laurels a little bit, started letting my program go a little bit. And slowly, slowly, the thought came in, you know, maybe I can eat like normal people. Maybe I can try. So there might be people who do this in this room and I have nothing against it, but I decided to try intuitive eating, which for me was not a good idea. 'Cause I intuitively, once I started, I intuitively ate my way up 30 pounds in three months. So if you, Kevin, I'm sorry, can you put the pictures back up? So basically, because I wasn't willing to let go of this resentment, I finally slipped back into the food. So if you look all the way on the right side, third picture down, you'll see a picture of me with a medal around my neck. That's me with my best friend. We had just run a half marathon. Now, before you go think that I'm some serious athlete or a good person raising money for a good cause, the reason I decided to train for a marathon was not to help other people. It was to control my weight while I was intuitively eating because if I ran, then I wouldn't gain weight, which of course didn't happen. I still gained 30 pounds. And then the day after that race, I ended up in the hospital with dehydration. So this is what I do to myself. I was so, it was crazy to watch how quickly, not only the obsession with food, but the obsession with my body came back in so hard and so strong and this sense of push, pull, control, not control, calories, what is this? But I didn't realize how much real estate it took up in my head until I went back into relapse. And I remember one time my son talking to me, and at the time he was nine years old, now he's 14, and he said, he was talking to me about something and I realized I wasn't listening to him because I was thinking about what I was gonna eat after he was done talking. And I was like, oh, it's not just about the food and the weight. It's the fact that my brain gets completely taken hostage by this disease and it becomes all about the food, all about the body, all about the weight. I'm just not here. But I wasn't willing yet to make a change until New Year's Eve, 2019. I went to a party and there's a comedian Margaret Cho who uses this expression like you come home and put on your eating dress. So like, that's what I did. I put on my eating dress and I went to this party and I just, I had a party. Let's put it that way. I ate like at Olympic levels, okay? And my husband, God bless him. He only ever knew me in program. And so I, for 15 years, I'm telling him that eating certain foods would kill me and eating like this would kill me and he's keeping his mouth shut. And then that night he said, he said to me, he's like, I don't think this is intuitive eating. And I was like, well, I don't think we should be married any. No, we're still married, it's any. But anyway, so the following day, January 1st, 2020, which is so cliche. But January 1st, I called my sponsor at the time who I had fired to work with a different sponsor. But I called her back and I'm like, listen, I think I think I need to come back and start again. And she was, and the thing was I had never left away. I always did connect the steps, but if I wasn't absent it, they weren't gonna help me. And so I came back and that was January 1st, 2020 right before COVID, thank God. So it's been four and a half years, almost five since then. And so like that's the new stretch of abstinence. But I really do consider it like a piggyback of my first abstinence, not that it matters how long, but like, you know, it is what it is. Anyway, so, so when I got back into this abstinence, I had to go back and work the steps. And the big thing I had to focus on was the resentment that I had refused to let go of that had brought me back to the food. And the big thing I realized in working the steps around that was that forgiveness, and I've said this in meetings before, forgive me if you've heard me say it, it's not mine, I've heard other people say it. Forgiveness is giving up hope of having had a better past. I'll say that again. Forgiveness is giving up hope of having had a better past, which basically means if I'm still angry about something that happened 10 years ago, that's my problem. That's the fact that it happened has nothing to do with me. But the fact is that if I keep doing it to myself for the next 10 years, I've made it my problem. Letting go of it is not condoning it or saying it's okay, it's saying I don't want to carry it around with me. And accepting that unfair shit happened, and bad things happened for no reason, and I may never know the reason, and it's none of my business. I just have to know that whatever happened, I'm supposed to take what I can from it, learn what I can from it, and stay abstinent through it so that when somebody else goes through something like that, I can say, oh, I have experience with that. And it was a bitter pill to swallow because, you know, I want justice. But no one ever said that we live in a just world, a fair world, I mean, look around for God's sake, like we certainly don't live in a just and fair world. But if I make demands of one, then I'm pretending that I know better than God. I'm not turning my will and my life over. And today, that's the foundation of everything I do. If I want to live sanely and peacefully in this life, and I don't want to eat composable for more minutes. Thank you, I don't think I'm going to use all of them if that's okay, just because I'm running out of steam out here. But I will say this, today, and Kevin, this is the last time I'm going to ask you if you don't mind putting the pictures up, thank you. Probably should have just had you leave them up, but whatever, it is what it is. So if you look at the bottom of this collage, in the middle row and the bottom right row, this is me now. I worked with a nutritionist and basically back at the weight that I was for about 10 years. In my head, I'm still not where I want to be, but it is, we'll see. For today, this is where I'm supposed to be. And I wear a normal thighs and I look like a normal person. I just have hanging skin and all that because I was obese at one time in my life. But if you look at me in the middle, it's me at the beach, living in Israel, living my best life, that's how I feel most of the time. Even when I feel shitty, I feel like that, you know? Like, I have that serenity. And next to that is a picture of me with my husband and two of my kids. The girl in that picture is my stepdaughter. I've been her stepmom and her sister stepmom since they were four and five. And because of this program, I've been able to develop a relationship with them that's incredibly close. And I really love them like my own kids. And if I hadn't, if I'd been caught up in my own selfishness, I wouldn't have been able to do right by them. And I really feel like that's been one of the main gifts of this program. Not the thin body, not the handsome husband. Like, although that's very nice, he's a very nice guy. And not the fact that I have my dream career. It's the fact that I've been able to show up as a parent, as a stepparent, and raise children in a way that was different from the way I was raised. And give over a message of self-acceptance that I didn't get as a kid. I have kids who all deal with their own stuff. I have one son on the spectrum who has weight issues and you know what, it's none of my business. I, when he wants to exercise, I'm there to support him. We just started an exercise program together because he wanted to. But it's never been because he has a problem that needs to be fixed. It's because a sedentary lifestyle is healthy. There is a difference. Okay. So I'm going to leave it there because I'm getting requests to leave the beach. But I really appreciate all of you inviting me to come and speak today. Thank you for your patience with me. And wishing you all a really blessed day. And the last thing I'll say is that this is a spiritual program. You know, the step 12 says, having had a spiritual experience as the result, the result of these steps, that means that's my son. Having had a spiritual experience as the result of these steps, the whole goal of this program is to have a spiritual experience. And so that really is what I encourage everyone to find. Abstinence is a prerequisite for that. You know, I can't be eating compulsively and still expect to have a spiritual experience, but I can begin with abstinence, but my program doesn't have to end there. It just begins there. So wishing you all a really blessed day. Thanks for letting me be in service.
