Frank H. from Santa Clara, CA telling his story at the 'Men's OA Tool Time Retreat' in Oceanside, CA

My name is Frank. I'm a recovery compulsive overeater

and I'm first going to give you the dates. I came into OA in August of 1979, about the end of the month, I don't know the exact day, it was a Wednesday. And so I'm coming up on 39 years and coming to OA and I had an initial period of nine years of abstinence and then I had a long 18 years of relapse and recovery, Relapse and recovery. And thank God it wasn't all relapse because I'd be dead right now. It was all relapse. And I'll get into that why, but you know, I'd have like 6 months relapse

recovery, six months relapse, 6 months recovery back and forth. And so the weight went up and up and up because gained more weight and the relapses than I lost in the recovery periods. And then currently I have 12 years of abstinence right now. Now I'll talk about the weights. My just the, the, the main numbers. My top weight before I came into LA was 430 lbs. My weight when I walked in the door was 380 lbs. In the first year in the program, I lost 180 lbs and got down to my goal weight of 200 lbs.

I then during that relapse period, I got to a higher top weight of 460 lbs during that relapse and recovery period. And 12 years ago when I started my current abstinence, I was at 400 lbs. Now I've gotten as low as 210 lbs about two years into this abstinence and currently I'm in my two 30s up and down a few pounds. And I that is not from breaking my abstinence. It's basically from just eating a little bit too much over a long period of time. I, I worked it out, it's like 20 calories per day over 10 years

would give me that amount of weight gain. So I do consider myself abstinence. So I would like to be in the in the two 10s and I'm currently in the 2:30. So five 2520 lbs is what I'd like to lose from here on.

All right, so now I'm going to talk more about the food. The very first time that I had any idea that I might have a food or a weight problem was in 8th grade. I'm I'm the oldest of 10. It's a large Catholic family. And

in 7th grade, there I was reaching for a second helping of the mashed potatoes to put on my plate. And my dad said something like, you know, if you stay at this weight when you grow taller, you'll be fine. And I had no idea that I wasn't fine at that point. You know, I didn't realize that I was fat. I thought I was just OK. I was fine.

So that was the very first indication. And that was that kind of struck me odd. What? What's he talking about?

Although I then found out in 8th grade when unfortunately the boys called me Hippo and they came up and grabbed my breasts like they were women's tits on the playground. And, and I hated that. I really, really hated that. And I hope it wouldn't carry through into high school when it luckily it didn't. I went, I went to a high school and that didn't follow me there. But you know, all during high school and grade school there I was maybe 30 lbs overweight. That was probably, I don't think it was any more than that.

And then I went away to college. I went away to a college back on the East Coast

and I grew up in Cincinnati, OH and then I went to the East Coast

and they had unlimited seconds in the dorm there and I put on about 50 lbs in that freshman year of having those unlimited seconds. And, and, and I am just a quantity eaters. The main bottom line it's not I don't go for any particular food group or anything like that is just quantity of eating. And I probably left the undergraduate school at around £300

and I came out to California to go to Stanford for Graduate School. And it was in Graduate School there that I got to my top way to 430 lbs in Graduate School. Now, compulsive reading is my main disease, there's no question about that. But in Graduate School I was so miserable for my weight that I got into alcohol and weed addictively. I mean, I was smoking joints, you know, morning, noon and night. And, and this was back when they weren't very powerful. They were,

you know, you have the role of big fat joint of leaves and stems to feel a little bit of a high. But I was also drinking and I was a poor graduate student, so I worked out the cheapest way of getting an ounce of alcohol was to buy this Old English 800 beer. I don't know if you guys ever tasted it tastes awful, but if you drink enough of it, you don't notice the bad taste. And I used to drink a six pack of Old English 816 oz cans in a night and that would put me out. I mean, I'd be, I'd

asleep. I fall asleep. I means pass out. So that's my alcohol and weed use. Now, this is a food program because, and I, and I really am a compulsive reviewer primarily.

So as you can imagine, I wasn't doing very well in Graduate School, you know, with all that weed and alcohol and, and the weight and so miserable and, you know, not really applying myself. And it was clear I, I, oh, I was clear I wasn't going to be able to continue in physics. I was getting a graduate degree in physics. So I decided I needed to switch it to software engineering, an engineering school instead of physics

thing. So I managed to. I knew that I would have a hard time

getting a job at 430 lbs. So I tried to lose some weight to go out and find a job. And that's how I got down to about 380 lbs. And, and I got down to there and that was the best I could do. And I, I did get a nice job and, and everything is great. Now, like I said, I quantity eating was my, was my thing. I just, you know, ate large quantities of whatever I ate. I would make a tray of lasagna for example.

That would be like 4 meals right? Something like that. Cut it in the 4th and it would be gone in one night. I just

take my 11 portion and then I go back and get a second, then I get a third and then I get a fourth and it's gone. And you know, I'd stop at multiple fast food joints if I was going anywhere, I'd I'd, you know, order a Max of whatever it is and then I'd go to another fast food joint and order a Max of whatever it is. So it was quantity eating. Now, as I said, I was raised Catholic and I got into physics in high school. I wanted to become a physicist and

with all my, you know, with all the science that I was learning and everything there,

I went and looked at all the proofs that God exists and I could prove that they were wrong. They, you know, they made it, they hit, they made a hidden assumption that God exists in their proofs. They were invalid. In fact, I could come up with a scientific proof that proved that God didn't exist. So I basically converted to atheism in high school. I was an atheist, absolutely atheist. And I I pretended to go to church because my parents still expect me to go to church. But I would typically drive the car and go get some fast food, then come back and hope they didn't ask me about the sermon.

That's how I would would do my Sunday morning.

So I so, so I was an absolute atheist and I came into the program and I did get a higher power in the program and I'll be talking about that a lot later. But I have to tell you, I still consider myself to be a spiritual atheist. That's what I would call myself today. So I really do try to do spiritual program and, and work the 12 step program as a spiritual program. But I say that I'm an atheist because I don't believe in a God that's outside of me, a God that's up there that created the earth and the heavens and a God that's going to judge me. And all the stuff that I learned in Catholic.

I do not believe in that kind of a God. And so that's the way in which I say that I'm an atheist still. And I'll tell you more about my higher power. So I needed to hit a hard bottom to come to a program that talked about, about God and the hard problem, the hard bottom that I had to hit was that it wasn't just the food and wasn't just this alcohol and also the, the marijuana. You know, I, I, I qualify for other programs like, you know, porn and things like that too. So I could qualify for other programs,

was into a lot of bad stuff, but it wasn't that was the bottom. The bottom came when I became friends with this woman at work and this is it. When I was at 380 lbs, I became friends with this woman at work and then after a few months of being friends and smoking dope together, we became more than friends. And then after a month or two, she wanted to end it and go back to just being friends. And that was the bottom I had to hit to come to a program that talked about God.

So I was, you know, desperate because this is the only woman in the world for me, you know, and no one else that will ever love me, especially a 380 lbs. And

you know, there, this was the only chance I had basically. So I, I finally called around for help. I called the Palito Medical Foundation. I was living in Palo Alto up there. And I called the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and they said, oh, we had a therapist come in and talk about weight loss just last week. So they gave me the, the, the name and number of the therapist. And I called the therapist and he said he would take me on as a client, but that I had to go to Overeaters Anonymous meetings simultaneously. Now I didn't know anything about ovaries

and thank God there was number Internet then because if I'd looked it up and seen it was a spiritual program, I wouldn't be here today.

But I, I looked in the phone book and found Overeaters anonymous. I called the number. They, they told me where there was a meeting that I could go to. And so I went to this meeting on noon at Wednesday in the, in the, in the, on the Stanford campus. So I went to this meeting. It was a very small meeting, like three people plus me. And so they let me cross talk at the meeting and I asked them, how can an atheist work this program? Because I heard it was God when I got there. Oh my gosh, You know,

I just about left, but luckily I stayed and they said, well, you don't need to believe in a traditional higher power

can be anything you want. You can use the group as the higher power. And you know, whatever they tried to convince me that I didn't need to believe in a traditional higher power. And somebody at that meeting loaned me the a, a big book and they said, read the chapter we agnostics that might be helpful for you. So I left that meeting skeptical and I went home and I read that chapter and then I was convinced this program was not for me because the only message I got out of that chapter was if you stick with us, we'll convert you. And I didn't want to be converted. You know, there was no, no way I wanted to be converted.

So if I had been given the book as a gift, I probably wouldn't be here today. But I had to go back to that same meeting a week later to return the book that they loaned me. And I went back to that meeting a week later. And I think the, the, the lady that loaned it to me wasn't even there that that second time. But I had another little dose of pain, dose of pain of this woman rejecting me in the week between the two meetings. And so I was little more willing to listen to them when they said that you didn't need to believe in a traditional higher power.

So I ended up going to my third OA meeting the same day, the same day that I went to the second meeting, my the third. These were both at noon on Wednesday. And I went to a Wednesday night meeting down in San Jose that same day of the second meeting. And there I got the hope that I needed. This is a much bigger meeting, something like 40 people, something like that at that time. This is, you know, 1979 when OA was big and growing bigger. And a man stood up there and he was a thin man. You know, he was a thin looking man

and he talked about having lost over 100 lbs and kept it off for years. And you know, that's like winning the jackpot. You know, people who lose weight generally gain it back. And you know, when I came into the program, I wasn't looking to get thin. I was morbidly obese and I was looking to maybe get down to just being obese. You know, I might be able to get a few more girlfriends just that obese instead of it morbidly obese. So that's what I was looking for. I wasn't looking to get all the way to thin

SO

so I did go I did go to the program and I did get a food sponsor. I didn't get a step sponsor because the steps had the word God in them. So I got a food sponsor and I called in my food and talked to my food sponsor about my food and my food plan was to count calories and the

and since I wanted to drink beer also, I decided to account for the calories of one can of beer. So I was going to have one can of beer with my dinner. And that was my plan. And it never happened to be 1 deer one beer. It would be the whole 6 pack because I had to buy a six pack to get the one can right. And then I drank the whole 6 pack and then had to buy another six pack the next day. So I kept binging on beer essentially during my first few weeks in the program.

And so after after that period of time, I got the the bright idea. Oh, I have to go to a A.

So I did go to an AA meeting. And from the, the time that I went to that first a meeting to now, I have not had a drink of beer. So I've been clean. I've been sober from that point of view since that, that meeting, which was a few weeks after I got in that way. So that would have been September sometime in September of 1979.

Now marijuana didn't have any calories and I was way past the point of getting the munchies from marijuana because I've been using chronically so for so many years. It didn't give me the munchies anymore. So I can continue to smoke weed continuously.

So for about the next six months, I went to OA meetings and A meetings stoned on weed. This is somebody who didn't quite get the message of what a A was about, for example. So, but I did that for about 6 months. And then I, I, I had, it turned out that I had a small Mullah tumor, not a tumor. Yeah, it was a tumor. It was a tumor on my thyroid, but it turned out to be a benign tumor. It wasn't, it wasn't cancerous

and I noticed it because I kept getting a sore throat that wouldn't go away. And the doctor finally sent me to a

endocrinologist and they could feel that there was a tumor there. And so they did studies. So they wanted to do surgery to take out the tumor. Now from all my chronic weed smoking, I would get bronchitis about twice a year and you know, be coughing, coughing for a couple of months from the bronchitis from all that weed smoking. So I decided that would be good to stop smoking weed for a week before surgery, give my lungs a chance to clear out so I wouldn't be coughing my head off right after surgery or anything like that.

So that, that was my plan

and then I decided, well, six days would be enough, 05 days will be enough, four days will be enough, three days will be enough. The night before surgery was my last joint. So I went into the surgery the next day and I had to tell the anesthesiologist that I just smoked some weed last night. And I said, OK, thanks for telling me. And, and I they went ahead with the surgery. Now this is back in, in 1980. This is like

February of 1980, late January of 1980. So

you actually stayed in the hospital for three days after this kind of surgery. I think you would be out in one day today, but it was three days at that time. So I had three days of clean and sober from being in the hospital and that's when I started my sobriety from both wheat and alcohol. So I haven't had any mind altering drug of those kinds since 19. Well, 38 years, 38 years clean and sober.

So,

so that's, that's the end of my alcohol story. I'm not going to tell you anything more about that because there's nothing more to tell. I haven't had really any desire to drink or, or use weed or anything like that since then.

Now I went to OA meetings and I, you know, I was calling my food sponsor and I was losing rapid weight. See, it was a great gift that I got to OA before I had that surgery because I actually lost almost 100 lbs before I had the surgery. So I'm sure that it was, I had much better prognosis from having the surgery having lost about 100 lbs. So I was probably in my upper two hundreds, 200 and 8290 when I had the surgery.

So actually it might have been 80 lbs, but it was a lot of weight. I lost a lot of weight

and you know, I still didn't have a step sponsor. I didn't, I wasn't doing any spiritual part of the program. I was kind of on a diet is what it was. I was on a diet with, with group support, you know, because I went to the meetings and if I went to the meetings, I got support. And so I was kind of using the meetings as my higher power because if I went to meetings, I got, you know, enthusiastic and I could stick to the food plan and lose some more weight and come back and report my weight loss and they would be all, you know, congratulations, Frank. And you know, blah blah blah.

So

what happened? And like I said, I was counting calories as part of my my food plan because I was a physicist. I knew the law of conservation of energy and that's what was required to lose weight, is to eat less calories than my body needed. And that's how I would do it.

Now, what happened is about 6 months into the program, this guy came up to me and volunteered to be my sponsor. Now, he had been cut out of the same mold that I've been cut out of. He had lost over 100 lbs and kept it off for years. He had been an alcoholic and a compulsive overeater. He was an atheist when he came into the program. So, you know, he had cut out, been cut out of the same mold that I've been cut out of. And he volunteered to be my sponsors. So I had a sponsor, a step sponsor,

and so work the first step fine on powerless over food. There's no question about that. And then you get to the second and third steps and what am I going to do there? You know, I what he what and what he was a brilliant because what he suggested was, first of all, give up the debate. You know my little proof that God doesn't exist,

What good does that proof do me in my life today? If I could prove that God doesn't exist to everyone's satisfaction here, is that going to help me at all? No, that's not going to help me at all. Whereas if I could come to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, what good would that do it in my life? well-being restored to sanity with the food would be a good thing. So that was giving up the date was the first thing. So setting aside my proof that God didn't exist,

and then he got me to act as if

and he got me to just say a prayer, even though I didn't think there was any God that I was praying to. I was just praying into a black void, you know, and there couldn't possibly have any positive effect into my horror and disgust. It worked because whenever I said the serenity prayer, I usually got serenity, which is usually what I needed because I was trying to change something I couldn't change like another person place your thing there. I was trying to change something that wasn't wasn't going to be able to change. And if I said the serenity prayer, I got some serenity. So that gave me the,

that experiment gave me the willingness to go ahead and, and try, try acting as if some more and doing more prayers. And so I can get over that, that second step, I could come to believe that a power of greater myself could restore me sanity because I had the experience that it did help to pray. So that's how I came to believe. And then I don't know how, you know, turning my well, my life over to this nebulous thing that I don't know anything about. It was a little bit harder. I couldn't really use the group as the higher power at that point because

how do I turn my well in the life over the care of the group? That's not going to help. So the best I came up with at that point in time was I just called it the higher self. It's it's some part of my brain. That's not Frank. So Frank that's talking to you right now, that's sitting here in this chair. That's the Frank that's powerless of her food, whose life is unmanageable. And that's the Frank who needs to turn his will and his life over to the care of his higher self. And if you look at both the OA literature and the A literature, and I'll be talking about this when I go through the steps,

a lot of them talk about intuition as being the conduit for hearing God's voice for us, God's will for us

is, you know, you pray and you're asking a meditation and if you get an intuitive thought, that's, that was God that put that thought into your head. So I basically turned intuition into my higher power. So that was my higher, my higher self is what I what I called it. So

the most important thing I need to know about my higher self, that is not Frank. That's the Frank that's sitting here here right now.

So now, you know, I was counting calories and everything, but I was still a quantity eater and cantaloupes have very low calorie, you know, they don't have very many calories. And so I was eating at least one cantaloupe a day and sometimes two cantaloupes a day until someone pointed out that my skin was turning orange just to show you how much cantaloupes I was eating. You know, that's that's not normal. So when they pointed that out, Cantaloupe. Cantaloupe.

Yeah, I'm sorry, cancel it. But Cantaloupe.

So that's why my skin was turning orange, because of the orange and the cantaloupe. So I just wanted to point out that I can still be compulsive about food even though I was absent in counting calories.

So

like I said, I started out counting calories and for that first year, that first period of abstinence that was about 9-9 years long. It gradually over that period of time, it's morphed into kind of moderate kneeling. That's what I've been doing. I would, I wouldn't be so rigorous about weighing and measuring and recording the calories. For the first few years, I recorded the calories very religiously. I still have the notebooks recording the food item and how many calories and the total for the day, things like that.

Now I, my first sponsor moved away, He moved back East and then I got a second sponsor

and I went through the steps, I think probably twice in that first nine year period there. With my second sponsor, I went through one more time, but then he moved down to LA. So I happened to be between sponsors at this point in time. And I was also very active in the program. My first of all, having lost 180 lbs, I was asked to speak at a lot of meetings. I was the I was a keynote speaker at the Region 2 convention when it was in San Jose. One of those years

I, you know, I went to retreats and conventions. I was

active in the intergroup. In fact, at that point in time, I was the chairperson of the inner group and I was also a World Service Business Conference delegate. So I went to the World Service Business Convention every year for like 4 years in a row at that point in time. And I knew the members of the boards of Board of Trustees of Overage Anonymous. I mean, I was in hot tubs with the Board of Trustees over years, anonymous that at our convention.

So as you can hear, my ego is getting bigger and bigger and bigger and I was basically

coasting on the program there. I wasn't really working the program. I wasn't really trying to find a higher power. I wasn't really trying to turn my will in life over the care of the higher power. I wasn't doing prayer and meditation. It was kind of a diet and calories club and, and coasting on my laurels at that point in time.

And since I was doing moderate meals, my, my, my rule at the time when I go to a buffet is that I could have one plate at the buffet. Now it could be close to avalanching off the sides of the plate, but I you know what? I came good at getting angle just right so that it wouldn't fall off the plate

and I can eat that and that would be my abstinent meal.

And then I what happened is one time I went to a buffet and I had one plate and then I went back and got a small second plate and then I went back and got a small third plate. They weren't 3 avalanches, 1 avalanche and two small plates, but three doesn't equal 1. So I broke my abstinence, but I was in between sponsors and I couldn't tell anybody that I broke my abstinence because all of these service positions that I had had abstinence requirements. And this was about two months before the World Service Business Conference that year. And I wanted to go to the World Service Business Conference.

I had a lot of fun going there. And so I didn't tell anybody about that first binge. And then a week or two later, there was a second binge and then there was another binge and I gained some obvious amount of weight. I don't know how long it took me, but I gained some obvious amount of weight. And I had to admit that I was no longer abstinent. So I gave up my service positions. And that was the beginning of my nine years of, of 19 years,

18 years of relapse recovery, relapse recovery.

And you know, at first the, the weight gains weren't very much. And then when I would get get some recovery again, it would go back down again. But the problem was that went up higher in the relapse periods and, and not as low during the recovery periods. And that's how I got up to my top weight of 40.

My pictures, I'll pass them around tomorrow. I think I have them and I hope I have them in my bag. I do have them on my bag. I meant to bring them here tonight. So I'll I'll show you the pictures. You can see that.

So that's how I got to into the relapse and recovery periods. And I, so I wasn't working the spiritual program before the program before my relapse periods. And now in the past 12 years, I am really, really trying to work the spiritual part of this program. I'm really trying to do the prayer and meditation. And in fact, I tried going back to the World Service Business Conference for two, two conferences

and it didn't work. I discovered that I wasn't spiritual enough to go to World Service Business Conference.

I was there the year when they put the plan of action in, and it was actually brought to the conference as a plan of motion. And I was vehemently opposed to doing a plan of motion because that's exercise. That's an outside issue. It doesn't have anything to do with working the programs. Where does it say a plan of motion in the steps? You know, I was arguing against it vociferously. They changed it from a plan of motion to a plan of action. But I knew they were really talking about exercise. And you know, I had actually made it a point of losing,

you know, at that time I was around 200, close to 200. I might, maybe not, might have not have been at my lowest weight, but I was close to 200 lbs and I'd lost 200 lbs there from 400 lbs when I started this abstinence to that point without doing a lick of exercise, I never once went to exercise. So when I, when I got so upset at the World Service Business Conference and doing that, I realized that I'm not spiritual enough to do the World Service Business Conference. So I haven't been back at that level of service since then. In fact, I haven't

back to the intergroup even since then. My service level needs to be at the meeting level right now. Meeting level and being this, being a sponsor, that's that's how I need to do service in this program. Maybe eventually I'll be spiritual enough to be able to go to work service business conference without getting upset.

And then the other, the other ironic thing about that is about two months after I came back from that World Service Business Conference, I joined a gym and I've been exercising regularly since then. So I do have a plan of motion.

So what did I do wrong in the, in that relapse and recovery period? Well, I, I'm convinced that I wasn't really working the first step the, you know, admitting that I'm parallel server food. What I did instead was I said to myself, OK, I'm going to start tomorrow. And that means I got to get all of my binge foods and, you know, quantities and just, you know, binge out today and then I'll start tomorrow and then that'll be OK. That'll be getting my absence and whatever. If I'm thinking that I have the ability to

today and to stop tomorrow, that's not taking the first step. That's thinking that I have power over the food. So it was, it was, you know, 19 years or 18 years of basically most of the time thinking that I had power over the food. So I wasn't, I wasn't taking the first step. And you know, during that time there, I tried to go back to the counting calories, the thing that worked the first time, but it never worked again. I tried counting calories and it didn't work. So I was doing moderate mailing. I was trying other kinds of things, you know, whatever

and

nothing worked for a long term. I mean, things would work for a few weeks or a few months, something like that. That's why I was really alternating relapse and recovery. The other thing is I used to go to conventions and retreats and all kinds of things like that. During this this period here, I didn't go to any conventions. I didn't go to any retreats. I basically just went to kind of at most one meeting a week, my my home meeting on a Saturday morning at 10:00 in San Jose. I went to that meeting and that's basically all I did was just

go to that meeting. And during the relapse periods, I didn't go as often. I might have gone every once every two weeks during the recovery periods. Maybe I went to two meetings a week during the recovery periods. So there's definitely a correlation between going to meetings and recovery. For me, meetings are essential part of my recovery and I'll get into that later when I get back to, to my current abstinence.

So I was lucky in software engineering. I joined a company that was successful enough that I could retire young at the age of 51 in the year 2000. And I was going to work this program on retirement and I was going to lose the weight and, you know, get abstinent and all that. And it took until 2006. So I had six more years of, you know, relapse and recovery back and forth. And most of that time I was probably in the range of around 3:50 to 400 was my, my main range that

was in during that whole 12 year period, 18 year period. See, I keep trying to minimize it. I mean, I did get the 460 at one point, but then I've, you know, being the 430 S and then down to 400. So I've kind of lose weight down to get down to 350 and then I binge and get back up to 400. Then I get discussed at that and lose weight, get back down to 350 and 400. So that was kind of the range that I mostly stayed in 350 to 400.

So, so I was going to retire and, and work this program

and my abstinence birthday is June 26th of 2006. And what's special about that day is that it's five days before the Region 2 convention in Oakland. So like I said, I never went to conventions and retreats during this whole relapse period. At that point, I decided I would, I would try out the convention and it happened to be in Oakland that year, which is close to where I was. So I asked my wife and she said OK. So I made the, I made the reservation

and the

Monday before the retreat before I decided it would be, it would be a good idea to be abstinent before I went to the convention. So I started on the Monday before the convention, right? Monday's the day you start any, any diet that you're on, right? And I went to a meeting a day before I went to the convention. So I went to five meetings in five days there. I did go to more meetings since I retired. That's one thing I did that, that did help, but I was still at £400 there in 2006.

So I must have just had one of my relapses.

But I went to the convention and I saw old friends of mine that used that I used to see when I used to go to conventions and they were still going. I had, I was the one to stop going. So I saw them. I went to a whole bunch of meetings there at the convention. I got a lot of recovery from the convention. And so I decided to do 90 meetings in 90 days and being, being retired, I could do that pretty easily. And, and then that was working so well. That actually kept up about a meeting a day for about 3 years. So I did three years of a meeting a day. Now there were days where

missed the meeting on a given day because of vacations or whatever, but then I'd make it up by doing 2 meetings on another day. So my my long term average was more than one meeting a day.

So,

and the other thing is my food plan, my initial food plan there in this abstinence was counting calories again. It worked again, but it was what I had somehow made a surrender. I somehow made the surrender that I was powerless over food and that I couldn't control it myself anymore. So I surrendered to the program and, and started the food plan of, of counting calories. Now, over the 12 years since I started, I started counting calories and then it got, you know, a little sloppier accounting calories and then it

was moderate meals. And I basically still do moderate meals. But there's a couple of other things that I have added to my, my food plan. One is that I, there's going to be no more starting over because starting over is what I was doing all the time during that relapse. You know, I'm going to binge, binge, binge and I'll start over, start over tomorrow. That saying that I'm going to start over tomorrow is saying, OK, eat everything you want the rest of today. So if I had a meal where I had more food than I really wanted to have at that meal,

that doesn't become the excuse for me to then blow it for the rest of the day. And I'll start over tomorrow. So, you know, I just accept the fact that I have more food at that meal than I wanted to and, you know, and just go on with the day and still try to work the program and still try to be absent the rest of the day. So I added the notes starting over. And then recently, like in the last year, I finally decided I needed to say no free food.

And I'm talking about free food, for example, at Trader Joe's and and Whole Foods.

And I'm not talking about going and getting nuts out of the nuts bin. That's called stealing in my opinion. But so I didn't do that. But I only took free food that they were actually putting out for me to take. For example, at the olive bar, they gave toothpicks for you to try the olives. So I tried 1/2 a dozen olives every time I was at Whole Foods.

So, but I was getting compulsive about it at Trader Joe's. I was making roots around the store so I can keep keep coming back to the sample station, get another sample. You know, I'd make several routes around there, get multiple samples

and I knew where all the possible sample locations are in Whole Foods. You know what departments have samples, So I'd go and find all the samples I could eat there. So I've got about six months of abstinence from no free foods. I decided I can't have the the things that give you on the airplane because I paid for the fare for that airplane. So I, that wasn't free food.

And then most recently in the last couple of months here, I've added 123 doing steps 1-2 and three before I eat. And this has been helpful. I, I haven't lost a huge amount of weight yet, but I, I feel really good about it. And the idea is this,

the idea is to take steps 1-2 and three just before I'm going to have a meal or have a snack, or even when I'm thinking about having food, I'm thinking about maybe I should have a snack right now. When that thought comes into my mind, I try to work steps 1-2 and three. And I could do it by just actually reading the steps and and the the, the way that I like I would like to do it most often is to say something like this to myself. Now this is saying something like,

Frank, if you've admitted that you're powerless or food,

you have no business deciding when, how much and what to eat. God, would you please help me eat an abstinent meal or an abstinent snack, whatever it is like that. So it's doing steps 1-2 and three, asking it for God's help. And the other thing is I, what I do is I, I then text to my sponsor 123 and, and that's important because otherwise I can say, OK, 123 and then just go ahead and eat.

Making that text to my sponsor slows me down where I have to pull my phone out, type 123 send and then I can go ahead and have the snack or have the meal or whatever I'm going to do.

And I've done that pretty reliably now for the last couple of months. And it's, it's been working to the, to the extent where sometimes where I'm thinking about having a snack and I do 123 and I don't have the snack or I'm thinking about having, you know, I'm sitting down to a meal with my family and they're passing the, the things around. I do 123 and I put a much smaller quantity on my plate from the dishes that are being passed around. So the quantities are, are being more moderate now from doing 123.

And then one of my sponsees, I've convinced him to try it and he's gotten benefit out of it.

So I used to, I used to text it to my sponsor, but now I text my 123 to my sponsee and now he texts 123 to me. So we, we trade two or three 1-2 threes or 412 threes back and forth each day. So that's been helpful too. So that's, that's what my food, my food plan is now. Now I'm going to tell you some things about me that I don't normally say in, in meetings because it's kind of going against the OA dogma. But I don't have any red light foods.

You know, I was just a quantity eater is what I was before OA. In fact, I avoided sweets and things like that because I knew that they had higher calorie counts than the meat and potatoes. So I went for the meat and potatoes because I could eat more of that without gaining as much weight. Whereas if I had the equivalent weight of sweets, I would gain more weight because it had more calories. Now I have to admit that during my relapse and recovery, I did binge on sweets. I, I can get binge on anything. I can binge on meat and potatoes, you know, basically. So I benched all those things,