CONTENTS
I. Introduction p 2
II. Our Lives Had Become Unmanageable:
Three Qualifications
Bruce L. p 6
Laura L. p 10
Gary G. p 16
III. Questions and Answers: p 24
Greysheeters Share Their Experience
IV. The History of the Greysheet Community p 167
V. Frequently Asked Questions p 176
VI. Greysheet Wisdom p 180
Program Slogans and Ideas
INTRODUCTION
Twenty five years ago, I was a nineteen year old student at Harvard University who could not stop eating. I wasn’t actually eating every moment of every day, but my food obsession and compulsion had overtaken my life. I woke up each morning with the resolve to stick to my diet and within hours had, once again, broken my promise to myself. It was a life full of self-hate, quiet desperation and hopelessness. When I wasn’t putting food in my mouth, I was thinking about what I had just eaten, what I would eat next, what I shouldn’t be eating, what “they” were eating, what I could eat in public and still look presentable, what diet I would try next, how I would forget the diet today and start again tomorrow, how I wish I had some disease a doctor could treat with a pill. I fantasized about being locked away in a white room, strapped down to a bed of white sheets, left alone so that my body could be cleansed of the food. Then I might make a fresh start. That never happened. I remained miserable and wanted to be anybody on earth but me.
I was owned by food and did not know it. Food made the decisions about what I would wear, where I could go, who I would befriend. I was trapped by rules I had made up for myself that did not work. I was a smart, happy, sweet girl on the outside and a very sad shell of a person on the inside, living a secret life of shame, immersed in food and self.
And then I found the solution. I was hoping for a magic pill that would suddenly make me neutral around food. I would have settled for being able to eat anything I wanted and not gain weight. I didn’t get either.
What I got was freedom. Freedom from the mental obsession and the physical craving for food. What I got was the information that I am carbohydrate sensitive, that when I eat certain foods, they set up an uncontrollable desire for more of the same. What I got was a plan that would allow me to eat guilt-free for the first time in my life, without the compulsion for more or the accompanying obsessive thoughts. What I got was a community of people who suffered as I had and who, through their own experience of recovery, could help me as no professional could ever have. What I got was a power greater than myself which restored me to sanity.
It has been twenty five years now that I have been relieved of the bondage of food. I have not had to diet, obsess, binge, control, vomit, take laxatives, exercise compulsively or hate myself around food for all that time. This is my truth. In some ways it has been like a genie granted me one wish and “poof” I was free. But the magic is not a lifetime guarantee. The magic comes from how hard I work the tools the genie gave me to build my recovery one day at a time.
This book is an effort to help reach the many people who spend their lives fighting food addiction in its many forms: compulsive eating/binging, anorexia, bulimia, obsession, chronic dieting/exercising. It is one solution, but surely not the only one. We say that it is for people who want it, not for those who simply need it. It requires hard work and willingness that you may not think you have. It requires a commitment to yourself that takes precedent over every other thing in your life. It requires suspending judgment of suggestions that may sound absurd at first, and trusting that you too can have the freedom that countless others have found by the gift of surrender.
The program that has saved my life is called Greysheeters Anonymous (GSA). It is a 12-Step program that sprang from the original 12-Step food program, Overeaters Anonymous (OA). The food plan we use is printed on a grey sheet of paper and is referred to as the Greysheet, hence the name. The plan provides for complete abstinence from man-made sugars and starches – the foods that set up a craving for most of us – and for defined portions, weighed and measured, at every meal without exception. It provides for a sponsor who acts as a mentor and a community which is a source of never-ending experience, strength and hope. And it gives you a way to find a higher power of your own understanding that will give you strength you never knew you had.
Seven years ago, Bruce L. (abstinent date 6/91) posed a series of questions to members of GSA regarding their eating disorders and their recoveries, with the hope of using their experiences to help those struggling to find a solution to their food problems. This first edition is an extension of his initial effort, including the original questions and answers in addition to some personal stories transcribed from recordings at Greysheet meetings and further information regarding the GSA program of recovery. The language at times is a bit imperfect as we, for the most part, kept to the words as they were spoken. Our suggestion when reading this book is to identify with the feelings expressed. The factual details of your journey may never exactly match those of another and the comparison on this basis alone could prevent you from finding the freedom you seek.
A deep debt of gratitude is owed to our dear friends Bethany C. (abstinent date 7/86), Colette C. (10/85), Gary G. (9/75), Jane L. (6/80), Desiree* (3/89), Pat N. (8/87) and Ralph F. (7/93) who so generously gave of themselves so that they might help carry the message of hope. They all have remained abstinent on the Greysheet without exception, a day at a time. GSA would never have existed at all if it hadn’t been for the founders of our parent program, Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob, to whom we owe our lives. And we maintain great appreciation for the Overeaters Anonymous program which created the Greysheet, our avenue to freedom. On a personal note I would like to acknowledge the inspiring lengths to which Bruce L. has gone to find and keep his own recovery from compulsive eating these past sixteen years and to help others do the same. Most members do not know that he established one of the primary tools of our community, phone meetings, which have served as an invaluable resource for those in the US and abroad who do not have access to face-to-face meetings. Countless numbers have found recovery as a result of Bruce’s efforts.
One last word to those of you for whom food is both your best friend and your worst enemy: there is a life beyond your wildest dreams just waiting for you. I promise you, I do not thrive on deprivation and would never have been able to stay on a diet for twenty-five years. This way of eating coupled with this program for living has filled me physically, mentally and spiritually. I believe that I have become the person I was intended to be before my food obsession hijacked my life. My food is now delicious, guilt-free and enough. And my life is nothing short of a miracle.
Gratefully,
Laura L. (4/82)
October, 2007
*pseudonym
OUR LIVES HAD BECOME UNMANAGEABLE
THREE QUALIFICATIONS
(Edited transcriptions of members sharing their stories at Greysheeters Anonymous meetings)
BRUCE L.’S QUALIFICATION
My name is Bruce and I’m a compulsive overeater.
I weigh and measure three meals a day from the grey sheet. I turn it over to my sponsor, I eat what I’ve committed, I eat nothing in between my meals, no matter what, and abstinence is the most important thing in my life.
Greysheet saved my life! Greysheet saved my life!
I don’t remember my first compulsive overeating experience but I do remember being a chubby kid and just wanting more food, and more sugar, and more candy, and not being able to get enough, and not being able to stop. I remember when I was about 10 years old, my father – who was also overweight – discovered he could count calories, and he lost 40 or 50 pounds and actually has kept it off for the past 30 years or so. I tried to do that, because he made it seem so easy and so possible. I tried to do that 100 times and every time I was a failure. I would lose and then gain it all back. Every time I tried to lose weight I could not do it. I guess that was the beginning of that spiral of self-hate that I spun into.
Somewhere along the line I decided I wanted to become an actor. I read in a book that chubby actors don’t work, that you should either lose the weight and become a leading man, or gain a lot of weight and be a character actor. I did not want to be a character actor, so I decided I was going to do whatever it took to lose the weight. Around the same time I heard on the radio or on television or I read about someone who had stuck their finger down their throat and caused themselves to vomit. That idea just appealed to me. I just loved that idea. I really did. I could eat everything I wanted and I wouldn’t have to pay the price for it. So I tried it, and I got very good at it. I got so good at it that I did it everyday. I got so good at it that I did it twice a day, or three times a day. And I did. I did it for 13 years. In the beginning, it worked. I lost a lot of weight and I looked great. But eventually I would binge and purge and I would be hungry again – because I’m a compulsive overeater, I’m hungry all the time – so I would do it, then I’d eat another meal, and I’d do it and I’d eat another meal. Now I was engaged in this bulimia three times a day and eating six or eight meals a day. I was still eating the same amount of food and doing it, and I was stuck in this vicious cycle. Of course I had gained all the weight back and I was now throwing up two or three times a day.
I remember once wiping a tear away from my eye after I had vomited and it was pink. I went to a doctor friend of mine, and said, “Oh, I had the flu, I threw up, and I saw this pink…” He said, “Well, every time we vomit we break the blood vessels in our eyes.” The other story is, is that I went to the dentist once to get my teeth cleaned. It was the first time they ever used that water drill pick thing they use now. I remember leaving the dentist and feeling these pock marks on the back of my teeth. I thought this dentist had somehow ruined my teeth, had hurt my teeth. Then it dawned on me that the enzymes from my stomach had eaten away the back of my teeth from vomiting. Since then I’ve taken very good care of my teeth, and again, a miracle that I have all of my teeth and that I didn’t lose them. So the fact that I am not blind today and toothless today is a miracle. So when I say Greysheet saved my life, I really literally mean that Greysheet saved my life.
Before I came to Greysheet, I had been in the process of going to AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meetings and other 12 step meetings. I had tried regular Overeaters Anonymous. I never could connect with the people there. I just didn’t get it. I tried it, I couldn’t make it work. There was nothing there that I wanted. After I had worked on myself a little bit in AA and in therapy, someone suggested that maybe I had a food problem, and they suggested I do this thing called Greysheet. But it required that I weigh and measure my food three times a day including out at restaurants. I couldn’t do that, I was in show business. By this time I had given up acting and had become a producer. I took people to lunch.
But I decided to go anyway. I got a sponsor and I got this grey sheet. It says, “This is the food plan. It will get rid of the outer manifestation: Fat. It is only part of our program. The 12 steps will take care of our living problems. You may ask, ‘can I do it?’ Yes. The key is within yourself. All you need is honesty, willingness, and an open mind. Many of the things you hear will sound strange at first. Just listen to the new ideas. Let them flow over you. Give these concepts time to settle. A choice is open to you. You can choose to become responsible to yourself, for yourself. Learn one day at a time to like and love yourself. Recovery begins here. The choice is yours. Keep coming back.”
I took that to heart because it made it clear to me that I was responsible for myself and that I did have a choice, I was not just in the vicious cycle. I had stopped throwing up and I had gotten enormous. I came to Greysheet and I just “shut up.” I stopped being Mister Know-It-All. I stopped having the answer. My first sponsor was a 16 year old girl and I let her tell me what to do. I remember going home and telling my parents that I was doing this thing, and I had to call my sponsor. And they said, “Well, who’s your sponsor?” And I said, “Well, she’s actually this 16 year old girl.” And they said, “You’re going to let a 16 year old girl tell you what to eat?” And I said, “Yes, I am going to let the 16 year old girl tell me what to eat.” She was tough. But she taught me.
I showed up and I made the community my own. I went to meetings, I got a sponsor. I did what she told me to do. I called her with my food, I wrote it down. Whatever she said to do, I did. And I found that I met people there that shared this common experience with me. And I bonded with the people in this community. I think it is the same thing that makes soldiers who are in a foxhole bond with each other: they share the common enemy -a common trauma. I found myself in New York with these other people who shared this experience with me and could understand what I was talking about, and when I would tell my horror story, they would go “Oh, you think that’s bad?” and would tell me their horror story. It made me feel better about myself. But it also put me on a path to really working the 12 steps. We do a thing in Greysheet called A.W.O.L – A Way of Life. It is an organized path going-through the 12 steps. I did it in Greysheet and I really confronted a lot of my demons. And I did a fourth step inventory and really turned it over to another person. I went out and made my ninth step amends. And I discovered a higher power. I communicate with my higher power on a daily basis. I talk to God and sometimes God talks to me. Most of the time I talk to Him. I would like to learn to listen better, it’s one of the things I’m working on. But I really try to show up in the world today and take responsibility for myself and for my actions and for who I am and for the way my life has turned out and is turning out, on a regular basis. I try not to blame my father or any other influences in my life for the way I am. I’m really trying to get that “this is who I am,” and “if I want it to be different, I have to act different, I have to learn different, I have to show up different.” This is a lesson I learned in Greysheet. I learned it nowhere else. I continue to learn it on a daily basis. I show up three times a day, I weigh and measure my food, I take a scale and I put my food on it, and it says a number, and if it’s not that number my sponsor and I have agreed upon then I don’t eat it. I do it exact. I follow this plan. And it works. And it has changed my life.
I’m not sure why it has changed my life. I think it’s because three times a day for the past ten years and some-odd months, I’ve given my word to God, to my sponsor and to myself day after day, everyday, three times a day and I have kept my word.. It has sent my mind the message that I am worthy and that my word means something, and that I am a valuable person – instead of being in that place where I hated myself and whatever I did to myself, and whatever I ate, whatever I did to my body – it really didn’t matter, because I guess I wasn’t really quite worth it anyway.
So when I say that Greysheet has saved my life I really mean it. I owe it in large part to all of the people in Greysheet. And I owe it in large part to this LA community, as well. I moved out here for a job at one of the movie studios, which turned out to be a terrible experience for me. I hated my job – but what I had in LA was I had a community of people – it started out with a small community with Bethany and Mindy. And it’s grown into this big, wonderful group. That little group gave me a feeling of connection. It helped me get through those dark days. And it grew and it grew, and to this day I sponsor people in LA, and they have sponsees and they have sponsees. I continue to show up and do service, not only speaking at a meeting and being a sponsor, but doing service by doing all the other things that are connected to Greysheet. I try to stay as involved as I can because I’m clear that “Greysheet saved my life!”
What follows is the testimony of members of Greysheet Anonymous. Take what you like and leave the rest.
LAURA L.’S QUALIFICATION
I’m a compulsive overeater, my name is Laura.
Hi everybody. I’m abstinent today, grateful to be abstinent. I weigh and measure three meals a day off this Greysheet. I write my food down. I commit it to a sponsor. I don’t eat anything in between and it is the most important thing in my life, without exception. I am abstinent through the grace of God and this fellowship. And I’m very grateful to be here. Thank you.
Bruce and I were talking before the meeting and I just want to say that I reserve the right to not be profound today. I have this self-centered fear that I’m supposed to say something that’s magical and people are expecting something, and I don’t know what. The most important thing I can say is that I ate breakfast today, and then I didn’t eat anything until lunch. And then I ate lunch, and in these last eight minutes I haven’t eaten anything. And honestly, that’s the most profound thing I could say – because that’s something I do as a result of working this program, not as a result of being the great “I am”. I never did that before. I know we’re asked to focus on the first step, so I want to remind myself and us that the first step says “admitted we were powerless over food, that our lives had become unmanageable.” For a long time in this program, I didn’t get that word “powerlessness” – what does that mean to be powerless over food? It was sort of a mental sticking-point for me. It didn’t stop me from doing this but I didn’t really get it.
The biggest piece of information about myself that I got when I got here, which didn’t seep in right away, was this first little paragraph on the grey sheet that says “for carbohydrate sensitive people, manmade sugars and starches create a craving for more of the same. Therefore these foods cannot be eaten at all. This plan provides for complete abstinence from manmade sugars and starches and from any foods not shown on the food portions list.” This idea of being sensitive to certain foods was so foreign to me. Before I got here, I just kept trying to eat the same foods over and over and over again in small amounts. And there are certain foods that I am incapable of eating in small amounts, and that’s just the way it goes. I never ate a little bit of sugar and said, “Oh, that was good. Oh, that hits the spot.” I never did. Once I ate sugar I had this motor that needed more. It was like this locomotive and it just needed to eat. They say in AA, “the man takes the drink, the drink takes the drinks, and then the drink takes the man.” And that’s the way it was for me with food, but sugar mostly. I ate sugar, and then sugar needed sugar, and then sugar got me. So I ended up living a life that wasn’t the life I would have chosen. It was more like the life that the food chose. There was really a battle between me and the food and I lost.
So being powerless over food, for me, means that I can’t do around food what I set out to do. From the day I went on my first diet, I was on a diet until I got here. Now, I wasn’t always following the diet – I was usually breaking the diet. I was oftentimes planning a different diet. Many times I was saying “screw the diet!” or “I’ll start again tomorrow”. But it was always a diet, I mean my whole life was a diet. And I never had freedom from food, whether I was fat or thin. I came to Greysheet and people would say “I can’t stop eating” and I thought, “I don’t eat every second of everyday. What are they talking about? They can’t stop eating ever?” But when I realized that my whole life was really based around the food -- I was always chewing, sipping, sucking something. Always. And I always ate three meals a day and I always ate in between without exception. I just ate all the time, little things – diet candies, you know, fruit – I always had stuff in my pockets, I could never drive without anything, I couldn’t leave the house without anything. It was all about food, it was just all about food.
I had binge buddies who I would start eating with. I once heard a guy in AA say that he would start drinking at the bar with his friends but then they would go home and he would do his real drinking. And that’s how I was with eating. I always had people that I sort of ate with, but then I went home and I ate alone. I did a lot of street eating. I would pretend I was window shopping, walking and eating out of a brown bag. I ate in my car. Sometimes I just sat in my car and ate in it because it was an anonymous spot. I was thinking about myself all the time, and I was staring at other women’s bodies. I was resentful of other women who were thinner.
I guess what I want to say is that, for me, it was truly a 24-hour thing happening, whether I was eating or whether I was thinking about it. I really didn’t have a whole lot of time for other things, mentally, but I did have this life going. I was in school, I had friends, I had boyfriends, but I was always running around. It was like the food had me. Like I was being led around by the nose. I remember stuff like, running into people on the street . In college, I used to have this tutorial that was a two-hour class and that was a huge stretch of time not to be eating. And I remember going to get something before, and I ran into somebody on the street and he said, “Where are you going?” And I said, “I’m going to get a pack of gum before the class.” And he said, “Oh, I’ll go with you.” And I hated people like that. When I was eating it was like people were obstacles. “You are in my way.” It happened a lot, that kind of thing, because I ate a lot on the street. I threw stuff in garbages and I took it out, and I threw it in different garbages and I took it out. I ate in the dark.
I remember one night, around midnight, I was in the kitchen, and my sister came in. She turned on the light and said “what are you doing here eating in the dark?” I said, “I don’t know.” Part of my story is that I would just find myself eating, you know, when I didn’t want to. I always planned to have just one. Or maybe just two. And I always ate more. I always went back to the refrigerator, it was like I was tied to the refrigerator, and tied to the cabinets. I had no freedom.
Another thing that eating did to me was make me feel dirty all the time. I felt like I had a layer of scum on the inside. I felt sweaty. I took so many showers. I cleaned and was a compulsive cleaner because of my compulsive eating. I had a roommate in college actually once say to me: “You know Laura, I can smell you from a mile away. You smell like detergent.” Well, it’s probably a better thing to smell like than vomit or some other things I could have been smelling like at that the time. But it was that I felt so scummy from what I was doing and how I was living and eating that I just cleaned. I think I had this idea that if I got my outsides clean, somehow my act would get cleaned up. And my outsides were really clean and my insides were really disordered, really out of order, and my eating was really out of order.
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous says that “this is a mental obsession coupled with a physical obsession” and that’s exactly what I had. And still have, only now it is contained being in recovery. I was obsessed and I couldn’t stop eating. Once I put that food in my mouth, the compulsion took me. I had no say over it. I mean, I could have not eaten but I still was not free. I was in bondage all the time to it.
I’m always impressed when people come into these rooms and they say, “I can’t handle sugar,” or “I can’t handle grains.” I was so clueless, I had no idea. I can’t tell you how many times I did Weight Watchers. “This has got to work. Somehow, this has got to work.” And it seemed so balanced, you know?
Anyway, I’ll sort of cut to the chase and say that I came to Greysheet in January of 1982 but didn’t get it right away. I came after a really bad binge and taking 90 laxatives. I went into the room, and do you know what I remember about that first meeting? What I was wearing. That’s what I remember. I was so absorbed in myself. My mother at that time was sober in AA for about eight years and I knew about 12-step programs. I had been to AA with her when I was growing up and I wanted what she had but for my food problem. The first 12 Step food meeting I ever went to was Greysheet. On the one hand I remember wanting them to say, “You’re too thin. You don’t belong.” I was probably about the same weight then that I am now. But I also wanted a community, I wanted support, I wanted what was there. However, I for sure did not want to give up sugar and carbohydrates.
There were two things that totally freaked me out about this program. If you’re new here, we don’t mention specific foods at meetings so I’ll just use generic terms. So the first inconceivable part of Greysheet was not eating carbohydrates. I thought I would die without that. I thought, “People cannot live without eating that stuff.” And the other thing was that there was nothing in between meals. I’d never gone any significant time without something. And I really thought I would explode, implode – I don’t know what the word is. I mean, what do you do if you don’t eat? And if you come to Greysheet you find out that there’s life to be had if you don’t eat. Gradually I surrendered to this idea that there are certain foods that I can’t handle. And I will tell you that the first night, even though I didn’t get it right away, it might have been the second time I came back, I remember crying that first night, that there was an answer and that it wasn’t up to me. I didn’t have to control it – I had a food sponsor and I really gave it all to her. I just gave it. I don’t know if I gave it to a higher power or a food sponsor, or something, but I just gave it up. And I felt relief from that first moment. And I have to say that there is something very magical in the surrender, and I don’t know how you get that – I feel like it’s a gift. You know, part of it is being really, really desperate. But we’ve all seen really, really desperate people not get it. There’s like this mix of desperation, willingness and something from a higher power and that’s beyond me. And next month will be 17 years for me.
That many years are so unbelievable that I just sort of detach from it. It’s a day, as I said, I had breakfast, and I didn’t eat till lunch and, God willing, and I won’t eat until dinner. I just want to add that when I came here all I could see – and what was mentioned in my small group this morning – was what I was losing. I had no clue about what I would be gaining. All I could see was “I’m giving up these foods; I’m becoming different and weird. I’m following around these people whose last names I don’t know. I can’t explain it to my family when they’re asking me what I’m doing.” I don’t know. All I could see was what I was giving up. And what I’ve gotten is so unbelievable. But really in relation to the first step, what I can say is I’ve gotten food restored to me. I actually taste my food which I didn’t realize I hadn’t been tasting food for a long time. Because the way I ate it – my mouth was so chewed up anyway, I ate frozen stuff that should have been defrosted and hard stuff that people don’t eat the way we eat. So now, I tasted my food. But I’ve gotten guilt-free eating and I’ve also got abundance. I eat more food than I ever let myself eat. I also have this kind of satisfaction.
There’s a wonderful page in the Food For Thought book, called “The Ultimate Ahh” – my favorite page. I searched during my eating career for the ultimate “ahh”, for the food that was going to hit the spot and turn it off, turn the motor off. I thought vomiting would do that and I was bulimic, and that didn’t – it never turned that cycle of compulsion off. With Greysheet I have never been compulsed. I’ve been somewhat slightly obsessed sometimes but I’ve literally never been compulsed to eat. That was removed from me when the sugar and carbohydrates got out of my system. And I’m really very much physically at peace and oftentimes mentally and spiritually pretty comfortable.
And I do want to acknowledge, just this morning, this afternoon, some of the most important people in my life are in this room. And I want to say that for people who don’t know, my sister is here, abstinent on the Greysheet for 12 years. I’m very proud of that. If you have people who are sick and suffering who you love, there are many of us who have walked this journey first in our families and as we’ve gone on, have been able to hold the hands of family members, too, and bring them along. So, please do not give up hope. It’s not by promotion that my sister got this, but by attraction, which is what we say. I’m not out there on the street corners trying to rein anybody in, but I think that what we do is very powerful and speaks very much for itself. The no-matter-what piece of it, I think, makes us completely different from any other “anything”. So I just want to say that I’m very grateful. I hope I’ve said something that might help somebody here today. Please know that if you binged your way here, you don’t have to binge your way home – there is a solution and there is help. I imagine we will be identifying sponsors later in the day, so if you need help, please reach out and ask for it. Thank you very much.
GARY G.’S QUALIFICATION
Hi, my name is Gary and I’m a compulsive overeater.
I am abstinent today, that’s three weighed and measured meals from the Greysheet, turned over to a sponsor. I don’t eat anything other than what I’ve committed, and abstinence is the most important thing in my life, without exception. I’m really glad to be here. It’s really wonderful to see that this community has grown and I think it’s a great – I think the first step is a great, great topic.
The first step says, “I am powerless over food.” Now that seemed to me to be a relatively simple concept. And I’ve thought about it – “Well, gee, if I’m powerless, what’s the problem? I just need power. That’s all. It’s a really simple solution. I’m powerless, I need power?” The problem was, I had no idea where to go to get the power. When I came into these rooms I was absolutely clueless. The only thing that helped me at all was seeing that there were people around who seemed to have gotten it. That was useful information. I looked at these people and I said, “These people look normal.” The other thing – not only did they physically look normal, which was important to me, I really – if I walked into a room full of people who were all 100 lbs. overweight and they told me they had the answer, I would have been out of there in about a heartbeat. So I needed to see that these people looked normal. But more than that, I noticed that lots of them had this look in their eyes, there was glow, there was a spark, a sparkle there. Not something that I could totally define, and I couldn’t say, “well gee it’s –” I couldn’t measure it in some way that I knew how to measure. Yet, I knew it was there and I could see it and that was something that really attracted me, it was something that I really wanted. And I ultimately came to understand that what that really was, was power. And what these people had discovered was a power over this disease.
To give you a little idea of what my history around food was like, it was pretty plain vanilla, actually. I am a very simple compulsive overeater. I just ate lots of food and got very fat. I didn’t have any, you know, I wasn’t into any of the esoteria about this. It wasn’t till I got into Greysheet that I realized that people threw up. I mean, although I have to say that I did at least twice try and stick my fingers down my throat and all I did was gag and nothing came up and I concluded that – I thought this was an ingenious invention I had come up with. I had never read about it. And when it didn’t work I just figured it was a bad experiment and moved on to something else. I did know about people using laxatives to lose weight, but that always scared me. So I stayed away – I’d heard about that before but that one I felt – I was looking for something that would give me some power, OK?
I had tried lots of different diets. Diets were interesting. They were interesting because they were one of these things that started out – for me, at least – working. I went on a diet and pretty much it always worked. And then I would cheat a little bit and it would work but it wouldn’t work quite as well. And I would think, “Damn diet.” And then I’d cheat some more and I would start to level off, and I’d think “Well this diet is really not very good.” And then of course I’d cheat a lot and start to put on some weight, and obviously the diet had failed. That was the dieting experience. I learned how to lose weight, how to get some sort of excitement out of that. Of course, I built a whole pattern of things around that. There were lots of them. We have our own little folklore here in Greysheet, but I had my own little folklore around dieting. Diets always started on Monday and they always started – they never would start around a major holiday or around a birthday, because those were times that were for binging – binging was acceptable at those times. So I’d always find a Monday to start that wasn’t around anything, wasn’t around the holidays. And the diet was always preceded by a major binge. Part of the reason for that was that, if I would binge and then weigh myself after the binge, and then go on a diet, there’d be that feedback, that reward that I would get because I’d get on the scale and the next day I’d lose five or six pounds, and boy – then I could plot it out on a graph. I’m technical so I like to plot things on charts and graphs. If I lost five pounds on the first day and I’ve got 75 lbs to lose, fifteen days and I’m there!
The graph always kind of leveled off. It’s another one of the things that’s really interesting about this disease. No matter how many times I would repeat the same lunacy, I would still go back to the same thing again. It wasn’t that after three times of trying this little plan and having it crash and burn that I would think that “Gee, maybe another plan might be called for.” It was always, “I just have to work it a little bit different. If I work a little bit harder, if I get a little bit smarter about it. There’s got to be that diet, that’s really it. If I find the right diet, that’s it, it’s done.” And I tried them all, I really did. The only thing I didn’t try was surgery and it was not that I didn’t think about surgery, I was just chicken, it was just that simple. I knew about stomach staples and I knew about bowel sections. But that meant you had to be operated on and I was scared. I mean, it was just that simple, no great moral convictions about it, just pure fear. So I didn’t do those, but I did all the rest of the other things.
I did the – the biggest dieting thing that I did – and I always talk about this when I qualify, and it’s important for me to talk about it, because I need to remember just how much of a lunatic I was around the food. When I was 16 years old, I was in high school, I was on the high school wrestling team, I did violent physical sports (and that’s a whole other story) and wrestling was one of them, and I also played football. At the end of football season I weighed 185 lbs, which was fine. That’s what I wanted to weigh. A few more pounds would have been fine, too. In my senior year in high school, I was the co-captain of the wrestling team; I promised the wrestling coach that I would wrestle at 154 lbs. That was the weight class, and New York State decided the way they would keep lunatics like me from losing a lot of weight, was they would only give us two weeks to do it. And they wouldn’t let the wrestling coach be the one who would officially weigh you, because everybody knew the wrestling coaches cheated. So the Director of Athletics, who was also the football coach, was the guy who weighed you in the first day of practice and then two weeks later he weighed you in again and that was what you wrestled at, whatever you weighed then. So I remember I got on the scale that first day and the coach said to me – you know I got on the scale and it was 185, and he said “what are you wrestling at this year, Gary?” and I said “154.” He just looked at me and he shook his head. He was a Colgate graduate, he could do that, he got 31 lbs pretty quickly. And he said, “You can’t lose 31 pounds in two weeks, it’s not possible.” And of course, at 16 years old that’s the one thing that I had to hear, that there’s something that I can’t possibly do.
So I immediately set out on my plan which was, “Well, I’ll eat a meal a day” and of course the weight came off very quickly and then it started to come off more slowly. Then there was all of the working out. Wrestling practices were typically between two and three hours. So there was that, and then I would run for another hour after that. And then we had this wonderful contraption that was called the hotbox. It was basically a plywood cube with two holes, because two people could sit in this at one time, so your head could fit through the plywood, and it had a couple of space heaters in it and a thermometer – so you didn’t let it get over 210º. And then you would put on several latex rubber suits and you’d sit in this thing as long as you could stand it. I got pretty good; I could stand it for about 45 minutes. The sweat would just come pouring out and it was about three days before and I still wasn’t at the point where I was going to make this weight. So I had to start in on a serious weight-loss program, which was ingesting nothing. No solids and no liquids. I did that for three days. I didn’t think about the fact that you could destroy the electrolytic balance in your body. I was smart enough to know that. I didn’t think about the fact that you could cause brain damage, or I could cause brain damage to myself. I didn’t think about any of the potential consequences of this. I thought of one thing. I wanted to be a number for one second on a day. That’s all I cared about.
I remember I woke up the morning of the weigh-in; my parents had this doctor’s scale in their bathroom, so I knew it was accurate. I got on it and I weighed 154¼ lbs and I had until noon to lose that ¼ pound. I was too exhausted to work out, so that was out of the question, so how the hell was I going to do this? Well, there was only one solution – I thought about it, and of course I always have a plan. So I came up with a plan, and the plan was – I lived about a mile from school and I used to walk to high school in the morning and I figured in a mile, I bet you I could spit a ¼ of a pound out. I mean, that’s not hard. OK? I didn’t know how much you had to spit to do that, but I figured it was doable. And there was only one problem: I was so dehydrated I literally had no saliva in my mouth. So that plan kind of fell apart. I remember when I got to school, thinking “I guess it’s going to be what it’s going to be and at noon I’m going to weigh whatever weight, that’s going to be it. I did whatever I could do.” I remember I got on the scale and the football coach said, “what do you weigh, Gary?” I said, “154.” He laughed. To humor me he put the scale on 154, I got on, and it balanced in the middle. And he looked at me, he looked at the scale, he looked at the wrestling coach and he said, “Vince you jimmied the scale.” And Vince said, “No I didn’t.” He said, “Gary, get off the scale. I’m recalibrating the scale.” He recalibrated the scale, I got back on the scale, and it still said 154. He just shook his head. I went to the water fountain. It was one of the few times in my life that what I really wanted was liquids; I didn’t want any solid food. I went to wrestling practice at 3:00 which was three hours later, and I weighed 165 lbs. All that mattered was that I weighed that 154 for that one second that I stood on the scale.
What that did though, was it set something up that was really, really problematic. It gave me the feeling that I had control. I mean, I had done this – I had lost this 31 lbs. in two weeks. Therefore, I knew how to do this. I was in control. Now I had many, many weight loss and gain adventures after that to prove that I wasn’t in control, but I always went back, “Well when I was 16 years old I lost …” – that gave me years and years of misery before I finally gave in and said, “I am powerless.” I went to that first Greysheet meeting feeling totally defeated. I was at a point in time when I literally could not go more than two hours without eating sugar, unless I was asleep and then I could sleep for three and a half or four hours, then I’d wake up and I’d need to have sugar. I remember, I worked in an office building in Manhattan at the time, and I used to go down to the candy counter and I would buy 10-15 candy bars. I would say to myself, “well, these are the very last ones I’m ever going to buy for the rest of my life.” There’s no grandiosity involved here, it wasn’t for the next hour, for the next day, for the next week – for the rest of my life! That’s it, I’m going to have this and then I’m finished. Half of them I’d eat in the elevator on the way back up, the other half I’d eat in the next five minutes, and then, that was it – I’d given it up for life. Or, until about two hours had passed and I couldn’t stand it anymore and I was going crazy and I absolutely had to do it one more time, though. And I did that for three days. And at the end of three days of doing that, I had to finally face the fact that I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t at my top weight. I weighed about 220 lbs. and to give you a point of comparison, I weight about 150 now. At that time – my top weight was something over 265, I don’t know how much over because when I got on that scale and it said 265, I did what most of us compulsive overeaters do -- when I get scared, I eat. But I didn’t get back on the scale so I didn’t get to see what the results of – what the consequences of the behavior were. But I – when I did get back on that scale, I knew I was not – I was below that 265. So I wasn’t at my top weight when I came in. But I was, really for the first time in my life, 100% out of control. I couldn’t stop.
I often say that I think that I was born with a quota of diets. I don’t know how many there were, because I went on so damn many diets, I have no idea what my quota was. But I do know this. I used it up. And whatever it was – it was gone. And on that day in September in 1975 I was just out of diets. And I literally dragged myself into a meeting, it was on a Thursday night, totally, totally defeated. I said, “I will do whatever you ask me to do.” Now, I have to say that I didn’t make a very long-term commitment to this. I said, “I’ll do this …” and then they went over something novel at this meeting. They offered me the idea of weighing and measuring what we put into our bodies. I’d never heard of that before. I knew how to weigh and measure my body – that was something that I’d been doing for years. But the idea of weighing and measuring the foods that I put into my body, that one had never occurred to me. So I thought, “Oh, a new diet. A new idea. I like new ideas, I’ll try this.” And then when they told me what was on the Greysheet, first of all almost nothing except from the protein column was anything that I ever ate. The protein column I could identify with but the rest of those columns – forget it! If it was green – unless it was covered with something else – I probably wasn’t going to eat it. So, you know, I didn’t like the idea of experiencing this new green stuff. But other than that – I figured, you know, if I do this for a week, God I’ve got to lose a lot of weight. Then they said, “well you don’t weigh yourself for a month,” and I thought, “A month? I’ll look like I came out of a concentration camp.” Not likely, but I have to say, I did it for a month. I said, “OK, I committed myself for that first month.” And I said, “That’s it, at the end of the month I’m out of here, I don’t want to be around this bunch of Looney-tunes [laughter]. I mean, they hold hands and they hug and they talk about the ‘G’ word.” I really – I could kind of handle higher power, but the ‘G’ word was out of the question. I mean, I’d given that up as a sophomore in college and I certainly knew better.
But I showed up. And I heard what they had to say, and I kept coming back. Some of it – I don’t know why. Except for that first step, that powerlessness business. I still remember that. I remember what it was like not to be able to stop, I remember what it was like eating the food out of the garbage can. I remember what it was like when I would take a cigarette and put it out in the carbohydrate and put the carbohydrate in the garbage can and half an hour later be in there digging it out and cutting around where the cigarette was, and you could still taste the nicotine in it – but I didn’t care because I had to get the fix. I still remember what that’s all about. I don’t ever want to go back to that again. And I don’t have to. We have a plan that works. I have a three-fold disease and I have to remember that the first part of that is physical. It tells me that in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. It says, “This disease is physical, it’s emotional, and it’s spiritual.” I don’t think it’s an accident that physical comes first. I have never heard anybody in an AA meeting say, “Get spiritual and the compulsion will leave you.” They say: “Put the booze down.” And that’s what we say here: “Put the food down. If you’re not putting the food down, you’re just kidding yourself.” It’s just that simple. I cannot be spiritual, I cannot be an emotionally there and present person if I’m in the food. Because when I’m in the food that’s really all I care about. It owns me, and nothing else makes any difference. I have grown – well, I’ve shrank physically – but in the other two areas I have grown. I have grown in the rooms. I’ve learned how to grow up. When I first came into these rooms, I’d been in some other rooms and I knew how this was done, and you guys didn’t do it that way, and I was not about to – and I used to pound on tables in business meetings and yell and scream, you people didn’t know what you were doing, and everybody would say “Thank you for sharing,” and move on, and I wanted to kill them. It took me about two or three years before I finally got it on that level, that what I had to say and think was one opinion, and it really didn’t matter. OK? I mean, it mattered but it wasn’t the only opinion, and just because it was mine didn’t make it right. I learned to grow up in these rooms.