The FA magazine connection is written, edited and illustrated by FA members, and shares FA members' broad experience of food addiction and their recovery. The volume includes a doctor's perspective, a chapter for family and friends, and a discussion of each of the Twelve Steps. Most of the book consists of individual accounts of food addiction and FA recovery, some from members with over thirty years of sustained, one-day-at-a-time success. The book begins with a description of the experience of food addiction and its symptoms, which can include obesity, extreme thinness, bulimia, exercise compulsion, or a normal weight maintained at the expense of debilitating obsession.
The FA book, Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous describes the possibility of long-term, continuous recovery from food addiction offered by Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA), a program based on the Twelve Steps pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous. Meetings are open to all FA members and those who are interested in learning about the program for themselves or for others whom they think might find FA helpful. Members attend three meetings each week and those with 90 days of abstinence from food addiction share at a group level. Meetings break the isolation that is part of the disease of food addiction and provide the opportunity for newcomers and members to learn from abstinent speakers who share their experience, strength, and hope. MeetingsįA Meetings are central to the FA program of recovery. Sponsors share their program up to the level of their own experience. Sponsors are FA members who are committed to abstinence and to living the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions to the best of their ability. Through regular contact with a sponsor (an experienced member who serves as a guide), attendance at FA meetings, frequent phone contact with others in the program, and continuous efforts to share the FA program with others who want it, members of FA begin to maintain daily abstinence.
Rather than turning to eating or other self-destructive, food-related behaviors, members gain strength from one another. SupportįA offers support for a way of life that makes daily, uninterrupted abstinence possible. FA defines abstinence as weighed and measured meals with nothing in between, no flour, no sugar and the avoidance of any individual binge foods. The problem can be arrested a day at a time by the action of weighing and measuring our food and abstaining completely from all flour and sugar. Abstinence is simple and clear, but it is difficult to sustain continuously over the course of a lifetime.įA believes food addicts have an allergy to flour, sugar and quantities that sets up an uncontrollable craving. Abstinence is a planned, disciplined way of eating that leads to the addict’s release from food cravings, obsession, and self-abuse. AbstinenceĪbstinence in FA is the parallel of sobriety in A.A. Overeating, under-eating or self-starvation, bulimia (including exercise bulimia), and extreme obsession with weight or food are among the symptoms of this addiction. The manifestations of food addiction vary. As is the case with other addictions, food addiction involves physical craving and an ever-increasing dependence upon and struggle with a substance (food).
Food addictionįood addiction is defined in FA as "an illness of the mind, body, and spirit for which there is no cure". In 2012, FA published Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous.Īddiction has been described as a progressive illness that is rooted in a combination of factors: physical allergy, mental obsession, and problems in the personality (fear, doubt, insecurity, and negativity), all of which drive the addict to repeated, destructive behaviors and a dependence on substances or behaviors in order to cope. As of 2011, the organization consisted of over 500 local groups and over 4000 members in 6 countries, Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United States. ContentsįA was established in 1998 by former members of Overeaters Anonymous. The program offers the hope of long-term recovery, evidenced by members who have continuously maintained a normal weight and healthy eating for periods of twenty-five or even thirty years. The common denominator uniting members of FA is addiction and a relationship with food that parallels an alcoholic's relationship with alcohol. Some have been obese others have been severely underweight, bulimic, or so obsessed with food or weight that normal life was difficult or impossible. FA members are men and women of all ages. Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous ( FA) is a program of recovery based on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
0 kommentar(er)
