People ask me what I mean when I say I’m a food addict or a compulsive eater. The dictionary defines addiction as “the fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance or activity: he committed the offence to finance his drug addiction | addiction to crack cocaine is spreading | [count noun] : an addiction to gambling.” This isn’t exactly helpful since the definition assumes you understand addicted. The way I understand addiction is that one is compelled to keep doing something like eating, drinking alcohol, gambling. Even when one wants to stop, they are unable to. It seems to the person that they have lost all power to control what they are doing. An alcoholic will binge drink until he blacks out, there is no more alcohol to drink or he is in an accident or dies. A food addict is no different. In my case, the ingredients in alcohol are the substance I seem to be addicted to: grains and sugar. Once I put them in my body, I binge until I run out of food, pass out in sleep or have some kind of accident.
In Healthline.com, Kris Gunnars says there are eight common symptoms of food addiction:
Cravings, Eating more than intended, Eating until stuffed, Feelings of guilt, Making up excuses, Setting rules, Hiding food intake, Inability to quit. While food addiction is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), it typically involves binge eating behaviors, cravings, and a lack of control around food. http://www.healthline.com
It is easy to think that if a person consumes a huge amount of food, they will be fat. This isn’t necessarily so. While it’s true that obesity is on the rise in USA and UK, teens, dancers, jockeys etc will learn to throw their food up after a meal. This is physical abuse that one does to oneself. It is as easy to get addicted to the throwing up as the eating and becomes a viscous circle. The movie Judy, that is in theatres right now, shows the result of Judy Garland being told she was too heavy as a child and the studio giving her pills. Then she needed pills to sleep. In the end, she died of all her pills.
The outside world sees a fat person or a horrendously thin person or someone who pushes food around on their plate but never actually eats. What isn’t well known, is what goes on inside the head of a food addict. The self-hatred, the anger, the pain, the panic attacks, the exhaustion that comes with an inability to sleep, feelings of hopelessness and despair are just some of the many mental and emotional symptoms that a food addict lives with and believes are true. Many people in recovery from alcoholism and food addiction believe that this is a disease. That it is a cancer that will eat a person up alive unless they get help. And of all ironies, the addict is just about as stubborn as they come and will reject any suggestions of help though they are screaming inside for someone to help them.
Food addiction is more rampant that one may think. Not all obese people are addicted but ingesting sugar and grains at high warp speed will push them closer to crossing the line. If a body is only fed these substances, it learns to subsist on them and cry out in rebellion if the addict takes them away. In future blogs, I will talk about why dieting doesn’t work. Why food addicts believe in magic and will do absolutely crazy things both to get food and thinking they will be cured. The world really needs more understanding that the food addict is not just some weak person who can’t take care of themselves but under the influence of substances much stronger than their will power.
Do you have a question about food addiction?
Sara
Saving Sara 