Category: Addicts

My scale/my friend

Since I’ve been in recovery from Food Addiction, I have used a kitchen scale to weigh my food. It had become obvious through much ‘research’ that I had no idea how much food is considered a “normal” portion for someone my size. I’d tried all my life to eat what I thought was normal. If it was peas and spinach, and I was eight years old, it was humungous and I wasn’t going to touch it. I’d lock my teeth closed, my lips fastened tight, daring my parents to force me to eat what I didn’t want to eat. They did and time spent at the dining room table often ended in useless power struggles that I always lost. Inevitably tears were shed, misery ensued, and sun set on another unhappy evening meal in the Somers’ household. The kitchen would be closed but I would sneak back up, and trying to make myself as quiet as a mouse, I would raid the freezer for ice cream, and gorge until I could no longer feel the hurt and pain of losing yet another food struggle with the powers that be.

So it turns out, scales were invented for people like me who needed boundaries set for them–what a concept for a food addict who knew nothing about boundaries or limits or how to take care of oneself. When I was first instructed to use a scale to measure my meals and not rely on my eyes, I felt DEEP shame. What I heard people say to me was: that I was ‘broken’, ‘defective’, ‘unfixable’–I completely misunderstood that someone was trying to help me. That I was being told that I was human, imperfect like all humans, and had a problem that was easy to fix if I would accept that there were tools to help me seemed impossible to grok. I was so used to being called names, shamed, not doing things right that I just assumed it was happening again.

I do not endorse any particular scale. This is just a photo of one that I found

I was wrong. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things as I’ve learned how to recover from a food addiction, as I’ve learned how to use whatever works to turn one’s life around. Many of the things I’ve had to learn have been hard work, but using a scale to weigh my food was easy. I just had to get over the hang up of thinking everyone else was looking at me, and that no one else in the world ever used help to obtain something they wanted. Other food addicts in recovery made suggestions for favorite scales but I had to do my own research. In the end, I found one that I could put my plate on and never have to take it off especially if I was at a restaurant. I wanted one that had numbers that lit up so if a room was darker than I was used to, I didn’t have to do contortion acts to see how much something weighed. In other words, I wanted a scale that made my life easy and guaranteed that I could protect my abstinence from eating MORE!!!

I began to think of my scale as a Higher Power of sorts. It was between me (sanity) and that first compulsive bite (my disease). I was so proud to have something that I could use, and it turns out most people never see my scale unless I bring attention to it, and that works 100% of the time keeping me in a normal size body. I mean really!! Only another addict would say, think, or observe “Surely you could make it harder on yourself!”

True story: I was having dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco years ago. As usual, I put my dinner plate on my scale and kept it there. At the end of the meal, as we stood up to leave, the waiter came up to me and, in a most respectful voice, said “I really admire that you bring your own plate warmer. It keeps the food perfect for you.”

It’s been a long time since I have been using my scale (actually scales. I have travel scales also that are much lighter and I keep small scales in convenient places so that I don’t have to go looking). Over the years, It’s become instinctual to look for my scale before prepping my meal. I don’t mind at all if someone asks me what it is and what I’m doing. I’m so happy to assure people that there is a solution for food addiction and this is something that works for me.

I am no longer ashamed of who I am. Other people have cancer, have all sorts of problems. This is mine. It’s my responsibility to learn how to live with it successfully in the world. My disease stole a lot of my life. That time is over.

Join me. Find the scale of your dreams and post it on this site,

Here’s to recovery!!!

Sara

Hooked

Here in France, we are lucky enough to be able to watch Christiane Amanpour on CNN. The other night, there was an interview with the journalist Michael Moss. He has written a book entitled Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions. The book was launched March 2nd and already is a best seller.

From Amazon: “Moss uses the latest research on addiction to uncover what the scientific and medical communities—as well as food manufacturers—already know: that food, in some cases, is even more addictive than alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. Our bodies are hardwired for sweets, so food giants have developed fifty-six types of sugar to add to their products, creating in us the expectation that everything should be cloying; we’ve evolved to prefer fast, convenient meals, hence our modern-day preference for ready-to-eat foods. Moss goes on to show how the processed food industry—including major companies like Nestlé, Mars, and Kellogg’s—has tried not only to evade this troubling discovery about the addictiveness of food but to actually exploit it. For instance, in response to recent dieting trends, food manufacturers have simply turned junk food into junk diets, filling grocery stores with “diet” foods that are hardly distinguishable from the products that got us into trouble in the first place. As obesity rates continue to climb, manufacturers are now claiming to add ingredients that can effortlessly cure our compulsive eating habits.” 

Any food addict who is in recovery from their addiction, will tell you, “I knew something was up. Food addiction is real. But this just validates everything we already knew. Now maybe big bucks will fight for us the way the tobacco industry was brought down.”

I’m very grateful that this journalist (he also wrote a book called Salt, Sugar, Fat, his first foray into the Giant Food business. The book won the Pulitzer Prize). I have not yet read Hooked but from the two interviews I’ve heard, it seems he is far more believable than those of us dying from food addiction.

I’m going to let others who have read the book speak. I want to get the word out that this book exists and not wait until I have finished reading it. So forgive me for quoting other voices.

From the New York Times: “And, wow, are the hard-wired instincts to eat these foods powerful — more so than those that push us toward addictive drugs like heroin and nicotine. Even seeing the pictures of certain foods can cause us to salivate. In unforgettable language, Moss describes how less than a second after you bite into a luscious chocolate or a glazed doughnut, flavor sensations derived from a combination of sugar and fat, as well as other smells and tastes, hit your brain, interact with memories and release a flood of neurotransmitters that stimulate and perpetuate fundamental cravings.

To trick us to eat more they also lure us in with low prices, dazzling packaging, convenience and trumped-up variety. One example among many: Differently colored M&M’s taste the same but dupe our brains to consume more than if they were all just brown. Perhaps most cunningly, Big Food has also acquired many major brands of processed diet foods like Weight Watchers and Lean Cuisine. One has to admit it’s clever to make money helping us get fat and then profit from our efforts (usually futile) to lose weight.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/books/review/hooked-michael-moss.html

A portrait of Michael Moss, a New York Times investigative reporter who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for explanatory reporting and is the author of the best seller, ‘Salt Sugar Fat’, New York, August 8, 2013. Moss has been a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, New York Newsday and the Wall Street Journal.

From NPR: “Addiction is a spectrum, Moss says. Not every person with substance abuse disorder experiences tolerance — which is the need for more and more of the substance to feel its effects — or intense withdrawal symptoms. Some people, scientists have learned, are affected only mildly. The early part of the book is helpful for reframing addiction in this way but, even so, does it make sense to talk about addiction to processed foods as one would about addition to tobacco or heroin?

Moss says yes.

Repetitive behavior that’s difficult to quit and that causes harm — the most accurate definition of addiction — accurately describes what many of us experience when it comes to highly processed foods. In the U.S., the turn towards overeating these foods occurred in the early 1980s, and the subsequent rise in conditions like hypertension, heart disease, cancer and diabetes is linked to it.” https://www.npr.org/2021/03/03/972747664/there-are-so-many-flavors-of-potato-chips-hooked-looks-at-why

From the San Francisco Chronicle: “To define the term “addiction,” Moss quotes a now-retired Philip Morris CEO who called it “a repetitive behavior that some people find difficult to quit.” Drawing parallels between Big Food and Big Tobacco, Moss relates how both industries manipulate our cravings for profit.

“Hooked” leads us into laboratories and courtrooms, kitchens and legislatures, and threads the complex and contentious arguments at the intersection of personal responsibility and corporate liability. The story opens with a Brooklyn teenager who, because of a daily diet of Big Macs, sodas, shakes and fries, is morbidly obese. She’s one of the first plaintiffs in what would become a series of lawsuits holding fast-food companies responsible for personal injury through the design of their products.

If knowledge is power, then” Hooked”  provides the facts we need to free ourselves from remaining unwitting conspirators in Big Food’s ruse. For too long, we’ve allowed this industry to exploit all the ways we’re drawn to their health-damaging products.

“Wrestling free of an addiction requires us to give up something that came to define our lives,” Moss writes. This is hard, he admits. “Enticement is the calculated business of those who make and sell processed food. They have nearly endless resources in knowing our vulnerabilities.” https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/books/review-in-hooked-how-big-tobacco-and-big-food-are-alike

Do you need more information to draw your own conclusion? Here from Publishers Weekly: “Food is a drug, and its manufacturers are tempting consumers into addiction, according to this contentious exposé by Pulitzer-winning journalist Moss (Salt Sugar Fat).” https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8129-9729-3

Most of you who suffer from the same disease that I do probably don’t need to read the book to know that what Moss has written about is true. We have lived it. So just know that the proof is starting to roll out to the world at large. There is sugar in everything, and it is there on purpose. Even your Weight Watchers bar that has x amount of points has the addictive sugar in it. If science is your thing, you will love this book. It is easy to read.

The main idea in the book is: Kick the sugar…..forever. Don’t take a vacation from abstaining from it. Don’t think of it as cheating–who are you cheating? I, personally, am of the belief that if I were to eat sugar today, I don’t know if I could kick it again. I believe it is that addictive and now I know that the ante has been upped 1000%.

“For now we see through a glass, darkly.” The Funhouse Mirror

When Alice ate cake and tripled her size, it didn’t seem like much fun to me. And I should know. If I were to eat cake, I’d become obsessed by a compulsion so powerful, it is terrifying. Not only would I double or triple my size, but Dr. Hyde would come out of hiding and drag me straight to hell on earth. So, I ask you, what is fun about a funhouse mirror? Is it truly possible for someone older than five years of age to look at their body totally distorted and have a genuine laugh without judgement? Or is the fun when you get out of there and realize with total relief that you are exactly the same size as when you went it. The Gospel according to Vogue has most of us in it’s grip. For over sixty years, I’ve tried to drink the Kool-Aid, swallow the message that true beauty is on the inside and is so much more important than how I look on the outside.  The thing is that may be true but one’s insides are not first impressions. 

In the house I’m staying at in Brittany, there is a large wall-sized mirror in almost every room.  I’m sure the objective is to make the place lighter and brighter but….people like me have to walk by them. Talk about a funhouse mirror. Depending on what I am wearing, I look thin or fat or frumpy or gorgeous. Is it the mirror or is it my eyes?  And what, I ask, is fun about this?

I know that Lewis Carroll didn’t have anything against people like me who struggle with body dysmorphia, and that his story of growing and shrinking and falling down rabbit holes had more to do with finding one’s way in the world of adults than making children like me frightened of black magic that can change our bodies so quickly.  But Lewis Carroll was a man, and he wrote in the 1860s. Who knew that food addiction was a disease back then? Did it actually exist?  We know alcoholism raged through the world, but I don’t think there were many mirrors. Women got married young, had children young and lost their looks, their bodies and it was deemed normal.

Of course, I’m wrong!  I want what I think is true to actually be the truth.  Mirrors, as we know them today, were invented in 1835 by Justus von Liebig, a German chemist. His invention consisted of depositing a thin layer of metallic silver onto glass through the chemical reduction of silver nitrate.  “Author Ian Mortimer argues that, before this invention, the concept of individual identity didn’t exist: “The development of glass mirrors marks a crucial shift, for they allowed people to see themselves properly for the first time, with all their unique expressions and characteristics,” writes Mortimer in an excerpt from his new book Millennium: From Religion to Revolution: How Civilization Has Changed Over a Thousand Years.” [1] Perhaps for the normal person (is there such a person?), it was possible to see oneself properly. 

The handheld mirror that was encased in a beautiful setting was popular well into the 20th century. One couldn’t see one’s whole body – just the neck and above. That was always my favorite pose.  For most of my life, I didn’t exist below my neck as far as my eyes were concerned.  I concentrated on what I considered my ugly nose, my too short forehead that made it impossible to wear bangs like my friends could. I even would practice pressing my lips together, so they were less full, looking more like my mother’s thin lips. Who knew that full lips would be the fashion for so much of my adult life, being much sexier? Not me. I was habituated to looking at what was wrong with me – the distortion of the Funhouse mirror.

There is so much to heal from when one is a recovering food addict.  It isn’t just losing weight. In fact, many food addicts don’t have much weight to lose.  For Anorexics and Bulimics, the dysmorphia is far more serious. It is a constant. Every mirror becomes a funhouse mirror. Every projection (seeing oneself through someone else’s eyes) is a distortion of what is true. When a food addict asks how they look, it is easy to think that they might be angling for a compliment. Perhaps they are but the truth is, most of us have no idea how we look.  We cringe if you say something unflattering because what you say might be our worst fear.  We smile if you say something flattering.  We really don’t believe you but are so grateful you aren’t telling the truth

[1] Charlie Sorrel; Fast Company, 11-15-16

Is sugar addiction less “real” than alcohol addiction?

I recently received an e-mail from an AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) related app entitled Why are Sugar Addiction and Alcohol Addiction similar. I was really pleased as alcoholics, in general, are quite resistant to accepting the idea that sugar addiction is real. For one thing, it’s recommended in many places in the AA literature that newly sober alcoholics eat sugar to calm down their alcohol cravings. Many meetings have sugary treats next to the coffee for just that reason.

The e-mail went through some of the brain chemistry that is similar in both addictions. But then said “sugar does not alter the brain exactly like alcohol and drugs,” but that it can cause chaos. By the end of the article, it implied that yes, one does need sugar to get through the alcohol cravings but that it is important not to become dependant on sugar. “AA recognizes that having some candy or an energy drink is a better option than relapsing into one’s addiction.” So, in the end, even though the title gave me hope, it was just another article saying sugar is not nearly the killer alcohol is and that one should control it and not become dependant.

I am a recovering alcoholic. I’m a recovering food addict. I would never say that one is more ‘real’ than the other. But it is much harder to get totally abstinent from sugar intake (I’m including carbs and anything that turns to sugar quickly in the body), fructose and dextrose intake than it is to get sober from alcohol. As I sit in AA meetings, I look around me and the percentage of overweight and obese people in meetings is roughly the same as in the US in general. In other words, it’s high. Are alcoholics so resistant to admitting that food addiction is real because they don’t really want to look at themselves and tackle another addiction? I don’t know the answer, I only have opinions.

I do know that I am often asked the question “What do you do when you want to celebrate your birthday or get married or it’s Valentine’s Day?” I think the underlying question is, ‘Is it possible to have fun and celebrate without food, especially sugar?’ I find that question very, very interesting. In my life, eating a birthday cake was never fun. The sight of it would trigger my compulsion and, of course, I would eat a piece and then, when I thought no one was looking, I’d eat the whole thing. I never found that fun. By my thirties, the sight of that kind of sugar caused me to stop breathing and want to disappear. Until I discovered the twelve-step programs, I thought I was the only person in the world who was terrified of a piece of cake yet couldn’t not eat it. I thought I was possessed. I remember seeing a “Star Trek” movie when I was in my thirties. The bad guys put some kind of horrible insect or animal into a good guys ear. Once inside, it killed the person by eating all his insides. To me that was real. I was sure that something evil had entered my being, possessed me and I couldn’t stop bingeing, couldn’t say No to anything that had sugar, grains or refined carbohydrates in it.

That was me for years and years and years. As a friend of mine told me after she got abstinent from sugar, grains and carbos, “I was just lying on the couch waiting to die.” I wrote Saving Save A Memoir of Food Addiction because it has been many, many years since I was held hostage by my food addiction. I strongly feel that if I can do it, anyone can do it. I found a twelve-step program called GreySheeters Anonymous that works for me because it is so much like Alcoholics Anonymous. It is a No Matter What program. We don’t eat those poisons no matter what. It isn’t the answer for everyone but for people like me who thrive with structure, need boundaries because I broke every one that was ever imposed on me. My hope is that my story will resonate with others. One woman who read my book and then went to a meeting with me, said “I didn’t know people talked out loud about things like this. I thought I was the only one.” There is hope for people like me. There is a solution. Don’t ever give up.

Food Junkies Podcast

Readers of this blog know that I’m a big supporter of the work of Dr. Vera Tarman, author of the book Food Junkies: Recovery from Food Addiction. She runs a Food Addictions Institute called Addictions Unplugged. Her book is on my resources list on this site. I was recently invited to speak on a podcast that she and two other women, Clarissa Kennedy and Molly Painschab, started at the end of 2020. The Podcast is called Food Junkies and can be found wherever you listen to your podcasts. I have been listening to the podcast – there are now 6 of them – and wanted to tell all of you about this informative and wide-ranging broadcast about many different ways to look at and approach food addiction. Many of us have gotten our information by doing years of research of bingeing, vomiting and a multitude of other ways of abusing food. A number of the episodes are focused on how the science of food addiction is catching up with our human experience.

Dr Tarman, Clarissa and Molly, also moderate a FaceBook page called Sugar Free for Life Support Group: I’m Sweet Enough. Is that a great name? I’m Sweet Enough!! Something all of us food addicts have to face in order to truly recover: there is enough, I am enough, you are enough.

Since I wrote my book Saving Sara A Memoir of Food Addiction, I’ve been lucky enough to learn how much is going on in the field of food addiction. They will tell you it is not nearly enough. And they are right. Food Addiction needs to get into the Mental Health bible, the DSM-V, and these three women are on the leading edge of making that happen. To me, however, who retired as a psychotherapist 12 years ago, it’s astounding how much is going on.

Some of you won’t be interested in the science that is backing up what we already know: Food addiction is real; it’s a killer disease, and it is akin to living in hell. But many of you will be interested and the podcast is a great place to start. Besides myself, who has no scientific background, you will hear researchers, nutritionists, Yoga teachers, and addictions specialists. What is really impressive is the patience and open-mindedness of Dr. Tarman who does the majority of the interviewing. I could feel myself get huffy when someone was explaining something that truly felt like old news to me. Give the podcast a listen. Let them know what you think. This is a field that needs to know there is a lot of support and encouragement to know as much as possible.

I do not know the date my episode will be available but stay tuned……

Stay safe and stay healthy. We are still in a pandemic that is very bad. Use this quiet time to reflect on your physical and mental health. You may never get this kind of opportunity again.

Sara

Follow Vera:

Website: https://www.addictionsunplugged.com IG: dr_vera_tarman FB: Sugar-Free for Life Support Group: I’m Sweet Enough Twitter: @addunplug Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drveratarman/

Follow Clarissa: Website: https://foodaddictionhelp.ca Email: crissy_kennedy@hotmail.com IG: @reinventyourblisspoint

Follow Molly: Website: unsugaredyou.com Email: molly@mpainschab.com IG: @mollypainschab

“The content on our show does not supplement or supersede the direction of your healthcare provider. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, substance use disorder or mental health concern.” Molly and Clarissa

Diets Don’t Work

How many people do you know who have gone on a diet and kept all their weight off? In my memory, I know two or three people.  They didn’t have much weight to lose, and usually the weight had come on over a holiday season or a vacation. They took it off.  Two or three people is less than .0001% of the dieting population.

Why is that? Almost all the diets I see advertised, show happy people on the day they reach their goal weight. I can’t help but wonder what those people look like five years later. Chances are good they have gained all their weight back plus more.

We live in a world of instant gratification.  I want this and I want in NOW. We wake up one morning with a burst of willingness to do something about our weight.  We know ourselves well enough to realize the willingness many not last long.  We jump on the computer and google “Can’t Stop Eating” or “Lose weight” and then shuffle through the sites that come up.  The one with the most bling, the best razzle-dazzle, and the promise that in just one month, you can lose up to thirty pounds jumps out at you. You’re afraid if you don’t plunk down your money now, you’ll lose your willingness and not do anything.  Congratulations! You’ve signed up for a diet that has the absolute best marketing plan and knows how to take advantage of your desperation. 

You are not alone.  I’ve done that. We’ve all done that.  And it doesn’t seem to matter how intelligent we are. At the moment of willingness and desperation, we are blind to everything except the overwhelming desire to lose weight NOW.

Some of us may take all our weight off quickly, some of us may make it half-way, and some may falter out of the starting gate. It doesn’t really matter.  What all the research has shown, both my personal research and professional research, is that without changing ways of thinking and much of our behavior, we’ll gain the weight back.  Then we hang our head in shame, want to disappear from the world, and take one more step towards disconnecting from our feelings, our hearts, and our souls.

The truth is that changing our relationship with food is hard work. Any diet program that doesn’t tell you that is lying, is more concerned with making money than they are with your health, both mental and physical. If you are forty years old, you’ve been doing something for twenty or thirty years that has resulted in you being overweight, underweight, or trying to manage your weight with vomiting or exercise bulimia. No one can undo that in thirty days. What is wrong with us is three fold. One, we have physical problem.  We abuse our bodies with food, some make it much worse by vomiting or anorexia. Two, we have an emotional problem. We have no idea how to live with the range of human feelings we all experience.  We let our feelings run our lives.  Three, we have a spiritual problem.  Most of us have a huge, empty hole in our souls that we are desperately trying to fill up. We try to fill it with food, or alcohol, or sex, or any variety of things.  And the hole stays empty because we don’t have any idea what to really do.

We need help. We need the kind of help that treats what is wrong with us. We need a three-fold solution not a diet. In my experience the only solution is a twelve-step program or any program that treats the three problems.  I like twelve-step programs because they are free, they work, and it’s a ‘together’ program.  We all recover together. I found Greysheeters Anonymous. I now live in the solution. I live in today. I’m pretty darn sure I will never be normal around food.  It hasn’t happened in over sixty years so it’s very unlikely. I crossed some invisible line when I was very young.  I’m a food addict. GSA has helped me accept that I am what I am. It gives me a food plan that won’t trigger my addiction. I have learned what behaviors lead me back into active addiction and which ones lead me away. At some point I realized that something miraculous had happened: the impossible.  I hadn’t binged in years; I was right size.  Did I mention GSA is free and that it works!!! That hole in my soul is filled with gratitude for the life I live today.

It’s January.  It’s the month so many of us swear we are going to lose weight. I encourage you to save your money and try something new.

Please look under Resources on this blog.  Especially go to YouTube and do a search for the GreySheet channel and you can hear lots of people tell their stories. And if you feel moved to tell me your story, I would be honored.

Join me in a discussion of Food Addiction with Judy Collins, singer and author of Cravings

A virtual “Evening with an Author” hosted by the American Library in Paris featuring a conversation between Judy Collins and Sara Somers about food addiction and recovery to celebrate the release of Sara’s new book “Saving Sara: A Memoir of Food Addiction.” Filmed via Zoom with a live audience on 18/11/2020.

For nearly fifty years, Sara Somers suffered from untreated food addiction. In “Saving Sara,” she offers readers an inside view of a food addict’s mind, showcasing her experiences with obsessive cravings, compulsivity, and powerlessness regarding food, with the hopes of educating her readers and promoting life-saving conversations between loved ones and those suffering with addiction. “Saving Sara” chronicles her addiction from childhood to adulthood, beginning with abnormal eating as a nine-year-old. A raw account of Somers’ decades-long journey, “Saving Sara” underscores the challenges faced by food addicts of any age – and the hope that exists for them all.

available anywhere books are sold.

Since childhood, legendary folk singer Judy Collins has had a tumultuous relationship with food. Her issues with overeating nearly claimed her career and her life. For decades she thought she simply lacked self-discipline. She tried nearly every diet plan that exists, often turning to alcohol to dull the pain of yet another failed attempt to control her seemingly insatiable cravings. Today, Judy knows she suffers from an addiction to sugar, grains, flour, and wheat. She adheres to a strict diet of unprocessed foods, consumed in carefully measured portions. This solution has allowed her to maintain a healthy weight, to enjoy the glow of good health, and to attain peace of mind. Alternating between chapters on her life and those on the many diet gurus she has encountered along the way, “Cravings: How I Conquered Food” is the culmination of Judy’s desire to share what she’s learned—so that no one else has to struggle in the same way she did.

Thank you and look forward to any of your comments,

Sara

Is it ok to eat like a “normie” on Thanksgiving?

In the world of food addiction, Thanksgiving is just another Thursday where the food is concerned.  For me, it’s a day to look around and say ‘Thanks’.  Since I no longer binge and I no longer eat massive amounts of sugar or carbos or grains, I now have the bandwidth in between my ears to have a day of true Thanks Giving.  A day when I can say with all my heart how grateful I am that I live in the solution and never ever have to binge again.  A day when I can say with all my heart how grateful I am to have the willingness to do everything I need to do to show that I care enough about myself to work hard not to engage in self-abusive behaviors that drove me deeper and deeper into food hell.

Normally, this is a lethal time of year.  Starting with Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then all the Christmas parties, then Christmas itself and finally New Year’s Eve.  At every single one of those occasions, there is always an over-abundance of food.  Does that mean we have to eat as everyone else does?  Does that mean we aren’t celebrating if we say No to foods and alcohol that will hurt us?  These are loaded questions with difficult answers.  Most people I know want to belong.  Whether to a family, to a close organization, somewhere that they know they can let their hair down. So many of us have grown up thinking of food as love.  “If I eat everything at Thanksgiving, I belong.  I’m home and I know I’m loved.”  

For some people that may be true.  There is a joke amongst recovering food addicts: Thanksgiving is amateur day for normal eaters. Everyone overeats. But not everyone pays the price of triggering the phenomenon of craving. Not everyone starts with Thanksgiving and can’t stop bingeing until they wake up on January 2nd determined to start yet another diet. We food addicts are different. We will never be normal eaters and therefore Thanksgiving and the rest of these holidays have to be about something else. About being with family, about knowing what works well in your life and saying thank you to the universe.  It just takes practice.  One holiday at a time.

This year, nothing is normal. It’s all different.  Here in France, ex-Pats do celebrate Thanksgiving but we won’t this year.  We are in lockdown and no one I know would risk exposing someone they love to the possibility of getting sick with Covid-19. In the US, I’m hearing that more and more states and cities are entering lockdown.  New Mexico went into lockdown today. One thing both Covid-19 and food addiction have in common—they don’t take vacations.  We can’t let up on our vigilance of either disease just because it’s a special day.  Wanting to belong to your family has to take a backseat to true love and telling them that we aren’t celebrating in person this year and let’s brainstorm how we can celebrate. On-line? Zoom? FaceTime.

This Too Shall Pass. We all have the opportunity to wake up January 2nd and not be vowing to diet and not have the deadly Covid disease. To do that, we have to expand our imagination.  We have to put our heads together and ask each other “How do we celebrate? Do we celebrate? Maybe we wait and have Christmas in July?” There are as many answers as there are people.

So to all of you I say: You don’t have to eat foods that will ultimately kill you.  You can provide yourself with an abundant delicious meal on Thanksgiving and any day.  You can stay “sober” and truly let the people you love know how much you love them. You can walk through the holiday season, one step at a time, one day at a time without engaging in self-abuse. This is the Holiday Challenge.  Can I love myself as much as I love others?

Let me know how you are doing? Please write some encouraging words to other compulsive eaters and let them know they are not alone.

Until next time,

Sara

“Now that I don’t binge, I have more time to read.”

Email from a reader:

Food addiction is REAL. Sweet foods are potentially more addictive than heroin or cocaine. It’s going to take more than 50 years to reverse the tide of the global obesity pandemic. How do I know this? Well – years of personal experience as a food addict and sugar junkie apart, over the last few months I have been reading Brownell and Gold’s Book “Food and Addiction”. I sit down and read it for fifteen minutes each day over my delicious abstinent (for me, being abstinent is not eating sugar, grains or starchy foods, eating only three meals a day and I do this every day without exception) breakfast. The book is subtitled “A comprehensive handbook” but it is so much more than that. This book is an extensive academic research compendium laid out as a series of academic papers (two columns per page, Vancouver-style referencing) containing 66 articles in seven parts. 

This may sound off-putting to the casual reader but in reality, this is one of the most compelling and fascinating books I have read for a long time. And it’s one of the few books that I have ever read that – when I had finished reading it – made me want to turn back to page 1 and re-read the whole book again!

The sections take the reader on a journey – starting with the neuro-anatomy, neuro-biology and psychology of addiction, through to clinical approaches to and implications of addiction and obesity via research on food and addiction and ending up with public health approaches and legal and policy implications for the global obesity pandemic.

This book’s great strength is its impartiality. There are so many other books out there about the gut, diet, just about any food group….…. as a food addict  struggling to control my compulsive behaviour around food I have read many of them, and I always feel slightly uneasy that the author is only really representing the research that supports their hypothesis and the inevitable “eating plan that is going to change your life” at the end.

In this book, if there is no research then that is not ignored or padded out with some obscure paper reporting small numbers.  It is just stated.  Where a food addiction research vacuum exists, there is discussion as to how the available research might apply to food addiction and what further research needs to be done.

So – what did I learn in reading this book? Several key themes emerged:

1–There is an awful lot of very elegant research that has been carried out on sugar, addictive behaviour, reward neuro-circuitry, how these interact and what influences them. OK – so much of the research for that was carried out on mice but – bearing in mind we share 60% of our DNA with a banana – mouse behaviour and brain structure ain’t that far away from humans – especially around behaviour as fundamental as reward, addiction and food intake regulation. Where comparisons are possible, the human research is clearly analogous to what they are finding in rats and mice. 

2–The idea that a lot of our reward circuitry is hard wired not only from a young age but also during fetal life made a great deal of sense to me. Hell – if  whale blubber or mammoth is/was the only item on the menu, and that’s all your Mom ate when you were in her womb – then you had better be born with a preference for the major food source in your community. It’s simple survival.

3–The concept of control of weight and body shape through delicate and intricate internal balancing (homeostatic) mechanisms which have evolved over millennia versus loss of control of weight and body shape through hedonistic (pleasure) eating – particularly highly refined carbohydrates and sugar was a new concept for me. Since food is needed for survival, it is likely to have complex and interconnected mechanisms for making sure that we are motivated to find food, remember those sources and to protect them. This all takes place in the parts of our brain associated with reward, emotion, and memory, to say nothing of the feedback via the enormous communication highway that exists between our brain, our gut and our gut bacteria. 

4–We are hard wired to like sweet flavours. Sweet foods are more likely to be energy dense – which is clearly advantageous when life was hard and food was seasonal and scarce – but does not serve us well in our current food environment. Imagine – millennia of evolving higher functions around eating for survival laid waste by just reaching out and putting a single tub of Ben and Jerry’s in my shopping basket!!

5–The food/sugar lobby is more powerful than the tobacco lobby and we have to eat. There is evidence that the food/sugar corporations are using the same tactics that the tobacco lobbies used back in the day so I expect that it will take as long, if not longer, if ever, for per capita obesity levels to show a similar fall to tobacco consumption (Figure 1). 

Figure 1:  Adult per capita cigarette consumption and major smoking and health events – US, 1900 – 2017. Sources: Adapted from Warner 1985 with permission from Massachusetts Medical Society, © 1985; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 1989; Creek et al. 1994; U.S. Department of Agriculture 2000; U.S. Census Bureau 2017; U.S. Department of the Treasury 2017.  

So – why did I read this book? As a recovered alcoholic and food addict I wanted to explore more about the dis-ease that I suffer from. Coming from a scientific/academic sort of mindset and being a bit of a nerd, this book appealed to me on many different levels. But even for those that don’t have that  background, this is a great book for just dipping into when the interest takes you.

It helped me to understand my part in my story and also to understand more clearly why this dis-ease wasn’t just going to go away after a few months of eating abstinently. It also helps me to accept myself as a person whose brain just happens to be wired in a different way – a way that makes me prone to addiction and addictive behaviour……. but also a way that qualifies me for a life in addiction recovery and all the benefits and rewards that that brings. 

Susanna R

Oxford University Press, 2012

Diabetes Awareness month

November is Diabetes Awareness month. There are many websites that one can go on to learn more about this truly devastating affliction.  The American Diabetes Association is one of them: https://www.diabetes.org/greaterthan

I’ve been reading up on some of the sites and found that almost all them put nutrition first as a way of managing one’s diabetes. I am not a doctor but I’ve seen many a food addict come into GreySheeters Anonymous and ,after 6 months or so, their diabetes seems to have gone away. My guess is that like food addiction, it is arrested and kept at bay by the food plan offered by GSA.

“Making healthy choices and taking steps to manage your diabetes can ensure you don’t just live but thrive with diabetes. But it’s important to take steps now-your health can’t wait. It’s time to thrive by finding a balance of nutrition, physical activity and mental health management.” ADA

One of the worst factors for being pre-diabetic is being overweight.  Of course, not all food addicts are overweight. Many are underweight or at a normal weight but fighting twenty-four hours a day to maintain that weight. However, those of us that were/are overweight are at risk of diabetes. I believe that most overweight people eat far too much sugar and starchy foods. This is like throwing gasoline on a fire. If you are a food addict like me, you can know this information but it doesn’t stop you from bingeing.

Why is that? Food addiction is real, it’s an addiction. When we are addicted, the craving for the substance(s) becomes far more powerful than our own will power.  We can know a lot about health, about nutrition, about diabetes and still not be able to control the addiction. We become ashamed and add that to the list of things we think we have failed at. The longer we keep trying to manage and control our food, the more miserable we become.

Do yourself a favor.  Go on the above website.  There are tests you can take to see if you are pre-diabetic, to tell you your BMI and there are lots of suggestions and advice. If you think you are at risk of getting diabetes, go to a doctor now and talk to him or her.  If you are also a food addict, a compulsive eater, a binger, like I was, you will need double the help. Go to www.greysheet.org and read up on this life saving program.  There is a long page of video meeting information. All meetings are on Zoom, Skype or by phone while the pandemic rages through our countries. Get information on how this 12-Step program can help you.  

Fight for your health.

Stay safe and please stay well,

Sara