Category: Greysheeters Anonymous

How serious is Food Addiction?

Anyone that has suffered from food addiction, has lived in the hell of not being able to stop bingeing or has been starving themselves for weeks on end, looks in the mirror and sees a fat person, can tell you ‘This is serious.”  But the diet industry will have you believe that the answer is simple: Just cut back on your food intact until you reach your goal weight and then you can eat like a “lady” or a “gentleman”.  I believed that for years.  And because it never worked for me, I also was deeply ashamed, thought I was a complete failure and not worth the ground I walked on.

What a relief it was for me to learn that food addiction is a disease, a serious disease, and requires a serious, some would say radical, solution.  If you had lung cancer, no one would tell you the solution is to just not go around smokers.  If you do that long enough, the cancer will go away, and then you can live your life normally again. Lung cancer requires some serious steps: probably surgery, maybe chemotherapy, maybe radiation.  These solutions will upset your life for a long time and you won’t like it and you’ll be uncomfortable.  I don’t know anyone who would say ‘well I don’t like that solution so I’m not going to do it.’

But when faced with a serious life and death disease like true food addiction, the addict will decide the future of their life on whether they like the solution or not. There is a quote at the back of the text of Alcoholics Anonymous commonly called the Big Book that says “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”—Herbert Spencer

That is what I practiced for the first half of my life.  If I didn’t like the solution, I would decide it wouldn’t work for me.  I’d feel sorry for you that you must do something hard but not me, oh no!  So, what I was really deciding was that the pain and misery and total hell of bingeing and loneliness of my eating was better than trying something that works for others but I was too scared to try for myself.  And they say there is an insanity about the addict!!!! 

The thing that differentiates an eating disorder/food addiction from someone who has gained weight over Christmas and needs to lose it again is all the crazy thinking, the absolute unwillingness to let go of faulty thinking and self-abusive behaviors.  It is why so many people are successful dieters and then gain all their weight back plus more.  They haven’t changed any of their thinking and behaviors.

So how do you know if you are a food addict? Any program that says they are treating food addiction will usually/hopefully ask you a series of questions.  I went on-line, typed in ‘quiz for compulsive eaters‘ and clicked the first one that was listed.  These were the four questions asked:

  • Do you have episodes where you eat more than what most people would eat in the same time period?
  • Do you experience any distress around your eating, including guilt, shame or regret?
  • Do you often sneak food or eat alone due to embarrassment over what or how you are eating?
  • Do you feel like your eating is out of control?

I suspect that most of you don’t need to take the test to diagnose yourself.  I believe only you can diagnose you.  Others can have opinions based on knowing you but you know the truth about yourself. I also believe that you won’t get the appropriate help until you can admit to yourself what the truth is.

What I write here is my opinion. I don’t speak for any Food Addiction program or any diagnostic tool. I speak from my own experience of living in the disease and in recovery. While living in the disease made me ‘an expert’ on nutrition (I probably owned fifty or more nutrition books before I finally broke down and accepted that what was wrong with me was a lot worse than a nutrition problem), living in the solution has made me a thorough researcher on the disease of Food Addiction/Compulsive Eating.

After writing my book Saving Sara A Memoir of Food Addiction(She Writes Press, 2020), I am using this space to try and bring education, an alternate voice to the world of ‘losing weight’ and eating disorders. I say all this because everything I know about myself and all the stories that have been shared with me underscore my belier that Food Addiction is very serious and, untreated, has the power to kill. It killed Mama Cass. It killed Karen Carpenter. It has killed six friends of mine.

If you think you might suffer from food addiction, do your own research. Go to GreySheeters Anonymous and just listen to the people share. Or go to the GSA YouTube channel and listen to a fifteen minute share. Only you can diagnose you.

To your physical and emotional health,

Sara

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.

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.

Christmas 2020

My 16th Christmas abstaining from sugar and grains has passed. As far as food was concerned, it was just another day. Christmas, as a season, can be full of wonder and full of stress. I’ve always loved the lights that sparkle and entertain as the nights grow longer. I love the music and carols. But when I was growing up, all that was overshadowed by the stress of the family getting together.

For me, the stress of Christmas drove me towards the foods I’m allergic to: sugar and grains. Each year I’d vow that “this Christmas it will be different.” But, each Christmas, as stress grew, I turned to sugar and immediately I’d feel possessed by something I didn’t understand and was terrified of.

Then a miracle happened. At the age of 57, I realised, without a doubt, that my bingeing wasn’t normal. That when it comes to food and my relationship to certain foods, I am not normal in any way. I would eat and binge like an alcoholic drinks. Since I was 35 years old, I had been told I had an allergy to sugar, grains and certain carbohydrates. My body simply will not process them. If I put them in my body, it sets off a craving just as if I was alcoholic. When a relief to finally accept that that is who I am and not keep banging my head bloody up against a brick wall trying to be someone I’m not.

Today, I can say with gratitude, that I have had 16 wonderful Christmases because I don’t eat those substances. Even this year when so many of us are still in lockdown, I have enjoyed the music, the lights and the Zoom get togethers.

You can get Saving Sara at http://www.bookshop.org or amazon or anywhere you like to buy books.

If you think you might be like me, please read my book: Saving Sara A Memoir of Food Addiction. If you identify with my story, you may need a solution like mine–a spiritual program that doesn’t cost anything. Where we help each other never, ever to put, what for us, is ‘poison’ in our bodies. GreySheeters Anonymous. http://www.greysheet.org

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

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

What was it like?

A reader asked me, “What was it like when you first gave up sugar and grains?” For me, as a food addict, I stopped putting poison in my system. I didn’t completely understand what was happening, but it certainly was very disruptive to my physical being and my life. I’d say I was detoxing which can be both emotionally and physically painful. I was (sometimes still am) an instant gratification person so the desire to stop the pain was intense. All my life I’d used sugar and grains to numb myself from pain. The people I now had to turn to for guidance said, “you are very, very vulnerable right now. Take good care. Protect yourself.” I really didn’t want to be living in hell anymore so I said ‘No’ to most invitations. I wanted the support and encouragement of my friends but, truthfully, it’s very difficult to understand why anyone would go to the lengths I was going unless they also were a food addict and had lived in the hell I had lived in.

It was not so different from learning a new language and the best way to do that is total immersion. I didn’t have the money to put myself into a treatment center and, in the end, it was me who was responsible for my own health and sanity. I had to create a similar atmosphere of immersion so that most of my days would be surrounded by the love and encouragement of the people who had gone before me. That included meetings, phone calls, walks with other recovering food addicts, going to others’ homes and weighing my food with them. Being around others who would love me until I learned to love myself.

Being around beings who love you exactly as you are.

Each thing I contemplated doing outside of this initial time of detoxing and learning the ins and outs of eating healthily without sugar and grains, I had to consider carefully. It wasn’t in my nature to think ahead and to be totally honest how I would respond to certain situations. An example of this was a cruise I had signed up for. A group of friends and I were going to fly to Russia and take a cruise up the Volga to St. Petersburg. It was fun planning it and I was looking forward to it. Then my sponsor asked me how I was going to deal with the food. Well, I hadn’t even thought about it. Not one member of our group was in a Twelve Step program. No one was sure if we would have any WiFi and I probably couldn’t make any phone calls so it was certain I would be out of contact with all my support. Because it was a Russian cruise line, it took me almost two months to get through to someone who could tell me about the food. By that time, there was only about three weeks until we were to leave. I was told that there was one seating an evening and only one choice for a meal. If I cancelled I’d lose my deposit. I started going back and forth in my head. On the one hand, I was trying to rationalise why it would be ok if I went, I’d be fine–even though left alone without support, it had never been fine before. My GSA program was urging caution and “when in doubt, leave it out.” No one said ‘Don’t go’. I made myself crazy trying to fit something I really wanted to do into a hole that it wouldn’t fit in. I didn’t want to lose the deposit. Finally my sponsor said, “What if you lost your abstinence and ate sugar and grains. You likely would binge because that is your history. How much money do you think you would spend on bingeing before you were able to get home?” That was pretty convincing. I could easily see myself terrified and desolate and paying top dollar for an early flight back to California. In the end, it would cost many times more than the $500 deposit. So I cancelled and have never regretted that decision.

My friends didn’t really understand. The average person thinks it’s a matter of will power and knowledge. I had tons of knowledge about food, nutrition, psychology, behavior and I was very wilful. None of that helped me deal with my food addiction.

I have a spiritual disease, an emptiness, that only a spiritual solution can heal. What I had to do during those first days and months of abstaining from sugar and grains, my friends in recovery call Radical Self-Care. Many people grow into adulthood knowing these caretaking things. Addicts don’t. In the quest to feed the habit, many important skills do not develop.

Next week: What are these new friends like, the people I had to depend on for my life and sanity?

Have a great week and plan ahead,

Sara

Am I a food addict if I can’t stop eating?

In new memoir, Sara Somers reflects on her hard-won battle with food addiction

Steven Winn July 8, 2020Updated: July 8, 2020, 8:24 pm

Friday was her favorite day when Sara Somers worked at the American Red Cross in Alameda. It had nothing to do with the weekend coming up and everything to do with sugar and grains.

When the weekly donation from Mother’s Cookies arrived, Somers would help herself to a plateful. And then another. And another after that. Finally, as she writes in “Saving Sara: A Memoir of Food Addiction,” she’d steal the cookies that were left and smuggle them home for more bingeing.

Today, 43 years later and 11 years “abstinent” from the addiction that dominated her life for decades, Somers regards herself as a “walking miracle.”

“The percentage of the food addicted who can stay abstinent over the years is pretty small,” she told The Chronicle by phone. “It’s very hard.”

Scores of books, a dizzying array of therapies and diets that propose everything from the Christian faith to a potato-only regimen testify to the extent — and difficulty — of the problem and sufferers’ desperate search for help. Somers, 72, a longtime Bay Area resident who now lives in Paris, tried one approach after another: hypnosis, encounter groups, Weight Watchers, amphetamines, promises to friends, the Atkins diet, a macrobiotic diet, SlimFast and many more.

Even when she was introduced to a system that would ultimately work for her — GreySheeters Anonymous, which involves weighing everything one eats — it took Somers another 14 years before her recovery took hold.

“Saving Sara” was released in May, and Somers is scheduled to have an online conversation about the book with Jacquelyn Ekern, founder of the organization Eating Disorders Hope, on Saturday, July 11. In her frank and forthright memoir, Somers recounts not only the dashed hopes and doomed follies along the way, but also what she sees as the tormenting question behind them. “What,” she kept asking herself, “is wrong with me?”

Twenty pounds overweight at age 9, she was an angry, quick-tempered child and young adult. “I always wanted more,” she writes. And when she didn’t get something she craved, whether it was food or clothing, her longing was intense. It could be ice cream or a pair of Frye boots worn by a svelte stranger. “Deep in the recesses of my crazy mind, I thought if I had those boots, I would be attractive like her.”

The daughter of a caring but doctrinaire father and a “perfectionist” mother, Somers had attended 13 schools by the time she graduated from high school. (Her father’s hopscotch career as a college professor accounted for the moves.) After her own college years, Somers traveled in Europe, moved to Berkeley in 1971 and eventually found her way to graduate school at Cal State Hayward (now East Bay) and became a therapist.

“Saving Sara: A Memoir of Food Addiction” by Sara Somers.Photo: She Writes Press

Through it all, her relationships with men kept imploding. Related in unsparing detail, the stories of boyfriends coming and going from her life are touchstones of flailing need and self-sabotage. There’s Eddie, the earnest Dutchman who has another girlfriend. And Dmitri, a handsome Greek who “changed his mind.” For Coop, an unrequited college crush she met again in Berkeley, Somers fell hard. But even as she got control of her eating for a while and started grad school, Somers flirted with other men, took drugs and failed to recognize her partner’s depression. The unhappy end was inevitable.

“I was mostly interested in being loved,” Somers said. “That’s why I wanted a boyfriend. But that I was to be a good girlfriend — that never occurred to me.” What’s true about addicts of all sorts, she believes, is that “we are self-centered, self-pitying, and we blame other people for our problems.”

Somers assesses her own experience, both in the book and in conversation, with honesty, modesty and a sense of purpose. Her own story isn’t important, she said. Her goal in writing the book was to demonstrate by example that recovery is possible and to help others find the way.

While Somers found professional fulfillment as a therapist and enjoyed the work, she has some cautionary notes about therapy and addiction: “I think therapy can be a good companion to 12-step programs, but that can be limited.”

Treating addiction is about behavior modification, she explained, “and then the feelings will follow. Often in therapy, you have the insight first and then make the changes. That can end up discouraging addiction recovery. People think, ‘If the therapy didn’t work, what am I going to do now? It’s all about addressing the behavior first.’”

Somers, whose life never lacked for drama, lost her home in the 1991 Oakland hills firestorm. She rebuilt a house she loved but spent the next six-plus years addicted to alcohol. It led to a bottoming-out, including a stay at the Hazelden recovery center in Minnesota. A chance meeting with an old friend from Overeaters Anonymous reopened the door to GreySheeters Anonymous, the program Somers has followed ever since.

Somers retired from therapy in 2008. Struck with the idea of learning French, she started making periodic visits to Paris and moved there full time in 2014. While the French think it’s “sad” that she can’t enjoy alcohol or the bounty of a boulangerie, Somers says Parisian waiters don’t bat an eye when she pulls out a scale to weigh her portions.

Another discovery is public transportation, which Somers rarely used in the Bay Area. In Paris she rides the Metro all the time.

“I think I’m a more interesting person over here,” she said with a laugh. “Who knew a subway could be so much fun?”

“Saving Sara: A Memoir of Food Addiction”
By Sara Somers
She Writes Press
(235 pages; $16.95)

Sara Somers: Read the author’s blog at www.savingsara.home.blog.

GreySheeters Anonymous: Learn more about the weight-loss therapy program by visiting www.greysheet.org

Thank you EatingDisorderHope.com

Author Sara Somers on Writing Her Story of Food Addiction

Sara Somers: A former food addict

In December of 2005, I walked into the rooms of Greysheeters Anonymous, and this time I stayed. I was fifty-eight years old. My life, up to that point, had been one of a food addict, abusing food and my body by bingeing uncontrollably, going on diets both sensible and crazy, having ‘who knows what’ shot into my butt, losing and gaining hundreds of pounds.

I made obtaining sugar and grains the focal point of my life. Then I’d do an about-face by denying myself food altogether. I had stolen food from friends, from families that I babysat for, and from grocery stores – and I lied if I was caught.

In complete sincerity, I had made countless promises to myself in the morning, throwing out binge foods, covering them with coffee grounds. By mid-afternoon, I was diving into the garbage to retrieve and eat it.

I called myself names for being so weak. I felt deep shame. I thought I was the only one who did these things. There was little doubt in my mind that I was a down and dirty, compulsive bottom of the barrel eater.

But I didn’t have the words to say that. In my view, I was despicable, defective, and only when I lost weight, could I show my face to the world.

I knew about GreySheeters Anonymous, but I didn’t want to go to their meetings. I didn’t want to be the kind of food addict that needed GSA. I refused to accept that I was exactly the kind of food addict that needed their ‘no matter what’ structure. I had been in AA for years and knew that message of ‘you either are, or you aren’t’ worked for me.

In 2005, I was at the crossroads of desperation and hope. I shut my mouth and opened my ears. I learned there is no easy fix for someone who is a true food addict. I heard people describing the insane things they did in the pursuit of beauty and normalcy. I learned I was not alone. People said to me, “raise your hand and share whenever you can. Your story is your most valuable asset.”

After I moved to Paris, I started taking writing classes. I found myself remembering specific incidents of food abuse. I wrote vignettes. After three years, it occurred to me that I could write down my story.

I was told over and over that, as a person abstaining from sugar, grains, and refined carbs, my primary purpose is to stay abstinent and help the suffering compulsive eater who didn’t know there is a solution. I wrote it all down, and it became the book, Saving Sara.

Writing my story showed me in black and white that I had a progressive disease that could only end in insanity, death, or recovery. By the grace of a Higher Power, I chose recovery.

Do I have any insights about food addiction? What I know is that it is real, and it is deadly. It only gets worse as a person ages. It is a disease that tells me I don’t have a disease. It is a disease that tells me, “go ahead, have one bite, it’s okay.” It is a disease that tells me I don’t need the black and white structure even though I’ve seen it work in AA. I’ve learned to recognize the voice of the disease.

I wrote my story so that food addicts who identify with my journey might find hope. Addicts of my type do not want to be told what to do by anyone. Addicts of my type only listen if they know someone else has experienced the exact same thing. My hope is that food addicts will recognize themselves and say, “if she can do it, I can too.” That they will come to a GSA meeting with an open mind.

I hope that families, educators, and medical professionals read Saving Sara and rethink their attitudes about this disease. I have written my story in the hope that it will shine a little more light on the very serious problems of obesity and loneliness as a result of food addiction.

About the Author:

Sara Somers suffered from food addiction from age nine to age fifty-eight; she has been in food recovery since 2005. In a double life of sorts, Somers worked as a licensed psychotherapist in the San Francisco Bay Area for thirty-four years. After finding recovery, Somers moved to Paris, France, where she currently lives. She writes a blog called Out My Window: My Life in Paris. When she’s not writing, Somers volunteers at the American Library in Paris, enjoys the cinema, reads prolifically and follows her favorite baseball team, the Oakland Athletics. Most importantly, Somers devotes time each day to getting the word out about food addiction and helping other food addicts. “Saving Sara” is her first book. To learn more about Sara and her work, visit www.saving-sara.org.

Saving Sara Book Cover

Personal stories of food addiction in ‘Saving Sara’ help readers better understand addiction

“A riveting and deeply human memoir.”

– Anne Lamott, California Hall of Fame inductee, novelist, and nonfiction writer

PARIS – For nearly fifty years, Sara Somers suffered from untreated food addiction. In “Saving Sara” (She Writes Press, May 12, 2020) Somers’ intimate memoir, 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 Somers’s addiction from childhood to adulthood, beginning with abnormal eating as a nine-year-old. As her addiction progresses in young adulthood, she becomes isolated, masking her shame and self-hatred with drugs and alcohol. Time and again, she rationalizes why this time will be different, only to have her physical cravings lead to ever-worse binges, to see her promises of doing things differently next time broken, and to experience the amnesia that she –like every addict– experiences when her obsession sets in again. 

Even after Somers is introduced to the solution that will eventually end up saving her, the strength of her addiction won’t allow her to accept her disease. Twenty-six more years pass until she finally finds her way back to that solution. 

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.

“Read Saving Sara to see how bad [addiction] can get before it gets great – and find out just how she did it, so you can do it too. What a great read!”

– Judy Collins, New York Times bestselling author of Cravings

Dear Reader,

Thank you for traveling with me. I am taking the next two weeks off for a much needed vacation. Stay safe and stay prudent. We aren’t out of the woods yet.

A bientôt

Sara