Then… When I was a kid growing up in my food addiction, summertime meant a lot of unstructured time to do whatever I wanted. I would always take at least one trip a day to the corner store to get my food goods (mainly sugar and flour). I rode my bike a lot in those days, took many ballet classes, and swam. I burned a lot of the calories I was eating and didn’t think much about the effects that food was having on me. I was a chunky kid, but I was still having fun with friends. As I got a little older, I was less active, and my eating became more ferocious. I went to summer ballet camps, but every time I had a break from a dance class, I would go home and eat bowls of sugar and flour in front of the TV. When I got a stress... Continue Reading
There are many things that I am grateful to have lost since stopping eating addictively. I am grateful to be without the depression that I’d experienced most of my life, the regular anxiety and crippling fear, and 38 pounds of excess body weight, to name a few. More than anything, I am happy to have lost the voices. When I was trapped in the cycle of addictive eating, the voices in my head were so loud: “Eat me! Eat me! Just this once. You know your willpower will break eventually, so you might as well eat it now.” Sometimes these phrases would repeat over and over in my head like a chant until I gave in and ate. After that, different voices would chime in: “You are such a loser, “You’ve amounted to nothing,” and “You are hopeless, you might as well kill yourself,” were some of the things the... Continue Reading
I have tried to lose weight for the past forty years, but I never stayed on any diet plan for long, and I always regained what I had lost. I tried Weight Watchers three times, a nutritionist, a psychotherapist, Diet Center, a doctor-supervised, liquid-protein diet (three times), Jenny Craig, Weight Loss Center, and my own plans. I followed various diet books by diet gurus, and TV-hyped programs, and went to a hypnotist and a weight-loss specialist. I fell for it all! I’ve been through bouts of depression over being overweight, wishing that I would die because of the pain in my back, legs, and hips. I was taking medication for blood pressure, pain, my heart, indigestion, diabetes, and allergies and was sleeping with a CPAP machine nightly. I was killing myself by eating uncontrollably and would pray at night for God to let me die in my sleep because I... Continue Reading
From the first day of honest and committed abstinence, I have had the gift of waking up without shame for my actions of the day and night before. I used to walk around with constant shame for the secret life I had with food, hidden from the people who knew me. I was not a social eater. In public, I chose diet-type foods, and prided myself for my reputation of not eating sugar and of having vegetables and the “will power” to maintain my normal weight. But alone in the evening, all bets were off, and I dove into sugar and flour with abandon. I used bulimia, exercise, and chewing and spitting out food to keep the weight off. My eating was like that of a hungry animal, voracious and rushed. I would read or watch TV shows while I binged—I did not want to be conscious. A therapist (I... Continue Reading
When I was 23 years old, I had everything going for me. I had amazing and devoted parents whose love I never doubted. I had a wonderful relationship with both of my sisters, whom I saw and spoke to regularly. I had just graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University and had just been accepted to Brown for graduate school. I had a terrific job teaching second grade at a progressive school in Brooklyn, NY. I lived a few blocks away in the basement apartment of my aunt and uncle’s brownstone. That apartment was the envy of my friends because it was so spacious and comfortable. My aunt and uncle and five cousins constantly reached out to me, inviting me to dinner and trying to make me feel like part of their family. I had dozens of college friends and new friends living in the NYC area and I was known for... Continue Reading
