The End of Overeating?

I almost don’t remember a time I didn’t struggle with food, body image and eating.  Like many in my strange fraternity, I wake up every morning resolving to eat healthy food that serves me.   For decades, I would be able to do so until some point in the afternoon and evening, at which point I would fly off the rails into eating whatever was available.  I would wake up the next morning hungover, sick and ashamed from eating food that didn’t serve me.  I would resolve to do it differently.  And I would fail.

Throughout my teens and adulthood, I would go on a series of diets (in my case, only the kinds where you can eat an unlimited amount of X, never the kind where you have to weigh and measure or buy your food from someone else who made it).  I was EXTREMELY successful at these diets.  I would lose whatever the maximum predicted amount you could lose very quickly: sometimes as much as 40 pounds in one month.  

When I was 16 years old I was cast in the part of Ethel Toffelmeier in the The Music Man because I was pudgy and so is Ethel.  I was horrified (that is not me on the left, but remarkably evocative of the part and my state of mind) .  I seized onto the popular Liquid Protein Diet.  For 30 days, while rehearsing for this summer production,  I ate only 3 tablespoons of liquid protein a day.  I lost something like 35 pounds during this period.  I drove the costume mistress crazy.  As performances neared and my weight dropped, she kept sewing more and more padding into my costume to retain the pudgy look of Ethel.  Then, in the final rehearsal week, while my parents and younger brothers were out of town on a family vacation, I passed out during a dance number and fell into the orchestra pit, my fall broken by a cello case.  I woke up with a physician parent force-feeding me Oreos and OJ and asking, “when did you last eat?” “What day is it?” was my reply.

Whatever I lost I would quickly gain back with interest.  As a result I got heavier and heavier.  I oscillated between a normal size and pretty darn fat.  When I am a normal size, people look impressed and compliment me and ask me what how I did it.  When I am heavier, they ask me if I’m okay and look concerned.  When I am heavier, I have hated how I look and judged myself harshly.  I have also judged myself for not being perfect and doing this perfectly.

Finally I stopped trying to do this alone.  By having help I have been able to stay a lot closer to my goal weight for years at a time and to refrain from dieting or yo-yo plans.  I have a healthy food plan that I work hard (with a huge amount of support from others) to stick to.  The most important part of my recovery is that I largely am also able to be loving and kind to myself.  Today I love my healthy body and how I look.

I learned, as this book details, that I have a disease, which the scientists call “conditioned hyper-eating” and that there is treatment available.  In my case the treatment involves getting a lot of support from others and staying out of my own head.  This book, written by the former head of the Clinton Food and Drug Administration, who says that he himself is a “conditioned hyper-eater, ” is really three books in one.  The first third is a description of how the fast food industry has manipulated ingredients to get people hooked on certain products and eating them compulsively.  The second third is a description of the science that proves that there is such a thing as “conditioned hyper-eating.”  And the final third is the science that explains what works to help people recover from “conditioned hyper-eating.” 

I have found this book to be the best scientific explanation of why my approach works. For 14 years, I have been more free (not completely free) from the constant obsession with my body and food and eating.