I’m reading your book and I love it. Thanks for being so candid and so inspiring!

I really like this article. I found it in my “quest” to quit smoking. And I revisit it often as I work on things like food addiction (hello pizza and 100 calorie packs…)

http://www.yogajournal.com/practice/679

It discusses the mental/emotional roots of addiction, and suggests ways to remove them.

It turns out that it had a physiological basis: I was malabsorbing nutrients due to a mild gluten intolerance. The only symptoms other than the bingeing were mild IBS symptoms and anemia, and later on, joint pain (which is why I tried going gluten-free, and it worked on that too). Our bodies interpret lack of essential nutrients (as Melanie said, amino-acids among others) as starvation, and send us very, very strong signals to eat, eat, eat, especially things high in fat and sugar.

This man, whose mother had BED for years (now GF and “cured”), thinks that even people who don’t have problems with gluten can eat too much of it (in an attempt to eat “healthy” whole grains) and also can have malabsorption problems:

http://www.celiac.com/articles/1034/1/Food-Cravings-Obesity-and-Gluten-Consumption-by-Dr-Ron-Hoggan-EdD/Page1.html

I really, really hope that this helps someone. I feel so much saner than I used to (my tiger was a ravening, slobbering nightmare beast). What completed my recovery was Linda Bacon’s book, “Health At Every Size”. She explains things like our taste buds taking 3 weeks to adapt to a new taste, and so if you hang in there 3 weeks, you will start to crave more of your new diet. This will only work if you’re getting enough nutrition/nutrients though. Good luck and good thoughts to all.

I also have taken the very radical step of removing all food from my home. If I want to eat I have to plan to eat. I don’t order in. I have to go out and get it. I have the life that allows me to do that, but it works for me.

Alcoholics and drug addicts have to abstain from their addiction. Food addicts still have to eat and in order to overcome this addiction I think that you have to approach it from the standpoint that we can never eat like a normal person again. I know I am not normal. I know that I eat more than just to sustain my life. I eat past the point of good sense or good health and I have to work hard to not do that. I am willing to give up those foods that trigger me to binge because I want to be healthy more than I want to eat them. My own gallbladder surgery was enough to get me to take a good, long look at how I was killing myself through food and make the changes that would reverse that lifelong trend.

I can’t believe I”ve never heard that before. Brilliant.

My husband is an alcoholic (recovering). We’ve had this discussion often. He just quit cold turkey 4 years ago. It’s not quite as easy to do that with food since we need it to survive.