The fact that you have to make the promise shows that you have a problem. I’ve never had to promise not to take another drink because I don’t care much for alcohol. It makes my headache worse and I’ve never thought the buzz was worth all the calories. There’s a bottle of vodka that has been in my freezer since July and it will probably still be there next year. That’s how I know I’m not an alcoholic. However, I have often promised myself that I will only eat half the meal at a restaurant and then eaten the whole plate. I’ve promised I won’t drive to the grocery store for ice cream, and then ridden home with a half-pint of Ben & Jerry’s. I’ve promised I wouldn’t eaten a lot of things and then I’ve eaten them anyway.

Which is why I have to say, “Hello, my name is Jennette and I’m a food addict.”

Last year I reviewed a book about food addiction and mentioned that I did not consider myself a food addict. One or two people commented, “Really? Are you sure?” I used to weigh almost 400 pounds. It’s not out of the question to wonder if I had a deeper problem than licking the beaters too many times. But things had been going pretty well and I had been eating really well and exercising and I didn’t think I had much of a problem with food.

In the past year however, my life has spiraled out of control in interesting ways, which has made me want to eat. Food is my drug, Kroger is my dealer and I’ve definitely been using. I’m still not sure if “addict” is quite the right word. The term “compulsive eater” might be a better description. I’ve definitely felt compelled to eat. I’ve wanted to eat chocolate in a way that is more powerful than just a desire for something yummy. I’ve wanted to eat when I’m not hungry. I’ve wanted to eat when I know it will make me gain weight or cause me health problems, and I’ve done it anyway. I’ve wanted to eat in some primal way that goes beyond just the need for survival.

When I’ve resisted the urge, it’s been hard. Very hard. I’ve sat on my hands in restaurants. I’ve gone to take a nap because I know I won’t eat in my sleep. I’ve manically gnawed on celery in an attempt to fill me up so I won’t eat an entire batch of muffins. Many times the only reason I haven’t eaten seconds is because I know other people will notice. I’ve looked at the half-eaten meals on friends plates at dinners and realized they don’t have the same need to keep eating that I do. I’ve realized I’m a bit different.

I’ve been reading All In My Head, a book by Paula Kamen about her fight with chronic daily headache. When speaking about the disease of headache she quotes Susan Sontag who says, “Theories that diseases are caused by mental states and can be cured by will power are always an index of how much is not understood about the physical terrain of a disease.” That can certainly be said of obesity. I think it’s true of addiction too. I don’t know why I am the way I am. Perhaps someday in the future they’ll be able to reprogram people’s brains so they don’t feel these destructive compulsions. All I know is that I have a screwed up relationship with food and I probably always will.

I know someone out there will now suggest I should go to Overeaters Anonymous. Thanks for your concern and for the suggestion. I’m glad there are programs out there for food addicts that have helped many people, but OA does not seem like a good fit for me at this time. As long as I avoid certain trigger foods or keep those foods in my trunk (like the bagels and honey that are freezing in the parking lot as I type), I seem to do ok. I only hit serious trouble when my life goes out of balance in other ways and in my sadness I reach for the Ho-Hos. But I can still recover from that by going to the gym and eating well for several days afterwards.

For now, it’s just enough for me that I can say, “Hello, my name is Jennette and I’m a compulsive eater.”

Lately, that list has become my grocery list. I was doing really well for a week and then, holy shit, I found myself plowing through the fridge at 11 o’clock at night, stirring peanut butter into ricotta cheese just because I wanted to eat SOMETHING. The next day I gave a coworker a ride home and was relieved I hadn’t left any embarrassing music in the CD player, but was less happy that the Krispy Kreme bag from breakfast was lying on the passenger’s side floor. I felt like I’d left a used syringe on the top of the trash, me, the poster girl for weight loss (literally, I have posters) who drank 400 calories of chocolate milk for lunch last week.

Some days I’ve been doing really well and some days it’s been so out of control I’ve felt like there must be something very, very, wrong with my brain. Like, perhaps my never-ending headache has screwed up my brain chemicals in ways I don’t understand and led me down a spiral of compulsive overeating. I’ve been hesitant to blog about this because the book changed things. I didn’t want it to, but it did. It’s a lot harder to be honest about my struggles when I’ve got a book out there with me standing in one leg of my fat pants on the cover.

How might it affect publicity if I admit that I’ve gained 10 pounds? I don’t know. Maybe somebody thinking about doing a story about my book will come here, read this and decide I am not worthy of their air-time and I’ll miss a big sales opportunity. I like to be honest about my struggles, but the simple message of a success story seems like a much easier sell than the complex “I’ve lost a lot of weight but still constantly struggle and will probably always be fucked up around food” story that is the reality.

It’s terribly ironic that at least 5 of those pounds are due to the stress of promoting a weight-loss memoir. The rest I refer to as my “mi-gain,” the weight I’ve gained due to my never-ending headache. But I figure, screw it, I’m not perfect and you’ll all be far less disappointed if I don’t pretend I am. I’m probably being far too hard on myself anyway. I’m nowhere near morbidly obese again, and I could go run a 5K after I finish writing this blog entry, which is more than a lot of skinny people can do. However, I’ve got to stop eating like I have been or else those things will cease to be true. And I REFUSE to buy new pants. I WILL NOT GO BACK TO LANE BRYANT. That bitch is dead to me.

So, Saturday was another fresh start, a day for healthy eating and definitely not donuts. It is disgustingly optimistic of me to say this, but I truly believe you can always start over tomorrow. Even if you eat a half-gallon of ice cream and a loaf of banana bread on Friday night, you can start fresh on Saturday. It is never too late to lose weight. Of course, I tried to be healthy by trying this new muesli-meth mix, but found myself craving it in the evening, so I reached for my desk drawer to indulge my other compulsive habit instead – gum chewing – only to discover – OH MY GOD! I was out of gum! I cannot remember a nanosecond in the past two years that I have been without gum. Ever since my dentist told me chewing gum with Xylitol would help prevent tooth decay, I’ve used it as an excuse to have breath so minty fresh that it would rival a Scope spokesman. (And no, I don’t think the gum chewing is causing the headache, so shut up.)

No gum. Crazy mad cravings. I ate too much muesli. I felt bad. “It’s OK,” I said. “You can make it up tomorrow,” I said, even though I haven’t been doing that lately. “I’ll buy some salad tomorrow and then…OH MY GOD! IT IS NOT OK! It is every letter in the alphabet except O and K! Your pants are tight. Your clothes feel uncomfortable. And you’re speaking at a blogging convention in a month in front of a couple hundred of people! You cannot gain any more weight! This. Must. End!”

So I went for a walk.

Thankfully, it was June 21, the longest day of the year and I think the sun set at midnight. I was able to walk almost 3 miles, and though I don’t have a calorie counter handy I think it worked off the extra muesli, which is now stored in the trunk of my car. (I was going to throw it out, but it is just too good to trash, oh sweet poison.) I don’t want to develop some anal habit where I am compelled to exercise off every extra calorie I eat, but I’m so glad I went for that walk. It made me feel a little bit more in control of my life, and my illness has made me feel anything but in control. It also does good things to my brain chemicals, making me feel a bit happier and less binge-tastic.

And it was a beautiful day. There was mist rising from the sidewalk as the sun evaporated puddles from the recent summer storm. Young couples were holding hands. Old couples were holding hands. Disaffected goth teens were smoking by the canal and I’m sure if I’d taken a photo they would all laugh at what they were wearing and how cool they thought they were in 10 years. I felt like I was part of my community and it reminded me of how much I just like walking. I’ve been doing a lot of running lately, but walking is perfectly good exercise too. You don’t burn as much energy as fast, but it’s calming in a different way and it’s less painful. I think I’m going to try to do more walking, maybe around town at lunch, and definitely AWAY from the food in my kitchen.

I know some women (and men) have spent their whole lives gaining and losing 10 pounds, but it’s something I’ve only been doing for the past year. Before then I just kept gaining 10 pounds and gaining 10 pounds and gaining 10 pounds and oh, lookie there, I weighed almost 400 pounds. It definitely requires a different mindset than the one I had when I blasted off 200 pounds at once. I’ll probably write more about that in detail later, but these past 6 months or so have definitely been the hardest for me. I haven’t been as hardcore about health and fitness. There’s been slippage, slowly, slowly, slowly, eating out more, not exercising quite as much and IT MUST STOP. So, I’m going to be stricter, probably do phase 1 of South Beach again, and there will be lots of walking, because there will NOT be new pants.

1) Start writing things down

2) Steer clear of unnecessary temptations

3) Find healthy alternatives

I bet you assumed those were weight-loss tips, what with this being a weight-loss blog and all. WRONG! These are tips about how to overcome compulsive shopping. However, when I read the list of tips and the companion article, I was amazed at how similar compulsive shopping seems to be to compulsive eating.

By the time I’d gotten to the copyright notice at the end of that article, I felt such kinship for compulsive shoppers. They’re like the Bizarro World versions of overeaters! The strategies they recommend for dealing with the problem are similar to the tips for weight loss, like tracking your spending/calories and taking note of your feelings when you overspend/overeat.

Frequently on weight-loss blogs I will see people bemoan the fact that they are not “normal” when it comes to eating. I admit, it sucks that I have to put so much thought into planning meals and making healthy choices all the time. However, when I focus on the ways in which I’m screwed up in comparison to the rest of the species, I forget to notice all the ways in which I’m completely normal. I’ve never felt a compulsion to hit the “clearance” rack at Sak’s Fifth Avenue and buy a couple $300 dresses marked down from $1200. I’d love to have a flat-screen TV, but I wouldn’t actually buy one unless I was sure it fit into my budget. I don’t have $23,000 of credit card debt. I don’t have a spending problem and I’ve never put much thought into what it would be like having one.

I do have an eating problem though. When someone places a slice of cake right in front of me at a party, it can be really hard to turn down. Sometimes I resent the fact that someone dares to offer me a fluffy, chocolate pastry of perfection when I have struggled with a weight problem all my life. Can’t you see that I used to have a weight problem! Why can’t you be more sensitive? However, when I got a prescription filled at Target last night, the pharmacist mentioned I could get 10% off if I got a Target Visa. This was no big deal for me to turn down or accept, but if I were a compulsive shopper this situation would have been just like a waiter reading me a list of fine dessert selections. Maybe everyone is crazy in their own little way and everyone has little battles they fight every day. We just don’t always know what they are. We witness inner warfare all around as and are none the wiser.

There was a lot of information in this book, far more than I could wrap my head around in one sitting. Reading about the different reasons why women may subconsciously want to stay fat was fascinating, if only to see how many different ways people can be fucked up. There were women with mommy issues, women who feared their sexuality, women who felt more powerful in a bigger body. We’re all damaged goods, just damaged in different ways.

I didn’t relate to every woman’s story, sometimes mumbilng “That’s not me. That’s not me either. Nope, not me again.” I particularly don’t relate to the diet/binge cycle because I never dieted, only binged. I was very anti-diet for most of my life. Still, there were some interesting insights. The most interesting theory to me was that we imbue fat with magical properties, for instance, thinking it will keep people away or make our presence more powerful because of our size. In reality, you can project these feelings and attitudes without the fat, you just need to learn how. Forgive me for the elephant metaphor, but it’s like Dumbo’s magic feather. Dumbo, the circus elephant, becomes convinced his magic feather allows him to fly. In reality he can fly all along because his ears are bigger than Texas. He has to learn to associate his power with himself and not his feather. Orbach says fat women need to learn to do the same with their fat. You can be powerful, confident or keep people away all on your own, no matter your size. Unlike an actor who always gets typecast in the same parts, you don’t have to play a certain role because of the way you look.

My library only had the original 1978 version of the book, though there appears to be a version that was revised in the 90′s. I’d be interested in comparing the two versions because the older one seemed out of date. It was published when my mother was only two years older than I am now, so it speaks more of society’s attitudes towards women from her generation than mine. While many attitudes are similar, like woman are supposed to be nurturers who feed their families, some of the workplace attitudes have improved since the 70′s. Orbach talked about a lack of powerful women role models, but I grew up with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Hillary Clinton on my TV screens. The section on medical attitudes on obesity was woefully out of date too, only talking about an old style of weight loss surgery. She also kept referring to anorexics as “anorectics,” a term I’d never heard before.

While I think the emotional issues behind obesity are well worth exploring, I disagreed with Orbach that it was the only way to permanently lose weight. The foods that you eat and your environment affect your eating habits in ways that have nothing to do with how screwed up you are in the head. If you eat a lot of sugar and carbs, you crave a lot of sugar and carbs. Once you detox out of that cycle, your mood levels out and you don’t feel the need to rip open a bag of potato chips every night. I’ve experienced this and I’ve known too many other people who’ve experienced this to dismiss it. In the book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, Brian Wansink showed that simply having large plates will cause you to eat larger portion sizes. While small stuff like that won’t lead you to become morbidly obese, it can pack on more weight regardless of how you feel about your mother.

While I don’t agree with all of Orbach’s theories, it was well worth the read. If you are stuck wondering why you got so fat, it may give you some leads on the culprit.