Before I realized I was a food addict, I’d been doing some reading on and off about the condition. The major sticking point for me was the same as some people’s responses in my post, which were, “Can you really be addicted to something that is essential to survive?” After all, we never hear about oxygen addicts. “That Bob, he just can’t get enough air! I wish he’d just hold his breath once in awhile.” I wondered if there were better terms for the condition, like “compulsive overeater” or “binge eater” or “Piggy McEatsalot.”

Ultimately, I decided the name doesn’t matter. A name is just a box we put ideas in. What matters is that I understand my relationship with food. Then I can start figuring out the consequences my environment, my thoughts, and my actions have on that relationship and make plans to manipulate these things to my best advantage. I don’t know what the official definition of addiction is, though I could look it up on dictionary.com or the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical [...]

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I was reading a review for the new movie Rescue Dawn and nearly sprayed soda on my screen in a rainbow array of backlit droplets when I read that the main character’s name is “Dieter.” It seemed somewhat appropriate since Christian Bale plays the character and I’ll never forget how scary thin he got for the film The Machinist. I should print out the picture of him imitating a bird and paste it in my dictionary next to the definition for “heebie-jeebies” because it always gives me them. The man made Nicole Ritchie look plump. But upon further research I realized that the name “Dieter” is German and I’ve actually heard it said many times, most notably attached to the Mike Myers character of a German talk show host. I’d just never seen it spelled before. It’s not pronounced “DIE-et-er” but “DEET-er.” It means warrior of the people and has absolutely nothing to do with SlimFast shakes.

However, I still think it’s funny that there are probably thousands of kids and adults in Germany named “Dieter.” [...]

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