Disclosure: I received an advanced copy of this book to review for free. I also have the same literary agent as the author, whose name I will guard with the ferocity of a mother lioness. ROAR! So don’t ask. I ain’t telling.

I related a lot to author Kim Brittingham as I read her new book, Read My Hips: How I Learned to Love My Body, Ditch Dieting, and Live Large. We both moved a lot as kids. We both had frizzy unmanageable hair that I have only recently learned how to tame. We both thought we might be having a heart attack at 23. We both have old “fat” photos from our teen years in which we don’t appear fat at all. And after weight loss and weight gain we’re both at places where we’re basically cool with our bodies. (Well, cool with the weight thing, anyway. I have numerous complaints about the chronic headache, crooked teeth, bad vision, flat fleet, five wisdom teeth, etc., etc.)

You might have heard of Kim after she got some media attention for riding the New York transit system while reading a book with a fake cover called “Fat is Contagious: How Sitting Next to a Fat Person Can Make YOU Fat.” (View a Today Show video interview here.) Each chapter in Kim’s book could probably stand on its own as an essay or narrative short story, but they’re linked together with the common theme of the book. That theme is Kim’s shifting attitude about her weight throughout life, detailing the sadly all too common stories of body self-loathing in her younger years to how she came to a place of self-acceptance in her 30′s and 40′s.

The most fascinating chapter describes her experience working as a weight-loss counselor for a company called Edie JeJeune. (I think this is a pseudonym to protect the innocent and the guilty since Google couldn’t turn up anything on it.) The company sold people diet plans that required pre-packaged foods and encouraged clients to buy motivational audio tapes. Most people know that the weight-loss industry exists to make money, but it was eye-opening to see how sales-oriented Kim’s managers were. The cutthroat atmosphere and pressure to meet sales goals at the price of compromising your morals sounds eerily similar to stories I’ve heard from friends with other sales jobs. This is frightening to contemplate since selling someone a new bathtub doesn’t affect their health like selling a diet plan could (unless they slip, fall and break a hip, I guess). The emphasis wasn’t on helping people either, just meeting sales goals. The counselors weren’t required to have any kind of certifications or degrees, and some were secretly binging on the foods in the warehouse, making the whole debacle seem like a case of the blind leading the blind.

On the positive side, Kim gives a speech during a work seminar that urges people to go for what they want now instead of waiting for something else first (like losing weight) that was so inspirational two of her co-workers decided to quit that day. Sounds like she could have a career as a motivational speaker if the writing thing doesn’t pan out.

The other chapters cover topics such as the fat prejudice she was subjected to from a PR company that represented a line of plus-sized clothes, the fat-person stereotypes she had to fight while filming a video with a major media corporation, and enough stories about the New York public transportation system to make me never want to ride the subway again.

Kim was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions I had after finishing her book.

One idea you stress in the book is that you shouldn’t wait until you’re thin to do things, that you should “Be. Do. Have.” instead of “Do. Have. Be.” That’s a philosophy I believe in too, but sometimes I find myself slipping into old thought patterns, like recently thinking that I should wait to take a martial arts class until I’ve lost some weight. Do you ever find yourself slipping into old patterns like this and if so what do you do about it?

Sure, I notice it happening all the time. I think it’s like anything else, it takes practice to change. The more you stop and recognize your old patterns and interrupt them, the easier it gets. For myself, I find I notice those patterns more readily now than I ever did before. It’s not as easy for negative self-talk to worm its way in and take hold. At one point I was frustrated and asking myself, “Well how the heck do I remember to remember to not have these thoughts?” I think it takes more than a single decision sometimes, and more effort than reading one good self-help book. You need to seek out multiple resources. Several books. Podcasts and videos, workshops. Reinforce those lessons for yourself in a variety of ways, then it becomes more second-nature.

Early in the book you talk about Glory Davis, a girl at school who lost weight over the summer. You try to get her to reveal the secret of her transformation, but she doesn’t seem to understand what you want and acts nonchalant about the change. It was at this point in the book that I thought you were going to reveal that you later discovered Glory Davis had an eating disorder. That doesn’t happen though, and it made me do some uncomfortable self-reflection on why I would assume that. Did you ever wonder if Glory had an eating disorder? Whether you did or not, do you have any thoughts on what it means about our culture that my mind immediately jumped to that conclusion?

You know, that’s an interesting point. No, it never occurred to me that Glory had an eating disorder. When she returned to school thinner, she had also blossomed in other ways. She had a self-assurance about her that transcended mere weight loss. It was like she’d discovered who she was. And I never saw any signs that her relationship with food itself had changed. She was always very much at ease with food, which is never the case with an eating disordered person. There’s always a tension. Guilt, resistance, desperation, uneasiness. All kinds of thinking about the food. Glory just seemed more interested in…well, boys than food, to be frank! And before she lost the weight, I never saw her overeat. So maybe for Glory, her chubbiness was a classic case of baby fat that sheds itself in good time. I remember a lot of kids like that, which is one reason I’m really disturbed by this growing trend of casting a floodlight on fat kids and stigmatizing them. From Michelle Obama framing her Let’s Move campaign as a fight against childhood obesity instead of a campaign in favor or healthy habits for children of ALL sizes, to billboards in Georgia making fat kids out to be freaks and their parents in denial. It’s going to cause a lot of damage to kids who would otherwise be fine without this holier-than-thou societal “intervention,” and we certainly won’t embarrass or shame any child into eating better and exercising more. If anything, we’ll accomplish the opposite. We’ll isolate fat children even more from their peers, and they’ll likely seek comfort in the one friend who’s always there: food. That is, if they don’t discover drugs first.

But I’m getting way off topic here, aren’t I? The fact that your mind jumped to that conclusion about Glory might say something about our cultural beliefs, I don’t know. We do cherish our preconceived notions about people and weight in this country, don’t we? Fat people are portrayed as unlovable, antisocial gluttons, whose greed must be condemned. Women who are rail-thin are assumed to be anorexics or purgers. Weight loss itself is always assumed to have been orchestrated on purpose and is uniformly praised. I remember seeing Tyra Banks’ show one day in the laundromat, and a guest mentioned she’d recently lost X number of pounds. The audience immediately took that as a cue to applaud. And I remember thinking, what if she fucking has CANCER, for God’s sake?

You recount a story about Marilyn Monroe in the book and how she could change from being almost invisible in a crowd to being the subject of attention simply by changing her body language and attitude. You have similar success attracting people to you by exuding an aura of confidence, though you admit it is hard to keep up all the time because it’s not 100% natural. Do you have any advice for other women on how they can try to access their inner Marilyn?

Well, it might be that we all have to be clumsy about it in the beginning. Like learning to ride a bike; like me when I first learned to carry myself with confidence. I could only sustain it for so long before it felt exhausting to me. Because it was unfamiliar. It felt like an effort, almost like an act. But after a while, if your experience mirrors mine, you’ll start to recognize who you really are, and you’ll fall into your own natural “strut,” so to speak. You won’t have to live every day of your life like you’re portraying a woman with better self-esteem than your own. You’ll simply have found your stronger self. Also, it’s not your job to put on an air of fabulousness if you’re feeling angry, frustrated, or otherwise unhappy. But giving yourself a chance to find your own inner Marilyn will help you find more presence when you’re in a shitty place, too. You and your feelings have every right to their space. You’re just as entitled as anyone else to every last inch you need.

You got a lot of attention for reading a book on public transportation with a fake book cover called “Fat is Contagious: How Sitting Next to a Fat Person Can Make YOU Fat.” Did you ever considering using that title for you book instead of “Read My Hips” to see if it’d generate more sales, since as you say body-loathing seems to be more popular than body-acceptance?

I did. Not from a sales-generating perspective, but I did shop my book to publishers as “Fat is Contagious.” But Random House suggested “Read My Hips,” which was the title of an essay I’d written for iVillage, and which wound up being a big part of the book’s introduction. It really seemed to fit — no pun intended. Much more so than “Fat is Contagious.” Because with “Read My Hips,” you really are reading my hips — everything that went into the creation of my hips. Everything I did to try and fight my hips and eventually accept them, along with every other part of me.

In the bio sent with the book it says you dream of “finding an affordable fencing school.” Have you taken up fencing like Inigo Montoya like you mentioned thinking of doing in the book? My brother started fencing in the past year and says they never have enough girls. He’d be happy to recruit you!

No, I haven’t taken up fencing and I’m heartbroken about it! The cruel truth is, there’s an excellent fencing school just fifteen minutes from my home, and they even have female instructors over 40, which I think is so cool. But their fees are well out of my league. Someone told me I shouldn’t be surprised, that fencing is one of those sports of the wealthy, like polo. Gee, I didn’t know! I did get a Wii gaming system, though, and my friend Peter gave me a Wii light saber for Christmas. It’s not quite the same thing, of course. You don’t get to perfect all that crisp footwork, and you don’t develop the same defensive instincts you would in working with a real person. But it’ll have to do for this pauper, for now. My pen will be my sword!

You can catch up with Kim on her site KimWrites.com and read her blog here. She can also watch her video series, Kim Weighs In. Watch the book trailer for Read My Hips below.

There is a part of me that wishes I could lose 50 pounds before the FitBloggin’ conference in two weeks. I can’t deny that. I’m not as thin as I used to be, but I’m not as fat as I used to be either. I could get into all the reasons for that, blah, blah, blah, excuses, defensiveness, marshmallows. But that’s not really important. What’s important is that I’m going anyway.

One of the things I learned from my weight loss is that your body isn’t holding you back in all the ways you think it is. Most of the problems you had before you lose weight will still be there after you lose weight unless you do work on your inner self as well as your outer self. And while the fat me from 6 years ago (dear me, has it been 6 years?) probably would have been too self-conscious to attend a conference all about health and fitness, the less-fat-but-still-undeniably-fat me of today shall not only be attending, but presenting too. ( I should really start putting together my presentation, shouldn’t I?)

It’s not your fat that holds you back, it’s you. And I’m not going to hold myself back, because I’d really like to see all my friends who will be attending. Shauna is flying in from Scotland! Roni is running the whole darn thing and raising a newborn! I’ll get to meet Rebecca in person after working on her web sites for months! And all these lovely people will be there too, some who I do know and many who I don’t.

So, yes, I will be there. And there will be more of me there than there would have been two or three years ago. If you’re going to be fat at FitBloggin’ too, don’t worry. I’ve got your back, and I’ve got your back fat too. See you there!

I’ve been reading The Pain Chronicles by Melanie Thernstrom, a well-researched and fascinating book about pain viewed through the filters of history, literature, science, religion and the author’s personal experiences. Of particular interest to me was the idea that disease is sometimes seen as metaphor. For example, a common 19th century belief about consumption (a.k.a. tuberculosis) was that it was a “spiritualizing struggle between the body and the soul, in which mortal flesh was slowly consumed in a way that heightened both beauty and creativity.” This view seems sort of silly now that we know tuberculosis is caused by mycobacterium tuberculosis. Similarly, cancer was once seen as a sign of repression, and HIV was originally viewed as punishment for homosexuality, both of which have similarly been proven false after the mechanisms of the disease were discovered.

This is when it occurred to me that obesity is still seen as a disease of metaphor.

Obese people have been assigned many traits by mainstream culture. They’re weak-willed. They’re lazy. They don’t care about their bodies. They’re disgusting. The popular belief is that obesity is an expression of these poor character traits. Unfortunately, the cause of obesity is not so simple. In the last few decades it was discovered that hormones like leptin and ghrelin modulate hunger. Someone with an imbalance of these hormones will be driven to eat more than a regular person. A pilot study by the Vanderbilt Addiction Center revealed that fMRI scans of obese people showed “greater activation in response to food cues in key regions of the brain, including the insular region, the hippocampal gyrus region, and the orbitofrontal cortex.” This suggests that obese people may battle strong biological impulses to eat that naturally skinny people don’t. Other studies have shown that a diet of high-calorie foods trigger addiction-like responses in the brain and affect dopamine levels, making it more difficult for people who eat these foods to change their diets. And Brian Wansink’s food lab research has revealed that simple things like the size of your plate or bag of popcorn influence how much you’ll eat in a sitting.

All of these findings suggest that obesity is more complicated than simply lacking will power. There is undoubtedly some personal choice involved, but it is comparable to the amount of a choice a clinically depressed person has to pursue treatment. Depressed people cannot simply “cheer up.” They can take medications, exercise to stimulate endorphins, eat a diet that provides nutrients that help battle their disease, and maintain a support system of family and friends. However, they still have to fight their natural brain chemistry, and even if they do everything right they may still fall prey victim to depressive episodes that make them consider suicide or stay in bed all day.

Similarly, obese people can eat a healthy diet, exercise regularly, weigh themselves frequently, and attend support groups such as Overeaters Anonymous or Weight Watchers. But many of them still have to fight brain chemistry and societal pressures that drive them to eat more calories than they will burn.

It is unlikely that obesity will escape its perception as a metaphor until its mechanisms have been decoded and a “cure” developed that shows the public that obesity is not just an illness of character. Currently the most affective cure against obesity is gastric bypass surgery, which is commonly viewed by the public as “cheating” and “taking the easy way out.” Though if you know anything about the surgery, it is hard to see what is easy about dumping syndrome, possible hair loss, extreme pain after overeating, and the risk of complications such as abscesses, leaks in the digestive track or death. Perhaps if there were a more socially acceptable treatment for this disease, such as a vaccine, a series of injections, or a pill, the treatment would not be viewed with the same amount of scorn as the disease.

Until obesity is better understood by the public, it will likely remain a disease of metaphor. It doesn’t help that obese people are typically regarded as unattractive, and thus deemed worthy of ill regard. In a much more extreme way, diseases such as leprosy similarly made outcasts of their sufferers. Of course, once obesity is better understood, it is also more likely that there will be a cure, thus allowing those who are overweight to escape the persecution that their weight would have brought upon them. Such a reprieve is of little consolation to those today who are discriminated against or taunted because of their size. The one consolation they can take is that it’s likely that future generations will look back on the current views of obesity with incredulity and view obesity as the complicated state it is, not an illness of metaphor.

I’m aware that this post has a serious, term-paper like tone that isn’t exactly similar to my more humorous posts. I dunno why that happened. That’s just how it came out when I wrote it, so I decided to go with it.

A few weeks ago I had lunch with Jennifer Joyner, author of the recently released Designated Fat Girl: A Memoir. It turns out she lives in Fayetteville and I live in Chapel Hill, which means we’re only ninety-something miles apart, or 1 hour and 36 minutes according to Google Maps.

We had a good chat about the publishing industry, weight, and incompetent medical workers. (While I related to many of the fat-girl experiences she writes about in the book, it was her encounter with bumbling Nurse Bob before surgery that really hit home for me. He must be the same guy who assisted with a CT scan I had last year that I’m amazed didn’t turn me into a mutant superhero.)

Joyner’s book is a memoir about her life as a food addict. After years of morbid obesity, encroaching health problems like gestational diabetes, and lack of success with other weight-loss options, she decides to go through with gastric bypass surgery. This comes with its own complications and leads to a battle with dependence on painkillers in which she switches one addiction for another.

The book is very frank about the embarrassing moments and low self-esteem Joyner’s weight problem caused her throughout her life. She’s also honest about the fact that weight-loss surgery didn’t solve all her problems, and actually gave her ones she didn’t have before. So, it’s not necessarily a happy-feel-good book, but it does revel the emotional truth of Joyner’s life well. If you’ve ever felt bad about being overweight, you’ll probably relate to a lot of what she went through.

It also provides insight into how food can be an addiction for some people. After her surgery, she has a craving for Doritos and ends up eating an entire bag, causing her intense pain, heart palpitations, dizziness and sweating. Then, the next day, she eats another bag, despite the experience the day before. This behavior leads her to the revelation that she has an urge to abuse food that goes beyond normal hunger.

It’s also good to see a memoir that talks about weight-loss surgery, and covers both the good and bad aspects of the procedure. There are lots of weight-loss memoirs in stores, but so few of them are based on experiences with gastric surgery, which seems odd considering how many people are having that procedure these days.

You can find out more about the book on Jennifer Joyner’s web site. You can also read a Salon.com personal essay she wrote recently in which she shares how food addiction has shaped her life. And despite the negative self-image she writes about having for so many years, she came across as a positively nice lady! You can buy her book on Amazon.com here.

Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, Jennifer was going to buy me lunch, but I used a coupon for a free meal instead, so she didn’t end up buying me anything. Which was sort of stupid of me in retrospect because I could have gotten a free lunch then and used the coupon later. I am a foolish girl, but at least that means there is no ethical shadiness about this review.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book to review.

Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life is a Buddhist guide to healthy living and weight loss co-authored by Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Lilian Cheung. The former is a Zen master whose name looks like a word scramble of the phrase “Ninth hatch, hah!” Odd name aside, it must be pretty bad-ass to put the words “Zen Master” on your business cards, assuming Zen masters have business cards. Dr. Cheung is a lecturer and director of health promotion at the Harvard School of Public Health’s Department of Nutrition. It must be pretty bad-ass to put the word “Harvard” on your business card too. Dr. Cheung is also a student of Hanh, who is a well-respected Buddhist monk.

I’m always slightly hesitant to read diet books because many of them retread the same ground. If you’re going to write a diet book, you’d better have something new to say or say it in a new way. Savor certainly meets those standards, presenting a plan for healthy living using the principles and truths of the Buddhist religion. The first half of the book is aptly titled, “A Buddhist Perspective on Weight Control,” and relates several philosophies of Buddhism, such as the four noble truths, the four nutriments that sustain us, and the four foundations of mindfulness. (You’ll have to read the book for more info on all that.) The second half, titled “Mindful Action Plans,” gives specific information on how to live a healthy life and how to incorporate that knowledge with the concepts related in the first half.

I found myself liking Savor, though probably more for the Buddhist concepts than for any information on carbohydrates. The theme of the book is that you should live your life mindfully. Savor every moment and sensation, every bite of an apple you eat, every breath of air you take in. Buddhists believe everything in the universe is connected and interdependent, so a weight problem is not something isolated to be fixed on its own, but part of the complex system of your emotional life, your society, and your thoughts. Your weight needs to be inspected and tended to on all those levels. By being present, aware, and observing yourself, you can recognize your suffering, find its root, and transform it into joy and inner peace.

Like I said, it’s very Buddhist.

A few ideas particularly clung to my mind:

• One, that we are driven by “habit energy” in our lives, like a rider on a horse. “Where are you going?” someone will yell at the rider, who responds, “I don’t know. Ask the horse!” Savor asks you to look at behaviors in your life that are habit, and like the horse are taking you somewhere out of your control.
• The authors also used a term, “sangha,” which refers to a group of like-minded people that help each other. Like the blogosphere! We’re our own little sangha, I guess.
• Interestingly, one of the relaxation and breathing exercises in the book is pretty darn similar to a technique the behavioral psychologist at my headache clinic taught me.

One other thing that really made me dig this book was the use of wise-sounding analogies. I am a sucker for stories about a lotus in the mud or parents who eat their child’s flesh. Um, ok, maybe not the latter. But seriously, the parables made me think of concepts in a different way. Buddhism seems to be very much about accepting yourself, the bad and the good, and using the bad to foster the good, like you use trash in a compost heap. (Their analogy, not mine.) I guess I’m just a sucker for spiritual self-examination, particularly now that I’m almost 30 and trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with the rest of my life and what is the meaning of everything anyway if eventually all the stars will die and no one will exist to remember anything that happened on planet Earth, even though we all thought our lives were oh, so, very important at the time, but are basically an insignificant blip in the cosmos, like the life of that ant I just smashed into the carpet.

So, uh, back to the book.

Overall, I’d give it 3 out of 4 stars, because Buddhism seems to be big on the number four. It’s given me a lot to think about, and I’ll probably read up more on Buddhism. I’m not sure if it will stop me the next time I want to drive to CVS and buy a bag of M&M’s, but if it doesn’t, at least I’ll be mindful of what I’m doing.

You can buy Savor on Amazon.com. You can find a full list of the Savor blog tour stops here on the TLC Book Tours web site.

Thankfully I was at home, and the only person who saw a flash of my clean white undies was my roommate (and possibly the two cats). Regardless of what we ultimately blame for this incident, be it the textile industry or the size of my ass, one cannot ignore that this is a stereotypically fat-person thing to do. I may as well have sat on a chair which collapsed beneath me. As I mentioned on Wednesday, I clearly need help.

If my life were an episode of that old VH1 series, “Behind the Music,” this moment in my life would be the time when I hit rock bottom after spiraling downward in a heroin and cocaine fueled whirlwind, only I used ice cream and chocolate instead. For those of you just entering the story, I developed a chronic headache two years ago that really f*$%ed me up. It changed the way I thought about food, making me see it more as a coping mechanism than I ever had before.

While we can blame at least 80% of my weight gain on the pain, depression and medications, the headache excuse is getting a bit old. At this rate, I might try blaming the poor economy and the high unemployment rate on my headache too. It has become the easy excuse for anything that is going wrong, just like being fat used to be. I’ve been managing my headache a lot better this year, and there’s no reason that I should be gaining weight. The real reason is that I haven’t been on the case lately, and because last December I snuck down some chimneys to eat cookies people just left lying around for some Santa person. When I braved the scale on Monday, I discovered I had gained ten pounds in one week.

Ten pounds!

Which explains why my pants split. But, I’m not one to wallow or whine. Instead, I’ve decided this is my theme song for 2010:

For those of you at work who can’t turn your speakers on, the song is “One More Time” by Daft Punk. It’s happy and upbeat and as the lyrics repeat over and over, we’re going to do this “one more time.” Fitting, because I’m going to do it one more time. Grand total, I’ve gained 50 pounds from the weight I felt comfortable at and maintained for a year and a half. It sucks, but it’s hardly unusual. Unfortunately people gain back weight all the time.

I have decided that when I fill out my National Weight Control Registry form next year I am going to be reporting a loss. I have decided that when I weigh in at my doctor’s office, the numbers will be going down. I have decided that I am going to lose the weight again and keep it off, and anyone who says that’s impossible can bite me (preferably in the thigh, which is high in cellulite).

I could look at my weight gain as a purely bad thing, but I will look at it as an opportunity to achieve another goal I can be proud of. I will be the girl who regained 50 pounds and then lost it and didn’t gain it back. *fingers crossed* Which is why I like the Daft Punk song. It is happy and talks about celebrating one more time, and that’s just what we’re going to do. As anyone who watched “Behind the Music” knows, the story always ends triumphantly with a comeback. I am all fired up and I have a plan!

I think my thinking is what’s really different from when I was thinner. Two years ago I wouldn’t have considered ordering the stuffed cinnamon pancakes at Bob Evans, and last week I barely cared that I did. When I first lost weight, I learned all the nutrition and fitness information I had been lacking all my life, so I’m certain I know how to lose weight now. I need to get back into the proper mindset to make it happen. That’s why I’m doing The Beck Diet Solution, which is a six-week cognitive therapy program that is supposed to help with behavior modification. I’ll be updating you on how that goes. I’ve got my note cards and my pen and my journal with the dopey cover that I got from Hallmark. How can I fail?

I’m not going to weigh in here, because I think that would drive me five kinds of crazy. I do have a little widget in the bottom right of the page from Traineo that says how many pounds I have to go. I’m setting my first goal to just lose 20 pounds, then we’ll go from there.

I also have to admit, I debated whether to write about this publicly. I wrote a weight-loss memoir two years ago, and I know a lot of newbies will be arriving here because of new year’s diet resolutions. I was concerned they’d see this post and think, “Well, this girl is obviously a big failure. I’m not going to buy her book! In fact, I’ll write the publisher and demand they burn every existing copy!” Ultimately though, I decided it’s just best to be honest, and to never give up on what you want. (And hey, if you buy it, there’s still time to win that free camera!)

The only good thing about this, besides the chance to prove myself again, is that my favorite pair of brown corduroys fit again! They were my “goal pants” back when I was trying to lose weight in college. Those pants reminded me that I’ve been way fatter than I am now, so things could be a lot worse. Anyway, here’s to the first 20 pounds in 2010!

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.”

I was never a skinny child. I never had a thin version of me to compare myself too. I only had the morbidly obese Jennette who spun herself into her own world of possibilities, one that exists in a parallel dimension from the skinny version. When I was losing weight, I would compare my current body to the fatter version of me. I could hang out with this fatter friend of mine in my mind where she made me feel skinny in her shadow. Even at 230 pounds I was 140 pounds lighter than the fattest me.

This year I’ve been dealing with chronic pain, the stress of a book release, and a variety of other happenings that are not ready for blogdom. Eating well and exercising shifted from being my top priority to being number four or five in my top ten life priorities, so I gained 20 pounds. On the way down I compared myself to the fattest version of me, but on the way up I compare myself to the thinnest version of me. Instead of seeing myself as 170 pounds lighter, I see myself as 20 pounds fatter.

I know this is silly. I know I’m not obese. I look in the mirror and think I’m pretty. I’m grateful that I can run and squat and cross my legs. I’m in better health than I’ve been for most of my life. But sometimes I resent making a slightly more perfect version of myself. I hate that I judge myself against her. I hate that other people compare me to her. I hate that I know I could be her again if I worked harder or cared more. I hate that she’s out there, existing as a possibility I one day made flesh, but faded out of reality and into the mirror world of what-ifs.

I may not have cable, but I did receive a screener of the second episode and was able to watch the complete first episode on the show’s web site here in the “Videos” section. (ETA: Looks like they have taken the episode down now. Sorry!) As I watched the show, I found myself muttering, “Oh, yeah,” as I remembered moments from my own period of morbid obesity I’d otherwise forgotten. Ruby has to hold onto the side rails of the treadmill for balance, like I did. She dislikes the chairs with arms at her friend’s house, just like I used to. She wants to take a bubble bath in the tub, a task I never felt worth the effort because I would struggle to get out of the tub. When she looks in the mirror sadly, I remembered all the times I sat in the Lane Bryant dressing room and wondered, “When did that become my reflection?” And while I never wore a mumus or put bricks under my bed to prevent it from collapsing like Ruby does, I did wish I could wear calf-high boots and jeans like she wants to.

Despite her extraordinary problem, Ruby is an ordinary girl. She’s the kind of person you’d have a blast with chatting in the salon, as we see her do in the opening of the second episode. The topic of discussion is an old boyfriend who is coming back to town after he broke her heart years ago because she could not lose weight for him. Amazingly, Ruby is not bitter over her ex and has come to accept that he was not the one for her. Even though she is unhappy with the state of her body, Ruby never exudes self-hate or negativity. Instead she expresses a love for life, a life that she does not want to be cut short by diabetes or sleep apnea.

I admire Ruby for letting cameras into the vulnerable parts of her life as she takes on this enormous task. In the second episode we see a group of people making fun of her size. She plays it off at the time, but later comes near tears as she recalls the moment in a private confessional. Luckily, Ruby is surrounded by friends and family who love and support her, though they too have to change their ways. Particularly ironic is one friend’s musing that it will be hard to do as she stirs a big pot of macaroni and cheese.

If “Ruby” suffers at all, it is from squeezing itself into the traditional trappings of a reality show. There is some repetition as clips from different interviews set up the scenario for this week’s show. The show also skips over some details, like why her nephew is living with her. He says it’s because his parents got a cat which he is allergic to, but I suspect there’s more to that story. The occasional voiceovers by Ruby which connect parts of the story sound somewhat awkward, but also go to show that Ruby is a real person and not a professional actress.

That is what I appreciate most about this show. The main character is a real person (who uses phrases like “I’m going to kick his astronaut” so she won’t have to curse) who also happens to be morbidly obese. People of that size are typically dehumanized and seen as objects to be ridiculed, but “Ruby” makes you see its heroine as a real person who could just as easily live next door as live in your TV set.

If you get the chance, I hope you check it out. “Ruby” airs on Sundays at 8pm EST on the Style Network. “Ruby” is a gem of a show.

First, right after I moved to Indianapolis, I was waiting in a line wrapped around a movie theater to get tickets for Star Wars – The Phantom Menace before we all found out the prequels were going to suck. The guy in front of me turned around and said, “Didn’t I go to high school with you?” Of course he hadn’t, because he wasn’t from Kentucky. The second event, was two or three years later when I was living fat and alone in my college apartment. I stopped at a liquor store to buy pina colada stuff when the counter boy asked me, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” But he didn’t.

During both of these incidents, I wasn’t so much amazed that someone thought they knew me. What I really wanted to say was, “Wow. There’s someone else as fat as me in this city? Who also looks like me? How completely bizarre.” Because seriously, how many super morbidly obese doppelgangers can you have?

I have never met this overweight “twin” of mine, but now I wonder if she too lost weight and banks at the same place I do.