The Demon Eating Me

Warning

This is a post about weight and weight issues. It's far too long and there are no pictures and it's not funny. And it's summer. You really should be outdoors enjoying the sunshine instead of sitting inside reading blogs on the internet.

The Demon Eating Me

My fabulous workout partner Kelly and I are both talkers. Today, while doing an hour’s worth of cardio on side-by-side elliptical machines, we breathlessly covered a range of subjects, everything from her Russian coworker’s current visa woes to what Kelly calls “pseudo-racism” (and what I just call racism, since I think that “pseudo-racism” is when, say, white people cry reverse-racism), from crazy father anecdotes to anti-depressant medication experiences, from iPod troubles to visits to the Apple stores in other cities. Today we also happened to touch upon the recent studies comparing recently popular weight loss strategies and which supposedly “prove” that Atkins is the way to go if one wants to achieve--what?--lasting weight loss and, oh, perfection in all aspects of one’s physical health, I suppose. Or something like that. I forget. But that’s what the Atkins people (who, incidentally, funded the “research”) want you to believe anyway.

I told Kelly about the recent articles in The New York Times that reveal the study for what it is, junk science at best. (So don’t go all crazy jumping on the Atkins low-carb nuttiness is my advice to you.) She was all, like, “Are you serious?”

Here’s an example of what happens when people try to talk about obesity and dieting and skinny folk are allowed to have a say: The reader responses to the Times article that debunked the Atkins-centric study quickly degenerated into a litany of useless advice to the obese, much of it along the lines of “I find that it’s so easy to be thin. All you have to do is what I do: Eat less, move more. That’s what I do, and I’ve always been thin.” I am incensed when people who have never had an extra pound to lose say that weight loss is a matter of eating less and moving more. That’s a lot like me, a non-drinker, telling an alcoholic that overcoming alcoholism is easy. It’s simply a matter not drinking. Right? So easy. What that really is is an insult. It’s insulting and shows a real lack of understanding about the problem.

Another reader, fed up with such insulting suggestions, tried to explain what it’s like to be a compulsive eater by relating a story about Stephen King, the horror writer and admitted alcoholic. Once asked how much alcohol he had drunk that day, King replied, “Why, all of it.” The reader wrote: “It is the same for [compulsive eaters] - we will eat it until it is all gone. Whatever it is that day.”

Compulsive eating is one of my weight loss woes. I don’t think many people truly understand what it’s like to be a compulsive eater. I don’t think that even I, as a compulsive eater, understand what it’s like to be a compulsive eater. Here’s a taste, though: If I am able to (and that means if I have access to foods that trigger a binge), I will eat past fullness, past the point of reason, past discomfort, into real pain. I will do it knowing that I'm doing it. I feel, as I am eating, unable to stop. The food will hound me until I eat it all. But the eating is just part of it. The other part is the letdown on the other side of the binge: The sick feeling in my heart and the disappointment and embarrassment at my failure to control myself. The only consolation? At least I'm not hurting anyone but myself.

Talking to Kelly while sweating away on the elliptical machine, I was reminded of a story about when I was approaching my lowest weight. My daily intake was a thousand calories and I was working out two to three hours six days a week. I weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds and my “ideal” weight on all the actuary charts was about one hundred and thirty-nine pounds. I was still then considered to be overweight. I was still overweight despite the fact that I had so little body fat that my period had stopped several months before. In an effort to keep hunger pangs at bay and stick to my diet, I started smoking again and was drinking about three gallons of water and diet Coke a day. I was determined to continue losing weight.

During that time, I went to a friend’s wedding. It was a late afternoon wedding which meant that dinner was served. I don’t remember what was served, I just remember looking down at a plate of things that I couldn’t eat and still maintain my diet. At my table was an old friend and her newish girlfriend and they began to taunt me (my friend later called it “bantering”) because I was having trouble finding something to eat on the plate. They couldn't stop themselves from commenting as they dug into the bread basket, saying, "Don't you want some bread? Oh, yeah. Bread with butter is so good. What's the matter? Mmmmm...this is so good. Oh, that's right. You don't eat bread." My response to this was a kind of disbelief followed by a meltdown. I got up from the table and went into the bathroom and fought back tears. I couldn’t believe that anyone could be so rude or mean as to comment on what I was or wasn’t eating. (I say that, but in all honesty it didn’t really surprise me because I had spent months listening to my friends voice concerns about my weight that I took as (and which was often nothing more than) thinly-veiled jealousy.)

Here’s the kicker: The newish girlfriend, who had laughed along with the taunting--excuse me, bantering--about my eating habits, was a recovering alcoholic. When champagne to toast the newlyweds was brought to our table, she waved it away, saying, “No alcohol for this table.”

That sense of entitlement astounded me. I would never have said, for example, when the bread baskets were delivered, “No bread at this table.” I would never say to a recovering alcoholic, “What the fuck do you mean, ‘No alcohol at this table’? I’m not a recovering drunk. I want my champagne.” And I certainly didn’t keep up some “banter” all night of, “Well, aren’t you going to have a drink, Girlfriend? C’mon, it’s good for you. Haven’t you heard that a little bit of red wine a day is good for you? Here, have just a little bit. A little bit can’t hurt. Don’t you want to toast the happy couple?”

I would never say these things because I understand that a little bit can hurt. A little bit can trigger a binge that will conquer someone who is battling an addiction. A little bit is not just a little bit (a little bit of alcohol, a little bit of food, a little bit of what seems like harmless fun), but is a gateway to a life that was miserable, was so miserable that it is preferable to walk away from friends, from family, from all things comforting and familiar rather than return to it.

Later, I was incredibly angry at the fact that the girlfriend could so cavalierly assume that her efforts to overcome her addictions would be catered to by everyone in attendance, while my own effort to overcome an eating addiction was apparently something to be mocked. I'm still angry about that actually. And that was about four years ago, that wedding.

Since then some things have changed. I’ve stopped being attached to the idea of being the weight that actuary tables say I should be. I’ve put on enough weight that my period has come back. Some things have changed--but some things haven’t. If I want to lose weight, I still have to resign myself to a thousand calories and two or more hours at the gym each day. (So I guess I am eating less and moving more. Though now that I think about it, as a matter of fact I am actually eating more and exercising less to lose weight. Sounds like a dream until I tell you that am eating just a few more calories than Hitler thought Jews in concentration camps should have, and I am exercising just a bit less than professional body-builders do to maintain their physiques. That's all just so I can lose a little less than a pound a week. So, yeah, I guess that insulting advice works. But you don't have to take my word for it: You try it and let me know how you get on, okay?) As always, if I am left with a food that triggers my compulsion, I will eat it and I will hate myself while I eat it and I will still eat it. I will eat until it is gone and I am sick to my stomach. If I try to not eat, I will be able to think of nothing else until I do eat it. I can circumvent the compulsion sometimes: I’ve learned to throw food in the garbage (as desperate as I've been, I've never eaten food from the garbage--though I know compulsive eaters who have), or to pour dishsoap over it to keep from eating it. I’ve learned to toss half-eaten cookies out of car windows and to dump styrofoam containers of restaurant leftovers, pressed on me by well-meaning waiters, into the trashcans outside of the restaurants.

The Other Side of The Coin

A couple of years ago, I was talking to someone at the clay studio where I used to work. This guy has been battling a fierce alcohol addiction for years and years, and when we spoke he finally thought he had a handle on it. (Turns out he was wrong, but that's not the point of the story.) When we talked, he was in full-on twelve-step mode, preaching it, citing it chapter and verse. Despite having battled alcohol for all of his adult life, despite having let it destroy more than one business and drive him near to bankruptcy, despite having let it wreck his relationships with his children and nearly bust up his marriage more than a few times, despite having let it lead him into situations where he was beaten and robbed, despite the twelve-step brainwashing, he still had little insight into the nature of addiction, his own or anyone's. He explained to me, for example, that he could never, never understand how people could be addicted to food. He just couldn't fathom what was going through the minds of compulsive eaters. He called them "sick fucks" and laughed.

When it comes right down to it, I am still battling an addiction that threatened to swallow my life, that ate up every bit of energy I had, that was the demon that I couldn’t shake for years. Every day I face it, and every day I do my best to conquer it, and every day there is the chance that it will conquer me.

And Another Warning

After reading that last bit, don't you dare quote Nietzche at me.