Desserts
is
Stressed
Spelled
Backwards
By Gloria Arenson, MS, MFT, D CEP
Published by BrockArt Books
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
Copyright © 2009 Gloria Arenson
All rights reserved
eBook Version
ISBN No. 978-0-9621942-8-3
Disclaimer
The information or advice presented is not intended to substitute for professional medical or psychological care. If you are under medical or psychological supervision, consult your healthcare professional before using any of the procedures in this book. The publisher disclaims any liability or loss incurred directly or indirectly as a result of the use or application of any of the contents of this book.
In case histories cited, the author has used fictitious names and described traits not identifiable to a particular person unless that person has given express permission.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Acknowledgments
This book could not have been written without the cooperation of the wonderful people who have attended my classes and workshops for over twenty-five years and have freely shared their stories. I am grateful to my clients, people who are courageous in their determination to fee themselves from compulsive eating. I hope their stories will inspire you.
I offer respect and admiration to Gary Craig for creating EFT, a technique that has not only changed my life but has also allowed me to help so many others.
The case histories included in this book are based on the lives of real people. I have used fictitious names and disguised some facts to protect their confidentiality. Sometimes I have combined or simplified cases to present a point more clearly.
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. I Had to Write This Book
2. Desserts Is Stressed Spelled Backwards
3. Who Binge Eats?
4. Medical Dangers of Eating Disorders
5. A Lifetime of Struggle: Diets Don’t Work
6. EFT For Rapid Results
7. What Is a Binge?
8. Core Issues of Compulsive Overeaters
9. The Four-Level Plan: An Overview
10. Changing What You Do
11. Changing How You Feel
12. Changing How You Think
13. Retrieving Your Power
14. How Psychotherapy Can Help
15. Advice to Family and Friends
The 4- Level Plan
Suggested Readings
About the Author
Chapter 1
I Had To Write This Book
I have never met a woman who liked her body. Every woman I have ever known will go on at great length about her inadequacies: fat thighs, thick ankles, too small or too large bust, small eyes, long chin, or fat earlobes. Women who are a size 18 dream of being a size 12; yet those who are a size 12 yearn to be a size 2. No one seems to be satisfied, and this is the nature of the game. To chase the carrot of "someday I’ll be perfect and then my dreams will come true" is what I call the weighting game. As a psychotherapist and teacher I have dealt with thousands of women who believe that if they change their appearance, get thinner, all their problems will be solved. They blame their unhappy relationships or lack of relationships on the premise that they are not slim enough to attract the right man or get the right job. Looking good equates with having a good life. It just isn’t so!
Recently, I tried to remember a time in my life when I felt totally OK. When was it that I lived every day as it came, without feeling inadequate or worried about my future? When did my self-consciousness start? For me, it began at age eleven when my mother decided that I was overweight and took me to my first “diet” doctor. Up until that time I had a body. After that I was my body. From then on, I was never at ease in the world. I had a handicap: my body. A body that would never be tall enough, slim enough, or flat-chested enough. Other women I know recall feeling unhappy about their bodies as young as three or four years of age.
Along with millions of other women, I have spent my life buying books and magazines that tell me how to improve. I have been obsessed with food, gone to doctors, clubs, and self-help classes. All this energy was focused on hiding the not-OK feelings. After all these years, the magazines are still running the same articles, the books are rehashing the same ideas, and there are even more weight control businesses than ever before. Women are feeling more pressured and more frenzied in their efforts to achieve perfection that will lead to love and all the "happily ever after" dreams they cling to.
Weight control is now a trillion dollar industry! We as a nation are obsessed with thinness. The emphasis on weight has created a monstrous situation. After many years of going on diets, trying shots, pills, and fads, I discovered Overeaters Anonymous. I was desperate. It was a relief to hear that I had a disease and couldn’t help myself. But I was encouraged to hear that I could arrest my disease one day at a time by following a twelve-step program. I decided that I had nothing to lose but my compulsion, so I stayed for eight years.
During those eight years I did not have cookies, ice cream, or cake! I quit sweets cold turkey and adhered to the rigid low-carbohydrate eating plan that was given to me when I joined. Those years were full of pain and full of joy. By giving up my sugar "fix," I had nothing to turn to in order to put aside the stresses and anxieties of my life. I had to face my feelings for the first time and acknowledge my problems. I had to live life without a crutch of food, and it hurt.
To survive this ordeal, I had to learn how to cope with my problems and to change or resolve the issues that were most difficult to live with. In other words, I had to become an adult. The twelve steps of the Alcoholics Anonymous program adopted by OA taught me skills and problem solving techniques. The only way to stay away from compulsive overeating was to practice the principles of this new program for living. It was like throwing a child who doesn’t swim into the water. You either learn fast or sink.
Overeaters Anonymous borrowed the Alcoholics Anonymous program for recovery that maintains that compulsive eating is a threefold problem: physical, emotional, and spiritual. In all the years I attended OA I saw many miraculous changes. They occurred when the individual did more than diet, when he or she lived the program for change. Food abusers, like alcoholics, can be either "dry" or "sober." Being "dry" means that you are on a diet; you are imposing a temporary program for eating that will eliminate emotional binges as long as you stay "good." Being "dry" means that you are on a diet but are not doing anything to understand how your feelings or your life stresses contribute to your compulsive overeating habits. Sobriety is different. Being "sober" is a state of physical and emotional wellness. Sober people have given up binging and have learned or are learning to understand what issues in their lives cause them to eat compulsively. They then can work to change these attitudes and unhappy situations.
One of the positive aspects of belonging to any weight club or support group is that you can get approval and love right now. You don’t have to get thin or stay thin to be successful as a human being. After eight years in OA, I realized that I accepted all the members I met whether they were fat or thin. They didn’t have to lose weight to please me. They were already lovable.
It seemed to me that an important stumbling block for OA members was the belief that their problem was a disease and was therefore insoluble. Therefore, you are a victim of compulsive overeating, Thinking of over-eating as a disease was also an excuse for feeling different. After eight years in OA, I no longer believed I was powerless over food. I knew damned well I had the power, but I didn’t know how to use it consistently. I decided to find another solution. I was tired of living my life being doomed to have an eating problem forever and thinking of myself as a sick person. I longed to be "normal." After more than twenty years of diets and eight years of abstinence from sugar laden and high-calorie foods, I was terrified at the thought that I could eat just one portion and stop. The belief that I was an all-or-nothing person who had no control over certain foods had been with me for a long time. I was doubtful that I, a college graduate with a master’s degree, could ever be free of my obsession with food.
Looking back at those years when going without ice cream and dessert was no struggle; I tried to find out how I was able to maintain the restricted food intake so easily. I decided that during my years of participation in OA, all my needs were met. I received the love, approval, and help from my fellow members that I hadn’t received in my life up until then but had yearned for. I had friends on call day and night. I didn’t need food to take the place of loving feelings because I was getting the "real thing."
I discovered that to eliminate compulsive overeating, the problem eater had to live a life of self-awareness. That meant finding out which of his or her needs weren’t being met and either getting them met or changing the situation and finding a better life. It meant finding a specific lifestyle of consciousness, courage, and willingness to go forward, no matter what was necessary. I had to exchange martyrdom, victimhood, and pain for autonomy and power. I decided to share my experience with others, and I began by teaching classes based on the idea that self-esteem was the key to creating a better life. If a person felt good about herself and her life was happier, she would be more motivated to diet and be less inclined to eat because of stressful experiences.
Then I came across a concept that seemed to explain why so many diets had failed for so many people. Elizabeth Keyes, in her book How to Win the Losing Fight put forth an idea called the "art of gentle eating." It was a precursor to behavior modification and was designed to help the binge eater learn to stop being afraid of food, stop depriving herself of favorite foods, and become responsible for eating what she wanted and stopping when satisfied. Along with this eating program was a set of ideas and meditations to increase self-acceptance and raise self-esteem.
Elizabeth Keyes’s ideas encouraged me to teach people how to be free of the bondage of food. After all, the problem is not in the food but in the overeater. The more the food abuser blames food, the more she relinquishes her power to change her life. Although this program was exciting and offered a life free of dieting, I was amazed at how resistant people were to incorporate these concepts into their lives. How wonderful it would be to give up dieting forever! Why wasn’t it easy to do?
Women who suffer from eating disorders are dedicated to the idea that the goal is to have a perfect body as soon as possible. The body must be pummeled, prodded, punished, and denied to give it the correct appearance. To seek freedom from compulsion is too long a process for most people. It takes hard work; you must look into yourself, and you must change. Very few people want to do that. They prefer the fantasy of a temporary diet that promises they will live happily ever after.
The non-diet approach was very popular and attracted many people. My students lost weight and seemed to enjoy the process. I evolved a system I called Integral Behavior Modification, which went beyond the "art of gentle eating." I became aware of the ways compulsive eaters stopped themselves from reaching their goal. I called the point at which a dieter stops working and starts to regain her weight the “resistance point.” I knew all the rationalizations for eating and cheating. Now I wanted to understand why so many women had to sabotage themselves at the “resistance point.”
Some people stopped themselves halfway to their goal; others ran out of steam five pounds from success. Many binge eaters have a “magic number,” a weight they never seem to go below. Each time they reach the "magic number," the diet goes out the window and they return to compulsive overeating and regain all the pounds they have lost. One day it dawned on me that the magic number symbolized the demarcation line between maintaining the status quo and the need for dramatic change in a person’s life. The “magic number” is a fantasy. The dieter believes that something major will have to change in her life if she achieves her goal. That something may be overcoming fears of intimacy with men, talking back to an authority figure, quitting a job, disagreeing with a significant other, or getting a divorce. When you go below the “magic number,” you have permission to be or do what you have wished but feared to do. Often the fear wins out, and the binger retreats to a safer place. The “resistance point” is the place at which fear surfaces.
Many dieters work hard to lose weight but know ahead of time at what weight they will run into trouble. I remember a young woman who had a paralyzing fear that something terrible might happen to her father. She feared that if she lost weight, she would become attractive to men and have to marry. Then she would have to leave home and would be unavailable if her father got sick or had an accident. Therefore, she unconsciously sabotaged herself before she reached her goal.
Another overweight woman kept herself from achieving her goal because she believed that she would have to confront her husband and ask for improvement in their relationship. She felt inadequate as an overweight person and thought she couldn’t get anyone better. As long as she was too heavy, it was fine for her to settle for less. But if she looked prettier, she would have the right to a more satisfying marriage. If she demanded more, her husband might leave. She was more afraid of being alone than she was brave, so she stayed fat to avoid putting her self-worth to the test.
My private psychotherapy practice grew as I continued to help women learn what “fat” symbolized in their lives. Fat is not the problem, but it is a powerful cover-up for the real issues of fear of loss of love, relationship problems, guilt, poor self-concept, and non-assertiveness. I found that although most overeaters wanted desperately to overcome the food compulsion, they really didn’t want to change. The idea of things being different, of having to learn to ask for what they wanted, of having to go to work and support themselves, of moving away from the dependence on parents or spouse was too frightening for many.
After teaching classes and counseling many hundreds of people, I wrote How to Stop Playing the Weighting Game, a workbook designed to help dieters and compulsive overeaters stop dieting and be free of their obsession with food. By doing the mental exercises and writing assignments in the book, the compulsive overeater could learn to understand her beliefs about food, to recognize how and why she sabotaged attempts to lose weight or control overeating, and to practice techniques for behavioral change. My main point was that food and fat are not the primary problem. For some people, overeating is a problem-solving device. A diet removes fat but doesn’t deal with the roots of the problem.
Although I was teaching classes that were supposed to help people lose weight, I was really teaching classes in self-acceptance and consciousness-raising. My work has been a joy to me because I have met thousands of intelligent, creative, sensitive, responsive, lovable people ... who don’t know that is the truth about them-selves. Each person who comes to me has locked herself away in a prison of doubt, fear, and low self-worth. It is a prison without a lock on the door, but she doesn’t realize that. She is locked in because she doesn’t see any way out of the situations that she created for herself. My job is to help those suffering from eating problems “get out of jail.”
Because compulsive eaters are so self-critical, the most important aspect of my work has been to create an attitude of change through self-acceptance, not through punishment. If a person suffers from allergies, she is not considered a bad person for reacting to substances that are toxic to her body. An overeater is also reacting to toxic substances, toxic ideas and toxic situations. Her reaction to a poisonous emotional environment is to break out in a binge. My challenge is to get food abusers to see themselves in a new light so they can begin allowing themselves room for gradual change. Human development is two steps forward and one step back. We all learn from our mistakes. Food abusers want to be perfect immediately with no setbacks or slips. This is usually impossible to achieve. Baby steps are easier to handle.
Here is one way of looking at the progression from binge eater to healthy eater. I think that overcoming binge eating can be done in four developmental steps:
• After the binge, you become aware of what triggered that binge.
• In the midst of the binge, you become aware of the cause of the binge, but you keep eating.
• Before you reach for the food, you are aware of why you are eating, but you go ahead and binge.
• Before you reach for the food, you become aware of why you want to eat, and you do something about the problem without eating.
The goal is consciousness. As long as you are on one of the four steps, you are becoming conscious of the dynamics of your behavior and are working toward a new alternative. When you finally reach step four, you may find that occasionally you revert to step one. That is human. It simply indicates that you have something new to learn about yourself and your life.
Another important premise in my work is the elimination of ideas like good and bad from the value system of my clients. As long as there is judgment, change is difficult to achieve. Bad, simply means that you were anxious or stressed and did not have the resources to resolve the situation to your best advantage. Good, means that you were conscious and making choices. One of my personal mottos is:
"There is no good and no bad. There is only what you do and what you learn from that."
As long as the person suffering from an eating disorder hates her problem and hates herself for having it, she will punish herself. If she thinks of the eating disorder as an opportunity for growth, she will be able to learn how to deal with the world in such a way as to get the very best. I recently met a young woman who was recovering from anorexia nervosa. She told me that after many years of medical and psychological therapy, she had come to see that anorexia nervosa was a blessing in disguise. If she hadn’t experienced this overwhelming problem, she would never have confronted her angers and fears about her family and her future. Recovering from anorexia meant that she had to learn to love herself and plan a happy and fulfilling life.
Eating disorders result when a minor difficulty is not handled correctly and continues until it becomes a problem. Every adolescent wrestles with the agonies of peer relationships, dating relationships, pressures at school, and family stresses that arise when he or she is starting to separate from the family and become a young adult. When the difficulty is mishandled so that the outcome is not a constructive solution, or when the unhealthy solution is applied over and over in the hopes that it will eventually work, the original difficulty becomes a serious problem. This is what happens with binge eating and with the binge/ purge behavior of bulimia.
In the case of binge eating, a young woman may feel unhappy because she is dateless on Saturday night or doesn’t feel accepted by peers. Her temporary solution may be to eat to soothe her unhappy feelings and to give herself a “feel good” to make up for the friendship she feels deprived of. At first, the food does seem to remove the misery. But, if each time this person feels left out she turns to food for comfort, she will soon find that her binges become obsessive. The binge takes over, and in addition to overcoming her relationship problems she has a new problem: compulsive overeating. The same is true of purging. As time goes on, the bulimic may become unable to stop the habit.
I encourage the individual with an eating compulsion to risk giving up her old, ineffective solution to problem solving (abusing food) and learn a new approach. In this book you will find strategies to help yourself find new ways to overcome your compulsive behaviors and find methods to face life and cope on a daily basis. As long as women choose to remain victims and believe that happiness comes from others, there will be eating disorders. This book speaks mainly of women and their problems (and the majority of my clients are female), but there are an enormous number of men who are also compulsive overeaters. (A much small number of men are bulimic.)
After teaching and counseling thousands of people who are obsessed with food, I know that food abuse is a widespread social and cultural problem that we usually learn in the bosom of the family. Food is easily available in this land of abundance. You will not be arrested for being drunk on food. It is not illegal to overeat. It is not as harmful as alcohol or drugs, although food abuse can lead to death when purging is practiced.
I had to write this book because I am sick and tired of reading about diets. Every month new books and magazine articles are written and sold that tell the individual how to lose weight. They reinforce how important it is to look good on the outside. I am tired of seeing beautiful young preteens and teenagers who tell me they are not good looking enough to have a boyfriend or wear a bathing suit. They are curtailing their happiness and a chance for a fulfilling life even before it gets started.
I had to write this book to tell of the pain and suffering that comes from the irrational belief that how you look is more important than who you are. It is time we saw compulsive overeating as a universal sign of anxiety and stress that is not dealt with in a sane and productive way.
I had to write this book to encourage all people with eating disorders to begin to see that they are not crazy and horrible people but wonderful people who need to learn new skills to have a life of joy.
People demand magic, a quick cure. There is no quick cure for eating disorders. A binger may be able to eliminate the symptom in a week or a month, but to achieve permanent freedom from addictive eating, she must be ready to spend a lifetime being self-aware and committed to face each situation that comes along and deal with it in a new way, without food. Once you have given up addictive eating, you must learn to live with your eyes open. Give up denying your negative feelings. Begin to ask for what you want. Value yourself so that you really believe that less than the best is unthinkable for you. It is a difficult job, but it is extremely rewarding. The results are happiness and a sense of mastery over your life.
YOU DESERVE THE VERY BEST!
Chapter 2
Desserts is Stress Spelled Backwards
Stress and Cravings
Millions of people in our society use or abuse food and spend years struggling with their excess weight. Very few of those who lose weight keep it off. In fact, over 90 percent of people who lose weight gain it back within 3 to 4 years! The weight loss business is one of the biggest industries in our country. Each month magazines are filled with articles about losing weight, and hundreds of books will tell you how to get it off. This book is not a book about food: what to eat and what not to eat. It is a book about stress. Stress creates cravings and cravings lead us to abuse many substances and activities in order to medicate the relentless need for gratification. Overeaters are sometimes also compulsive spenders, alcoholics or drug users. Alcoholics frequently crave sugar. Marijuana causes the munchies. Addicts often find themselves "changing deck chairs on the Titanic," going from one feel-good to another but still unable to stop the urge for some type of self-medication.
Stress begins in the brain. You may be surprised to learn that hunger caused by low calorie diets, food deprivation and feelings of anxiety cause intense stress. The longing for relief from stress, whether physical or emotional, creates cravings. There are two brain chemicals that are involved in this problem, dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine is a chemical that is part of the pleasure circuit in the brain. Science now knows that many people with weight problems often have fewer dopamine receptors in the brain. People with this problem have a harder time coping with stress. Therefore, they instinctively turn to activities and behaviors that stimulate the production of additional dopamine in order to feel better. Eating Carbohydrates stimulates dopamine production. The craving is directed toward anything that will raise dopamine or anything associated with the anticipation of feeling good/pleasure. That is why dieters usually choose cookies over celery and carrots when they feel a craving.
But the relief of craving is temporary and is followed by the return of the physical or emotional stress. The stressful situation continues and the craving returns. Compulsive overeaters often turn to other activities or substances that make them feel good like: cigarettes, caffeine, or spending.
Another reason the cycle keeps going is that intense or prolonged stress lowers the serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is the chemical that creates a feeling of satiation or satisfaction that ends the craving cycle. Compulsive eaters, drug users, alcoholics, spenders, etc keep reacting to the urges that will raise the dopamine and bring pleasure. The feeling of “I gotta have it” doesn’t stop until the serotonin raises enough to offset the dopamine. Unfortunately, the brain does not have a system that automatically raises serotonin. At this time no drug seems to be able to stop cravings. The way to end craving cycles is for you to learn how to balance the dopamine and serotonin in your brain.
Therefore, the number one challenge for any compulsive eater is to reduce stress. We all experience stress in our lives each day. The kind of stress that leads to cravings and binges is what I term Super Stress. Super Stress occurs when you are plagued by a situation or relationship and feel powerless to change it. You may think, “Ain’t it awful and there’s nothing I can do about my situation.” This state of mind leads to great turmoil that leads to imbalance in the brain chemistry that leads to craving and that leads to overeating.
The Downside of Dieting
Few of us realize that one of the causes of chronic stress is dieting! Researchers at Oregon Health Sciences University discovered that there is a mechanism in the brain that apparently memorizes and regulates a person’s weight. It acts as a fat thermostat. During weight loss the body thinks it is starving or ill and it tries to prevent us from losing weight. This system may even cause us to put weight back on.
Additionally, hunger caused by the low calorie diets, and ongoing stress about weight has extremely negative consequences. Few people with eating issues can keep up the rigid requirements of diets that limit the amount of calories and kinds of food they can eat. Most of us think of a diet as temporary deprivation in order that we can go back to eating the way we used to eat before the diet.
During the weeks or months that you stay on an eating plan and see the numbers on the scale go down, the thrill of moving toward your goal may bring you joy. Meanwhile the body is actually experiencing stress. At the end of the diet, even though you are looking good, your stress hormones are reacting, and you may start to crave the kind of high carbohydrate or high fat foods that blunt the feelings of stress and make you feel better. The only trouble is that you will start to add the pounds back. It is a vicious cycle that repeats itself over and over again. We call that the Yo-Yo Syndrome.
It has been proved that certain activities are able to raise serotonin. Meditation can help as can biofeedback or neuro-feedback that you can learn from specialists. Acupuncture is known to help with cravings. A new acupressure method called Emotional Freedom Techniques or EFT is a self-help method that I will teach you in this book to eliminate both Super Stress and cravings. Other ways to deal with life issues that create Super Stress are: 12 Step or support groups, Psychotherapy (especially Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), and Energy Psychology modalities.
The three most common eating disorders are compulsive overeating, bulimia and anorexia nervosa. These syndromes are the result of biological, psychological, and sociological factors. Compulsive urges to overeat or gorge and purge may arise as a backlash to strict dieting or fasting, but it is also the inadequate coping mechanism of many people whose lives are filled with stress and loneliness.
What is compulsion? How is it possible to understand this kind of behavior? Why do so many people feel like slaves to these bad habits, obsessing about what to eat, or how to prevent themselves from binging or purging? Compulsion is loss of control and continuation of the behavior despite harmful consequences. In other words, if you cannot control when you start or when you stop an activity—you have a problem!
Compulsive behaviors alter your mood and lead to major life problems. Both binging and starving change brain chemistry. We all are familiar with the use of fasting during religious rituals and retreats to create changes in consciousness. People with eating disorders are using pleasurable substances or behaviors to mask the pain of their lives. Gorging, purging and fasting are distractions from their real feelings. The obsession with food, weight, or exercise is a detour away from feelings of pain, anger, fear, and depression.
Don’t Worry, Be Happy
Human beings have an innate aversion to physical or emotional pain. If we cannot avoid it, we will discover ways to lessen the discomfort. Society encourages us to use pleasure to mask pain or postpone the experience of anxiety, frustration or discomfort. Our national motto might well be: Don’t worry… Be happy! As a result we encourage each other to eat, drink, spend, be sexual, get high, or escape. We believe in immediate relief and gratification. If one serving is good, more is better. Habits most associated with either strong feelings of pleasure or avoidance of distress are the most likely to develop into compulsions. Foods are one of the most easily available and universally used substances that are abused.
Eating disorders arise when you learn to apply comforting activities involving food as solutions to life’s problems, just as you apply a Band-Aid to a cut. But it is as if a person with an ulcer took an antacid; there is temporary relief, but the underlying condition remains and continues to flare up. By applying the same unsuccessful remedy of food as a temporary comfort over and over again, a new problem arises. The pleasurable act takes on a life of its’ own. The original situation that caused anxiety or discomfort is still there and now there is a new worry, leading to addictive eating, purging by vomiting or abusing laxatives or starving.
Society tends to accept the abnormal as normal when it is common. We use phrases like “everyone is doing it” to absolve ourselves from guilt. We elect politicians or put our trust in religious leaders who tell us that they are upstanding citizens, and although we find out they are deceitful, dishonest, and often addicted to alcohol, drugs, and sex, we re-elect them or continue to support their ministries. How do we come to terms with these mixed messages? We learn to live in a state of denial. We tune out; we turn away; we avoid. Finally we forget, and forget we have forgotten.
During a televised sports show on a major network I saw a public service announcement showing a well known basketball star telling viewers to "Just say NO to drugs." This was immediately followed by a commercial for beer. Most people watching probably didn’t notice the hypocrisy of the message. We were being told that although dangerous drugs are rampant in this country, beer doesn’t count. "Crazy-making" messages that encourage us to eat, drink and indulge but to stay thin in order to be loved or accepted are a major cause of eating disorders.
Addiction to Feelings
Researchers Harvey Milkman and Stanley Sunderwirth in their book, Craving for Ecstasy, discovered that human beings crave three kinds of feelings: (1) relaxation, (2) excitement and (3) fantasy or oblivion. Each of us seems to enjoy one of these sensations more than the others, sometimes to such a degree that we create various ways to produce this feeling in order to replace discomfort or anxiety in our lives.
If you pleasure yourself by means of carbohydrate snacking, reading, TV watching, or using tranquilizers, you prefer a mellow, relaxed state for yourself. You may wonder at the people who adore roller coasters and thrills. These people enjoy feeling aroused or excited. They may find themselves drawn to sky diving, race car driving, compulsive spending, caffeine, cocaine, or gambling, while another segment of the population enjoys feeling oblivious to their surroundings and problems and may become addicted to psychedelic drugs. Meditation is a wonderful tool for achieving a state of altered consciousness in which you reach another plane of awareness, but some people don’t know how to create that experience in a healthy way.
The theory that we tend to become addicted to feelings rather than substances, explains why the majority of people I have treated for eating disorders suffer from more than one compulsive problem. We call this “changing deck chairs on the Titanic.” Many of the bulimic women in their twenties and thirties who have come to me report that they are former drug users or sober alcoholics. They have just traded one compulsion for another. They also often abuse caffeine, cigarettes and spending as well. The majority of eating disorder sufferers seek relaxation or oblivion. Eating large quantities of sugary foods will produce a state of lethargy. The opposite is true for hypoglycemics. These people get “high” from sugar.
Virginia was what I called a “triple threat” client. She was addicted to drugs, alcohol, and compulsive overeating. Virginia told me her goal was to “not be.” She craved the oblivion of unconsciousness to avoid the pain of a childhood of physical and emotional abuse. The most efficient way to accomplish this was by abusing drugs. When drugs weren’t available, she would drink until she passed out. People like Virginia, who want to avoid feelings and problems, also escape into sleep. Another method of achieving oblivion with drugs is to take flight into fantasy through compulsive reading or computer games. Computer hacks become so immersed in their fantasy world they don’t hear anything going on around them and can sit at a computer terminal through the night.
Brain Chemistry is a Major Factor
Compulsions result from a combination of traumatic early experiences, a genetic predisposition toward compulsivity, and negative environmental pressures. It is possible that the reason some people prefer relaxation while others crave excitement or fantasy is differences in our brain chemistry. Scientists now know that electrical activity in certain areas of the brain is responsible for experiences of pleasure and pain. Addictive behaviors result from self-induced changes in brain neurotransmitters. Compulsive individuals repeat specific behaviors to bring about activity in the brain nerve cells that create intense feelings. Different behaviors or substances lead to different sensations.
A chemical called serotonin is synthesized in the brain and plays an important role in mood changes. Studies comparing the brain chemistry of people who died of natural causes with those who committed suicide show that those who took their own lives had much lower levels of serotonin. Lack of serotonin can affect your mood, producing irritability. An outstanding researcher in this field is Professor Richard Wurtman, who has shown that serotonin is one of a number of brain chemicals affected by nutrients. Serotonin levels can be increased when a person consumes carbohydrates.
Doris, a bulimic, no longer used alcohol or drugs to dull her pain when she was unhappy and wanted to become oblivious to her surroundings and her feelings. She discovered that if she drank a quart of milk, she could escape into sleep. Milk contains tryptophan, an amino acid important in the manufacturing of serotonin.
Dr. Wurtman studied a group of obese students who were depressed and craved carbohydrates. He believed they had low serotonin levels and, although they were snacking on carbohydrates, their bodies were not producing a high enough level of serotonin to lift their depression. The students received a drug called fenfluramine that increases serotonin levels. As a result, they significantly reduced their compulsive eating, and they felt less depressed. Unfortunately, fenfluramine was found to be dangerous and was withdrawn from the market.
The Carbohydrate Factor
Doctors Janice Keller Phelps and Alan Nourse, in their book The Hidden Addiction and How to Get Free, write that people who act compulsively or are addicted to substances are using these behaviors to get relief from depression. Continuous use of the substance or behavior wards off withdrawal or depressed feelings. They believe addiction arises from physiological or metabolic flaws in biochemistry that are usually genetic. Something may be wrong with the way the body of an addictive person handles sugar.
At times it is difficult to differentiate between the depression that results from biochemical imbalance and depression that results from the abuse of sugar, binge/ purge behavior or starvation. Does the abuse of food create the depression or does the food addict use these behaviors as self-medication for an existing state of depression? Perhaps both are true.
Food and the Family
Although researchers are discovering how important the physiology of the mind-body connection is in understanding eating disorders, a predisposition toward compulsivity does not guarantee that a person will definitely suffer from an eating disorder or addiction problem. One of the most important factors that interact with biology and environment is childhood experience.
There are four types of family systems that are dysfunctional. If you are the product of one of these family types, you may still be suffering from the damage of your unhappy upbringing. They are: (1) Overachieving, (2) Judgmental, (3) Enmeshed, and (4) Distant. Your family may have combined attributes of more than one of these types. The result of growing up in one of these families is that you don’t learn how to solve problems effectively, don’t see how healthy people relate to each other, and may not have received adequate nurturing and acceptance. Therefore, you have formed a false self, based on your unfortunate experiences.
Pressure to Achieve
The overachieving family strives for perfection. John Bradshaw often remarked in his books that some people grow up to become “human doings” instead of “human beings.” The overachieving family pressures the child to achieve success. Each family defines success in a different way. In Maureen’s family, success for women meant: to be married to a successful man who made lots of money. In Zoe’s home, success meant being a college graduate. Barbie came from a family where the women were known for their looks and had won beauty contests or were professional models. Barbie had been a chubby child, and although, as an adult, she was tall and beautiful, she was preoccupied with food and dieting. In order to be thin enough to model and follow in her family’s footsteps, her behavior resulted in bulimia.
The commands of the overachieving family are often perfectionistic. A majority of young women with eating disorders have been told, “Make us proud of you!” Along with this is the demand to be a “good” child. What does a good child do? The child is supposed to already know the rules for being good, since they are seldom spelled out for her. These “good” girls have decided that they cannot let the family down. They must get excellent grades, never give their parents anything to worry about, never hurt anyone’s feelings, and, of course, never get angry. They live by the belief, “what other people think is the most important thing.” Appearances matter greatly. The pressure to achieve and look good at all costs made Kerry, an “A” student, cheating in high school in order to always come out on top.
The result of growing up in an overachieving family is the tendency to be highly self-critical and condemn yourself if you do not live up to the impossible standards you set. You don’t realize that your expectations are irrational and unreachable because you are a result of your upbringing, and the environment of your dysfunctional family was the only model of the world you had. As a result you may be unable to give yourself credit for many of the wonderful talents and traits you already possess because you aren’t perfect (thin enough) yet.
Never Good Enough
The judgmental family is one where you always hear what’s wrong with you, but rarely what is right with you. Judgmental parents often abuse their children physically or verbally. Discount and ridicule make the child feel small and helpless. No matter what she does it won’t be enough. She can’t get her needs met, no matter how hard she tries. Some of these unhappy children decide that they’ll never be good enough and grow up settling for mediocre lives of quiet desperation. Others build a wall between themselves and other people. They are afraid to trust, so they become extremely independent and appear confident and successful, yet they constantly battle their inner guilt and shame that they cannot share with another soul. In the unhappy setting of the judgmental family the commands are: “Don’t do as I do, do what you’re told,” “Don’t ask questions,” and “Don’t feel your feelings.” The controlling family doesn’t allow you to be you because who you are is not what pleases them. One common misconception is that feeling sad or crying is a sign of weakness. The message is, don’t have these feelings. Anger is also a “no-no.”
Judgmental parents say things like, “There’s nothing to be scared of,” “There’s nothing to be mad at,” “Why do you want to feel like that?”
Since you aren’t allowed to feel what you feel, where do the feelings go? You bury them. Some people learn to eat to stuff them down. Anorexics numb their rage and despair through starvation. In their minds, to eat is to feel. Without anger you turn into a “people pleaser.” Many obese overeaters use their fat as a protection or armor used against the judgment and shame created in the family. Adults who grew up in judgmental families have very low self-esteem. These women often seek relationships with judgmental men or become co-dependents in relationships with other addictive people.
Whose Life Is It?
The enmeshed family is a clinging family. “All for one and one for all” could be its motto. An outsider looking at an enmeshed group may think they are one big happy family, but they aren’t. Each member is a slave to the idea that it is “us against them,” or “united we stand, divided we fall.” Loretta’s family brainwashed her to believe, “we are the only ones you can really trust.” “We’ll always be here for you.” “There’s no place like home.” Yet each time that Loretta tried to find comfort and acceptance in the bosom of her family, she was verbally abused or discounted. Her father was usually unavailable because he was a workaholic. Her mother, a compulsive overeater and gambler, was either away playing cards or acted critical and angry. Love came in the form of food or money.
Members of the enmeshed family have no lives of their own. Privacy is not honored. John Bradshaw describes it like being in a room with the doorknob on the outside. Anyone can enter anytime, and there’s nothing you can do about it. In a healthy family, it is like being in a room with the doorknob on the inside. You have control over your privacy and the degree of intimacy you allow. Clinging families believe that your business is everybody’s business. Boundaries are gone. There are no secrets. Nothing can be withheld.
You don’t get to have your own life in an enmeshed family. Instead, you may grow up believing that you are responsible for other people’s happiness. Almost every person suffering from food addiction is trying to make mother or father feel good. John was 50 years old and still called his mother every day, like a dutiful child. Molly’s elderly parents called Molly to solve their problems and mediate their fights. She had to drive one hour each way to their home, never hesitating when the call came.
Although she was acting like a “loving” daughter, Molly had to lose work time, and she neglected her husband and child while catering to her parents. People in enmeshed families never truly feel strong and independent. They may look grown-up and be geographically separate, but they are still bound by an umbilical cord of guilt and shame to their family.
Stay Cool
The distant family may also be an overachieving or a judgmental family. The hallmark of this system is a lack of emotional involvement. People don’t act loving. They may be both physically undemonstrative, rarely hugging, kissing, or touching, and they may also refrain from verbal expressions of warmth and support. When Lydia brought home “A’s” on her report card her mother rarely praised her. So Lydia tried even harder to get a response. She graduated at the top of her high school class and was accepted by a prestigious college where she did outstanding work. Then she went on to an illustrious career. Lydia knew that her mother bragged about her daughter to her friends and neighbors, but Lydia never heard it. By this time Lydia was both an overachiever and overeater. How much would she have to do, how many honors would she have to earn in order to hear, “I love you?”
Bonnie came from an emotionally cool family too. Her family only hugged and kissed when people were getting on an airplane or arriving home from a trip. She was uncomfortable with physical touches yet yearned to be close to people. Bonnie developed a way of hiding her shyness by holding herself aloof. The other children in her neighborhood thought she was stuck up, but she was only hiding her fear of rejection. She spent many hours alone, fantasizing and eating.
Distant families avoid emotion. They may not express anger openly or talk about their feelings. They just go through the motions of living. Again, to the casual observer, they may appear as perfect as an episode of the old TV shows “Father Knows Best” or “Leave It to Beaver.” On the surface everything looks wonderful and happy, but underneath the calm surface, the family members are in great pain because there is no intimacy.
Growing up in an inadequate family environment doesn’t prepare you for dealing with life. When you find yourself in a high-risk situation or relationship you may be overwhelmed by feelings of pain or helplessness. Food abusers automatically turn to binging or purging in order to turn off their feelings and become numb. Many sufferers of eating disorders come from families where there is a history of alcohol, drug or food abuse or indicators of familial depression. The combination of: (1) a biological predisposition toward addiction, (2) an unhappy family history, and (3) a society which encourages us to feel good at any cost leads inevitably to compulsive and addictive behavior.
Chapter 3
Who Binge Eats?
Ingesting large quantities of food in short periods of time can become an addiction. The binge behavior then takes on a life of its own, and the problem eater is hooked into a vicious cycle of feast or famine. Surprisingly, the central issue is not food, although the sufferer spends a tremendous amount of time worrying about and discussing food and body weight. The issues underlying eating disorders are directly related to problems such as low self-esteem, perfectionism, rejection, loneliness, and control over one’s life.
These same concerns affect the lives of many people who do not turn to food. Millions of people have come from broken homes or have parents who are alcoholics, abusive, or absent. Many men and women suffer from the need for approval and fear of rejection. Not all of these people turn to food as a solution. People who have experienced fear, guilt, anxiety, stress, or pain have developed their own particular ways of coping. Some people drink, others use drugs, smoke, or get lost in overwork, compulsive sexual activity, sleep, and even chronic illnesses such as headaches, stomachaches, or backaches. Millions choose food as a tranquilizer. A few tackle their problems head-on and learn to resolve them and to deal directly with emotional pain.
Your choice of coping mechanism can be linked to the problem feelings you are trying to deal with. Alcohol seems to be the choice for many who want to reduce anxiety and depression or cope with loneliness or feelings of inadequacy. It seems to release inhibitions and emotions. Nicotine reduces awareness of tension. Being a workaholic may make you feel better about yourself because you may gain praise from others and feel in control. Getting lost in work also helps you avoid the stress of intimate relationships. Compulsive sexual activity may temporarily reduce the sense of isolation and give you a sense of power or control. Food also reduces tension and relieves anxiety and depression. For some binge eaters, the abuse of food promotes withdrawal from intimate or sexual experiences.
These actions serve different purposes. For one group of individuals, abusing substances or engaging in compulsive acts is the only way they have learned to, or believe they can, deal with their emotional lives. Overdoing alcohol, drugs, food, and so on may be a method of suppressing or denying positive or negative feelings or both. Many food abusers actually can’t stand happiness and overeat to “suppress the sublime”! Some, who are relatively happy, eat as “insurance” to reinforce good feelings and distance themselves from the possibility of unhappiness.
These attempts to reduce stress and eliminate pain may be inappropriate and harmful for the realistic resolution of the problem, however they are temporarily soothing and pleasurable. Binge eating does not solve the problem, but it numbs the eater so she thinks her worries are over for the time being. Binge eating becomes an addictive process in which the binger uses excessive pleasure to erase pain.
Compulsive Overeating
The most prevalent eating disorder is compulsive overeating. Compulsive overeaters are both male and female and of all ages and classes, some are periodic bingers, others binge daily. Some compulsive eaters do not have bouts of excessive gorging but eat continuously. It is as if an intravenous feeder is dripping nutrients into the body in a constant flow to tranquilize and calm the underlying painful emotions.
Compulsive overeaters share these characteristics:
• Recurring binge episodes; eating large amounts of food in a short period of time
• Eating high-calorie food
Sometimes eating secretly
• Repeated attempts to lose weight
• Frequent changes of weight caused by alternating binges and fasts or diets
• Feeling depressed and thinking hateful thoughts about oneself
Bulimics fear getting fat, while compulsive overeaters often fear becoming thin (but don’t always know it). Some obese overeaters use excess food intake as a way to deal with uncomfortable feelings, to soothe stress, and to relieve anxiety. Others eat to calm themselves but also to be fat, since fat acts as a protective covering for these people.
Some overweight individuals hang on to excess pounds as a health measure even in this age when we know that lean bodies are healthier. In the pre-penicillin age, many more children died than now. It was widely believed that if you were larger, you were healthier and could fight off disease and survive. Skinny children were fed cream, tonics, and rich foods to “put meat on their bones.” To this day, some fat people fear that they will become ill if they get too thin.
A corollary of this myth is the fear of cancer. Sufferers of cancer lose weight quickly. Sometimes an obese client has shared a fear that if she loses weight “without trying” she may be ill and doesn’t know it. She tells herself, “I’ll just gain a few pounds back to ensure that I’m OK.” Another fantasy fear that I have come across is the “holocaust fear.” The overweight individual is worried about being lean because “What if it happened again? I couldn’t survive in a concentration camp!”
In addition to fears about life and health, some compulsive overeaters hang on to fat as a way of denying sexuality, reflecting conflict about sex roles in society. Many overweight women avoid sex because they feel unworthy or ugly. They not only turn their partners away, they turn themselves off and stop feelings of arousal. Denying sexual feelings may resolve fears of being "bad" or promiscuous if they followed their natural impulses. Many fat people have told me that they are afraid that if they lost weight they might act out their sexual fantasies and bring shame upon themselves. For those women who have been sexually molested, the unresolved trauma can also lead to ambivalence about their sexuality.
Fat As Metaphor
Fat resulting from binge eating may also be an expression of anger by many women toward men and society. Certain women who want to bow out of the race to be a sex object or a perfect size-2 will use fat as a cover-up. They are saying, “Look at the real me, not just the package.” People with low self-esteem may feel uncomfortable when noticed by the opposite sex. Fat is a big coat that covers up and protects the person.
Most compulsive eaters seem to live from the neck up, a majority shying away from exercise. They are not in touch with their bodies. One woman told me that she lived in her brain, and her body was just the pedestal upon which her head rested. Compulsive overeaters live in a paradoxical state; they hate their bodies but are consumed with the need to control and shape up the very body they want to ignore. Whereas bulimics are exquisitely sensitive to every rumble and gurgle of their insides, compulsive eaters tend to be totally unaware of what is happening within. They tune out messages about hunger and satiety and eat mostly from emotional stimulation.
As in the case of anorexics and bulimics, compulsive eaters also have a need for approval that leads them to become compliant people pleasers. Most overeaters give more than they receive from others. The jolly fat man is the stereotype of this group. Many female overeaters are the "Earth Mother" type, or what I call the “Statue of Liberty Lady,” saying “Give me your tired, your poor . . . and I will care for them.”
A third reason for binging to get or remain fat may be to avoid dealing with another, more important problem. As long as the compulsive eater is trying to work on her weight, she has an excuse for not taking a look at her unhappy marriage, the traumas around sex in her past, her failure to get a job in which she is respected and liked, or her inability to express anger. Both bulimics and compulsive eaters maintain their behaviors to skirt issues of success and failure.
Compulsive overeaters are sometimes perfectionists who drive themselves to overachieve and then punish themselves for falling short. Unlike the bulimic, however, the overeater cannot hide her problem. Looking fat and feeling unacceptable because of it adds to the unhappiness and anxiety of the overeater the way secrecy adds to the stress of the bulimic.
Three Types of Eaters
We can generally identify three eating-types of people in the world: True-thins, Thin-fats (a term coined by Dr. Hilde Bruch), and Fat-fats. True-thins are people who never worry about their weight or what they eat. They eat when they are hungry and that’s that! They are not slaves to the scale because they know that their bodies will not betray them but will digest and assimilate what they eat as nature decreed.
Thin-fats are people, both men and women, who are obsessed with the fear of getting fat. Those who fast and starve to reach an impossible goal of skeletal thinness are called anorexics. Those people who are terrified of becoming fat but do not choose to starve, alternately binge by eating huge quantities of food and then purge by vomiting or ingesting large amounts of laxatives or diuretics. These people are bulimics.
Fat-fats are overweight, or even morbidly obese individuals, who are also driven to swings of dieting and binging, but they do not purge. In this book, I call them compulsive overeaters. Their binges result in weight gains that drive them to renew their attempts to diet again and again.
The popularity of organizations like Weight Watchers and Overeaters Anonymous, and the overwhelming success of diet books, is testimony to the numbers of people who are concerned with the questions of weight reduction. Eating disorders begin in elementary school as younger and younger girls worry about their weight. Obesity is a national problem affecting all ages. Of those who lose weight, ninety percent gain it back within three years!