9
DEAR BELOVED
You love someone who is addicted to food. You are a husband or wife, partner, lover, friend, mother, father, daughter, sister, son, or brother of a food addict. You may have observed behaviors in your loved one or friend that seem incomprehensible to you. You have said to her (as I mentioned, I use female pronouns because more women than men suffer from this disease) or you have thought, why don’t you just quit eating?
Perhaps you have wanted her to lose weight. You may have offered rewards if she would—a new dress, money, a trip. Perhaps you have felt disgusted. Perhaps you have lost respect for her. Her seeming lack of control may be repulsive to you. You don’t understand it, you don’t like it, and you see it as a weakness that makes you think less of her.
Would you like to understand? I’ll describe what it might be like for her on the inside. If you truly want to understand, put down your anger and your judgments for a few minutes. Your anger has a place, your judgments are rich in information for you—I’ll talk about that later in this chapter—but if you truly want to understand, you’ll have a better chance if you can be open to some new ideas.
THE ADDICTION
What is it like to be addicted to food? It’s a nightmare. When she wakes up in the morning, does she anticipate the day with joy? No. She’s barely conscious, but her mind is telling her that today she must get control of herself. She must not eat between meals, she must limit her sweet intake, she must eat sensibly, she must lose weight. She’s barely conscious, but her thoughts are about not being good enough.
By the way, do you know that you’re a good person? Is your worth as a person in any way related to your appearance? If you are a man, this may be a startling notion. As a man, your sense of worth probably depends more on what you do than on how you look.
Many women don’t know such peace. An attractive woman of normal weight may often wonder if her appearance is good enough. Women often compare themselves with other women and find themselves lacking. If you are a woman, you know what it’s like to feel that your worth as a person is connected to your attractiveness. If you are a man, you may be spared this terrible, draining, ongoing battle. (As women get further into recovery, they get more and more relief from this.)
Women of any size battle with the idea that their appearance reflects their worth. Imagine then what it’s like for an overweight woman. She feels that her size proves she is worth less. (And you, secretly, have a similar opinion, don’t you? You think a little less of her because of her size.)
Imagine how hard it is to walk around feeling that everyone might, simply on the basis of appearance, judge you less worthy. Imagine how hard it is to overcome that judgment. It would be as bad as having to wear a patch on your arm announcing your religion or your sexual orientation if either were discriminated against. It would be like having a skin color or facial characteristic different from the majority and considered by some to be inferior. Overweight people, then, belong to an oppressed minority. The discrimination they suffer is as arbitrary as all other forms of discrimination, for weight does not indicate worth any more than skin color or facial characteristics or sexual orientation or religion or favorite toothpaste.
What’s in the heart is what matters. Size doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, your loved one doesn’t know that. She thinks that every time you see her, you judge her as less. She judges herself as less. She may feel inferior because of her size. If she gains a pound, she may despair. If she loses a pound, she may think she’s a slightly better person. So every morning she awakens frantic about her predicament. She wants to feel she has worth, and her weight is in the way.
HER DAY
She gets up. She has to get dressed. Getting dressed is a horror for most overweight people. Recently, attractive clothes for overweight women have become available, but just fifteen years ago many women had to resort to smocks in order to be clothed.
No matter how expensive her wardrobe, getting dressed is a painful experience. Getting dressed requires looking in the mirror. Even well-designed clothes can’t make a person look 100 pounds lighter. She may try on three or four things and feel terribly frustrated because none of them looks really good. Worse, something may feel tight, leading to despair that her weight is even increasing. What a hopeless feeling that is. If the present extra ten pounds have been impossible to lose, another five pounds will be insuperable. She may have trouble putting on her hose. She may have trouble bending over. She may not be able to tie her shoelaces. She has a handicap. Weight is handicapping her, limiting her movement and flexibility.
Once dressed, she must face breakfast. She may greatly fear breakfast. She fears food. She fears that if she starts eating, she won’t be able to stop. She may put off eating for as long as possible because of that fear. Like many with this disease, she may skip breakfast. If she’s in recovery, however, she may be trying to eat a sensible breakfast. You may not realize the enormity of this. You may not see the courage it takes for her to approach breakfast. She doesn’t tell you how frightened she is because she fears you’ll laugh or not understand.
If she’s going to work, she must muster her courage. Do you remember what it was like to be taunted as you approached the schoolyard? Maybe you were lucky and no one teased you. The person with extra weight runs a gauntlet every morning. She must get from her car to her office without hearing someone remark on her size. If she rides a bus, she worries that she’s taking up too much room. That person wouldn’t have to stand if she didn’t lap into the next seat. Perhaps someone will even say something about it. In her office or school or wherever she works, she worries that she won’t fit in the chair, that there won’t be a place where she can sit. Her boss and coworkers may have doubts about her because of her size. She may have to work harder than other workers to prove her value as an employee.
If she’s in a job that is appearance-oriented-if she’s a hairdresser or a retailer or an eating-disorders therapist—she braces herself for the remark that confirms she is not one of the beautiful people. What is she doing here, anyway?
Lunch is a mixed blessing. It’s a break from work. Since food helps her cope with difficulties and she’s had a difficult morning, lunch offers relief from the struggle. On the other hand, food is the cause of her problem. She’s afraid of eating, too. No matter what she chooses to eat, she fears people are looking at her plate and judging her. Leaving work, she runs the same gauntlet as in the morning, except that she’s tired, so a stranger’s rude remark cuts deeper. In leaving work, she is fighting perhaps the hardest battle of the day. Leaving is freeing—she is now free to eat—yet confining: Food is calling—loudly. It may call so loudly that she’ll surrender to it rather than arrange activities with friends. She may prefer to eat alone and unwatched rather than be with others.
Perhaps today was a diet day. Then the puny scheduled meal seems cold and inadequate. The time before and after dinner may stretch emptily before her. Food calls loudly, more inviting than any other promise of comfort. She feels restless, vulnerable. She is continually tempted with food thoughts and visions. The minutes stretch endlessly. Chances are great that eventually she’ll succumb.
THE STRUGGLE
When you’re normal, you can hardly imagine the enormous pressure a food craving can have. For a food addict it’s irresistible. It’s as relentless as gravity or the IRS.
So, this person you love is obsessed with eating and possessed by the struggle most of the time. You see her from the outside, where little of the preoccupation shows. She has learned to operate despite it. She probably doesn’t let on for fear of ridicule or fear of not being understood. She may not tell you about the taunts she’s endured from strangers or the fear that a chair won’t be large enough. And she probably doesn’t talk about the struggle of dinner—trying to make herself choose wisely yet being taken over by the food and filling herself until it hurts.
A WAY TO UNDERSTAND
You may still want to say, “Why doesn’t she eat less, then? If she’d lose weight, she’d feel better about herself and she wouldn’t go through this.” Two factors keep her eating. Odds are she is physically addicted to certain foods, that her brain has changed in such a way that powerful cravings to eat are stirred. Chemically caused cravings are quite difficult to resist.
The second factor is that her needs aren’t being met. Now wait a minute, I’m not saying you should meet them! It’s much more complicated than that. She may not even know what her needs are and in the past may have been abused when she expressed them or tried to meet them herself. Food has been used to fill the deficit. Chapters 1 through 3 explain this in detail and I hope you’ll read them. The point is that her need for food is both physical and emotional, and to change this takes years. If you really want to understand, there’s probably one way you can relate to her pain.
Do you have any addiction or compulsion? Do you smoke? There’s a powerful addiction. How many times have you quit? How many times have you thought about quitting? How many times have you said you need to quit someday? Nicotine is a powerful drug. It’s so powerful that you can quit for a year and still want a cigarette now and then. People have been known to start again after five years of abstinence. Do you work compulsively? Do tasks call you? Can you not rest until you complete them? Do you strive for perfection around you?
If you have an addiction or compulsion that you’re not honest with yourself about, if you are minimizing its power in your life, you might find her struggle harder to understand. Sometimes we are most critical of others when their behaviors are most like our own. If you find yourself judging her harshly or being unduly critical, how about backing off for an hour to take a hard look at yourself?
If you have no compulsions or addictions, it will be harder for you to relate. I know a few nonaddicted people. Some have great compassion for the addicted but have difficulty understanding. They are not, however, the harshest judges.
I find that many angry, judging loved ones fall into two categories. Either they are not looking at their own problems or they are using the weight to deflect attention from unresolved issues with the loved one.
If you are one of the few people in the United States who has neither an addiction nor a compulsion or who hasn’t been damaged by growing up in a dysfunctional home, you get up in the morning and feel good about yourself. Most days you get a lot done. You have rich, lasting, mutually giving relationships. You have freedom of choice. You can choose to eat a little less now and then and it’s no big deal. You can skip a meal and not eat twice as much the next meal. If you stay up too late, you go to bed a little earlier tomorrow. You get enough rest. You have rewarding contact with friends on a regular basis. You use time alone well and can work and relax without feeling a lot of pressure. Your mind is your own. You can think about your needs or your plans. You can choose not to think. You have lots of choices.
The food-addicted person envies your choices. Food and eating and dieting preoccupy her. Whatever she does, she must rise above this preoccupation to do it. She’s really quite amazing. Can you imagine patching a life raft while treading water in the middle of the ocean? Life is like that for her all the time.
Recovery relieves her from this preoccupation. Recovery brings her closer and closer to land so that eventually her feet touch bottom and she can hold the raft above the water while she patches it. Eventually, recovery lands her on the beach. She will no longer need her life raft. She can use her feet to walk and her hands for many things. Recovery frees her mind, frees her thoughts, gives her choices and self-esteem. If you support her recovery, you support her life. We are not asking that you take responsibility for her recovery, only that you support her. If you really want to help, keep reading.
SABOTAGE
It’s incredible, but some loved ones actually sabotage recovery. Can you imagine offering a cigarette to a man who has made it through four months without one? Think it through. If he takes it, you’ve contributed to the pollution of his lungs. You share some of the responsibility. Not all, maybe just 10 percent. But do you want even 10 percent?
If you find yourself balking at the idea of supporting her, if you find yourself uninterested in learning how you may be sabotaging her, please consider talking to someone about it. If you don’t want to help her, if you don’t care that you might be harming her, you probably harbor some anger. Hidden or misdirected anger hurts you as well as her. If you feel very judgmental toward her, you may have been judged quite a bit yourself. You may be operating under a heavy burden, too. This burden can be removed. Your anger can teach you a lot and you can be freed from it. Psychotherapy has come a long way in the last 100 years. A good therapist can help you find a freedom, wholeness, and joy you can barely imagine.
I hope you are at least willing to learn how to keep from sabotaging her. To sabotage her pushes her into deeper water. Most compulsive eaters suffer from inadequate or uninformed parenting. As a child, she very likely interpreted this poor parenting as her fault. She received insufficient, unhealthy love. Unfortunately, this makes her vulnerable to anyone who loves her. She needs love so much that she may sacrifice all else, even put herself in harm’s way, to be loved. If she didn’t get much healthy love, she can’t discriminate between healthy and unhealthy. If you’re starved, any food will do. If you’re starved for love, any love will do. So you, as her loved one, have more power than may be good for her. You have the power to interrupt her recovery. I hope you love her enough to go to extra lengths to support her recovery. Supporting her recovery gives her life. You’ll be surprised, but her recovery can give you new life, too.
COMMITMENT TO SUPPORT
Please show how much support you’re willing to give her as she detoxes from sugar and starches. Initial each step you’re willing to take.
1. I’ll give her a break from any important decisions or changes for the first three weeks of abstinence.
2. I will help rid the house of products containing sugar and refined carbohydrates.
3. I won’t throw out junk food but it’s okay with me for her to do it.
4. I don’t want the house cleansed of sugar and starches, but I am willing to store all sugar and starch in a special cabinet or closet or box and keep it closed and out of her way.
5. I’m willing for us to eat regular meals at regular times.
6. I won’t bring sugar or starch items into the house.
7. I’m willing to learn how to read labels so I won’t unwittingly buy foods that contain sugar or carbohydrates.
8. I won’t try to monitor what she eats. It’s not up to me to make her abstinent.
9. I won’t offer her food.
10. If I want a snack at night, I’ll excuse myself from the room and go to the kitchen to eat it rather than unwittingly remind her of food.
11. If I want to go to a restaurant that has enticing displays of sugar products, I’ll go when I’m not with her. I won’t suggest such places when we eat as a family.
12. If I want dessert at the end of a meal, I’ll wait until she has left the kitchen or restaurant and I’ll wash that plate myself (if at home).
13. If we go to a fair or activity with lots of enticing food, I won’t expect her to enter the section or area where the food is. If I want to go there, I’ll meet her afterwards. I’m willing to bring her an item she can eat if she asks me for it.
14. I’m willing to take abstinent foods to potluck dinners.
15. I understand alcohol is a refined carbohydrate. I won’t offer her any alcoholic beverage.
16. If she is acting crazy or angry, I’ll stay out of the way and take care of myself. I’ll listen for as long as I feel comfortable doing so.
17. If she is sad, I’ll listen if I can.
18. I’ll support her in calling support persons and going to support meetings.
19. I understand abstinence is not a diet and that recovery is one day at a time; I understand she’ll always need to refrain from certain foods.
20. I want her to have a healthier, more serene life.
RECOVERY IS NOT DIETING
Food addicts and their families sometimes lose sight of the difference between recovery and dieting. Dieting is eating directed by a reduced-calorie or distorted food plan with the goal of losing weight. Diets have failed food addicts; the food addict did not fail at dieting. Notice the difference? Food addicts and families usually believe that she was at fault for not making the diet work. On the contrary, the diet failed because it was not big enough for the problem.
Your car functions perfectly but it didn’t make it up the hill when the streets were icy. Was it the car that failed or was it, without chains or snow tires, being pushed beyond its capacity? Throwing a diet at a food addict is like using a washcloth to paint the house. It’s the wrong tool for the job. So what’s the plan? Chapter 6, “How Healing Happens,” gives the plan in detail. Basically, the approach is twofold:
1. Eliminate foods that perpetuate food obsession and compulsive eating.
2. With therapy and the help of a support network, develop new behaviors that decrease the need for food as a solution to feeling bad.
How long will this take? Recovery takes the rest of her life. Any addict has a chronic disease. Any addict is vulnerable to relapse. All that stands between a sober alcoholic and his next drunk is one drink. All that stands between a food addict and her next binge is one cookie. We food addicts must live life just a little more carefully than other people. We must be more deliberate in talking about what bothers us, in choosing our meals, in taking care of our needs. Most of the time, the rewards are worth the trouble. Sometimes we wish we could be more carefree.
One day at a time, it’s a lifelong process. Each day, our choices determine if we’re at risk of eating the wrong things. Each day, our first priority must be recovery. Although weight is one consequence of this disease, it is initially beside the point. To focus on weight and ignore the addiction would be like trying to heal a smoker’s cough while the person keeps smoking.
WEIGHT LOSS
So what about weight? Will she lose weight? If she stays with her recovery program and maintains frequent contact with support groups and individuals, she probably will lose weight. I might as well warn you, however, that at certain points during the recovery process she might gain weight. If she sticks to her recovery program, it could take two years or five years or eight years before sustained weight loss is possible.
How could it take so long? Weight loss is possible when two things happen—when she is 90 percent free from needing food for emotional support, and when she is willing to exercise. Weight loss is possible when she is emotionally free enough to maintain an abstinence that goes little beyond physical sustenance. If she’s addicted to sugar, carbohydrates, fat, and salt, that could mean three or four years. If she was abused as a child, she’ll need to work that much longer to let go of food as a lifeline.
One key to weight loss is raising one’s metabolic rate. Diets—which deprive—lower one’s metabolism, one of many reasons why she should never again diet. Exercise is the other key to weight loss. After years of pushing clients to exercise, I’ve found that the willingness to exercise requires a certain level of recovery. Some people never enjoy exercise. Some people are naturally less active than others. If you are one who loves to exercise and feels great afterwards, you probably have trouble relating to someone who doesn’t feel that way.
A perceptive, sensitive food addict who has been abused has a lot of grieving to do. Most people don’t feel like moving when they are grieving. Their energy level is low. It is used up coping with heavy, sad feelings. So I have found that certain clients of mine simply can’t sustain an exercise program while they’re grieving. Gentle walking, yes. Aerobic walking, no. I hope you can see the logic of her taking care of the dependence on food first before attempting weight loss.
She gained weight because she used food to cope with hard feelings, and it led to food addiction. Getting abstinent from the addictive trigger foods and breaking the dependence on food must happen before she can sustain wise choices about eating. Obviously, trying to lose weight without breaking the emotional dependence is doomed to fail.
Once she can attend to weight loss, however, she must do it gently. If she is deprived or abused, food will once again beckon. Recovery must always come first. And if that recovery is threatened, weight-loss efforts must be temporarily abandoned and questioned. Why was it threatening? How was it abusive or depriving? What body feelings surfaced? If she maintains her recovery, she can work through the aspects that triggered painful feelings and redesign her weight-loss program. If she loses her achieved recovery, then the weight-loss program will ultimately fail as well.
Nature doesn’t know that our society rewards the thin and punishes the fat. Evolution designed women to store fat more readily than men, to have appetites similar to men, to have lower metabolisms than men, and to store fat as they age. This prehistoric survival insurance, however, is no longer seen for the asset it is.
As you get older and less able to hunt for nuts and berries, your body stores fat as it has been programmed to do. As the days shorten toward winter, your body stores energy in the form of fat and you feel sleepier and less active; fat can then sustain you until spring, when the berries ripen. Nature doesn’t know, however, that food is on every corner today no matter how old you are, no matter what time of year it is.
Each of us has a programmed weight limit. Weight loss beyond that limit introduces you to the nether world of anorexia or the yo-yo diet syndrome. When you force your weight beneath your body’s natural limits, you trade one problem for another.
SUPPORT
You can support her efforts toward abstinence by following the guidelines listed earlier in this chapter. Adjust your expectations. Some weight loss will eventually be possible. A bikini figure may not. Help yourself grasp the importance of recovery by becoming interested in recovery yourself. Read this book. Go to O-Anon or Al-Anon or Codependents Anonymous meetings. (O-Anon and Al-Anon offer strength, support, and hope to spouses, friends, or relatives of people who suffer from food, alcohol, or drug addiction. Codependents Anonymous helps people learn to stop enabling others and to take care of themselves.)
Find out why weight is important to you. Do you want her to look different to make yourself look better? Does her weight deflect your anger away from some other issue? These are excellent topics to explore in family therapy, individual therapy, and support-group meetings.
ABSTINENCE
Recovery from alcoholism is hard, but at least it’s clear. The alcoholic’s abstinence is never to drink again. How we food addicts wish for such clarity. What is abstinence for a food addict? Since we must eat again, we are forced into gray areas that drug addicts can avoid. The bottom line is this: Abstinence is refraining from foods that cause an addictive reaction—change of mood, increased craving, increased compulsiveness around food—and refraining from using food as an emotional support. If we are addicted to sugar, that abstinence can be fairly clean. If fat products set us off, we have a more difficult challenge.
Part of the struggle of recovery is working out just where our addictions lie and gradually freeing ourselves from them. This takes time. There’s no way to do it perfectly. This is one of the many reasons why you canʹt monitor her food. As she learns her limits, she can let you know which foods would mean sabotage; in time, however, this list will change. Abstinence from sugar means no sugar, but with refined carbohydrates, for example, abstinence may mean being 90 percent clean. Abstinence can also mean not bingeing, not eating between meals, not eating at night, or not eating more than the body truly needs for physical sustenance. At the start of recovery, abstinence is usually less defined and less strict, becoming more refined over time. I am now willing to be abstinent from many more foods than I was at the beginning. Giving up dependence on food as emotional support is not like slamming a gate. It’s more like peeling an artichoke. We give up a little dependence here and a little more there. Over time it takes us to the heart of things.
One last thing—relapse is a part of this addiction. Since there’s no way to define perfect abstinence, we all cross the line into compulsive eating now and then. Most of the time, we can read this as a warning, get help, and get back to safety. Sometimes we wander in the wilderness for a while before finding the path back. This is not an occasion for judgment. When this happens, we need more support from recovering people.
The support combination that seems to work best is participation in a therapy group designed specifically for overeaters and food addicts, and attendance at Overeaters Anonymous, Bulimics Anonymous, and Eating Disorders Anonymous meetings. Inpatient, outpatient, or residential treatment programs can give her a boost at the beginning of the recovery process or later, when the issues come rolling out. My own program combines all of the above, depending on the needs of the client.
Although we tend to focus on the needs of the person suffering from the disease, you need attention, too. I highly recommend Codependents Anonymous, Al-Anon, or O-Anon. Any of the three will support you as you support her.
ASSIGNMENT 9.1
1. Look up Al-Anon, O-Anon, or Codependents Anonymous in the phone book.
2. Call each fellowship and ask to be sent a meeting list.
3. Attend three meetings (either three different fellowships or the same one three times).
4. After the second or third meeting, talk to someone whose comments you liked.