[I am happy to present my second guest post on Weight Maven. Michael is a blogger and the author of Fat Boy Thin Man, which I've read and recommend. In this post, Michael shares his perspective on the usefulness of abstinence in managing food addiction. -- Beth]
By Michael Prager
When I saw Beth had welcomed a guest blogger a while back, I put up my hand and shouted, “me too, me too!” ‘cause I admire both her and her audience — smart, engaged, opinionated. I’m happy when I can live up to those traits myself.
She made a few suggestions on what I might discuss, and, natch, any of them would have worked, but I decided to talk about addiction and the notion of abstinence when it is applied to problem eaters who are also food addicts.
For drug addicts and alcoholics, the notion of abstinence is considered wholly different because everyone has to eat, right? But I don’t think the gap is as wide as most do. Do drug addicts ever take pharmaceuticals, ever? Most do, even if it’s only aspirin. So the question isn’t “drugs,” it’s “which drugs.”
The gap is even less pronounced regarding alcoholics, IMHO. Just as everyone has to eat, everyone has to drink. Alcoholics don’t swear off drinking, they swear off alcohol. If you think that’s just semantics, then you are in the majority of folks and don’t understand the term.
Food addicts don’t swear off eating — duh! — they swear off some food substances and behaviors. I grant that the comparison isn’t perfect — the alcohol and drug examples are clearer, certainly — but it’s still useful.
The most common substances that food addicts avoid are refined grains and sugars, but perhaps a better description would be processed food. This isn’t all or nothing; I consider processing on a continuum: The more steps that separate farm from plate, and the greater number of these manufactured substances there are in a product, the less likely it’s to be healthful.
The thing is, I am sure this is true for all eaters, not just food addicts. The difference for us is that “normal” eaters can far more easily regulate whether they’ll take these substances in. When I ingest them, my body cries out for more of them — it’s a biochemical craving.
But “processed food” doesn’t nearly cover the food addiction landscape. In the active period of my addiction, I encountered minimally processed foods that I couldn’t handle. Peanuts and popcorn are two examples: I choose not to begin eating these today, simply because when I do, I don’t want to stop. I can’t express how many times I ate enough popcorn — drenched in salt and butter, of course — that I experienced little mouth cuts from the husks for all that salt to sting. Still, I kept going, often to painful overfullness, and still, I returned to it another time.
So does that mean peanuts and popcorn are addictive? It’s the wrong question.
Why can two people go into a bar, drink the same substances and amounts, and one ends up home in bed and the other ends up in the gutter? It’s not just the substance, but the interaction of substance and constitution. For me, the only “out” for those substances was never to start, but it took me years to realize, and years more to be willing.
Meanwhile, substances are a secondary issue for others food addicts; the amount is the thing. We readily accept this for anorexia, but are less willing for binge eating, which is merely the flip side: getting a hit from emptiness or fullness.
Part of me rues that I will never have the same black-or-white certainty that alcoholics can experience. But ruefulness is hardly very useful. The issue isn’t what I feel about a circumstance in my life, the issue is what I’m going to do about it.
Even if I can’t get my food addiction down to the same all-or-nothingness, I can sure get a lot closer than “everything in moderation,” which will not work for someone with a biochemical sensitivity. Someone allergic to strawberries or peanuts doesn’t decide to cut back, not if they want to avoid the consequences they’ve been dealt regarding those substances.
I often weigh and measure my food, which I once considered eternal servitude but now appreciate because it’s how I stop the hamster wheel in my brain that won’t stop asking, “too much? enough? do I need more? can I get away with more?” I have adopted other disciplines that help me not to overeat as well.
One last word: Anyone who mocks food addiction as the excuse that lets someone avoid responsibility for their actions betrays obvious foolishness. Saying I’m a food addict isn’t what allowed me to keep overeating. It’s what allowed me to stop overeating, by understanding that I had a condition more serious than I’d understood, and that I’d have to adopt sterner measures if I was to overcome them.
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health, & food policy. And cats! 
Food addiction and abstinence was one of my suggested topics for Michael in part because he and I aren’t 100% on the same page on the subject. Given that, I’m particularly interested in further discussion!
Me, I find Stanton Peele’s writing about abstinence and addiction (i.e., it’s not necessarily required) compelling. I wonder if the fact that many people find abstinence useful and/or essential may simply reflect our current understanding of addiction.
That said, I completely respect folks’ decisions about their lives, whether that’s about addictive substances or carbs or grains or animal products etc. What’s important is what works for the individual. And it’s important to consider all of the options.
Oh darn, I don’t know anymore. Like many AN sufferers, I had to deal with a long binge (interspersed with more restriction) phase during ‘recovery’. It feels like once the reward centers in the brain relearn to light up in response to food, they go crazy. I’d try to have 1/4 a normal-sized serving of a trigger food just to prove to myself that I could stop at just that amount…and it wouldn’t work. It is nothing short of horrifying, to someone used to exercising maniacal control over their food intake. Only after I acknowledged that abstinence was a solution, and *accepted* that, as Michael points out above, could true recovery begin.
But I’ve now found a peace with my eating habits that would have been utterly unimaginable to me a few years ago. And now I can do moderation. And this new realization that I *no longer need* abstinence…is just so empowering. There are some days when I eat some ‘treat’ food, stop, and then *marvel* with gratitude at the fact that I can stop, just like that, with zero desire to have more and zero panic/guilt that I had more than (some arbitrary amount that) I was ‘supposed’ to have had. Those foods are no longer some form of kryptonite.
So in the ideal case perhaps abstinence is just a tool. A powerful one, and one that might have to be wielded for a relatively long haul, but really something meant to be used in the process of healing. And maybe only after the healing is done will one see that it has fallen into wonderful obsolescence.
Michael knows the life of a recovering food addict. Thanks for increasing awareness of food addiction. For people who have this condition but are unaware, life can be miserable. Getting good information about abstinence can be the gateway to relief one day at a time for a lifetime.
I identify as a food addict. Abstinence is one of the tools that is available for me, and it’s constantly evolving. What food called to me 2 years ago does not now, but new foods do. I declared those foods to be on my “red” list, as the obsession to eat those foods have caused issues. I can’t act like a good father and husband if I’m obsessing. On the other hand, if I accept that certain foods are not for me, the issue eventually goes away. I can be around those foods with no issues. The problem has been removed. I can give them to the kids, wife, etc, smell them and know that that food is not for me.
A anecdote may help. My wife was craving chocolate, as she will do during her cycle, telling me she needs this chocolate. All throughout my mind is racing that she needs food, so she may be a food addict too… and we can go to OA meetings together (he he). She takes the chocolate bar, eats half of it, and puts the rest away. This story just tells me that that I’m addicted, I have never saved a bit of anything. I have completed every package. She can eat “like a lady”… I cannot eat like a gentleman. Another story where light is shed on what I am, and, as sunlight is the best disinfectant, this is something I cannot avoid.
(And excuse this if this seems like spiking the football, but with the help of a good program and food plan, I have shed 288lbs. These programs work, if you work it.)
Are you having trouble controlling the way you eat? Many of us with this problem have found help in Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA). FA is a program based on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. The program offers help and recovery to those whose connection with food can be understood as a form of addiction. There are no dues or fees and the meetings include no weigh-ins. Membership is international and includes men and women, adolescents, and the elderly. All are welcome.
People who find help in FA vary greatly. Some of us have been diagnosed as morbidly obese while others are undereaters. Among us are those who were severely bulimic, who have harmed themselves with compulsive exercise, or whose quality of life was impaired by constant obsession with food or weight. We tend to be people who, in the long-term, have failed at every solution we tried, including therapy, support groups, diets, fasting, exercise, and in-patient treatment programs.
Some of our members have been in continuous recovery (maintaining a stable, healthy weight and enjoying freedom from obsession with food, weight, bingeing, or bulimia) for over twenty-five years. Members with five to ten years of recovery are increasingly common.
FA has over 350 meetings throughout the United States in large and small cities such as Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Charlotte, Grand Rapids, Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, Austin, and Washington, D.C. Internationally, FA currently has groups in England, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Australia. If you would like more information about FA, please check out our website. If there aren’t any meetings in your area, you can contact the office, where someone will help you.