When I fall apart I do it in all areas of my life at once. Collapsing isn’t really something you can compartmentalize.Exhaustion tends to affect everything. I have quit running, writing/posting, and going to Weight Watchers meetings. In many ways I feel like an addict re-lapsing.

It feels like addiction when I slide into bags of Easter candy and bottles of wine. I am not consuming them out of the joy of eating as Francis Lam describes so well. This consumption is about obliteration. I want to dissolve. It is the opposite of a gastronomic experience. An experience like that is about being alive in all your senses: taking the time to smell, feel the textures of the foods, look at the colors, really taste and absorb all the flavors.I have experienced food in this way and it is pure joy.

Addictive eating is 180 degrees in the other direction. It is about self-hatred and anesthetizing your feelings. It is, in some strange way, barely about the food at all. It is a gulping unaware consumption that never truly fills you. It is knowing that what you are doing is unhealthy and unhelpful, but feeling powerless to stop, being unable to find the better way. It is hiding in your dark kitchen with a box of mass-produced chocolate cookies that aren’t even that good and eating every single one even though you’re not hungry and you know they aren’t worth it. For that first soft chocolatey bite you feel a tiny bit better so you keep repeating the first bite over and over again. Even though you quickly start sliding into feeling worse rather than better.

Suddenly now you’re pissed. Every voice that has ever mocked you and your pathetic weakness is ringing in your head now. Your mother who takes food out of your hands and tells you you’re not really hungry. The dance teacher who calls you into her office to say, “I’m concerned for your health.” And your own voice disgusted and hissing, “What the hell is wrong with you? Why can’t you get it together? Normal people don’t act this way. Normal people know how to stop.” And this, of course, doesn’t help. Sometimes it spurs more eating. The food sits there mute and comforting and blameless. 

No one sees these struggles in the dark, but they see the results you wear on your body every day. They see the results of the weight loss work too and when people compliment weight loss I feel just as strange as when I feel the disapproving silence that surrounds any gain. Do they really know what goes on in the dark hours?

Still, I am lucky. I would never compare myself to a heroin addict or even a nicotine addict. The physical danger and emotional hell of those addictions far exceeds what I do and I know that. I am glad and grateful I haven’t managed to hook myself on drugs or drink. I am lucky that I don’t seem to have that kind of addictive personality.

It is interesting, though, how like a twelve-step meeting Weight Watchers can be sometimes. People on the message boards talk about “working the program” in much the same way I’ve heard AA people talk about their program. I’ve heard, “it works if you work it,” in both groups. In both situations you come to meetings after trying everything else after “hitting bottom.” In both places you will hear stories of misery before the program and hope after joining. In both places you will talk about one-day-at-a-time-but-for-the-rest-of-your-life. I’m not judging either group, mind you. I’m not an alcoholic, I don’t know what that struggle is, but I imagine it’s at least as lonely as struggling with food issues and joining with other people who are similarly struggling has to be powerful. And sometimes it’s powerfully isolating when you don’t feel connected to those people. That’s what happened with me, I think.

Can food really be addictive? I know it’s not the same as other addictions. It is more subtle and because of this, harder to understand. The people who believe weight and food issues are just about willpower and weakness do not understand. The people who believe we just need to get over what society tells us about “bad food” and “bad fat people” don’t understand either. I don’t believe in moralizing food. A candy bar is not “bad” and does not make me a bad person if I eat it but, these foods are different. They affect me differently than “real” food. Food that is highly processed and full of fat, salt and sugar affect my body and mind in completely different ways than whole foods. I have existed both ways and eating real food is better. My moods are more even and I have more energy. Eating fruits and vegetables and lean protein makes for better fuel and they taste wonderful in a different way than a fast food cheeseburger. It takes time to get to like that taste better, but it can happen, I’ve done it. The thing that sucks is that the addictive food always has that power to pull me back in when I’m stressed or depressed. I’ve used it to make myself feel better for a long time. Those neural pathways are built. I feel them. I feel them drawing me to the old comforts during hard times.

I will probably re-join Weight Watchers. I eat better when I’m on the program, quite simply because it forces consciousness of what I’m putting in my body. When I keep track of what I eat, then I eat more vegetables and fruits and whole grains and drink more water.  Sometimes I want to chuck it all, though, all the platitudes and pithy quotes. All the tough love and all-knowingness of the long-standing members. I could certainly do with not paying for this service. (The whole for-profit thing is one big difference between WW and AA or OA, for that matter) Mostly, though, I want to be someone who doesn’t think so much about what she eats, but I know, even if I never join another diet program I will never be a person who just eats. Food is not that simple for me. It never will be.