My Battle with an Eating Disorder:
A Compulsive Overeater's Road to Recovery
By Janie Lieberman
I'm Janie, a compulsive overeater who has struggled with food and weight for most of my life. I've recently learned to live and eat in a healthy way and have maintained a 27-pound weight loss for the past three years.
Today, I am five feet tall and a very fit 98 pounds. I run competitively in 5K races and take home first place ribbons in my division. I don't say this to brag but to emphasize that there is hope even for a serious binger and faster like myself. Looking at me, you would never guess that I have an eating disorder.
My problems with food first surfaced at age thirteen. I can recall feeling isolated and lonely when my family moved to a different area of the city. Away from my friends, I sought comfort and companionship in food and began sneak-eating sweets and whatever I could find in my parents' kitchen. Growing up in an upper-middle-class Jewish family in Indianapolis, Indiana, food was in plentiful supply. At family gatherings, I'd refuse to eat if in a fasting cycle or would stuff my face with leftovers when no one was around. I tried Weight Watchers, but could even binge on the permitted "unlimited" vegetables. Mostly, I lost weight through fasting (once for 30 days), but I would always return to my old familiar friend -- the food.
The bingeing and fasting continued throughout high school and on into college, where at the University of Arizona I discovered compulsive exercise. I'd eat a gallon of ice cream, among other things, and would swim 50 to 75 laps and/or run to work off the calories. It never worked, because I ate so much before and after I exercised. I also abused laxatives and for one summer subjected myself to that horrible orange and cherry-flavored liquid protein. After graduation, I moved to Los Angeles to find work in the entertainment industry. Seeing all the beautiful, thin people, I craved to look the part, but instead my weight climbed even higher. I couldn't stop eating.
One painful episode in my eating career serves as a continual reminder of how powerless over food I have been. I was an intern at the Pasadena Star News and was assigned to cover the Emmy Awards. Dressed in a black-sequined dress, I stopped at a health food store a few miles from the event and stuffed myself with "healthy" snack food. All the while, my dress was becoming tighter and tighter. I can still see myself interviewing David Letterman back stage in the press room, while all I could think about was how fat I felt. At the same time, I was consumed with thoughts of gorging at the post-Emmy parties. How sad that my food obsession kept me from being fully present for that once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Always interested in the "quick fix," I finally hit my bottom in 1979 when I took 90 laxatives to lose 20 pounds by the weekend, when an ex-boyfriend was due to visit. He never showed, and I ended up at the UCLA emergency room, dehydrated from overdosing on laxatives. No thinner for the wear, I started seeing a therapist who suggested I go to Overeaters Anonymous. At my first meeting, I felt at home immediately and was relieved to discover I was not alone. I wasn't a glutton simply because I could not control my eating. I had a disease.
Since then, I have had various periods of freedom from my food obsession but my real recovery began when I learned, through the program of Greysheet, a more disciplined, food-specific offshoot of Overeaters Anonymous, that I have an allergy to all grains, sugar and alcohol. I abstain from those substances and today have no desire to binge, nor do I crave foods that are not on my food plan. I eat three delicious meals a day, all weighed and measured, with nothing in between except sugar-free beverages. I accept and understand that my "too full" thermostat was broken long ago. To stay toned and fit, I exercise daily, combining running and weight training.
For many, myself included, eating has deep emotional and psychological roots that aren't as visible as tight-fitting jeans or a protruding belly. But the media chooses to focus on celebrities and their battles with the bulge - such as on actress Alicia Silverstone, who was thin in Clueless and heavier in Batman and Robin." Other celebrities openly discuss their weight, but few have found healthy ways to shed pounds. Roseanne chose surgery when her weight skyrocketed to nearly 300 pounds, and Emmy Award-winning actress Camryn Manheim of TV's hit show The Practice claims it's okay to be fat. "If art is supposed to imitate life, why do they want all the actors to be thin?" says Manheim in Radiance: The Magazine for Large Women. The media is equally dedicated to uncovering anorexia in celebrities. For instance, Calista Flockhart, star of Ally McBeal, has been the brunt of numerous remarks about her low weight but vehemently denies any anorexic leanings.
I do not consider myself "recovered," but I do thank God every day for being relieved of my food obsession. I am grateful that when I wake up each morning I am no longer hung over from the previous night's binge. I can wear the same clothes I did the day or week before. I look "normal" but know I will never be neutral around food.
With Yom Kippur "fast" approaching, we atone for our sins of the body and spirit. Forgetting all that, many will end their daylong fast by gorging at sundown. Indeed, the Jewish holidays are as rich in traditions as they are in rich food. I, however, do not fast. I did enough of that, and it was only a set up to binge. Judaism teaches us that the body is a soul's house. I respect that philosophy and don't abuse food or my body. My problems have not disappeared just because I am thin. As the saying goes, "thin is not well" but I am learning to deal with life and not use food. One day at a time.
Janie Lieberman is a Los Angeles-based, Jewish freelancer, who frequently writes about the entertainment industry.
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