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      Introduction

       Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

       —JAMES BALDWIN, THE CROSS OF REDEMPTION: UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS

      DESPITE THE FACT THAT AMERICANS are obsessed with weight and spend over $60 billion a year on diets and diet products, has it done any good?

      The media screams out to us on a daily basis: We have an obesity epidemic! According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, over two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. Many of the millions of heavy people have an eating disorder, which has the highest mortality rate of any mental health diagnosis, including depression. Binge eating, the most common eating disorder in the United States, affects over twenty-five million people. This diagnosis has received a lot of media attention recently because the American Psychiatric Association is recommending that it be considered a separate, distinct eating disorder, as are bulimia and anorexia.

      Though not all obese individuals are compulsive overeaters, experts believe that about 75 percent of overeating is emotional eating—using food to deal with feelings. Although everyone turns to food for comfort on occasion, such as hot soup or hot chocolate on a cold winter's night, or something sweet to chew on after a fight with your honey, the compulsive overeater turns to food as the primary means of coping with everyday stress, anxiety, and other difficult feelings. We have an emotional hunger. Some of us eat because of an inner emptiness, and some of us become addicted to sugar and refined carbohydrates as a result. “Fast food has become the opiate of the masses,” fitness trainer Chris Powell declared on Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition. Compulsive eating begins as an attempt to ease emotional pain, but it ends up making us feel even worse.

      As a licensed professional clinical counselor, I have worked with compulsive overeaters and binge eaters for over twenty years. In addition, I, too, am a (recovered) food junkie and spent many years quelling feelings by shoving ice cream or cookies down my throat. Food was the glue that kept me together.

      Some folks with excess weight just eat a bit too much. Emotional eaters like me, however, use food as a fix: I abused food, just as an alcoholic misuses booze, stuffing myself in an attempt to fill an inner emptiness. For many of us, though, there is not enough food on the planet to fill the gaping hole within our souls. I know—I tried.

      During my compulsive overeating days, I spent my time bingeing; hoarding and hiding food; making food my best friend; sneak eating; taking pills to curb my appetite; going to diet doctors; gaining and losing a gazillion pounds; trying different fad diets; hating myself; loathing my body; making and breaking countless self-promises; and feeling helpless and hopeless. I ate frozen food that tasted like cardboard; I finished the food off my children's plates; I retrieved food that had been thrown away; I confiscated my students' candy and ate it myself. I expressed lots of dishonesty around food, masquerading as the supreme dieter in public and experiencing out-of-control bingeing in private.

      My behavior around food was a closely guarded secret for decades. But not anymore. After years of psychotherapy, working the Twelve Steps, and doing focused personal-growth work, I have gained insight and understanding as to why I became an emotional eater at an early age and why compulsive overeating became such a driving force in my life. Fortunately, I have recovered from my binge eating disorder, and the tools I used are presented here. I share my journey candidly so that others may benefit from my experiences.

      Tools

      As I disclose my ordeals with food and out-of-control eating, I am telling the story of millions of others who use food to self-soothe. With the focus on recovery, however, I share the modalities that worked for me, including the spiritual approach I first encountered in support groups using Twelve-Step Recovery. No one method will work for every person, and rest assured that successful use of this book does not depend on adherence to a Twelve-Step Program. I didn't adapt the Alcoholics Anonymous program to my food issues by myself—it's served as a model for many over the years. Overeaters Anonymous (OA), for instance, began in 1960 and uses the same Twelve Steps as AA, substituting the word food for alcohol. It is open to anyone with issues around food, including those with binge eating disorder, bulimia, and anorexia. Other Twelve-Step groups dealing with food issues include Food Addicts Anonymous (FAA), Eating Addictions

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