Emotional Eater

An excerpt

To me, food is love. It’s also romance. Intimacy and sex come to mind as well as I imagine how it feels in my mouth, touching my lips and sliding across my tongue.

The particles mingle with my saliva as they hit my 10,000 taste buds, and because these taste buds regenerate themselves every two weeks, it’s always new and exciting.

I kiss fudge. I have my way with cheesecake and mashed potatoes. I swoon over the gentle way food enters me, working its way inside, and then it explodes and changes my cells. It never leaves. The more I eat, the more it stays with me.

Food is everything to me.

I lost 200 pounds and I’ve kept it off for over 20 years. This is my story of how I did it.

Losing 200 pounds feels like the greatest thing I’ve done in my life. It’s for sure the thing that makes me the happiest day in and day out. Being thin is the one thing I love more than food, which says a lot. Even at 170 pounds, food is my best friend and constant companion. It will forever be my true love.

When I was 50, 100, 200 pounds overweight, all I wanted was to be thin, though I never thought I could be. You see, I’m the biggest food addict I’ve ever met. If I were to throw in the towel, I could gain 100 pounds back in a year, no problem. I so understand what it’s like to be very overweight and not be able to stop eating.
I’m obsessed with food. I can eat like no one I know. Sugar plum fairies really do dance in my head, and candy bars come to life like the old cartoons that would play in theaters before the movie. Cupcakes grow legs and run toward me. Doughnuts have personalities and potato chips are instant friends. I am constantly thinking about what I can eat next.

This obsession has caused me to do things I’m not proud of. I’ve roamed the halls of a hotel late at night, eating scraps off the room service trays left outside the doors. I’ve eaten doughnuts out of the garbage at work. (That Seinfeld episode when George does the same never struck me as that outrageous.) When I couldn’t wait to cook it, I ate raw bacon like gummy worms. I’ve stolen money to buy cookies from the vending machine. Oh, the many bulk bins I’ve grazed on at the grocery store like they were free samples.

Even at 170 pounds, I’ll stand in front of the refrigerator with the door open and eat five slices of bread like chips. When I’m at work, all I think about is heading to the kitchen to eat. I’ll get something random from the cupboard, bring it back to my desk, and scarf it down. As soon as it’s gone, I think about what I can get next.
The only difference between now and when I was a fat kid is what I eat and that I don’t do it as often. Life as a grown-up ends up not much different than when I would run home from school after a bad day and eat everything in sight. Instead of sneaking back to the kitchen during TV commercials, it’s between Zoom meetings.

I’m an emotional eater
How are we emotional eaters supposed to get along without our best friend food? Not eating when stressed or scared or lonely or hurt is unthinkable to us. The compulsion to eat feels so much stronger than we are.

As a food addict, I feel powerless under its spell. I don’t want to overeat, but it’s as if I can’t help myself. Something inside makes me do it. When I’m insecure or bored, food is a companion and ally. Food is a dog, a best friend, a source of love. Food is the one thing that will never leave me.

Compulsive eating soothes the hard edges of life. It talks me off the ledge and adds a little sparkle to the mundane. It’s the most reliable thing in the world, and it always makes me feel better—for a little while.
Then the cycle begins. I eat a lot and then I feel bad about it because I want to be thin more than anything. This makes me eat more and then the fat begins to accumulate. Then I feel really, really bad.

I guess I’m a fat realist. I’m not sure any of us who turn to food for love, comfort, and security ever completely get over it. Food is forever a diva in my life. It’s simply not going to be ignored. It’s Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, and Mariah Carey all rolled into one. As far as food goes, “Nobody puts baby in the corner.” Food isn’t going anywhere in my life, and it certainly isn’t going easy.

So, what do I do? For one thing, I keep my old friend close by—but I’ve cleaned up his act. Dieting perfectionism sabotaged me over and over through the years. I finally faced the reality that my food compulsion may always be a part of me. I needed to find a way to get along with my food addiction so I could lose weight, the thing I wanted most in the world.

I still eat a lot when I need to, but I’ve upgraded from half a cake to half a watermelon, for example. I call it friendly bingeing. A bag of baby carrots has replaced a bag of Doritos. I’ll eat grapes on the way home from the grocery store rather than a Milky Way bar. I tell myself I can eat all I want, but it needs to have at least some benefit to my body… or at least, not as much harm. This works most of the time.

“I’ve been thin. I’ve been fat. Thin is better.”
There’s a lyric from the Broadway musical A Class Act that goes, “I’ve been thin. I’ve been fat. Thin is better.” When I first heard it, I thought, yes, this Ed Kleban guy knows what he’s talking about.

Being thin is so much better than being fat, though saying it out loud feels not quite right. It’s like I’m not supposed to think or feel or certainly speak it. If we say aloud that we’d rather be thin, it seems vain and self-centered. Plus, it draws attention to our trying to lose, and ugh, it’s so disappointing and embarrassing when we don’t.

But I’ll say it again: being thin is so much better than being fat. Fat makes life harder. Of course, not all your problems go away when you lose weight, but many do, and life is generally so much easier.

I don’t believe that anyone is happy being fat. I surely never was. I had moments, but they were fleeting. Again, this is my experience, but I often notice overweight folks tugging at their clothes and plastering on smile masks with eyes that look dead inside. I see them scan a room to find a chair that won’t break, and my heart hurts for them. I’ve been there. I broke a bed at a friend’s house when I was 18 and another time at my cousin’s when I was 12. Once, a theater seat folded beneath me during one of the 45 times I saw Flashdance. I split many pairs of pants in public. I hope all the fat people out there can feel a certain level of self-love. I so hope they do. I couldn’t, but I did find it along the way, and I find it so much easier at 170 pounds to love myself, warts and all.

I’ve had conversations with friends or co-workers who are carrying extra pounds, and at first they’ll play it cool when it comes to their weight. Then we’ll talk some more, and soon their frustration over their weight and their desire to lose it surfaces.

Being thin helps me feel comfortable in my skin, which is what it’s all about.

Stepping out of the shower and not hating what I see (though I may not love, love, love it every time) clears so much emotional garbage out of the psyche.
Not having that self-loathing, and the hundreds of extra pounds, simply lightens the load of living. For this alone, I would love everyone who needs to lose weight to make it a priority. Yes, loving yourself when you’re heavy is possible, but it’s so much easier at 170. I could never get there when I was in the 200 and 300s.
Losing weight may require eliminating things in life that make you turn to food. This can be challenging because it might be something big like a job or a relationship. The most important thing is to find a way to get on with it, even if you’re not in the place to make that big leap. I can testify that whatever you have in your life that is making you eat will be easier to deal with after you’ve lost some weight. Even 10 pounds lost begins to clear the storm clouds.

The F-word
It also feels a little wrong to say fat, but please know I use the word lovingly. I was 380 pounds at my heaviest, and I was the one who didn’t fit into the rollercoaster seat. I’ve done the walk of shame past the queue of skinny people staring at me, some giggling and smirking. Those of us who’ve been fat may use the word, but if you haven’t, proceed with caution. If you’ve been there, you know that nothing describes the stuffed, awkward, uncomfortable feeling of extra weight like the word fat. The word, well, it just sounds fat.

I also use the word fat rather than chubby, fluffy, or “more-to-love” because these all dance around the issue and try to lessen the impact it has on life, both the quality and quantity. We use those words because they hide our shame, but they keep us from facing the reality of carrying many extra pounds. How many fat people over 80 do we see? I recall a giant scale somewhere that you’d slip a quarter into, step on, and get your weight, along with a fortune. This says it all. Our weight says so much about what our future can hold for us. Fat keeps us from our hopes and dreams. Not only are our lives less full and rich than they could be, they are also shorter.

Then there are all the diets and weight loss programs out there
I get frustrated with all the weight loss programs and diets that never get to the heart of the matter. They always skip the chapter explaining why we can’t stop eating. We pay our money, behave like good little kids for a while, and then we start slipping and sliding. Our inner fat kid wins. We want to believe the TV commercials, Facebook ads, and fitness magazines at the grocery checkout, which I still impulsively grab. “Lose weight for good” gets me every time. We search endlessly for the miracle, the answer, the one diet that will change our lives. (Side note: I don’t think we should have to pay a lot of money to lose weight.)

The plans and programs work at first. They’re great at getting us started and I would even encourage you to use one if you need to get the weight loss ball rolling (but please, don’t fork over a lot of cash).

The Weight Watchers app helped me drop my final 10 pounds and figure out how much I could eat in a day to stay around 170. The free Lose It app is also a great way to touch base with the number of calories we need to lose and maintain. I go back to it when I’ve gained a few pounds and I need a reset. The science is black and white—you can find out how to lose weight with a Google search—but the science is such a tiny part of it.

It’s easy to be successful for a while. The newness carries us when we start a diet or weight loss regime. Soon the excitement fades, and we are again left with the frustration of “Why do I eat when I don’t want to?” The cookies start to tug at our sleeves.

Why does the emotional and compulsive eater inside us win? That is the code we must crack.
This book tells how I did it. This is my food story. As you read, you will see my journey was not a straight and steady path; there were many twists and turns and bumps along the way. This is how it goes for most of us, I believe. Discovering why we turn to food can be a two-steps-forward-one-step-back process, but that’s how I got to the heart of my emotional eating.

In addition to losing weight, I discovered how to get along in the world as a highly sensitive, people pleasing, compulsive eater. I even found my own personal secret to happiness.

Hearing other people’s stories may be the only thing that helps
Something needs to click inside us. I think that’s why most programs fail in the long run—the internal click doesn’t happen. The overeater hasn’t figured out why they can’t stop when all they want to do is lose weight.

Outside support can help, but losing weight is mostly an inside job. Hearing how others did it helps the most, I think.

Nothing is better than hearing someone else’s story and thinking, “Wow, I see myself in you.” It helps me feel more okay with myself.

Hearing another story like mine validates that what I went through was hard, which is why I responded the way I did. I’m not a solitary freak or a one-off in the world. I was just doing my best.

Not feeling alone in whatever we are going through is always key. When I hear someone else who has gone through what I did—especially when we have something in common, like gender, age, sexuality, or where we grew up—I feel not so alone. It’s like someone sees me and says, “Me too. I understand.” I feel seen and understood.

This is how I felt when I heard a fellow addict talk about chewing his nails as a little boy to distract and disassociate from his dad’s hurtful words and looks. He also spoke of the intense anxiety he felt going to college, with the swarms of people all around, and the energy of competition, grading, passing, and failing. It was like his words were coming out of my mouth.

Witnessing someone who has gone through what I have and reacted the same way, relieves the shame and regret. It somehow detoxifies it all and I feel better about the experience. When I hear a story like mine, I think, “Well, of course, I ate like a house on fire. Anybody would have.” By witnessing someone with a similar story, we can view our situation objectively and with the compassion we rarely give ourselves.

Please, make it a priority
I’m the lightest I’ve been since fifth grade. At 58, I feel better than I ever have.

People often ask me how I lost the weight, especially those who knew me at 280 and above. I’m not a weight-loss doctor or a nutritionist or a therapist, though I feel I have a DIY PhD in all three. In the end, I only know what has worked for me, and I want this for anyone who is fat. I really, really want this for you. And I want it for you now. I’ve never liked the phrase, “If I can do it, anyone can.” It’s so self-deprecating and usually not true. That said, I wholeheartedly believe if I can lose weight, you can too.

I will attest that with every year, the body clings more desperately to the pounds. They tell us our metabolism slows yearly, even with continued exercise. I say to all you 20- and 30-somethings, lose the weight now.

I hope that what I’ve learned along the way will help you get on with it because nothing is better than being thin.

Though eating runs a close second.
 
Part One: How to gain 200 pounds
 
Chapter 1
I bundled up in my old barn coat that no longer reached across my stomach. Then I slipped on a pair of old sneakers with the heel flattened like a clog, and slid and meandered my way down the lonely old path to the barn that no one walked any longer. Funny, it had been used for so many years, it was almost as if the snow didn’t collect on it, like it was hot from so many emotional trips back and forth. A two-foot snowbank flanked a tiny valley so narrow it was like walking a tightrope. I was on a lonely and anxious circus walk to weigh myself on the giant feed scale, like a big bag of corn or maybe a calf that was being sold off.

I had made many walks like this through the years. The terrifying walk to PE class and down the hall in high school was a slow rug burn and constant stomachache. I had walked through the fires of hell as a teenager, so a few minutes in the Minnesota below-zero night was nothing. The moon was so bright and blue, it made sure I could see ahead of me, and that I didn’t feel so alone.

The old milk room of the barn still smelled sweet and dusty, like manure and hay. I dropped my coat and sweatpants and pulled off my enormous t-shirt the size of an old lady’s nightgown. I slid my underwear down and kicked them across the freezing cement floor and stepped up on the platform, like I had many times.

Clunk, the arm dropped. I was way above where I was at my last weigh-in. I slid the cold metal bar to the right, and I could feel my heartbeat in my teeth. I slid it more. The arm finally balanced; it swung gently like a dancer. It moved like the dancer I knew I was, who also danced around things in life.

There it was. I did it. I made it to 380 pounds.

“It’s okay, Eric. You’re okay. You’ll be fine.” I kept repeating it in a panic, and then I turned on myself. I began to slap my big boobs and Santa belly and lumpy thighs and big pillow butt like I was killing imaginary bugs.

Maybe Mom would help me lose weight this time; she had promised once when I had chest pains that were likely indigestion. But no one would or could save me—this I knew from experience. I did this to myself. I was responsible for it. I was an adult now—18 years and four months old—so if anything was going to change, it had to be me who did it.

* * *

I imagine that in the nine months I grew in my mom’s stomach, I fed off not only what she ate, but how she felt about it and why. A bag of Bugles chewed into a gritty paste calmed her nervous stomach. Crunchy chocolate-covered peanut clusters lifted her spirits. My personality was basically formed off her sneaking Kraft caramels from a cookie jar and thinking that no one could hear the noisy cellophane as she opened them. Several years later, I’d tiptoe into the kitchen for more Oreos, thinking I was invisible, and I’d hear, “Yes, Eric, I see you.”

Half a century later and in my 50s, I’m still sneaking into the kitchen to steal bites of something even when no one is around. I ask myself, “Who am I hiding it from?” I seem to be hiding it from myself because even at 170 pounds, I’m still embarrassed by my addiction to food.

Maybe my perspective was made hazy by the cigarettes Mom chain-smoked during her pregnancy. It relaxes the mother, they told her, and the constant need for something big and vague grew in me with each inhale. Perhaps some of the beer my dad loved to drink was in his sperm and landed in me, and I was born just the tiniest bit buzzed.

My nine months in the womb were one big college party I didn’t want to end, and that’s how I see eating to this day.

I don’t want the feelings that go along with food to stop. Not long ago, I was eating pudding, and I thought, nothing bothers me when I do this. This is how I want to feel all the time.

The magical powdered sugar doughnut
It was a Saturday morning when I was four. I was alone, as I always seemed to be, except for the lovely box of doughnuts on the coffee table. It was that magic trio: the chocolate-covered, the crunchy one, and the one dusted with powdered sugar.

Ah, the powdered sugar doughnut. It was cocaine to a little fat kid. I picked it up, and the mere contact gave me a rush. When I bit into it, the magic dust sprinkled down, releasing a type of feel-good drug into the air and into my system. It covered the front of my fat kid sweatshirt like frost does on a windshield on a cold morning in Minnesota.

The messiness of this enchanted white doughnut didn’t bother me. This was my destiny: to be covered, almost anointed with my food. The feeling of relaxed euphoria was so intense it’s still with me fifty years later, and in a way, I think I’ve been trying to get that hit ever since.

But then I was nearly killed by a Dairy Queen vanilla malt
On one of our family’s special trips to the Twin Cities that farm kids live for, our Ford Galaxy 500 overheated, as it always seemed to do. We stopped at the Dairy Queen in the southern suburb of Chaska to let it cool down, and I was so excited I shot out of the car as soon as the wheels stopped.

I wedged my chubbiness into the Formica booth and waited for my skinny dad to bring straws, spoons, and napkins. Mom set my big vanilla malt in front of me at eye level; it was a little Mount Everest to me. The waxy cup clicked on the table, and something clicked in me. One of the harsh fluorescent lights shone directly on it, and it seemed to sparkle. I had experienced the thick sweetness before, and they made the cup so irresistible with the naughty little Dennis the Menace running wildly on the side. Even at five, I knew this was a hefty serving of feeling good.

I couldn’t take it any longer. I flicked off the flimsy lid, wrapped my little fingers around the bottom, and tipped it up to my mouth. As you can imagine, the whole thing poured down like lava into my nose and mouth and down my shirt, and it piled up on my little belly. I was, quite literally, smothering. I gasped for air like a fish out of water and flailed my arms like I was drowning because I sort of was. My eyes began to water the way they do when you’re about to cry.
Mom scooped the ice cream out of my nose and my mouth, her fingers so far back they were choking me, and I sat in a type of shock and red-faced humiliation as I came back to earth. It was a food slap in the face, an ice cream punch to the nose.

That about summed up the next 25 years or so of my eating.

The F-word

Mom said at least a dozen times to me through the years: “Until you were five, you were this big around,” and she made the “OK” gesture with her hand. A cigarette was usually propped between two of her fingers. I’ve seen photos, and this isn’t exactly the case; I could have been Pugslie’s stand-in on The Adam’s Family. She may not have been the most impartial judge at 200 and some pounds (think Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids). I started to hear the hideous F-word (fat) from the other kids once I headed off to school in nearby Arlington, Minnesota (population 1,700 or so), so I must have been at least somewhat fat for my age.

The F-word. I’ve embraced it now, and because I was fat for so much of my life, I get the unique privilege of being able to use it freely. I have the accreditation. It can be fun to watch those who haven’t been there struggle to say it. To pause and then elongate the F, then freeze in a chipmunk face to test if they should finish. They are right. If you’ve never been fat, watch your mouth.