Love Hunger or Food Hunger?

Breaking Out of Food Jail: How to Free Yourself from Diets and Problem Eating, Once and for All
by Jean Antonello, R.N., B.S.N.

(Page 3 of 4)

The symptoms of eating disturbances we've looked at never seem to develop in people who aren't trying to get or stay thin by ignoring their hunger and eating less food than they need. The desire to be thin that motivates undereating occurs in a culture which equates thinness with success and unilaterally rejects people who are overweight, so it's not too hard to understand why people want to be thin or fear weight gain. What may be hard for some people to understand is the degree of self-destruction to which a person will go on this road to a fat-free body.

Eating problems appear to be psycho-emotional in nature because, as many of us know, people with eating disorders can get so weird! But the eating disturbed really aren't as weird as they act, considering their dilemma. The physical nature of that dilemma is explored in Chapter 2.

It is the understandable desire for thinness, coupled with a gross misunderstanding about the real cause of weight gain, that sets highly motivated individuals up for bizarre eating patterns that threaten their health and vitality. Emotional troubles and unmet psychological needs are not at the heart of crazy eating habits. Fear of food and undereating are. People with eating problems may or may not have enough love in their lives, but one thing is certain: they do not have enough good food when they need it.

Compulsive Undereating

Although this term sounds suspiciously like a synonym for anorexia, it isn't. Compulsive undereating refers to the chronic urge to avoid food, eat less than you want or restrict your eating in other ways, in order to control weight. I have found that the label "compulsive undereater" usually applies to anyone who seriously adopts traditional diet principles, and this includes a huge population, especially women. Diet methods train individuals in compulsive undereating. And it is compulsive undereating that propels the vicious Feast or Famine Cycle (see Chapter 3), and all the eating disturbances associated with that cycle.

Compulsive Overeating and Emotional Overeating

These labels are used as a self-diagnosis by many who regularly lose control of their eating and overeat or binge compulsively, often in response to emotional stress. Overeaters Anonymous has helped make the term "compulsive overeater" popular, since members often use it to refer to their alleged addiction. The term is used interchangeably with "food addiction" (which is discussed in the next section, along with more about OA).

I have discovered a very interesting irony in counseling clients from this group. Compulsive overeaters are always very much aware of their overeating behavior and readily admit that it is a problem. Often the evidence is rather obvious. But these bingers just as certainly have another symptom which they almost never identify: compulsive undereating.

Compulsive overeaters rarely recognize that undereating is part of their disorder, but it is just as pathological as its opposite and actually lies at the root of the disturbed eating pattern. Because undereating, unlike overeating, doesn't show up on the body, it is harder to see as part of the problem. Besides, who would ever imagine that an overweight person could actually be eating less than, she should? It doesn't seem to make sense until you really sit down and think it through, which is exactly what we're going to do in the next two chapters. The critical relationship between these two polar symptoms is the key to understanding eating disturbances.

But why do compulsive overeaters so often start a binge under the influence of heavy emotions? Isn't that proof that their eating disorder is psychological?

All people experience stressful emotions at times, but most don't overeat as a response because the natural physiological reaction to stress is a loss of appetite, not its stimulation. Eating is actually stressful to the body, and digestion will be delayed when more pressures are present. But this normal response is contingent on the eating habits of the individual, so that only when a person is well fed does the appetite tend to shut down under stress.

By contrast, when a person who is underfed suffers emotional stress, a paradox occurs. Rather than representing an additional stress to the body, eating for the underfed is a stress relief, promising to solve at least the chronic, underlying problem of inadequate fuel intake. So emotional problems and other forms of stress provoke chronic undereaters to eat and often overeat. Their bodies are simply using the stress as an opportunity for catching up on their inadequate eating.

Food Addiction

Many people consider themselves food addicted, usually as a result of their affiliation with Overeaters Anonymous. OA is an organization based on the same recovery principles as Alcoholics Anonymous. Instead of alcohol addiction, OA members deal with what they consider an addiction to food, which they also call compulsive overeating. The concept of food addiction is very appealing to many people whose eating behavior feels out of control, compulsive and impossible to explain. Many professionals are engaged in therapies based on this addiction model because they, too, see compulsive overeating and bingeing as inexplicable by another means.

The only problem with this approach is that it is completely unfounded and does nothing to help people normalize their eating behavior or their body weights. People find some much-needed camaraderie and support for their feelings of isolation and despair at OA meetings, but most of the ideas about eating control are superstitious and the counsel shared is typically unsubstantiated diet propaganda. I know I am desecrating a holy cow here because many dejected dieters are extremely loyal to OA. For them it has been the only place left to turn in the hopelessness of dietland failure. But along with positive stories of support, I have heard some alarming reports of OA tactics designed to motivate "food-addicted" members to stay away from food, based on theories that inspire even more fear in these already fear-ridden people.

If you really think you are, in a way somehow unlike normal people, addicted to a substance you must have every day in order to survive, you are doomed to a cycle of fear/control/avoidance/loss of control/fear. This cycle will be described and illustrated thoroughly in Chapter 3.

Everyone is addicted to food, and to air and water, for that matter. We would all suffer withdrawal symptoms if any of these substances was restricted below our needs. In fact, the withdrawal symptoms associated with food restriction are exactly what this book is about.

But why would some people think of themselves as food addicts in a special way? What makes this "diagnosis" seem so right? And what makes even professionals buy this food-addiction theory?

Eating Out of Control

People who consider themselves food addicted describe their symptoms: uncontrollable cravings for food (usually sweets and rich foods); bingeing or eating huge amounts of food at a time (usually forbidden food); obsession and preoccupation with food; fantasizing about food and eating; feeling "high" during or after food binges; depression and/or irritability during binges or periods of abstinence; terrible guilt about eating; inability to control eating once it gets started; inability to stay away from "bad" food; serious physical, emotional and social consequences of overeating. Doesn't this sound like "foodaholism"? Indeed it does, but it isn't. It just sounds like it.

There are physical reasons for these symptoms, which, by the way, are reported to some degree by most dieters. People who have these symptoms are no more food addicted than people who don't. The main difference between the two groups is this: people with these symptoms are trying to avoid eating a good part of the time and those without symptoms are eating. What's behind these so- called food-addiction symptoms will be discussed at length in Chapter 3.

Self-Check: What Have You Been Taught?

Check off any question that applies to you.

• Have you been told that your eating problems are about your dysfunctional family?

• Did anyone ever suggest that your mother's using food as a reward when you were a child caused your compulsive eating?

• Have you been "helped to discover" what purpose your extra fat plays in protecting you from something bad that happened in your past?

• Was it ever pointed out to you that your eating behavior is connected to your sexual hang-ups?

• Were you ever told that your overeating is about your fear of men? Of women? Of sex?

• Have you sought help for your disturbed eating patterns from a therapist and learned all sorts of interesting psycho-emotional reasons for your disorder, such as every problem you ever had?

• Have you tried any spiritual remedies, such as prayer or meditation, for your eating problems?

• Have you been labeled a food addict, a foodaholic, a compulsive overeater, a glutton? Other words?

Has any of this helped you get your eating back to normal?

I didn't think so. It's been my experience that most people afflicted with eating struggles have psychological problems, and sometimes serious ones. And virtually all, I have observed, suffer emotional and mental consequences of their bizarre eating patterns. One universally cited symptom associated with eating disorders is anxiety — about food, about eating, about weight gain. That certainly is a predominant psychological feature. But are rational fears really symptoms? And is it abnormal for overly hungry people to have emotional distress over food?

Copyright © 1995 by Jean Antonello

About the Author

Jean Antonello, R.N., B.S.N., an obesity, eating disorders, and co-dependence specialist, is the director of the Naturally Thin Training Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, and is the author of How to Become Naturally Thin by Eating More. She lives in St. Paul.