Excerpt from The Optimistic Food Addict (Fisanick): Dancing with the Dragon
Binge eating and overeating can be a problem for almost anyone over the holidays. Author Dr. Christina Fisanick Greer knows all about unhealthy relationships with food. Her book, The Optimistic Food Addict, brings insight and support for those suffering from binge eating disorder but also for anyone who at times eats too much
Chapter Eighteen: Dancing with the Dragon
The fever
started the day after Christmas, and by December 28, I was out of commission
entirely—struck down by the flu. I could barely sleep, but that’s all I wanted
to do. My throat hurt, my head hurt, my back hurt. My entire body was alive
with peculiar aches and painful spasms.
By the time I started feeling
somewhat functional, I still had no appetite and, worse yet, no sense of smell
or taste. This predicament gave me a good opportunity to put to rest a
curiosity that had plagued me for decades: what role does taste and smell play
in bingeing?
We
know from recent research and self-admissions that companies engineer foods
that make it impossible “to eat just one.” Given the purposeful nature of hyper-palatable
foods to make us crave more and more, what happens when taste and smell are no
longer in play? Of course, our sensory experience of food involves texture,
visual appearance, and even sound (recall the crunch of a pretzel or the snap
of a Slim Jim), but most food addicts I know have immediate reactions to
trigger foods once they hit their tongues.
There’s a saying in recovery
circles: Alcoholics and drug addicts keep their dragons (addictive substances)
in cages, while food addicts walk their dragons three times per day. Well, for
the sake of my one burning question, and at the risk of derailing my recovery,
I decided to dance with the dragon.
I
planned my experiment for New Year’s Eve. Still not hungry from being ill, I
chose my mother’s Christmas cookies as my test. They were rich butter cookies
piled high with too-sweet cream cheese frosting. My mother made these cookies
for the first time that year, so I did not have a nostalgic relationship with
them as I do with some of my trigger foods, like mashed potatoes, pancakes, and
bananas.
To begin my experiment, I
placed two cookies on a plate. They were heart-shaped and decorated with stiff,
white icing. I sniffed them. I could smell nothing. I sat down in my chair to
finishing watching It’s a Wonderful Life
for the fifth time that season, and I took a small bite of the first cookie. It
had absolutely no flavor. The shock of the cookies that I had expected never
came, but given I hadn’t eaten that much that day, or really for much of the
week, I figured I would finish both cookies and go off to bed.
But
that’s not what happened. Despite the fact that the cookies had no flavor
whatsoever, I ended up going back into the kitchen again and again, eating six
cookies total. Once her cookies were gone, I ate a sleeve of Oreos. Although my
stomach physically hurt from eating too much, an hour after my experiment
began, I found myself standing in front of the microwave waiting for three
slices of my homemade lasagna to heat. I was in full-on binge mode.
I woke up the next morning hungry, but
not ravenous. I gave myself permission to eat whatever I liked, but I chose to
eat healthy, abstinent foods. My senses of taste and smell had mostly returned,
but I just wanted miso soup instead of noodle soup and grapefruit over
Hershey’s kisses.
I was bewildered, and even more so
once I made my way to the grocery store for the fist time in days. Once there,
I gave myself direct, unimpeachable permission to buy whatever I wanted,
including my most favorite of all binge foods—two chocolate cookie sandwiches
with butter cream frosting in the middle. I must have eaten those cookie
sandwiches a dozen times right in my car. I could never get out of the parking
lot without gobbling them both down. As I passed the bakery case I could smell
the cakes and breads baking, and to my great surprise, instead of feeling
tempted, I felt repulsed. I spotted my former go-to-binge food and felt sick.
As I tried to recall the way they tasted, I shuddered like I had swallowed
something revolting and walked on.
Not long ago, I would have been
kicking myself over not taking the opportunity to eat those cookie sandwiches,
but at this point, I have no attachment to that decision. For once, the cookies
have become what they are—cookies.
Of course, I don’t recommend that anyone
with an eating disorder attempt such an experiment. My therapist was both
genuinely curious and sincerely annoyed at the risk I took that night, but I’m
glad I did it. Now I know that taste and smell are not the only binge triggers.
Clearly something happens in my brain when I ingest sugars and flours.
Read other posts on binge eating and the holidays HERE,
Read other posts by and about Dr. Fisanick HERE.
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