MSI Press Blog

  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

  THIS EXCERPT FROM THE OPTIMISTIC FOOD ADDICT SEEMS APPROPRIATE FOR WHAT MANY PEOPLE ARE EXPERIENCING FROM THE "QUARANTINE FIFTEEN" COUNTRY-WIDE AVERAGE POUNDS GAINED OVER THE PAST YEAR.              For a good half an hour before falling asleep, I would try to force my mind to coerce my body to burn itself alive. I hated my fat so much that I would imagine it sizzling like bacon in a skillet, dripping like hot wax off my bones and into the ether. I was determined to will my fat to melt away.              The next morning I would wake up, disappointed to find my thighs and ass still too big to fit comfortably in my third-hand Jordache jeans. And later that night, I’d lay prone in my bed, visually imagining my flesh liquefying in my skin once again.              This dour wishful thinking would go on night after night from the time I was 11 until well into my 20s. And yet many people asked me, nearly as often as I asked myself, if being fat bothered me so much, why couldn’

The following excerpt comes from Dr. Fisanick's book, The Optimistic Food Addict (Chapter 6):               The roads were thick with ice the night I told my parents I was pregnant. My boyfriend and I broke the news to my mother first, as we sat on that old, gold couch in the living room, waiting for my dad to get home from the midnight shift.               My mother, who had been a teen mother herself, was disappointed, probably because she knew the hard road ahead of me. She wanted me out, and she was sure my dad would feel the same.               I had just turned seventeen and was in my senior year of high school. I was an underachieving Honors student. I stopped caring about school the day I met my neighbor’s blond haired, blue-eyed best friend. And there I sat next to him, five months pregnant with his child.               The trailer where I grew up was cold that night, like always. The lack of insulation and ancient oil furnace meant frozen pipes and the necessit

Too much holiday food? Gained some weight? Need to move on from overeating in general? New Year's Resolution weighing you down?  Take some advice from Christina Fisanick, author of The Optimistic Food Addict? Ending the Tyranny of Day One:  Stop Starting Over and Start Living Your Life in Recovery by Christina Fisanick “I will start day one again on Monday.”  “I blew it! It’s back to day one tomorrow.”  “I am ready to get back to eating healthy. Day one starts today!” I hear those words often in recovery circles, especially at this time of year when overeating during the holidays and then dieting in the new year are the “norm.” Even people without disordered eating struggle with guilt for eating too many high calories foods and abandoning their exercise routines. However, for people who suffer from an eating disorder (and people for whom dieting is a way of life) continuously starting over and over and over again can actually hamper recovery and overall heal