Food Junkies: The Truth About Food Addiction

Are you one of those people who thinks food addiction isn’t real? Then you might be what Dr. Vera Tarman describes in her new book as a Food Junkie! I was addicted to sugar and other processed carbohydrates over a decade ago and found my way back to health and recovery thanks to some basic lifestyle changes that made me whole again. Dr. Tarman walks you through all the necessary steps to make that happen for you too. Addiction is real, but it’s not inevitable. Grab back control of your health NOW!

— Jimmy Moore, author of Cholesterol Clarity and Keto Clarity and creator of the Livin’ Vida Low-Carb blog: www.livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog

For all those who have struggled with weight loss and failed, here is a wise book that applies the addiction model to food. Tarman tackles the neurobiology of pleasure and the epidemic of obesity and makes sense of both. With a no-nonsense approach, Tarman offers a thoughtful, groundbreaking exploration of a subject that plagues the majority of readers.

— Ann Dowsett Johnston, author of the bestselling Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol

To Cathy,

my beloved partner.

—Vera

To all food addicts, especially those in recovery, their families, friends, and health professionals.

—Phil

Chapter

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Endnotes

Bibliography

preface

When it comes to food addiction, neither my colleague, Phil Werdell, nor I can be objective. We have both struggled with this disease for decades, so, although our purpose is to present a fact-based examination of food addiction, we can hardly be neutral.

We have struggled to control our addiction through diet pills, diet doctors, and even diet candy.[1] We have spent thousands of dollars on Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig, therapists and psychiatrists, weight-loss vitamins and herbs. We have ingested diuretics, laxatives, and other substances to purge ourselves of extra food. We have exercised hours each day, so obsessively that we eliminated the rest and relaxation most people enjoy on weekends and vacations.

Our eating has been out of control; we’ve often ingested enough calories in an hour to fuel a two-hundred-pound male for days. We have repeatedly tried, and failed, to tame our appetites. We have enlisted people — friends, family, even professionals — to help us by shaming, blaming, bribing, nagging, cajoling, ignoring, encouraging, comforting, and punishing.

So, we realized we could not be dispassionate about the contents of this book. We are on a mission to present vital information to the many individuals who struggle with unwanted eating behaviours. We want to give readers a better understanding of the continuum that begins with food compulsions and ends with full-blown addiction.

For years, food addicts of all types — including Phil and I — have been trying to talk about this phenomenon. All too often, though, our disclosures were met with light-hearted dismissals (Oh, everyone eats a little too much sometimes) or blunt skepticism (It’s not a disease, you know; you just eat too much). Now that obesity, one of the hallmark symptoms of food addiction, has grown to epidemic proportions, scientists and medical professionals are no longer laughing. Instead, they are taking a closer look at what is really going on in the bodies and brains of those of us who struggle with our food intake. In Food Junkies, we will present this information about the addictive nature of food in a format that can be understood by patients, clinicians, and, most importantly, the general public. We will introduce you to people who are struggling with this disease and hear the stories — the tragedies and the victories — that have been for so long silenced, scoffed, scorned.

We don’t want the book to be drily academic, the sort written by experts dispensing prescriptive advice. Though you will find helpful information in the book, much of it drawn from authoritative studies, the book also contains very personal stories, moving accounts full of feeling and struggle. Given our histories as food addicts, as well as educators in the addiction field, we are both well situated to present this information in an authentic, accessible way. As yet, there have been no books like ours, written by authors who have both experienced food addiction and its recovery and who are also equipped to speak from the authoritative stance of clinicians in the field.

In this book you will meet men and women suffering from food compulsions and addictions as well as those who have recovered. You will also meet people who are not addicted to food but have a tendency to overeat. Although their names have been changed, they are all real people we have met in our practices. You will meet Mary, who made a decision to lose weight when her scale indicated that she weighed more than two hundred pounds. She has managed to keep her weight off for many years. And you’ll meet Janet, who insists that her lack of willpower is her real problem; she has lost weight and kept it off, but she is only able to do so as long as she sticks to her diet. And you’ll also meet Ellen, who, despite great willpower, simply cannot control her bingeing at night. She worries that she might be a food addict.

You will also be introduced to Laura, who is addicted to alcohol as well as food. While she no longer drinks, she simply cannot stop eating. As badly as she wants to stop, her cravings for food are even stronger than her cravings for alcohol. You’ll learn about Lawrence, a morbidly obese food addict, whose death marks the inevitable conclusion of this disease when left untreated. And you’ll meet Ruthann, whose primary addiction is to undereating. Yes, we believe that even anorexics suffer from a kind of food addiction. Ruthann learns to control her anorexia by applying to her undereating patterns the same approaches we present for food addicts who overeat.

We have interviewed clinicians who have stepped outside the box, experimenting with treatment approaches for eating disorders. Among them, you will meet Ester Helga Gudmundsdottir, who runs a successful outpatient clinic serving more than eighty food addicts in Iceland. Another specialist is Renae Norton, who has treated hundreds of anorexics and bulimics and has concluded that both groups achieved recovery only when they abstained from all drugs, alcohol, and specific trigger foods. (If they didn’t, she found, her clients would eventually relapse, with each relapse harder to recover from.)

Finally, you will meet people who have found effective solutions for themselves. Martha, for example, has stopped eating sugar and flour and weighs and measures her food down to the last ounce. Despite inquiring looks from others, she brings a scale to every restaurant meal. Once one hundred pounds overweight, she has kept the extra weight off for more than twenty years. More important, Martha has finally found a level of contentment with her eating. She provides a message of hope that freedom from food cravings is possible. For Martha, this freedom is so delicious that it overrides any pleasure that the food might have given.

Our message is simple: if you see yourself as a food addict you must treat your trigger foods as a drug. The most successful treatment for any drug addiction, from alcohol to drugs to food, is abstinence from the trigger substance. Our addicted brain — whether it is so for genetic, psychological, or even environmental reasons — is wired to crave more as soon as even the smallest amount has entered our system. Like a flame igniting kindling, trigger foods ignite a fiery and voracious appetite that makes us want to eat, eat, eat.

While our message may be simple, it’s not an easy one. The message of abstinence from a drug of choice is a hard one to hear, especially since so many otherwise excellent diet programs give conflicting messages. The first phase of most diets is often very restrictive: no sugar, starches … but the dieter is promised that in the second and third phases she will be able to eat all her desired foods, only in smaller portions. We shake our heads at this advice. If a particular food is your drug, any portion, large or small, will ignite insatiable cravings. In this book, we will explain the physiology of this reaction so that you understand the critical importance of abstinence.

There is good news. Abstaining from problematic foods does not have to be a hardship. Instead, you will experience a freedom from obsession as well as all the negative consequences of addiction. If you think you really are addicted to food, you may never have felt this freedom. That’s why Phil and I invite you to take the first step: keep an open mind and read this book. Overcome food addiction now and discover that freedom really does taste great.

this book, bite size

OUR MESSAGE TO YOU

Christine’s Story

November clouds began to drop the first snow of the season as I tossed my book bag over my shoulder and started to walk. I was not happy about the half hour it would take to get home from school, where I was a sophomore. To distract myself, I looked up and caught a snowflake on my tongue.

Tastes pretty good, I thought to myself, like a snow cone without the syrup. As I walked, I began to think more about snow cones — lime, cherry, raspberry, grape.

I knew I should not go down this path. I knew that thinking about snow cones, or anything edible, was dangerous for someone carrying thirty extra pounds, especially since I had just started another new diet. I knew from experience that one fleeting image of a cheap carnival confection could be my undoing. I told myself that today would be different, that I would be stronger than the food.

Before I was halfway home, I knew it was hopeless. I had gone from thinking about snow cones to thinking about ice cream with Oreo cookies in it. I started walking faster, so I could raid the refrigerator and the cabinets before my roommates returned.

I started with the M&Ms, stuffing a handful in my mouth, barely chewing them before I swallowed. After scarfing down the rest of the bag, I opened the freezer and grabbed a virgin gallon of vanilla ice cream. It was gone in minutes. Next came the toast with butter and jam, followed by potato chips, salted peanuts with lemonade, peanut butter from the jar, slices of American cheese, a bag of Nestlé’s chocolate chips meant for baking.… I didn’t stop until I hit oblivion.

My friend and collaborator, Phil Werdell, talks openly about his own struggle with food. Here’s his story:

My grandmother died of a massive heart attack at age fifty-two. I can’t prove it, but I have come to believe that she really died from untreated food addiction. Of course, my grandmother didn’t think of herself that way, nor did her doctor. No one in the medical professional did at that time.

Three decades later, I, like my grandmother, was having trouble with my weight. I kept losing it then immediately putting it back on. One day, after a long day of working too long and a long night of eating too much, I had a heart attack myself. It did not even occur to me that I, my grandmother, or anyone else could become chemically dependent on food.

My food addiction had to get worse before I could address it. A few years later, I had another brush with death that scared me even more. I was sure it was caused by overeating a specific food (wheat), but no matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did, I couldn’t stop eating that food for even one day. I felt demoralized and hopeless.

When I shared my experience with a friend who happened to be a recovered alcoholic, he surprised me by telling me, Phil, you eat like I used to drink.

Those words changed my life.

When an office worker sheepishly polishes off the last cookie from the plate, or a poker player grabs the last slice of pizza from the oversized box, they are not necessarily showing signs that they are addicted to food. There is a difference between simply enjoying food, even to the point of overeating, and having a food addiction. Our brains are wired to enjoy food; it is a primal survival mechanism. We enjoy foods that are high in fat and sugar, because we relate to the immediate energy they provide. Centuries ago, facing a potential famine, these energy dense junk foods might ensure our survival.

In this book I will explore the science behind the dynamic of food’s enticing, mood-altering effects. I will look at why we find food so enjoyable. At the level of the emotional brain, eating — as well as other activities that encourage survival, such as sex, social interaction, and exercise — are all reduced to the same pool of neurochemicals in our brains. These organic molecules, such as dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins (with dopamine as the key carrier), travel specific neural pathways to influence our moods. They give feelings of safety, comfort, and joy.

Food addiction results when the enjoyment of food has become so euphoric that it dominates our natural impulse to stop when we are full, when the pleasure of eating should be diminished. If the pleasure continues beyond our natural satiation point, something has gone wrong in the hormonal and neurochemical complex that governs our behaviour. Eating with abandon is a biological imperative gone awry. In Food Junkies: The Truth About Food Addiction, I will explore how this occurs by looking at the mechanics of this frustrating and all-too-common phenomenon.

Today, abnormal eating habits have become a focus of interest, especially in light of the obesity epidemic affecting much of the developed world. Many attempts to understand this phenomenon have been made, principally by dieticians, nutritionists, and eating disorder clinics. Self-help books on how to take off weight are as plentiful as cookbooks. Many experts offer solutions on how to solve our problems with food. Yet no solution has successfully worked over the long term.

Both Phil Werdell and I believe that by applying the principles of addiction to our destructive eating patterns, we have found the missing piece of the puzzle. We wish to explore the addictive impulse that morphs the normal pleasure of food into what is, for some people, an insatiable and relentless desire. Hot, buttered popcorn becomes a means to settle anxiety; a quart of butterscotch ice cream numbs emotions; a rich chocolate cake provides a burst of euphoria. Food becomes a drug.

Using emerging scientific techniques such as genetic testing, neuroimaging, and neurochemical alterations, we are finally able to see that some foods have the same qualities as commonly abused drugs. Sugar, for example, shares the same neurochemistry and neural pathways as cocaine. Sweetened chocolate mimics the effects of alcohol and opiates. Flour modulates moods and anaesthetizes pain just as many drugs do.

Genetic research now suggests that people can be predisposed to becoming alcoholics or drug addicts. This research has found that the same dopamine D2 receptor alterations that are common amongst these subgroups are also found in the obese. Demographic data shows shared familial patterns between alcoholism and obesity. There is also strong demographic evidence indicating that bulimics are more likely than the general population to become alcoholics. In our clinical practices, we have frequently found that alcoholics are more likely to become bulimics once they have stopped drinking.

In a groundbreaking study in the June 2012 issue of the reputable Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA), researchers report that of the 1,900 bariatric surgery patients surveyed, alcohol abuse increased significantly in the second year after gastric bypass surgery. Sixty per cent of these patients insisted that they did not have problems with drinking before the surgery.[1] We have concluded that both conditions, the drinking and the overeating, can be interpreted as different indications of the same addiction. When the person is no longer able to overeat, he or she turns to another means to find intoxication.

As recovering food addicts ourselves, Phil and I are both well aware of the daunting physiological force that drives some of us to eat compulsively. We will use our own personal stories as well as numerous stories from our practices to put a human face on the current research about food addiction; we will also discuss the solutions that are typically attempted and, finally, our solution.

However, we are more than recovering food addicts. We are also clinicians on the front lines of this baffling and unrecognized condition. I have been an addictions physician for more than twenty years; Phil Werdell has been a long-time counsellor, writer and educator in the field of food addiction. Together we have worked with thousands of people who have struggled with food. We have seen many failed attempts to regain control of normal eating, but we have also witnessed a number of remarkable recoveries. We wish to share this information so that you can better understand the complexities of out-of-control eating.

We believe a paradigm shift is in order. Society needs to recognize that people who struggle with abnormal eating behaviours may be struggling with the same demons as the alcoholic or drug addict. Some may be potential food addicts, in the early phase of battling urges that only occasionally erupt and lead to a binge. Others could be driven by the compulsion to eat, even after hours upon hours of eating and purging have left their tongue and throat raw. What they all have in common is an inability to tame an overpowering impulse to eat, which is magnified by the potency of some particular foods.

You might wonder whether a paradigm shift is necessary. Do we need to take the extreme stand of calling this struggle an addiction when that is not a label most people are inclined to favourably accept. Doesn’t overeating alone carry enough shame, with its implications of gluttony and greed? Even foodies, who know that they like food more than the next person — who will say they love apple crumble or couldn’t give up their bread — will deny they have an addiction.

Most people will acknowledge that problems around eating and food exist, and some may even be willing to confess to their own deviant relationship to food. To the extent that it’s now more acceptable to speak out about these disturbing inner demons, we can thank celebrities.

Karen Carpenter was a pop singer with a devoted following in the 1970s. In 1983, the public was stunned when she unexpectedly died of heart failure caused by complications relating to anorexia. Until this time, most people hadn’t heard of eating disorders. In her memoir, Gilda Radner wrote of her experience with ovarian cancer and how she struggled with bulimia throughout her comedy career. Radner was a much-loved comic and, despite her disclosure, her fans continued to adore her.

Actress Kirstie Alley has also lived a cycle of weight loss and gain. In 2008, she had lost about one hundred pounds using the Jenny Craig diet, then gained it back, then lost it again in 2011 using another program: Organic Liaison. Again her weight has returned. This pattern of weight fluctuations has been attributed to a binge-eating disorder. She has been quite candid about her struggles, even chronicling her regime in her reality show: Kirstie Alley’s Big Life.

What she said in December 2013, as a sixty-two-year-old woman, indicates her understanding of her condition to date:

I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted in huge quantities, but that all changed about the time I turned fifty-three. What works for me now is to eat 90 percent organic. Most days I eat no sugar and very little dairy. If I work out hard for an hour a day, that keeps my metabolism boosted and I can eat more. When I’m filming the show, I don’t always have the opportunity to exercise, but I’d always rather eat more calories and work out harder. That to me is a winning combination.

In the early nineties, when biographies of Princess Diana were published reporting on her eating disorder, it opened the door for many to admit to their own bulimic tendencies. Unfortunately, the explanation that Phil Werdell and I put forward — addiction — carries with it an air of disrepute that adds to the shame already cloaking these kinds of eating issues. It introduces an unwelcome dimension into our everyday lives. Even Oprah Winfrey, who openly admits to a past history of crack abuse, has not declared herself a food addict who has merely shifted her focus from crack to food. Instead, she has positioned herself as the everywoman who struggles with her weight by regulating her eating behaviours through diets, personal coaches, and affirmations. Her previous relationship with addiction is in the past, a tasty bit of gossip hidden in her memoir, while she publicly provides her own year-by-year account of her food and weight issues on network television.

Oprah’s weight has fluctuated quite dramatically, from 237 pounds in 1992 to 160 pounds in the early 2000s. She has attributed the fluctuations to a thyroid condition and depression, and her success in losing weight to various diets (among them Weight Watchers) as well as personal coaches. She has talked in the past about her relationship with food:

As far as my daily food choices go, I’m not on any particular program. I’ve gone back to the commonsense basics we all know: eating less sugar and fewer refined carbs and more fresh, whole foods like fish, spinach, and fruit. But in order not to abuse food, I have to stay fully conscious and aware of every bite, of taking time and chewing slowly. I have to focus on being fully alive, awake, present, and engaged, connected in every area of my life.…

What I’ve learned this year is that my weight issue isn’t about eating less or working out harder or even about a malfunctioning thyroid. It’s about my life being out of balance, with too much work and not enough play, not enough time to calm down. I let the well run dry.

Here’s another thing this past year has been trying to teach me: I don’t have a weight problem, I have a self-care problem that manifests itself through weight. As my friend Marianne Williamson shared with me, Your overweight self doesn’t stand before you craving food. She’s craving love. Falling off the wagon isn’t a weight issue; it’s a love issue.

When I stop and ask myself, What am I really hungry for? the answer is always, I’m hungry for balance, I’m hungry to do something other than work.… If you look at your overscheduled routine and realize, like I did, that you’re just going and going and that your work and obligations have become a substitute for life, then you have no one else to blame. Only you can take the reins back.

Gradually, discussing the gritty details of problem eating has become more acceptable and today it’s almost commonplace. These dark forces from within have finally been named in medical circles, labelled bulimia, binge-eating disorder, or compulsive overeating.

Alas, food addiction has never achieved a place in the medical canon. It is odd: Why has behaviour that is compulsive, impulsive, often self-destructive, and even called an addiction in the popular press not been flagged as addictive in the respectable corridors of modern medicine? We believe that this obvious interpretation has been largely rejected for an alternative diagnosis, one that identifies most eating irregularities as primarily some version of an eating disorder.

Indeed, this new diagnosis has emerged with an industry surrounding it. Research, medication, and freshly trained clinicians have appeared to help treat what has been labelled under the rubric of eating disorders. While critics in the alternative health communities have demonized particular foods, the focus of medical science has been to look at the pathology of the individual, the behaviour of eating, rather than the addictive content of the food itself.

That’s why we believe that recognizing certain foods and eating behaviours as true addictions is essential. It points to new solutions at a time when the results of the standard ones, such as specialized diets and exercise, have been discouraging. Far too many people, for example, have found that their resolution to diet in the morning dissolves by the end of the day. Even if a diet is successful, most are impossible to maintain beyond a few weeks. The exercise industry is a highly profitable business premised on the illusion that increasing physical expenditure can neutralize bad eating habits. Exercise has tremendous value for physical and mental well-being, but personal trainers are the first to warn overeaters that exercise has minimal efficacy on weight control. Therapy, medications, and surgery also have limited success. Clinicians are puzzled why treatments that work so well in the short term do not, in the majority of cases, result in long-term weight loss or mental stability.

Within the proposed paradigm shift is a solution that works. As with any true addiction, the key is identifying the drug that creates or intensifies the desire. Once it’s identified, abstain from it. If taking even the smallest amount of the offending substance creates a desire to have more and more and more — what addicts call the "phenomenon