To the outside world I had it all. A wonderful husband, beautiful children and a life that many would dream of. But I carried one terrible secret. My overwhelming obsession with food, and my complete inability to stop it. If people have strength to overcome such challenging adversities, why couldn’t I just stop eating?

Without any warning, without any reason, I found myself in eating binges. I would tear through food in just a matter of moments and not be able to stop it. As though a switch had been flicked, and once it was on I felt helpless to turn it off.

Outside of the rational fears of safety and health; food was the fear in my life. I was afraid of having “one”. One cookie led to a box. One chip led to the whole bag. One bite of something good and junky led to a loss of control. It was private and shameful. I was living the life I had always dreamed of with a secret that stole me from life.

You’re imagining I was quite overweight. I wasn’t. And I painted a perfect picture so no one could see inside. If you had met me you would have seen someone who was fun, upbeat and warm. People marveled at my self discipline and my willpower to stay in shape. What I saw in the mirror was not what they saw. I only saw imperfections.

I thought I was weak. I thought I just needed the right diet. I combed through books and magazines or asked people how they did it. In my mind I had ten pounds to lose but it may as well been a hundred. The bingeing sabotaged every effort and I couldn’t break the cycle. Deprive myself of food I liked in an effort to lose the weight. Binge on masses of food, then exercise to cancel it out, and spend a couple of days not eating.

I wondered why no one else had this. How could people stay away from food, when it was the very best part of the day? Forget success, wealth or achievements; to me they were overrated. If someone was thin, well they had everything. What would it be like to get into bed and sleep in a skinny body? Why did I poison my chance to be thin and sabotage this goal?

Finally I made a call. I told my doctor I thought I had an eating disorder. That phone call changed my life. He led me to a wonderful therapist to whom I confessed my problems with food. It’s not about the food, she said, there is something else going on. Oh no, there’s nothing, I told her, I just really love to eat. To give you an idea of where I was at, here’s a dialogue that could have taken place:



Q: What’s your idea of a wonderful evening?

A: Eating as much as I want



Q: What excites you, what do you look forward to, what’s the best part of your day?

A: The part where I get to eat.



Q: If you could name any accomplishment, something you could do and be proud of, what do you think it would be?

A: To be thin



I wondered how anyone could be so pathetic. My shame equaled my disbelief and I still couldn’t manage to stop it. I would eventually learn in my therapy that my “perfect” life was not perfect. It wasn’t that I couldn’t stop eating. It was that I couldn’t stop feeling. There were issues going on in my life and my marriage and none were being handled upfront. My binges were really my screams.

It was the hardest work I’ve ever done. It felt like blind stabs in the dark, but I opened my life wide open. I began looking into my past and examining my present. I looked at my marriage, my family, friends and situations. Any plan, event, discussion or activity would have to be dissected. Food was my guide. Anytime I felt out of control I knew this was a place to look.

Sound exhausting? It was. It was also fascinating. I was able to finally see there were things I was saying yes to that I had never wanted to do. There were things I was saying no to that I really needed to have. There were things I wasn’t accepting and the fight was doing me in. My world was open to choices now in a way it never had been. My inner self was emerging.

When I took that energy away from food and directed it into my life, I was amazed at what I produced. I understand what the bingeing was now. It was all of my potential and all of my feelings, banging to find its way out. Like a genie poured from a bottle that had been corked for so many years. What has come out has been truly magical.

I recently wrote a book called “It Was Food vs. Me and I Won”. I have a mission to rescue genies. I want to help others to release that cork that holds their potential inside. I truly believe that food obsessors are gifted people, with amazing capabilities. They need to learn, just as I did, to stop fighting food, stop fighting feelings, and live true to themselves.

My relationship with food today is completely comfortable. I can eat just “one”. I eat whatever I want and I feel safe with any choice. Extra weight dropped off, since extra food was no longer needed. Food can’t hurt me anymore. But people and emotions can. Now I have to deal with that, and man is that ever tough! But finally I am free.