Similarities between my addiction to food and drug addiction

David and Nic Sheff

Last week, I started reading David Sheff's book A Beautiful Boy, and his son Nic's book, We All Fall Down. I tried reading both of them at the same time, meaning, read a chapter of David's book, then a chapter of Nic's. But for some reason, I didn't want to read Nic's book. I told myself that the reason was that David's book was well researched and beautifully written. I come from the same generation, and I'm accustomed to reading the concise, descriptive style of writing the elder Sheff displays in his book. The more in-your-face, raw style of his son was jarring to me, or that's what I told myself. My first reactions to books and life situations aren't what they seem at the time. There's often something rumbling underneath the surface of my initial reaction. Usually, it's something I don't want to face.

I wish I could say that since David Sheff is from my generation and a journalist that I identified more with his story. I admire his writing and his dedication to setting the stage, providing the research that is necessary for understanding the most complex pressing social and health issue facing this country right now. And, for the sake of pride (which, as we all know, cometh before the fall), I would like to say that I belong to his group of esteemed journalists. But that would be a lie. My food addiction and extremely low self-esteem obliterated  every dream I ever had of working for a major newspaper or magazine when I was younger. And, he managed to earn a living doing what he obviously loves. That would be another no for me, for the reasons stated previously. And, if that isn't enough, he lives in Marin County (California) with his wife and two children, who are Nic's step-siblings. Yes, Marin County. I don't know if I would have lived there, but if I had pursued my journalism career to the best of my ability, I probably wouldn't have lived in the high crime, low income places as consistently as I had over the past 25+ years. And I probably wouldn't be broke now. However, I still would have been an addict, so my long term effectiveness in the career of my choice would have been questionable.

Even though I am 55 years old, have been married and divorced, raised three children as a single parent and now have a grandson, I realized that I had much more in common with twenty-something Nic than his father. The reason is simple:  even though David Sheff was going out of his mind with worry and doing everything he could to help his son, he doesn't appear to have the same kind of problems with addictions that his son and I have. He's human, that's for sure, and he made plenty of mistakes. But when he discovered that his son was most definitely an addict, he approached the problem in a way that most addicts wouldn't...he gathered up all the information that he possibly could, and he asked for help. Would an addict do that? Absolutely not. No matter what the particular substance or behavior any addict is into, we all share some pretty basic characteristics: denial and a lifelong membership in the I-can-take-care-of-this-myself-so-leave-me-alone club. To sum it up, addicts are people who desperately need help, but they won't get it until some catastrophe, life or mental health-threatening situation happens to them and they have to say, "All right; I give up. Help me."

And sometimes even that doesn't work. I can tell you all about that. I've been in relapse. And, I think, so can Nic Sheff. He has relapsed countless times. Here's a few quotes from his book that echo my thoughts and feelings about myself, addiction and recovery a little too much: 

Page 20, paragraph 8: "Writing my book--finishing it--getting it published--that's like the one thing I have to hold on to. I mean, really, since I was, like, six years old (age four for me, and I was frustrated because I didn't know how to write the alphabet yet), my dream has been to get a book published." Nic's treatment center counselor tells him to stop trying to write and talking about writing and publishing with other clients in treatment. I remember telling sponsors that writing was the only thing I do well, and it's only thing that keeps me sane during recovery. I had a lot to learn.

On top of page 139 is the ubiquitous "your addict is in control" speech. Unlike Nic, I never said anything whenever a sponsor or another recovery fellow ran that one down for me. But inside, I was fuming. I have to give Nic kudos, at least he voiced his discontent to his treatment counselor: "I can't talk about having doubts or anything? I mean, I'm telling you, I'm genuinely freaked about this whole thing. Should I just, like pretend I'm not feeling this stuff?" I always said, "Yeah, you're right." And I still did whatever I wanted to do anyway.

I also heard, "you are not unique, you just you think you are." That really pissed me off. I don't know if it's right, but at times like that, I automatically switch into "children should be seen, not heard" mode and clam up so tight that minutes of silence goes by. What I was thinking was, "Bitch, how do you know what I think? You don't know me!" I don't think saying that to a sponsor is appropriate, however. I guess those "I" ("I feel really angry right now.") statements is better than popping off with a smart-ass remark, which I never did because my mother drilled it into my brain to "be respectful" aka, shut-up-when-folks-who-know-more-than-you-do-are-talking. Hence, the silence. Actually, at the behest of some of my recovery fellows, I did try one of those "I" statement things about how I felt on a sponsor. Her response was, "So? Feelings come and go. They don't matter. What matters in recovery is taking the next right action."  All right? Recovery folks say "take the next right action" a LOT. But what does that MEAN, exactly? I need some definitions for these terms, something I can understand and hang onto. After all, I know I am a low-bottom, gutter level food ADDICT. But what I don't know is how to "do life" without flour, sugar, and excess portions of food.  The problem was, when I did ask, I didn't like the response: "Pray. Make phone calls. Read the Big Book. Write, not your kind of writing (as if "my kind of writing" had the cooties), but recovery writing." Well. That's not a whole helluva a lot of fun now, is it?

On page 177, first paragraph, Nic writes, "As much as I try to just be like everyone else, I always end up leaving feeling hollowed out, fucking gutted--like I need a drink--like I must be some entirely different species from the rest of humanity. I swear, sometimes I really do wonder if I'd be better suited as a hermit living off in a cabin somewhere--away from all people and pressures and judgements and responsibilities."

Yeah. Of course, I would rather have a deep dish pizza with garlic breadsticks or some fried chicken with greens and super-buttery cornbread (even though this kind of food would make me do the "vomitus projectus" thing because of my gastric bypass surgery), but other than being addicted to a different substance, I relate to Nic's sentiments about being better off living in a cabin somewhere 100%. In fact, whenever I read about people being locked in solitary confinement, I would think, what's so bad about that? At least no one would be bothering me. And being like everyone else? Yeah, I've always been hopelessly inept at that. I don't know how to do it, even with people in my recovery groups. I know it's me and my messed up thought patterns, but it's difficult for me to come up with something to say. Someone approaching me and saying, "How are you, Angela?" completely freaks me out. Do I tell them what I think they want to hear or the truth? Like Nic, I've always opted for what I thought people wanted to hear. Life seems so much safer that way.

And finally, this little gem from the second paragraph on page 326: "My whole life I've been looking for the easy way out. It's like I've been wearing those little plastic water wings, pretending that I could swim but never actually taking the time to learn how. So here I am, twenty-four years old, and I can't even swim. The water wings are gone, and I'm sinking--I'm going down and I'm gonna die if i can't get someone to teach me how to swim."

At fifty five years old, I feel exactly the same way. Sad. But Nic pulled himself out. And others have, too. I'm going to have to swallow my pride and ask for help. I have to let someone throw me a life preserver instead of sinking by myself. And also like Nic, I need a lot of help, not only from my food addiction 12 step program, but also from mental health professionals. For people like me with "grave emotional and mental disorders", there has to be more than one source of help: God (of course), my 12 step fellowship (who I will have to learn how to trust), psychiatrists and therapists. After all, it is MY recovery, no one else's. For the very first time ever, I recognize that I need to do this, and to stop being ashamed of the fact that I do need extra help. Thanks, Nic, for sharing your story and helping me see myself reflected in your words.

Post. Traumatic. Stress. Disorder.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that some people develop after seeing or living through an event that caused or threatened serious harm or death. According to the 2005 National Comorbidity Survey-Replication study, PTSD affects about 7.7 million American adults in a given year, though the disorder can develop at any age, including childhood. Symptoms include strong and unwanted memories of the event, bad dreams, emotional numbness, intense guilt or worry, angry outbursts, feeling “on edge,” and avoiding thoughts and situations that are reminders of the trauma. National Institutes of Health report: PTSD

It was my oldest daughter who insisted that I show signs of the Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. I scoffed at the idea. That's what my father has, and for good reasons. He's served in both Korea and Vietnam. I really didn't see it as being an issue in my life. Besides, don't I have enough "issues" already? Recovering from food addiction, in my experience, is quite enough to have to deal with. But after many up and downs in my recovery, I finally had to concede that maybe something is going on within my mental/emotional processing that keeps causing depression, anxiety, despair and finally, the inevitable "first bite" of food that I have for years had difficulty restraining my consumption. So, I got on my computer and did the research. Unfortunately, I didn't like what I uncovered.

Since I'm a Kaiser Permanente patient (sorry, I can't link to their site; but you can go here, here or here for more information), I went to their website, read everything I could about it, and found an self-assessment form. I filled out the assessment and looked at the scoring ranges, which was:

If your score is:
0 – 16 = No symptoms of PTSD.
17 – 20 = No to minimum symptoms of PTSD.
21 – 29 = Mild symptoms of PTSD.
30 – 49 = Moderate symptoms of PTSD.
50 – 86 = Severe symptoms of PTSD.

My score? 73. Pretty solidly PTSD. Who knew? I sure didn't.

Suddenly, the memories began rushing in, and even though I was extremely upset and sad by their appearance, I felt like I had finally found the missing puzzle pieces. I'm not "constitutionally incapable of being honest with (myself) themselves" , as the book "Alcoholic Anonymous" states. Nor am I looking for the "softer, easier way" to recover from food addiction. Just because I could have PTSD doesn't mean I expect special consideration, i.e., a "pass" on eating "weighed and measure meals with nothing in between, no flour, no sugar, and no excess portions" or using the tools of the program to get from one meal to the next. It simply means, as far as I'm concerned, I get counseling that focuses on decreasing the effects PTSD has had on my life, and especially, my recovery.

But what does PTSD look like if you aren't a military veteran who has been in combat situations? I don't know about anyone else, but mine began with a military veteran--my father, who had served in Korea and Vietnam.

I was fourteen years old in in the spring of 1972, and already in the point of absolutely no return as far as food addiction goes. At that time, I weighed anywhere between 210 to 220 pounds, and I was ashamed of my body and miserably depressed about my inability to stay on diet most of the time. One day, I sitting on my bed listening to my radio, and I heard my mother saying something to my father. As usual, I ignored them and continued gazing out of my window while listening to the music. My father appeared in the bedroom doorway and told me to turn the music down. Like most teenagers, I was annoyed with that directive, but I reached over to turn down the volume. Next thing I knew, something that felt like large rock struck the right side of my face, and I went flying backwards across my bed. Stunned, I looked up and saw my father glaring at me. He pointed a right index finger in my face and snarled, "You better move faster when I tell you something to do, you hear me?" I couldn't say anything. My throat closed up and I could feel the tears dripping off my chin. He had never, ever done anything like that before, and fortunately, he never did it again.

I don't remember much of what happened after that. I know I stayed in bed crying, and I wasn't allowed to go to school until the black eye had completely healed. Maybe my mother gave me an ice pack for my eye, maybe she didn't. Maybe she came in my bedroom and tried to explain  my father's irrational explosion to me, maybe she didn't. All I know is that nothing was ever said about the incident. The message was unspoken, but clear. I was to act like it never happened and tell absolutely no one about it at school or anywhere else.  And I didn't, until I wrote this blog forty years later.

Being addicted to food is catastrophic to one's physical and mental health, but over the years, I found it to be  an excellent temporary balm to any emotional wound, including my father hitting me in a sudden fit of rage . The downside is, like drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling or shopping, it takes rapidly increasing amounts of the substance or behavior (for me, it was food like a double cheeseburgers with bacon, lettuce, tomatoes and onions, large fries and a large chocolate shake) to get that calming, drowsy relief from the mental and emotional storms that raged (and persist to this day) inside me. By the time I graduated from high school, I was stuffing down enough food to bring my weight up to 240 pounds.  When I was an English major and a supposed to be a graduating senior at California State University at Sacramento, I weighed 265 pounds. I rarely showed up for my classes, and when I did, all I could do was either think about what (and where) I was going to eat as soon as I got out or I fantasized about having a boyfriend. My once honor roll grade point average dropped to 1.85, and I was on academic probation. So I left school, went on a starvation diet that made me drop 57 pounds in four months, found a job as a newspaper writer, AND...lo and behold, a boyfriend seemed to magically pop into my life. I thought I had found the answer to all of my problems. Lose weight, get a job and a man--life is good.

As that old saying goes, history has a way of repeating itself. In my case, I didn't see the signs or recognize the familiar patterns. Like many people who grew up in alcoholic families, I had no idea that I was repeating my past, and even if I had some inkling, I would have denied it. "I never saw my father hit my mother," I would have told a person who might have suggested that I was turning into a carbon copy of my mother. And that would have been an absolutely true statement. He didn't my mother. And he only hit me once. Yeah, it was pretty harsh; my eye closed and it was red, black and blue for almost two weeks, but so what? He never did it again, and that's all that matters. It's in the past.

Well, that boyfriend became my husband (now ex) and the father of my three children. I didn't know it back then, but he had, and still has, one the most maniac types of bi-polar disorder, a heavy addiction to cocaine, marijuana, crack and sex with numerous women, and an aversion to finding and keeping suitable employment to help his growing family. Worst of all for me, he had been severely abused by an insane, autocratic step-father. No, I didn't see it coming. Repeating the past? No way! My dad not only hit me JUST that one time, but he ALWAYS worked and provided us. How could anyone say I was repeating the past? Besides, that's all over and done. I've "moved on".

During the six and one half years we were married, he slapped me numerous times, usually because I didn't respond to him "with respect", or I wasn't "paying attention" to him. It was true; I didn't respect him, or to be even more honest, like him. Pay attention to him? Please. He was a full grown adult; his "attention time" should have happened with his mother, so as far as I was concerned, his neediness was not my problem. Our children, however, were a different story. They needed to be cared for by at least one rational thinking adult. Not only that, I had a household to run with whatever money I managed to hide from him to pay the bills. He hated holding down a job (I did that most of the time), took what little money we had and spent it on drugs and all kinds of women, then expected me to be his adoring fan, no matter what he did. I found very little to respect.

(By the way, the behavior and attitude that I've described in the previous paragraph is known as "codependency". In this excerpt from the WebMD article that I've linked to, you can read what kind of codependent I was):

Still, the codependent partner often finds some type of reward in this setup. "Probably the most significant theme is a sense of control," Bochner says. "The other person plays the out-of-control person, and so the codependent partner gets to be the person who is in control and thus respected."He says the partner who is codependent can be "the better person, the smarter person, the person who's recognized as having it all together. They're defining themselves as strong enough to deal with it when actually they need to realize that maybe they should be taking care of themselves instead of proving their strength."

 I won't go into detail about the physical abuse involved in that marriage because even though it has been nearly 30 years of numbing out the pain and stuffing the memories down with food, reviewing that period of my life feels very raw. But this is what happened:

1. He became angry because I had to go to a work related event, and he wanted me to stay home and cook for him. He shoved me down on the ground, grabbed the still-hot iron that I was using to iron my clothes, and held it over my face, telling me he would burn it off unless I promised to stay home.

2. After a July 4, 1981 argument, he pinned me down in the back seat of his mother's little Datsun beater, and smashed his fist into my face repeatedly. According to the x-rays, his fist came within a millimeter of crushing my temple, the doctor in ER said. He was upset and wanted me to call the police. My parents did it for me. A few days later, I entered the hospital to have reconstructive surgery on my face.

3. After another argument, he grabbed our oldest daughter, who was about 16 months old, and our son, a one month old infant, held them over the balcony of our two floor apartment and threatened to drop them. I completely broke down to the ground, crying hysterically. He told me, "You know I wasn't going to do that. You know I would never do that." He frequently said after threatening me or the children.

4. He broke down the front door after being on the run for two months with a teen-aged girl who was a foster home resident, screamed at me about how I was "keeping him away from his kids", pulled out a very long, serrated Bowie hunting knife out of his pants pocket and tried to stab me with it. I fought him off with a closet pole.

After we split up, I numbed the pain with King Henry VIII sized portions of food, and ate my way up to 400 pounds. I'm no longer anywhere close to that weight, but I've been struggling with my recovery for almost two years now. Hopefully, with therapy and support of my 12 step friends, I will be able to "trudge the Road of Happy Destiny."

John Bradshaw - Healing The Shame That Binds You (Part 2)

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - Health Matters

Food Addiction Speaks

I received this from a friend who is also a food addict. It's a humbling reminder of what I and so many other people are dealing with.  Recently, I have been experiencing the thoughts expressed in this article (I have no idea who wrote it, but whoever it was nailed the target). This is quite frightening because I can't afford to let up on my program, especially with my health issues and history of family addictions. It's no joke. Food addiction KILLS. 

www.foodaddicts.org

Hello... just in case you forgot me....

I am your disease.....

I Hate meetings....I Hate higher powers.   I Hate anyone who has a program.  To all  who come in contact with me, I wish you death and I wish you suffering.

Allow me to introduce myself, I am the disease of addiction,.  I am cunning, baffling and powerful

Thats Me.  I have killed millions and I am pleased.

 I love to catch you with the element of surprise.  I love pretending I am your friend and lover.

I have given you comfort haven't I?  Wasn't I there when your were lonely?

When you wanted to die, didn't you call on me?  I was there.  I love to make you hurt.  I love to make you cry.  Better yet, I love to make you so numb you can neither hurt nor cry.  When you can't feel anything at all.  This is true gratification.  And all that I ask from you is long term suffering.  I've been there for you always.  When things were going right in your life, you invited me.  You said you didn't deserve these good things, and I was the only one who would agree with you;.  Together we were able to destroy all the good things in your life.  People don't take me seriously.  They take strokes seriously, heart attacks, even diabetes, they take seriously.  Fools.  Without my help these things would not be possible.  I am such a hated disease, and yet I do not come uninvited.  You choose to have me.  So many have chosen me over reality and Peace. 

More than you hate me I hate all of you who have a 12 step program.  Your program, Your meetings, Your higher power.  All of these things weaken me, and I can't function in the manner I am accustomed to.  Now I must lie here quietly.  You don't see me but I a growing bigger than ever.  When you only exist, I may live.  When you live I may only exist.  But I am here....

Now until we meet again, If we meet again, I wish you death and suffering.

Relapse sucks. Seriously.

It started real slow, real sneaky after I noticed that could "get away with" eating a "little bit of this" and a "little bit of that".  The weight was still dropping, fast.  It just kept coming off, so I thought those little bits didn't matter. But I was wrong...very, very wrong.

I'm a food addict. I need boundaries, especially with food, and moving on from there, with living my life.  But before I began a program that addressed my food addiction, I didn't know how to stop eating. Let's get real here--I'm the type of gutter-level food addict who binged so bad for a 14 hour period that I ripped a hole in my stomach lining (hernia). I didn't know that at the time, of course. I was too busy eating more food. I felt something in my stomach had stretched and popped after I had been throwing all that food up (even I have limits, apparently) for four hours, but I didn't do anything about it. It didn't even occur to me to call a doctor. I was morbidly obese, somewhere over 350 pounds at the time. I knew the drill by then--go to the doctor, hear the "lose some weight and your symptoms will disappear" speech, go home feeling lower than sh*t, open the refrigerator to get something to numb that feeling. I wasn't aware that this was the pattern I had developed over the years. It was what I did, unconsciously and automatically. If I was taking a breath, I was thinking about what I was going to eat, where I would eat it, how much money it would cost (I had contingency plans in case I didn't have enough money to eat exactly what I felt like I wanted), where I would eat it...on and on.

That has been my life, day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, from the time I got my first "hit" eating a half bottle of chewable vitamins at age 5 until...well, we'll see how I do today.  It's all about staying in today, which is something that I'm not in the habit of doing. That's all I can handle because I'm in that emotionally agonizing infernal place of knowing that I have to work my recovery program to keep alive, but hating every second of it because it leaves me emotionally vulnerable.  Like most food addicts I've talked to, I love comfort, ironically enough. I have always been very uncomfortable and revolted by the appearance of my body, even when I working my recovery diligently and I was 65 pounds thinner than I am right now. But that encompassing hatred of my body has been superseded by the irresistible need to succumb to the familiar calm and the anesthetic effect food has always had on me.

"Face your fears, get out of your comfort zone." That's what my sponsor tells me now. How do you do that when you are accustomed to reaching for some of this and that before you can answer the telephone or say hello to someone?  It freaks me out, to be honest. I was calm and in charge on food, at least that's how I felt. I clearly remember that I never felt the level of anxiety on a minute by minute basis the way I do now.  I don't know how people get through the work day without having a stash in your desks drawers, and taking vending machine breaks throughout the day. Maybe the rest of you have your own addiction problems that don't show up on your body the way mind do. A part of me wishes I did have one of those "hidden" addictions--you know, being addicted to relationships (and that's in spite of the fact that  I'm a relationship anorexic; I'll take a down home Southern food or working on my writing over a man ANY DAY), playing video games, collecting coupons, going to comic book conventions...actually, I take back collecting coupons and playing video games.  Those might not show up as pounds on the body, but I can't see myself doing them. They're way too complicated.

These are the facts: I know the food plan; I don't have to scramble around trying to figure out how to buy and fix the food the way I did when I was a newcomer. What I have do now is pray for the courage to remain abstinent from flour, sugar and excess food, call my sponsor on me, do my prayers and quiet time, call my fellow food addicts for help and write down what I'm gong to eat the next day and how I've been feeling during the day--EVERY SINGLE DAY WITHOUT FAIL, something I didn't do with any consistency in the past. It's simple enough plan for living. But it's definitely not easy. When I went on diets, I never changed my thoughts and behaviors. My recovery absolutely demands that I do both. And I have to do it, if I don't want to die  If you want to know what I'm talking about, check out my previous posts about all of my health issues here . And here. And here. Oh hell, if you don't have anything better to do right now, read this here.

Until next time, folks.

Wondering about "Half Ton Dad"

Whatever happened to Kenneth Brumley, also known as the "Half Ton Dad" on TLC/Discovery Health shockumentaries about morbidly obese people? Is he dead? Or if he's still alive, has he re-gained all of his weight, plus more?

I'm not a doctor, but in my years of experience as a food addict, I can tell you that unless some very DRASTIC changes took place in Kenneth's life, he had weight gain and/or death to look forward to after he left the Renaissance Hospital. I wish I could say something different, but I know how powerful food addiction is. It's way too much for any one person to handle by him or herself. Besides, Kenneth didn't have a supportive environment waiting for him at home after he was released from the hospital. Granted, the program only provided the audience with glimpses of his home life. For all we know, his girlfriend, her children, his children and grandchildren all eat lean protein, plenty of fresh veggies and fruit, and whole grains on most days. I doubt this, however. Although some of the family seemed to be of a normal weight, they were shown heartily chowing down on very high fat/calorie fast food. In the first video, Kenneth talks about eating three cheeseburgers and drinking two liters of soda. He didn't specify what kind of cheeseburger, but one Big Mac provides nearly half the calories that a healthy person should eat in one day.

Don't believe me? I'm not a dietician of course, but here's the nutritional breakdown:

My guess is that when the Big K said three cheeseburgers, he wasn't talking about the small ones that come with onions and pickles. He was talking about the BIG ONES, the triple cheeseburgers, or the "Angus" burgers that come with heaping amounts of extra stuff--extra cheese, grilled mushrooms, the proverbial lettuce, onions and tomatoes (personally, when I thought of vegetables, that is what I thought of--the stuff on top of a burger.) Yeah, you get the idea. That's what I was talking about when I said the word "cheeseburger". I could only handle one with some small fries and a medium chocolate shake. Even THAT was a helluva a lot of food, and trust me, that wasn't my only meal of the day.

This is what Angela used to eat when she went to McDonald's (pre-food addiction recovery):

Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese: 9.8 oz; 740 calories, 380 calories from fat(or 42% of the total daily amount of fat recommended for a healthy diet);

small fries: 2.5 oz; 230 calories, 100 calories from fat or 11% of the daily amount of fat (we are now over half the amount of fat that a person should have in one day)

AND one 16 fluid ounce Chocolate Triple Thick Shake: 580 calories (we are now OVER the recommended amount of calories/fat for effective weight loss for one day with this meal!); 120 calories are from fat, or 14% of the daily amount.

That's JUST one meal! And I ate three big ones every day!

So, you want an example of breakfast and dinner? Let's see...on the same day I might make a large cereal bowl of grits with LOTS of butter or margarine (Don't ask me how much; I never measured anything!) four scrambled eggs with green onions and mushrooms (scrambled with a LOTS of butter or margarine) and four pieces of whole grain, honey wheat toast with LOTS of butter or margarine. Do you see the pattern here?

For dinner I might "take it easy" and get a large bowl of creamy tomato soup, about 4-6 more slices of that honey wheat bread, and slice up a half pound of extra sharp cheddar cheese. Sometimes I would make a grilled cheese sandwich (with LOTS of butter or margarine); sometimes I would be "too tired" and just eat the bread and cheese.

I'll let you figure out the calorie count for my three meals. I am now officially depressed. And more than likely, I had ice cream or cookies and milk at some point during the day, too.

What I'm showing you, folks, is Angela's recipe for packing on 400 pounds of weight. Kenneth said he ate THREE cheeseburgers, and he thought that was eating light. Well, basically, BOTH of us are very sick food addicts, in my opinion. I was headed down the path that Kenneth was on (and perhaps still is). I pray that this isn't the case, but people being who they are, change is extremely difficult for most of us. It certainly has been for me. And I still stumble and fall back into some of my old behaviors. Thank God, nothing like how I used to eat. But if I wasn't in a program that has been helping me recover from food addiction, I wouldn't be where Kenneth is,(or was, whatever the case may be). I wouldn't have made it that far up the scale. Dead. That's where I would be. I KNOW this.

As for the second video, I included this because I thought what brotha man (Larry Cooper) said about his food summed up why I ate addictively:

This is me and MY world. I love my food; I appreciate my food. Once you eat, everything goes away, all the pain,all the misery...(Points to the various food items on his plate, but what he says is unclear at first)...everything is gonna be all right. Everything is gonna be all right. This is like "home sweet home"; it's like another dimension, "The Twilight Zone".

Yep. I hear you, Larry. I understand what you're saying, believe me. And "there by the grace of God go I..."

For more information about food addiction, please visit:
Food Addicts In Recovery (FA)

Post script: I searched for an update on Larry Cooper, too. Nothing, not even on the former-TLC-now-known-as-Discovery-Health channel. What's up with that, Discovery Health? Do you have any intention of providing follow up programs to see how these folks are doing? Do you even care, or are they just the perennial "circus freaks"? I think I know the answer to that.

There Can Only Be One (Mom)

My mother, Mary Ellen Graham Shortt, passed from this material realm to the ‘Abha Kingdom on December 31, 2008 at approximately 4:50 pm. In the intervening two years, I’ve felt relieved that her physical and emotional pain has finally ended, and humbled that the Supreme Being has granted me peace and acceptance concerning her ascendancy. Last year, I remembered the day while recovering from hip surgery. I wanted to write something about her, but doing the zombie shuffle to the bathroom was all I could handle at the time. Making my way to my computer was a surprisingly painful amount of exertion, and the 2 tablets of 500 mg paracetamol and 5 mg hydrocodone (Vicodin) three times a day insured that I didn’t have mental clarity to handwrite anything.

This year, I’m recovering from foot surgery, a kidney infection and pneumonia, but I promised myself that the holiday season would not pass without writing a tribute to the woman who was my very first teacher, and whose words (and hands) of guidance has formed the solid granite foundation for my life. This is the very least I can do, while the most would be to become the woman she knew I could be. After all, I wasn’t a very easy child to handle. A hard-headed, rough and tumble Aries daughter born to a cultured, harmony-loving Libra mother is a guaranteed bundle of frustration and heartache.

I’ve asked my three adult children, Clarissa, Marc and Chenelle, to write and post their memories of their grandmother. I’m hoping this will be an annual event on Facebook, but one can never predict the outcome of these things. My offspring lead very busy lives while I don’t have much else to do except keep my doctor appointments and take my meds. I might as well start writing again, especially since I no longer have to take the heavy duty, mind-altering pain killers.

The memories of my earliest years are not my own, of course. They are stories Mom would tell me and anyone else within earshot. To my dismay and embarrassment, she loved to tell these stories during social gatherings: “Angela was such a beautiful baby!” (Translation: “Look at my child now! What happened to my sweet little baby doll?”) She looked like the angels had placed in an oven and took her out just as she turned a perfect golden brown!” (Inwardly, I shuddered as I visualized a group of slightly demented beings putting a big lump of manna on a countertop, rolling it out like cookie dough and using a one-use-only Angela-shaped cookie cutter to make my body.)

That wasn’t all. Apparently, I was the perfect baby, too. I only cried when wet, sleepy or hungry. Otherwise, I smiled, laughed, cooed and clapped my hands a lot. (My opinion is that I was a prodigious people-pleaser.) This joyful behavior delighted my mother and her friends so much that they talked about it sixteen years later as I tried to escape their fur-coat wearing, tightly hugging arms and red lacquered, cheek-kissing lips. By the time I reached my teens, I had begun to regard these stories as a source of anguish, an unspoken reminder of how beautifully angelic I was as an infant, and how disappointingly imperfect I had become as I ballooned into an overweight adolescent.

So when did I make the transition from a sweet little crowd pleasing cherub to a sweaty, football-playing, chubby tomboy-terror? Well, I was four years old, and our family, which consisted of Mom, Dad, me and my sister Tam at the time, lived on 8th Avenue in the Oak Park area of Sacramento, California. It was spring, and I know this because Tam and I received new tricycles for our birthday presents. No, we are not twins—Tam was born March 21, 1959 and I was born March 27, 1958. But our parents insisted on conjoined birthday parties and presents until we hit puberty.

There were a lot of African American families with kids living there on 8th Avenue at that time, and one family of those families had a son named Raymond. I don’t remember much about him except that he was around my age. His specific physical features may have passed from memory, but his actions remain vivid in my mind to this day. I was standing across the street from our house, and Tam was riding her tricycle on the sidewalk in front of our yard. Raymond had been asking Tam to let him ride her tricycle, but he was out of luck. Mom told us that she better not see a single scratch or dent on our birthday presents, so no one was getting a test ride.

But Raymond must have thought he was the exception to my mother’s dictates. He ran up to Tam, shoved her off the tricycle, and tried to wheel off. My sister slammed face-first into the sidewalk, knocking out her maxillary central incisors (two front teeth). I heard her scream as blood gushed from her mouth. After that, I heard nothing but the wind shrieking in my ears. The entire block looked like it was painted red. Suddenly, I felt myself running into something and hitting it very hard. It fell to the ground and I sat on top of it. My hands were balled into tight fists that seemed to have an intelligence of their own. My right fist swung effortlessly and landed soundly on some pliable tissue with a loud smack, and then the left fist repeated the action. Frankly, I was amazed that my hands seemed to know what to do so well. As if it was in a slow motion video, my brain began to emerge from its red-stained haze, and I saw that I had been pounding on Raymond’s face. I was breathing heavily and making these horribly primal grunts with every punch. Someone grabbed me from behind, and I screamed in rage until I was gasping for air.

There is a block of time that is missing from my memory. Somehow I moved from the sidewalk to our family’s living room, and I have no recollection of climbing up the stairs or walking through the front door. I do, however, remember staring at the carpet while listening to my mother’s stern voice.

“Angela Denise, I’m talking to you. You better tell me the truth because you know I’ll find out if you’re lying. Did you throw the first punch?”

Uh, oh. I was in BIG trouble. One of my mother’s cardinal rules was that we could not start a fight. If someone brought one to us, we had to finish it. Mom approved of self-defense, but she could not abide “heathen, uncouth” activities, especially from her girls. Starting a fight was at the top of her list of forbidden heathenish behavior. I had broken that rule by throwing the first punch. My throat began to constrict as I fought off the urge to cry.
There was a loud knock at the door, and I could hear the voices of neighborhood kids. While my mother went outside to talk to the kids, I thought about my sister. I wasn’t sure where she was. Maybe she was lying down in her bed with an ice bag over her mouth. Or Dad had taken her to the hospital. I was certain of only two facts—Tam was hurt, and I was about to get a spanking. I thought about hiding in the backyard, but that would only make the situation worse. Miserably, I stood there and waited for my punishment.

It seemed like hours later, but Mom finally came back and announced that there would be no punishment. The kids uniformly answered her questions to her satisfaction, and she ascertained that Raymond essentially threw the first punch. Tam was unable to defend herself, so it was understandable that I would leap to her defense. In Mom’s mind, the scales of justice were balanced, and her oldest daughter hadn’t earned the title of neighborhood heathen. Harmony had been restored. My legs almost gave way when I realized that there would be no spanking.

“Now go get in the tub,” Mom told me. “You got filthy dirty out there tussling with that boy.” She had her priorities, and cleanliness in body and home was essential.

That was fine with me. I preferred Mr. Bubble to a spanking any day. But a problem emerged from that day forward, one that Mom hadn’t anticipated. I had felt the thrill of adrenaline coursing through my body; the power was indescribably fantastical. How could I ever go back to being seen (not heard), speaking softly like a proper little lady when spoken to, and wearing those awful, scratchy crinoline petticoats under stiffly starched dresses?

A problem had emerged….

Life under the knife

More cutting is on the way--I have yet another surgery scheduled for Wednesday morning, September 1. I don't what the deal is with me having surgeries scheduled for the first day of the month. I have a complete hip replacement on October 1, 2009, and a hernia repair surgery on April 1. I guess God just wants me to get it out of the way up front. This will the third one in less than 12 months. So, what is it THIS time? I have posterior tibial tendon dysfunction,otherwise known as PTTD. What is that? The website "Your Orthopaedic Connection"explains it much better than I can:

Tendons connect muscles to bones and stretch across joints, enabling you to bend that joint. One of the most important tendons in the lower leg is the posterior tibial tendon. This tendon starts in the calf, stretches down behind the inside of he ankle and attaches to bones in the middle of the foot.

The posterior tibial tendon helps hold your arch up and provides support as you step off on your toes when walking. If this tendon becomes inflamed, over-stretched or torn, you may experience pain on the inner ankle and gradually lose the inner arch on the bottom of your foot, leading to flatfoot.

For those of you who are toting around 100-500 plus pounds on your body and consider yourself "healthy" because you don't have high blood pressure, heart disease or diabetes, think about how much extra pressure you are placing on your bones, joints and connective tissues like the tendons and ligaments. Check out this excerpt from The Importance of Foot Orthotics:

The human foot is a marvelously complicated yet efficient machine, comprised of over 100 working parts, including as many as 28 bones working in conjunction with ligaments, tendons and muscles. All of this supports and balances our entire body, and in the course of normal walking bears up to 1.5 times our body weight on each foot. This pressure is enormous, and with the average foot traveling 1,000 miles a year, it is no surprise there are many injuries.

The feet act as shock absorbers for the entire body, and in the course of a one-hour strenuous workout will cushion nearly one million pounds of pressure. As a result, many people feel the pain of this stress, usually caused by foot imbalance. This pain shouldn’t be ignored as it is not a normal result of foot function.

The passage above is talking about people who are at a normal body weight. Extra pounds places extra pressure on those 28 bones and 100 working parts in the feet. At 400 pounds, I was asking my feet to carry a lot more than what it was designed to do. In addition to that, I was born with very little arch in my feet. I remember feeling the arch in my right foot collapsing when I around 10-11 years old and playing baseball in the backyard. It doesn't feel good. But I ignored it, which is what the article says a person shouldn't do.

Over the years, I gained more and more weight, which added even more pressure to my weakened arches. Finally, when I was about 26 years old, I felt a tendon snap in my right foot. I didn't know that was what happened. But I've learned more about what's been going on with my feet over the past six months, and now I can recognize when the tendon is tearing. And it's been doing that a lot these days.

Now, I'm a visual/audio learner, so seeing pictures helps me to conceptualize new material. I don't know if this helps you, but I appreciate the graphics available on the Internet that have helped me see what my podiatrist has been talking about. The first picture is a normal foot and arch. Here's the medical description of it from www.arthroscopy.com :

The navicular bone is a key structural component in the formation of the arch of the foot. When this bone is in the proper position, the arch is maintained. However, if this bone moves out of position, towards the bottom of the foot (plantar surface), then the arch begins to sag and disappear. As this occurs, the patient develops a flatfoot deformity.

And now, a picture of the foot that has begun to develop a flatfoot deformity. (Mine looks worse than this on the MRI.):

The posterior tibial tendon is essential to the normal functioning of the foot by maintaining the navicular bone in the proper position. By doing so, the arch of the foot is maintained. However, if the posterior tibial tendon fails to function properly, the navicular bone begins to drop, the arch falls and a flatfoot deformity begins to develop. When this occurs, the foot may develop pain with weight bearing.

This is kind of what my feet look like right now (picture courtesy offootankleinstitute.com):

And this is how bad it can get without surgery (from the The Institute for Foot and Ankle Surgery at Mercy):

With increasing deformity of the foot, the joints in the foot get very stiff, and little in and outward movement of the foot is possible.

Obviously, I want to have the surgery before my feet become badly deformed and essentially useless. I asked my podiatrist if I would be able to walk if the tendon completely ruptured. He said that I could, but I wouldn't want to. I understood what he meant immediately. The pain would be excruciating. No, thank you.

This is yet another example of the wreckage of my addictive eating past--it has wrecked havoc on my body in ways I never could imagine. Even though I've lost an awful lot of weight, I'm still paying for the damage done. As bad as that seems right now, it could be so much worse. I could be still into the food, gaining even more weight, and becoming one of those people that you see on programs like "Two Ton Mom".

If you are suffering from morbid obesity, you HAVE to lose weight in order to get the treatment you need for the various health problems that incur as the result of out of control eating. I strongly recommend this program: Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous
The life you save will be your own.

My brother's birthday

Today, my brother Ricky would have been 46 years old. But he never made it past his 24th birthday. The truth is, I can't tell you the exact date he died. I think it was early December, either 1987 or 1988. It must be intentional, this memory lapse. Why would I want to remember the most horrific day of my life-- the day my baby brother, my ONLY brother, left all who loved him?

So I'm not going to remember anything about his death today. I'm going to remember how he LIVED.

Richard Sydney Shortt II was born May 18, 1964 at Sutter Memorial Hospital located at 5151 F Street in Sacramento. Six years earlier on March 27th, I was born--same hospital, same room, and according to our mother, same bed. I'm not so sure about the bed part, but hey, I was too young to remember the first event and not allowed entry into the maternity ward for the second one. Mom came to the window of her room and proudly showed my sister Tam* and I the swaddled bundle that we were supposed to believe was our brother. We weren't buying it.

"That's a doll." Tam.

"And it's red. It's a red doll." Me.

I can't remember what Dad said in response, but it seems to me that he wasn't very happy.

Like any family, we can recall all kinds of memories--how Ricky used to spit out his pacifier when we peered into his crib. He had pinpoint accuracy. I was always hit in the forehead, and when Tam looked in, he nailed her on the nose every time. Then he would chortle gleefully. We swore that he was doing it on purpose, but Mom said it was just our imaginations. He was only four months old, after all. We weren't wrong. Ricky turned out to be a prodigy in terms of finding ways to harass his older sisters on a daily basis. His Older Sister Guerrilla War Campaign began before he was weaned off Similac.

Exhibit 1: Carefully placing his Hot Wheels, Tonka trucks and Lego toys right outside our bedroom door before Tam and I woke up in the morning. Purpose: To torture our bare feet as we headed for the bathroom in the morning.

Exhibit 2: Lobbing pieces of cantaloupe (I'm allergic to them) at me during breakfast. Laughing when they stuck to my forehead.

Exhibit 3: Turning both the bass and the volume of the stereo on full blast while I was taking an after school nap on the couch in the den. I was in high school! Teachers, hormones and constant crushes on boys seriously wore me out every afternoon. Straight cruelty!

Exhibit 4: I had a boyfriend named Sam when I was 16. I wasn't all that crazy about him, but he drove a shiny blue Mazda, and I never had a boyfriend before. Ricky decided that if Sam wanted to be my boyfriend, he was giving his consent to the same treatment I received. Poor guy never understood what had happened to him. Ricky and his little buddies from the neighborhood would run around his shiny blue Mazda, kicking in the hubcaps, jumping on the hood, and yelling "Sam, Sam the garbage can man!" This happened as soon as he parked his car in front of our house. I would be in my bedroom reading, and I suddenly heard Sam yelling, "Angie! You better do something about your brother!" Damn shame to see an 18 year old man near tears.

As mortifying as the experiences were at the time, I would pay off the United States' debt to China if I could have my brother Ricky with me today, sitting around laughing at these and many other memories. I do, however, believe that there is life after this one, and that my little brother is in the Realm Beyond, smiling because he knows how much I love and miss him.

I just wish I could tell him in person.

*Tam wasn't born at Sutter Memorial, but at Keesler Air Force Base hospital in Biloxi, Mississippi--these things happened when your father was a member of the United States Air Force. Ricky and I used to tease her by singing "Mississippi Mama, never lost a fight!" Don't tell her I said that. She still gets pissed off about it.

An Open Letter from a Food Addict

With much love and sincere thanks to Al-Anon Family Groups, for pioneering the way to keep substance abusers and food addicts accountable for their actions.

I am a food addict. I do need your help, but not in the ways you have tried in the past. The best way you can help me is to leave me to my own devices. Believe me; I have a lot of them.

Don't lecture, blame or scold me. I know exactly what I’m doing to myself, even though I eat as if I will never get another meal. I berate and demonize myself almost every moment of the day about my obsession with eating large quantities of highly refined, processed sugar/flour/high fat food.

Don’t show me the latest magazine diet or clip out articles about obesity risks and weight loss treatments from the newspaper. I will thank you politely on some days, become surly and distant on others. But I won’t do anything more than glance at the clippings before tossing them in the garbage. Please don’t take it personally.

Do not buy me diet books; I’ve bought enough of them over the years. Do not get angry if you’ve noticed that I haven’t opened those books. I am sick. You wouldn't be angry with me for having cancer or diabetes. Food addiction is a disease, too.

Don't throw away my “secret” stashes of food when you find them; it's just a waste because I can always find ways of getting more.

Don’t hide the bathroom scale from me; I will find it. Or if I hide the scale, don’t put it out in the open again. I know this doesn’t make any sense, but there is nothing rational about food addiction.

Don't let me provoke your anger. If you attack me verbally or physically, you will only confirm my bad opinion abut myself. I hate myself enough already.

Don't let your love and anxiety for me lead you into doing what I ought to do for myself. Don’t bring me food, cook my meals, help me get dressed, or call my boss when I feel too depressed to get out of bed and ready for work. If you assume my responsibilities, you make my failure to assume them permanent. My sense of guilt will be increased, and you will feel resentful.

Don't accept my promises and solemn pledges to lose weight. I'll promise anything to get off the hook. But the nature of my illness prevents me from keeping my promises, even though I mean them at the time.

Don't make empty threats, as in you will send me to one of those fat camps or reality shows to force me to lose weight. I know you’re not going to do that, and the fact that you would even say that to me just compounds my shame. But if you do decide to do those things or anything else, stick to your decision. Do not let me talk you ought of it.

Don't believe everything I tell you; it may be a lie. I’m not going to Weight Watcher’s or start the latest magazine diet on Monday, and even if I do, I will only half-heartedly follow those programs. I will tell you that another family member or a friend ate all the entire box of cookies, the gallon of ice cream or the whole bucket of fried chicken. What I tell you about my eating may even sound plausible, completely rational. But my word can’t be trusted when it comes to food. Denial of reality is a symptom of my illness, and I am in so much denial that I don’t always see how much more weight I’ve put on. It’s unfair of me to require you to be in denial about my food issues the way I am. Moreover, I'm likely to lose respect for those I can fool too easily.

Don't let me take advantage of you or exploit you in any way. Love cannot exist for long without the dimension of justice. It doesn’t matter how much I yell, scream, cry or make you feel guilty. Don’t give into my overt or passive/aggressive machinations.

Don't cover up for me or try in any way to spare me the consequences of my addictive eating. Don't lie for me, pay my bills, or meet my obligations. It may avert or reduce the very crisis that would prompt me to seek help. I can continue to deny that I have a a serious problem with food as long as you provide an automatic escape for the consequences of my eating.

Above all, do learn all you can about food addiction and your role in relation to me. Go to Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA) meetings when you can. Attend Al-Anon meetings regularly and adapt whatever they say about alcoholism and the alcoholic to food addiction and the food addict. Read the literature and keep in touch with Al-Anon members. They're the people who can help you see the whole situation clearly.

I love you.

Your Food Addict

Drive-by spammin' web site sleazoids

First, the !@#$%ing drive-by spammers who took over this web site (and many others here on Blogger): a pox upon you and those of your ilk, unkind and barbarous sirs! Okay, that's lame, but I'm working on keeping the old Aries temper within reasonable boundaries these days. For the sake of my continued recovery from life-long food addiction, I can't afford to have lingering anger and resentments to fester and boil over. (Even though the drive by spam took place when my Internet connection was down and my health was on the downside; oh, those low down, dirty sleaze-suckin'!@#$oles taking advantage of a lady when she's down and out! No class!) Anyway, I have to try my best to refrain from such actions because they might lead me to consider Domino's newly revised pizza with the improved crust that once tasted like cardboard.

Now, you are probably asking yourself, Angela, how do you know what Domino's pizza crust used to taste like? Obviously, I ate it. Can't lie. Domino's was cheap and they delivered. When a food addict gets into the "phenomenon of craving" aka a serious need of a fix but has very little money, a cardboard crust seems better than nothing at all. Of course, that's in the opinion of a desperate addict in need of a fix, as pathetic as that seems to me right now. I used to say that I never ate anything I didn't like, but that's not true. I had that flour/high fat protein jones going on, and if I couldn't afford Zelda's (pizza heaven here in Sacramento, IMO)I was willing to pay for a knock off version of my drug. It's kind of like the drunk who's low on cash and buy cough syrup or vanilla extract to get a buzz. Disgusting, but hey, that's what addiction does. Warps the mind to do unreasonable things.

Hmmmm....now that I think about it, THAT'S what I should wish upon those website-crashin' Neanderthals! Yeah! May your nights be filled with a thousand cardboard crust pizzas with anchovies that tear up the roof of your mouths, and your mornings be filled with acid indigestion and clogged bowels! Heh. That'll learn ya!

I have more to post, but I have to get to bed. I have to have a tooth extracted tomorrow, Act 4 of Angela's Teeth Opera that started last June. Hopefully, the finale will be an exhilarating success, and I walk away with a minimum of the AlvinandtheChipmunks look in effect. Catch y'all later in the week.