Little Girl Addict

A "discussion" on Twitter about whether parents should allow their children to eat sugared cereals became pretty heated today. First of all, mothers go on the serious offense if they perceive that another woman has something negative about how she is raising her children. Add to the mix a disagreement over what is "good nutrition" for children, and whoa...ladies, ladies, ladies! Let's break it up and go to your separate corners, all right!

Well, I happen to agree with the moms who feel that feeding refined sugar and flour products to children is not only nutritionally unsound, but it is also setting them up for some serious issues with food addiction. It may not happen while they are children--they might get to their 30s or 40s before the weight starts piling on. But it's a lot more complicated than "oh, I'm getting older and my metabolism is slowing down." It's all about craving the good stuff--the hot,fresh French bread slathered with butter, deep dish pizza with loads of oozing extra cheese and pepperoni, mountains of nachos dripping with cheese, salsa, sour cream and guacomole--are you getting the picture here? And all of those delights are usually introduced in childhood.

Now, mothers do not know how their children will react to this food. They have no idea that the first bite of Ben Jerry's ice cream at two years old will be become two pints before bedtime at age 45. And that's in addition to the Claim Jumper family size lasagna that Mommy's former sugar pumpkin had for dinner. No, there's no crystal ball that can predict a morbidly obese future for Mama's lil' darlin'. But Mom can certainly keep the odds favorable by keeping the fresh veggies and fruit on her sweetie-kin's plate, and putting a permanent moratorium on all refined flour and sugar products. If you don't give it to them, they won't develop a taste for it, at least not on your watch. They can (and will) do whatever they want once they are grown. But you will breathe a lot easier knowing that it won't be because you piled that poison into their systems.

You don't think it's poison? An occasional treat is not going to be harmful? All right, you don't have to believe anything I say. Just check out what the good Dr. McDougall has to say about it:

Food Processing Raises Insulin Levels and More

When people consume significant quantities of unhealthy foods for prolonged periods of time their bodies show signs of distress, usually a rise in one or more risk factors—such as an elevation of blood sugar, cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, and/or insulin. These values are called “risk factors” because they are associated with heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and obesity. The association is not one of “cause and effect,” but rather rich foods cause them to rise and concurrently cause people to become sick.

The refining of plant foods commonly results in elevations of insulin levels. When whole grains are ground into whole flours nothing is added or removed, yet the properties of the food have changed. The physical structure has gone from a nugget to a powder—as a result the surface area of the food exposed to the intestinal lining has increased and the natural fibers of the food have been disrupted. This simple grinding process results in a greater elevation in the insulin levels in a person’s blood after eating, than that which is caused by the whole grain.1 During the next step of purification the whole grain flour is sifted to remove the chaff, thereby eliminating dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals and other important nutrients. The end product of this purification is white flour, which causes an even greater rise in insulin than the unrefined flour.

A classic experiment reported in 1977 showed similar effects on insulin production from the processing of fruit.2 After eating an apple, subjects showed a small rise and fall in blood sugar (glucose) and a small rise in blood insulin levels. Applesauce, made by simply grinding the apples, caused a greater rise in insulin and subsequent fall in blood sugar. The juice, made by removing the pulp, caused the largest rise in insulin and fall in blood sugar levels. These kinds of studies demonstrate that consuming grains, vegetables and fruits in their unprocessed form is healthiest for the body.

Look, there's no doubt that my mother loved me. She had no idea that I had a very dangerous propensity to be addicted to flour, fats and sugar(probably genetic, since most of my family members are addicts of one sort or another). There's nothing wrong with giving a little candy to a pretty little sweet, quiet and well-behaved child, is there? My mother told me about how some Japanese women thought my sister and I were living dolls, and they gave us handfuls of rice candy. I was about a year and a half, my sister was six months old. Later, I remember being intoxicated by the smell of my mother's homemade oatmeal and raisin cookies, and feeling crazed with anticipation for the second they came out of the oven. I was four, not yet fat.

But in two short years, I was chubby. By eight, I was fat. At age ten, I was obese. And my addiction to flour, sugar and fat spiraled beyond any measure of control. I weighed 301 pounds after I gave birth to my son in 1982. I was 24 years old. My mother was almost in physical pain every time she looked at me when I was at that weight. Little did she know that I would weigh 100 pounds more by age 42. But at least she didn't have to be tormented with guilt by the sight of me at that time. She'd had several heart attacks and a major stroke, and the result was she was far too ill to take note of my double-wide body.

It wasn't my mother's fault. She didn't know that sugar and flour would cause an unbelievably strong reaction in my body, creating intense cravings and total mental obsession with getting more and more food. My mom wanted a much better life for me. But those powerful drugs, flour and sugar, were more powerful than my mother's unconditional love.

I would like for the reader to watch the excerpt from the TLC (The Learning Channel)series "Inside Brookhaven Obesity Clinic" and consider this--all of those super morbidly obese people were just like me. They lost control of their addiction to flour and sugar products, and they had been condemned to an unhealthy, tortuously hellish existence that is isolated from most people and normal activities. And I'm sure their mothers didn't want them to be food addicts any more than mine.

Recurring hernia rupture, toothaches, life

I have three types of hernias--umbilical, incisional and epigastrica. The first two have ruptured. I'm hoping the third won't.


Things that a post op gastric bypass patient SHOULD NEVER DO: a) Eat any flour products of any kind. You WILL stretch your pouch. And if you have a lap band, ask yourself how many times do have to have that thing tightened; b) eat more than the recommended amounts of food that your surgeon and primary care physician advises for you. This is for the same reason listed in a); c)In fact, you should do everything your doctors tell you to do as if your butt's on fire and you're about to turn to cinders if you don't follow instructions; d) DO NOT, EVER IN THIS LIFE OR ANY OTHER, EAT GOMASIO AFTER ANY FORM OF WEIGHT LOSS SURGERY!

Why am I saying this? Well, first of all, many people don't know what gomasio is. Here's a formal definition from About.com's Macrobiotic Cooking section: Gomasio is sesame salt. It is made of toasted sesame seeds and sea salt, and is rich in calcium and iron. Sounds good and healthy, right? Something that a recovering food addict should have as a healthier alternative to salt, right? Yep. It is healthier, unless you have had Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery, which means that little pouch your surgeon made out of your stomach cannot process sesame seeds. In fact, sesame seeds tears very nasty holes in that little pouch, which is what happened to me last week. The funny thing is, the same thing happened to me around this time last year, too. It was for a different reason, but once you have an abdominal wall hernia, it's REALLY easy to have one of those holes open up in another spot. And that's what happened to me, which is what I realized as I lay in my hospital bed.

First of all, I had been breaking my abstinence, which means quite simply that I had been eating things that were NOT part of my food plan, AND I was eating amounts of food that were larger than what I had committed to my sponsor. So let's add up all the elements here--eating bread (a definite no-no for someone who's had weight loss surgery), pasta, cheese, cookies, trail mix, cashews, almonds, crackers, bagels, peanut butter, peanut butter-filled preztels, croissants...if I could have possibly lived on bread alone, I would have. Bread and cheese. That's all I wanted, all day long. I'm sure eating that stuff opened the hernia even more than the gomasio.

Here's Wikipedia's explanation of a hernia:

By far the most common hernias develop in the abdomen, when a weakness in the abdominal wall evolves into a localized hole, or "defect", through which adipose tissue, or abdominal organs covered with peritoneum, may protrude. Another common hernia involves the spinal discs and causes sciatica.

Hernias may or may not present either with pain at the site, a visible or palpable lump, or in some cases by more vague symptoms resulting from pressure on an organ which has become "stuck" in the hernia, sometimes leading to organ dysfunction. Fatty tissue usually enters a hernia first, but it may be followed by or accompanied by an organ.

Most of the time, hernias develop when pressure in the compartment of the residing organ is increased, and the boundary is weak or weakened.

* Weakening of containing membranes or muscles is usually congenital (which explains part of the tendency of hernias to run in families), and increases with age (for example, degeneration of the annulus fibrosus of the intervertebral disc), but it may be on the basis of other illnesses, such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome or Marfan syndrome, stretching of muscles during pregnancy, losing weight in obese people, etc., or because of scars from previous surgery. (Angela's note: I had the last two conditions.)

Thank God I stayed away from doing a lot of sweets. I did some, but that dumping thing that happens to post op gastric bypass patients puts a damper on a "good" time. The splitting headaches, cold sweats, shaking, feeling faint--no thanks. Sweets, as weird as it seems considering my eating history, were things that I ate in moderation. (Hey, I said it's weird!) So,I did not go buck wild with the sweet stuff. Why not, you ask? Sensible question, considering that I was already messing myself up my weakened abdominal wall with all that pouch-swelling bread; why not go all the way? Why not spend a day at the Cheesecake Factory, or at Freeport Bakery, where they make some of Sacramento's most sumptuous pies, cookies, cakes and tarts? I have no logical answer for that one, except that in the deep recesses of my food addicted-brain, I acknowledged that what I was doing wasn't very wise, and that I was already risking another hernia rupture. The very nasty complications from eating too much sugar would have put me in my final resting place. I narrowly avoided it this time. God must have a plan for me, but I know I can't keep doing this to myself.

Now, here's the low down and dirty deal--I have been obese since age 9, morbidly obese since age 25. I'm now 51. All those years of dieting and gaining weight over and over again has stretched my abdominal wall to breaking point, or as my surgeon told me, "it has been severely compromised." I created the first hernia the night I had binged beyond human capacity, which I described here in an earlier blog.


So that umbilical cord hernia was sewn up; I went home and within months, forgot about it. Forgot that once the abdominal wall, that precious muscle tissue that keeps essential organs like the intestines, the colon, the bladder, becomes toilet paper thin after years of abusing food, there is a high risk of having another weak spot will break open. When that happens, those precious organs are displaced and sometimes burble out of that little hole in the wall. That event is known in medical circles as organ incarceration, or as I wrote in last years blog, "jailed guts". Last year, it was part of my large intestine that tried to escape through the hernia opening. This year it was a section of my colon. That was not good. Not good at all.

My surgeon, the calm, cool and collected Dr. Mortensen, informed me during our pre-op talk (actually, she did a lot more talking than I did because I was just a whisper away from shrieking in pain) that they would do some exploratory procedures first with two laproscopic cameras. If I wasn't hurting so badly, I would have geeked out and said, "Cool! Go for it!" Even now, I really think the idea of having tiny cameras inside of me taking pictures of my innards is pretty awesome.(Yes, I know I'm weird.)

"If we go in and find infection(in or around your colon), we may have to surgically remove part of it," she told me.

I didn't react to that at the time because the morphine was just beginning to kick in. But what I didn't realize was I could have been wheeled out of the operating room equipped with a brand-spanking new colostomy bag attached to me. Now, that right there is not cool. Exposing the world to the product of my elimination system is a very unflattering look, even for a fashion dud like me.

Luckily, that didn't happen. I was fitted with a synthetic mesh to keep the hernia from opening again, sewed and stapled up. I do have a drain attached at the incision site, though. That will be removed this Thursday at my follow-up appointment with the calm, cool and collected Dr. Mortensen. I have a third hernia, located much higher than the other two. It hasn't opened up yet, but the good doctor is obviously concerned that it might. We will talk about this when we meet again.

A week prior to this surgical event, I had a massive toothache. Turned out to be a very deep gum infection. I'm in need of a root canal, scheduled for May 4, 2009. And the wreckage of my addictive eating past just keeps piling up.

My problem is that I have underestimated the power of the dark side. Being a food addict means that if I'm not 100% diligent about working my recovery program, I will die way before I'm supposed to. Slow suicide, plain and simple. And I'm not ready to go, not like that. So I'm abstinent, today. And I have been since the surgery. Have I learned my lesson? I can't say. Look at what's happened to me in the course of a year. If nothing else, I've learned it doesn't matter that I very much dislike the way my food in this program tastes. I just have to endure it for one meal at a time so I can live one more day, and pray at night that I can wake up in the morning and do what I need to do to remain alive another day. That's what it is for me right now. And I refuse to think about it any other way. I'm not happy, joyous and free yet. But I'm alive, and still able to raise a little hell while I'm in this realm of existence. For today, that's enough.

A Family in need of serious intervention

Philip Chawner, 53, and his 57-year-old wife Audrey weigh 24st. Their daughter Emma, 19, weighs 17st, while her older sister Samantha, 21, weighs 18st.

(Angela's note: A stone equals 1.40 pounds; two stones are 2.80 pounds, and so on. So Philip and Audrey apparently weigh 336 pounds each. Emma weighs 238 pounds, and Samantha weighs 294 pounds. That's 1,162 pounds all together. That's a whole lotta "chips" going down right there!)

Family who are 'too fat to work' say £22,000 worth of benefits is not enough

A family of four with a combined weight of 83 stone say they are "too fat to work" and need more than the £22,000 (31,955.17 in US dollars, whoa, the British pound is pounding the mess out of the dollar!)they currently receive in benefits.
The Chawners, haven't worked in 11 years, claim their weight is a hereditary condition and the money they receive is insufficient to live on.

Mr Chawner said: "What we get barely covers the bills and puts food on the table. It's not our fault we can't work. We deserve more."

The family claim to spend £50 ($72.6322 US) a week on food and consume 3,000 calories each a day. The recommended maximum intake is 2,000 for women and 2,500 for men.

"We have cereal for breakfast, bacon butties for lunch and microwave pies with mashed potato or chips for dinner," Mrs Chawner told Closer magazine.

"All that healthy food, like fruit and veg, is too expensive. We're fat because it's in our genes. Our whole family is overweight," she added.

Each week, Mr and Mrs Chawner, who have been married for 23 years, receive £177 in income support and incapacity benefit. Mrs Chawner is paid an extra £330-a-month disability allowance for epilepsy and asthma, both a result of being overweight.

Mr Chawner gets £71 a month after developing Type 2 diabetes because of his size. He was on a waiting list for a gastric band last year, but a heart condition made the operation unsuitable. Their daughter Samantha receives £84 in Jobseekers' Allowance each fortnight while Emma, who is training to be a hairdresser, gets £58 every two weeks under a hardship fund for low-income students.

Emma, said: "I'm a student and don't have time to exercise" she said "We all want to lose weight to stop the abuse we get in the street, but we don't know how."

I've never read a story that screamed "FOOD ADDICTS IN NEED OF INTERVENTION, TREATMENT AND RECOVERY!" more than this one. It makes me sad. Yes, I was once too obese to work. I had all kinds of medical issues related to my weight. And most, but not all, have cleared up since losing 200 pounds. My other medical problems are caused by permanent damage done to my body through morbid obesity, which in itself is caused by being addicted to eating.

About three months ago, I was diagnosed with something called diffuse arthritis, which is a not-so-common form of degenerative arthritis. Calcium has built up along both sides of my lower vertebrae, and bone spurs have developed on my spine. There's no cure, and surgery is too risky. I just have to live with it. But even living with pain for the rest of my life is not going to stop me from being a productive member of this society.

My intention is to recover from food addiction, get a weight that is healthy for me (don't know what that is yet, and I don't worry about it), and become an increasingly productive member of society. I do not expect the government to continuously pay me for being sick. Right now, I do have a lot of medical risks that do interfere with my ability to work. But I look at this as temporary. I can't and won't become dependent of disability for a living. I'm grateful that I have worked enough to pay into the system, thank you God, and that my basic needs are being met right now.

But the issue is food addiction, as I see it. Obviously, the parents have passed on their eating habits to their daughters. Is there an "Intervention" type show over on the BBC like there is on A&E channel here? Can anyone get this family into some kind of treatment program so they can have productive, fulfilling lives? It's obvious that they are suffering from a problem that is far beyond their ability to control. Addiction of any type is serious, especially when the substance is food. We all have to eat, and in the Western world, food is literally everywhere--on television, the Internet, magazines, billboards, neon signs. Don't believe it? If you are a boomer, finish this sentence: "You deserve a ___ ___." Or, "Have it___ ___." I don't know what the current fast food ads are like because I refuse to watch them. Yes, I'm not neutral to them yet. So I have to protect my recovery by keeping the T.V. off and clicking away from food ads on the Internet.

So when food is so prevalent that we can literally collect pennies to get a 99 cents fix at Mickey D.'s (short of McDonald's, for those of you outside of the U.S.), people have an open highway leading to food addiction. That addiction "ON" switch can be easily triggered in the brain, and it will run amok very, very quickly. Question: How many of you have ever bought bags of sweets from Dollar Tree or the 99 Cents store and felt elated because you got ALL that "good stuff" for cheap? If you are a food addict (and you don't have to be obese or even overweight to be one), you probably felt like you had found a leprechaun's gold pot at the end of the rainbow. That is, until you devoured all of the shopping bags of candy, cookies and other stuff by the end of the night and you have a splitting sugar hangover and horrendous upset stomach. But that's ok, right? It sure tasted good, didn't it? You can't WAIT to go back and buy some more! Addiction, my friend, addiction!

The Chawner family may just have a genetic predisposition for obesity. My family does too, at least the women do. But it's not hopeless, and just like the Chawners (if they ever come to believe it), I'm not helpless. There is recovery for food addiction and its outward symptom, morbid obesity. I pray that they find it, soon.

"I have a boyfriend who just got out of prison..."

(This is another re-post, written on 11/07/2007. I had been in recovery from food addiction for almost three weeks, and it was hellish. I was shaking uncontrollably, nauseous, vomiting, shivering with cold, clammy hands and feet, the inside of my mouth was blistered with cold sores and I was quite literally dazed and confused all the time. The severity of my withdrawal from flour and sugar was pretty nasty. I should have been in a treatment center, at least that's what a recovering meth addict told me. He went through that kind of withdrawal while detoxing in a hospital. Well, I was actually working at the time. But my mood and behavior was pretty monstrous. I wound up having to leave that job a few months later because I developed some pretty life-threatening complications as the result of all those years of piling highly refined, toxic sugar and flour into my body. Garbage in, garbage out. My body has been through a shredder. But I'll post more about that later.

Oh yeah, I make a reference to a "Dark Angel" character in this blog. She's basically my "evil twin" cartoon character that I occasionally bring out of the loathsome depths of my imagination. I wrote an earlier blog where I resurrected her, but I deleted it. It seems a bit silly now. But at that time, "Dark Angel" expressed what I was afraid to tell the world--that it sucked, and even worse, *I* sucked. I was in a whopper of a mood in those days. And it's entirely possible that I could go back into that soul-draining bottomless pit again. One day at a time, I don't want to go there again.)


No, I don't. I'm actually quoting my co-workers. It's a slow day, and we're hanging out talking about what to say to obnoxious guys. I never thought about saying "I have a boyfriend who just got out of prison," or "My husband was just dishonorably discharged from the Army for assaulting his commanding officer." I just roll my eyes and walk away. No words needed, as far as I'm concerned. I get that cold, nasty BWC (black woman crazy) attitude sometimes. It began in high school, and every once and a while, that sista-with-attitude behavior resurfaces. Inappropriate behavior for a Baha'i, and I'm glad I don't have many opportunities to show that side of my personality. I'm consciously trying to be a gentle, loving, considerate person these days, and it ain't easy to change old habits. Especially when the changing is taking place at the same time I'm living without sugar, flour and excess portions of food. The way I've been feeling lately, it wouldn't be a good idea to test my patience. There's nothing holding down my inner brat these days.



Other people have an "inner child". I have an inner brat, and she's been acting up lately. It's funny what happens when a person gets clean and sober off flour, sugar and excess portions. Yes, the program is working. That's the good part. In fact, that's the miraculous part because I have been abstinent in spite of the fact that: a) my parents are rapidly declining into dementia, and the process is very frightening; b) I'm having emotional reactions to life that I've never experienced before. c) I have no experience in how to deal with aforementioned emotional reactions to life since my only coping mechanism has been to eat some of my addictive foods.
d) I'm averaging one emotional meltdown a week in which I have a panic/anxiety attack or I become unbelievably afraid of people and/or leaving my house.

Apparently, this is normal for any food addict who is "coming down" off the addictive foods. It's not fun, but it's also instructive. This process has revealed to me how much I rely on food to make life manageable. This past summer, I got through my math class by chewing numerous pieces of sugar-free mints. It wasn't chocolate or Cinnabon's giant cinnamon rolls (oh God, deliver me from food fantasy), but that isn't the point. It's not "just" about calories. It's about engaging in addictive eating, which will eventually lead my addict brain to rationalize eating the chocolate or cinnamon roll. Other people do just fine with making sugarfree or low calorie substitutions. I have a friend who calls herself an emotional eater, and she is able to keep her weight under control by making those kinds of healthy substitutions. Not me. I turn into a sugarfree-eating junkie.

What I have isn't cured by going on a diet and making substitutions. I have to learn to rely on God instead of food to deal with life. When I'm anxious, scared, lonely, bored, tired, angry, impatient or just plain fed up with everything, I have to remember to leave the food alone and call on God for help. Unfortunately, asking God for help isn't my first choice very often. That's why I've decided to work a 12 step program that specifically helps food addicts like me. I need to be constantly reminded of how to deal with life on life's terms without stuffing myself. To paraphrase Earl, an addict and alcoholic who has a similar story to mine but with different substances, I can't be walking around unattended. Left to my own thoughts and machinations, I'll eat. And eat. And eat.

So this is what I do: I wake up at 5:30 am. (I'm not a morning person at all; it takes me at least a half hour to remember that I am a human being.) I say morning prayers, call my sponsor at 6:10 to tell her what I'm going to eat for the day (I don't get much of a choice; it's protein, vegetables and fruit in which the portions are strictly weighed and measured, and I have to write down my food the night before I call my sponsor); I have a half hour of "quiet time" in which I read the required meditation for the day and try the best I can to meditate without going back to sleep. I don't always accomplish this, however. After that, I rush to eat my yogurt with fruit (plain, with no sugar) and oatmeal (also no sugar), grab the food that I have packed the night before, then hurry to make the bus and train without succumbing to the panic that seems to overtake me every morning.

The rest of the day is work, prayer, phone calls, lunch, prayer, phone calls, work, prayers, dinner, go home, more phone calls or meetings, more prayers. Or very desperate pleading to God for His Divine Assistance and Intervention when chocolate or a loaf of French bread seems like a good idea. Oh, yeah. I attend three meetings a week plus make at least three phone calls every day to other members of my program besides my sponsor. By the time I get home at night, I'm exhausted. Luckily, I have a friend who helps me immensely by keeping me laughing. Without the laughter, I would probably snatch the car keys from my father and drive myself to the nearest mental health facility. That's not an exaggeration. I seriously considered making that trip this past Saturday. Even though I felt absolutely insane, I didn't eat. That's the good news.

No Dark Angel, Liz. :) I can feel her lurking around, waiting for the precise moment to strike. She made a slight comeback twice, but she's no match for God. I've had two instructive slips (and one of them let me know that I can't play around with eating sugar-laden food any more unless I want to be horribly sick), but I'm still with the program. Prayers for steadfastness are definitely welcome. I might give the Dark One some room on this blog, but that's it. She doesn't need to have much more than that from me. I've paid my dues to her with morbid obesity and two near-death experiences. That's quite enough.

Ya Baha'ul'Abha'!

God is sufficient unto me. He verily is the All-Sufficing. In Him, let the trusting trust.