My Story...
For as long as I can remember, I never had that ability, that common sense, that sanity that other people had. Specifically, that ability to not grossly overeat at every meal.
Eating for me was about eating as much as possible, eating until the thought of another bite made me feel ill. The enjoyment of eating was an equation basically of: eating is pleasure, and therefore the more I eat, the more pleasure I will feel.
Even more important to this equation: if I DON'T eat as much as I possibly can at every meal, then I am severely missing out on pleasure. And moreover, as a result of "restricting" myself, I am due for serious pain.
So on this went day after day, for some 50 years. A ferocious attitude toward food. In a word, GLUTTONY. Even with a fairly high metabolism, I always had a gut. Every meal was a serving size. A large pizza? One serving size. An entire chicken? One serving size.
I had also tried a variety of diets that were mainly based on the idea that controlling the quality of my food would result in a happy solution to my eating problems. So I tried vegetarianism, veganism, and even the macrobiotic diet. I went so far as to live in a Macrobiotic home in Colorado (back then they were called "study houses," where one paid for a room and someone to cook very high quality macrobiotic meals). I expected success, because macrobiotic men were thin!
But the problem with overeating remained. I went for stretches with being faithful to a "strict' macrobiotic diet, but always fell off the wagon for the forbidden temptations of sugar, dairy and meat. (I felt guilty about this for a long time, until I realized a very important truth -- almost NO ONE is able to faithfully and consistently eat a strict diet that, however "good" it's supposed to be for one's health, nevertheless leaves them feeling hungry and deprived. More on this later.)
Eventually I tried a 12 step group called Overeaters Anonymous. Lots of different ideas there, and frankly, not many success stories in those local meetings. Bbut I met a man called "Motorcycle Gene" who impressed me. I knew Gene had been a 12 stepper for several decades, and moreover, someone who led a life I could look up to. He had been a pilot before and during WWII, and could fly anything from a helicopter to the Goodyear blimp (indeed, he was one of the blimp's pilots!). And he was known to some as "Motorcycle Gene" because though he was well into his 80s, he still rode a Harley everywhere. Most impressive to me: Gene had conquered overeating. He had found the secret. Gene told me his story, about how he was always stuffing himself with food. But he'd found a solution to this problem. Now, Gene, though over 80 yrs. old, had the physique of a well-proportioned man in his 30s. Gene was not fat, he did not have a gut like I did. And he never overate. Gene said he put a limit on how much to eat every day.
It took me years before I fully understood Gene's secret to conquering overeating. It was so simple, yet it eluded me.
I took Gene's advice (as I understood it) for about a month.. It was the 1st time in my life without daily overeating. I lost a good bit of weight. But having this success, I felt it was time to reward myself with a really huge meal. After all, I could go back to Gene's way and start over.
Guess what happened next? If you guessed three years went by with me overeating about every day...you nailed it!
As I said, "about every day." This means the other days were spent trying following a half-way attempt at "getting back on track." Like Matt Foley. Manic enthusiasm to begin, and then finding a way to fall on my face a few days later, gorging myself on something or other. I didn't have a problem with kinds of food, but with overeating any kind of food. And these failures were all accompanied by the best of intentions. I deserve a break, this food looks too good to pass up, this is a "special occasion," and I start tomorrow, ad infinitum.
Finally, I reached a point where this was really getting tiresome. I was coming up on an anniversary of my AA sobriety date, and resolved to really begin a sane eating plan in earnest at that time. This was several weeks away. Now, to prepare, let's try something new: I will give up ALL control over my eating, and just eat as much as I want, whenever I want, and see what effect that has on my tendency to overeat. I mean, perhaps I was simply "repressed," and needed to give my overeating free reign to get it out of my system (yes, I can see this "strategy"was mostly a rationalization to give myself permission to really go on a run with my eating. But, since I was sincere about really doing something about my eating in a few weeks, I figured what the hell, let's really try letting go, giving full permission to my appetite and whatever intuitive wisdom I have about how much to eat. Maybe, just maybe, if I give in to "no rules," then my eating will straighten itself out.
Look, I don't even know if I really believed it would "straighten out." Nevertheless, for a month or so I followed my hedonistic "let go" program.
What, you ask, were the results of my little social experiment? Through unrestricted bingeing, did I get the compulsion out of my system? Sort of like aversion therapy where Mom catches you smoking and makes you smoke the whole pack of cigarettes? Did overeating cure me of wanting to overeat?
It did not! The more I overate, the more I wanted to eat. Strangely, I was never hungry, but always wanting more food. I was always full, but always wanting to be even fuller.
Have you ever done this? If not, you might be thinking "well, at least there was enjoyment from eating all that food, plus the enjoyment of the freedom to eat however much you wanted to eat."
Yes, you might think so, but you'd be wrong. I was surprised to find that there was really no enjoyment in fully giving in to overeating. The more I ate, the less I enjoyed it. Maybe that's not quite accurate -- overeating made enjoyment flee.
So the giving in to overeating experiment was a total failure. I felt like crap, I'd gained about 20 lbs., and my compulsion to eat had only gotten worse.
It was at this point that I really took stock of my situation with food. As I said, I was nearing an anniversary date of success over another addiction. I wanted to begin again and solve my problem with overeating.
So I took stock. Two things I knew:
1) My previous attempts to not overeat had all failed.
I was now 50 years old. This of course meant 50 years of failure. I didn't think of this statistic at the time, which is a good thing! It was of course true, but would have been highly discouraging.
2) My previous attempts to quit drinking and to stop smoking, HAD worked.
I began to think about this. I knew that it was possible to overcome drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. These were items that I used to excess and, like overeating, had repeatedly failed at overcoming. Yet overcome them I eventually did.
I began to wonder: would it not make sense to look very carefully at what I did that worked?
So I looked closely at "the program" I'd practiced over the last few years with food, and compared it to what I had done in respect to alcohol and tobacco. I looked closely, to see where I had gone wrong...for this might...just might hold a very slight chance....of holding the key to the solution.
Next -- the Solution
