It is 1980 and I am living in Tooting Bec for a year while I study English literature at the University of London. Most of my fellow students are here to escape their small arts colleges in the United States and experience the city. My reasons are less exemplary. I am hoping that by leaving New York City, I will somehow be magically changed. What I want to escape most of all is myself: I am a compulsive overeater.
The problem has dogged me since I was young. I stole sweets from a friend’s cupboard when I was five. My own mother kept none in the house, and I soon learnt that fattening foods were taboo and kept out of reach. Only the restriction didn’t work. As soon as I got my driving licence, I made clandestine trips to stock up on forbidden food that I would eat secretly, dumping the rubbish before getting home. Like an alcoholic or drug addict, my addictive cycle was all-consuming, only my hangover left me growing steadily larger.
I hid my weight as best I could under standard-issue hippie garb. My hair was a long, wavy mane and I sported tinted, wire-rimmed glasses. I fixed up guys I had crushes on with prettier, slimmer girls, even though I was desperate to date. Eventually, an adolescent depression settled in as comfortably as the extra pounds. My parents were worried, so they took me to see a psychiatrist, who said I was a manic depressive and prescribed lithium. Frightened that the medication might alter my essential self, I didn’t take it.
In the mid-1970s, when I was growing up, eating disorders weren’t on the map. If you needed to lose weight, you went to a fat farm. Nobody then understood what we now recognise as a western dieting crisis. In America, $40bn is spent annually on dieting and diet products. And when studies show that most women would rather spend time in prison or suffer from a major illness than put on a significant amount of weight, I know I am not alone in living my life at the crossroads of food and mood, beginning each day by stepping on the scales and calculating my self-worth.
When I was 15, my desperate parents took me to Overeaters Anonymous. I was self-conscious, but after a few weeks I grew comforted by the support. Through the restrictive OA diet of three meals a day, I experienced my first significant weight loss of 50lb in five months. The moment I stopped, of course, I put it all back on and began a cycle of yo-yo dieting that ranged between total abstinence and out-of-control bingeing. Like the 95% of people who diet and put on weight, I had failed to change my behaviour and address the underlying reason for my overeating.
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The extremes were so vast that in the five years between joining OA and going to London, I had lost and put back on about 150lb. London, I hoped, would be a chance to leave behind the bingeing, the clandestine eating, the feeling sick but not being able to throw up. Sadly, this wasn’t so.
When I arrived, not only did I have my own room — both a sanctuary and a disaster for a secret eater — but I was faced with one-to-one tutorials where I could no longer hide behind the other students. Every week, I’d leave the tutorial in emotional turmoil and look for anything to eat to obliterate the feelings. That is what food had become: a blunt instrument with which to dull my pain. First, I’d stop for fish and chips, then a tube of Smarties and a packet of Rolos, which I’d pour down my throat before heading back to my room. Once there, I’d hole up with a cheap bottle of red wine, a king-size chocolate bar, a large pack of peanuts and the fat novels of Thomas Hardy. I don’t know why I went from sweet to salty. All I knew was, I had to get it all in. When I binged, I felt so unworthy I couldn’t bring myself to go out. When I was out, I dreamt of returning to my monastic room to soothe myself with food.
When I got back to New York, my mother was again extremely worried about me and insisted I go to a shrink. I went, but because nobody suceeded in persuading me that thinness was not the route to happiness, three years of therapy resolved nothing. I put on and lost weight, my depression rising and falling with my body. At the age of 24, after losing 50lb and putting it on again in record time, I had nowhere to turn. My weight was at an all-time high of 175lb. My shrink thought I was exaggerating and dubbed me, “the boy who cried wolf”. I believed I was failing at university, which I wasn’t. I was numb. It became my habit after classes to sit by a flyover, where I’d smoke and write. And dream of taking my life.
A single consultation with the university health service encouraged me to check into a psychiatric ward, where a weekend stay turned into six months of therapy, 24/7. For months, I still believed my problems were based on my struggle with food. “If only I were thin,” I’d sigh. But slowly it began to sink in; my young, earnest doctor made me realise that happiness would not come from being a size eight. I’d be happy when I was in control of my life — and my moods.
It’s almost impossible to accept this truism when everything in our culture screams otherwise, and I certainly do still want to be thin and feel jealous when I see someone with a great figure. That said, and having nearly killed myself for it, I’ve been able to find greater self-acceptance. Some of that begins by not stepping on the scales every day, not allowing myself to feel like a victim and dressing more stylishly, no matter what size I am. I came to understand that the overeating and bingeing were symptoms of a deeper problem: a serious mood disorder, which was helped through medication. Once I finally had that under control, then I could focus on the food.
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I didn’t leave the hospital cured. And I’m still not thin. But my binges are fewer and further between. I still think about food every day, but not exclusively. I’m mostly happy and married with a healthy six-year-old girl. I keep a variety of snacks in the house, in the hope that she will enjoy food openly. My dream is for her to live a life free from food obsession and to love her healthy body.
As for me, it’s a daily struggle, but the progress is steady. And I can now even walk past a chocolate bar without pouncing — most days.
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