The Becky L. Jackson Recovery Center

Definition of
Eating Addictions

Eating addictions are biological illnesses like diabetes, alcoholism and heart disease. Compulsive overeating, anorexia, and bulimia do not occur because of lack of will power or personality flaws. Research is finding that people with eating addictions have chemical differences within the brain that make it likely that they will eat abnormally. Just as we cannot cure diabetes, alcoholism or heart disease, we cannot cure an eating addiction. Just as someone with heart disease must take special care of themselves because of their disease, so must a person with an eating addiction. Otherwise, the disease gets worse, shortens lives and, tragically, often kills.

Every person with an eating addiction has asked "Why me?" There are surely those who have the chemical imbalances that put them at risk for an eating addiction, but never develop one. Eating addictions occur when the chemical imbalance is brought out by confusion, stress, and most of all, painful feelings. For everyone with an eating addiction, the cycle started with pain. Full recovery means walking through the pain and letting go of the shame and old beliefs about not being good enough.

Unfortunately, no one can functionally deal with pain when their lives are unmanageable and when the eating addiction is out of control. Recovery is a heart and mind-set that includes clear guidelines and tools to arrest the eating addiction first and then work on the painful feelings underneath.

Psychiatrists and/or counselors cannot fix a person with an eating addiction. While there is hope that better medicines will be developed (some already help), professionals can learn how to serve as better guides to recovery. But people with eating addictions must fix themselves. They must admit that they have a disease and are sick; they must admit that their lives will stay out of control unless the eating addiction is arrested. They must abstain from the eating addiction, no matter what and begin living the tools to recovery.

There is no easy way to recovery, but there is a way to recover.

Paraphrased from the Foreword of Dieting: A Dry Drunk. All rights reserved. Copyright 1991 • BLJ Nautilus Publications

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