Food Addiction Acceptance

         I recently traveled to Houston, Texas to attend the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) conference to present my work, The Side Effects of Exercise as a First line of Defense Against Type 2 Diabetes. During my down time, I took advantage of every single minute to explore the city and experience new places, new foods and meet new people. On my last morning there, I explored the Rice Village district and stumbled upon a used book store. I love used book stores and for some reason I was feeling drawn into this one (or maybe I just needed a break from the oppressive Houston heat lol).
       I wandered in and naturally fell in love with the smell of old books, all the little alcoves and rooms dedicated to a particular subject and the peaceful quiet that is only found in bookstores and libraries. I flitted from room to room, blissfully skimming the shelves, when my eyes fell upon Cravings: How I Conquered Food by Judy Collins. This book has been on my list of must-reads for over a year! My heart swelled with excitement as I reached for it, a feeling of kismet washing over me, this very book was meant for me. I gingerly lifted the book off the shelf, happiness mounting, feeling it's smooth jacket, allowing elation to build as I prepared to read the first few words, when all of a sudden upon opening the book my heart sank, tears swelled up in my eyes, and profound sadness enveloped me.
          What could possibly have happened within a matter of seconds to cause such a drastic change?Well, I opened the book to find a postcard sized, laminated, handwritten note with colorful doodles that read: "Be your own kind of beautiful". One might be delighted to find such a note from a stranger in a book, and on most occasions I would too, but let's put this into the context into which it belongs. This book is about addiction, a life long, full blown addiction that spanned decades. An addiction that caused very real physical and psychological health problems. An addiction that interfered with relationships. An addiction that control her life. There is nothing beautiful about addiction.
        While I understand the person who placed this note in this particular book was most likely trying to instill some body positivity in the potential reader and came from a place of trying to uplift a stranger, this highlights a very big problem in the United States: food addiction is not taken seriously and those suffering from it are being encouraged to love their bodies and themselves just as they are ... even though they are clearly unhealthy, sick with an addiction and perhaps crying out for help. Would anybody think it's ok to place a similar note in a book about beating drug addiction? Is anybody telling drug addicts to be their own kind of beautiful within their addiction? Is anybody telling drugs addicts to keep shooting up even though it is killing them? No, of course not. Yet, when it comes to food, the body, and obesity society is encouraging unhealthy, sick people (especially women, I would argue) to continue on in their food addiction and sickness. That is exactly what this does note does. It encourages a person who picked up this book in order to get help and better understand their addiction to not see themselves as sick. It encourages the potential reader to think the problem is with society and not an addiction within themselves.
        Within the first few pages of this book, I came upon this passage:

"I once was telling a seriously overweight friend that one of our mutual friends had died of alcoholism, literally drinking himself to death. 'Thank God I never got into that!" she said, congratulating herself. She is a bright woman, and yet she was unable to associate her own problem - morbid obesity - with the illness of addiction to alcohol that had killed our friend"

        Somehow the lines between body positivity and food addiction have become blurred, or perhaps the raw truth is that we as a society are not ready to admit that we are a nation of addicts who are literally eating ourselves to death while at the same time being told to embrace our own kind of beautiful as we lead a lesser quality of life, slowly kill ourselves, and lead the next generation down the same path of addiction. Type 2 diabetes is not beautiful, heart disease is not beautiful, depression is not beautiful, early death is not beautiful, not being able to run around with your grandchildren due to morbid obesity is not beautiful. What IS beautiful is loving yourself enough to admit that you are an addict and working towards creating a reasonably healthy (not perfect!) body ... at whatever size and shape that looks like (remember there is no perfect size or weight!).
        If I were to write a note to put in a book like this it would read: You are a beautiful soul who is IMPORTANT to the people around you, they NEED you to be here and be present. This addiction is YOURS to beat, one day at a time. You are WORTHY of a long, healthy life.