Part OneBy: Jean Johnson for Reflux1
Jill Schmidt thinks she’s finally got it this time. Schmidt lives in Santa Barbara, Calif. and is using a fictitious name for this story. She’s spent a lifetime trying to deal with a compulsive overeating disorder. It’s been up, down, and around the block in the past for Schmidt, but more recently, the librarian believes she’s found a way out of the nightmare that has tormented her life.
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About Compulsive Eating Disorders
Jennie Schaefer wrote Life Without Ed in 2004 with her therapist Tom Rutledge. McGraw-Hill publishes the book.
Overeater’s Anonymous is a twelve-step program patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous and was formed in 1960. It does not promote any particular diet; instead, members develop a food plan with a health care professional and a sponsor. See www.oa.org for more information.
“Symptoms” of OA members vary, but often include:
Obsession with body weight, size and shape
Eating binges or grazing
Preoccupation with reducing diets
Starving
Laxative or diuretic abuse
Excessive exercise
Inducing vomiting after eating
Chewing and spitting out food
Use of diet pills, shots and other medical interventions to control weight
Inability to stop eating certain foods after taking the first bite
Fantasies about food
vulnerability to quick-weight-loss schemes
Constant preoccupation with food
Using food as a reward or comfort
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“Oh Jill, you just have big bones,” Schmidt mimicked the well-intentioned comments she heard while she was growing up. She is 5’4” and at the most has medium bones. She says she’s currently running between a size 10 and 12, down from the sizes 14 and 16 where she languished for much of her life. “At one point I got so fat I didn’t even have the heart to buy clothes and just made these huge skirts. I know I was larger than an 18 because that’s when I started sewing my own. I probably reached size 20 or 22, and I know I couldn’t cross my legs. It was horrible, and I could easily eat myself back there in a heartbeat. My mother and grandmother both got really big in their later years. Like my daughter says, when Granny put her suit on her stomach looked like a pickle barrel.” Schmidt says that it was in high school when she heard the big bones line the most. “That, and various jeers by young kids that never failed to come right when I was making yet another futile attempt to appear normal and attractive in front of a boy.” Going through adolescence as a fat teen was no fun. She faced overwhelming rejection across the board from girls and boys alike – as well as adults. “I was a great dancer and made the pom pom class as a freshman, a relatively rare occurrence. But I never did make the line of girls who got to dance at the games because no tubbies were welcome under the stadium lights. It was a pretty bitter pill to take – four years of humiliation smack dab in the middle adolescence – even though I agreed that a fat dancer would have never done.”
Schmidt laughs and the lines around her eyes crease in memory. “The whole thing scarred me for life!” She chuckles a little more. “It really is true. But then we all carry one form of baggage or another. My goal now is to skip all the feeling sorry for myself stuff and get on with learning how to deal with my situation.”
Years have elapsed since Schmidt was a troubled teen. She’s been married and divorced, had children, did a stint as a public school teacher, found the natural foods movement, and earned a master’s degree in library science.
“It’s true. I’m older and wiser now, and finally thanks to Overeater’s Anonymous I accept the idea that I am a food addict,” said Schmidt. “At least on my good days I do. It’s very easy to get cocky with this seductive disease. You get a little recovery under your belt, and you start thinking you can handle foods and situations that are simply beyond you.
“I’ve had quite a bit of recovery in OA since I found the program in March of 2004. It’s been up and down as my story will show, and sometimes I get discouraged that I’ll never find my way completely through. I know that that’s just my disease talking – the half of me that’s a compulsive eater really does not want to give up her drug.”
“I used to call that part of me my lizard person, but then I found a book called “Life Without Ed,” in which the female author anthropomorphized her eating disorder and named him Ed. I’ve found Ed to be a useful metaphor as well. The guy really is a creep. Ed’s an abusive charmer. Worse, Ed can always be counted to come along toting yet another of his luscious bouquets precisely when I’m stressed or tired, or vulnerable in any way. I hate Ed,” Schmidt confessed. “But he’s been with me so long it’s hard to imagine life without him. One thing I’ve found, though, is that I seem to manage him better when I’m kind. So instead of telling him what a complete turkey he is, I try to take him for walks so he can get some fresh air.”
Schmidt chuckles. “I know I probably sound like a nut case, but basically it’s just gestalt therapy – a method through which a person that’s suffering can get some perspective on their tortured mind.”
Schmidt says she’s never understood women who let men abuse them physically, but thinking of her eating disorder in terms of Ed has given her greater empathy. “Ed is more formidable than anything I’ve ever encountered in life. He’s so very seductive. That’s why I put up with OA and all its banal platitudes, the trite little sayings, and church basements, and seedy carpets. Underneath that rather awful veneer, the 12 step program really is the best thing I’ve found. In fact, it’s the only thing I’ve found.”
Continued in Part Two
