Collins - Cravings: how I conquered food: a memoir

Chapter 11: LIVES OF THE DIET GURUS: JEAN NIDETCH AND
WEIGHT WATCHERS

Chapter 17: LIVES OF THE DIET GURUS: LINUS PAULING,
ADELLE DAVIS, AND THE VITAMIN REVOLUTION

INTRODUCTION

Do not cut the wings of your dreams, for they are the heartbeat and the freedom of your soul.

FLAVIA

Cravings is a memoir of my long struggle with an eating disorder. It is also the story of a search for a spiritual solution to my problems with food. As an active, working alcoholic with an eating disorder, I yearned for serenity and was tormented for much of my life by longings, addictions, and painful crises over food: bingeing, bulimia, weight loss and gain. I was determined from an early age that I would never get fat. I would rather die.

That was the driving idea behind all the trouble. From the beginning I wanted to look good. Like a jockey who has to get on that horse, like the dancer who must get into the tutu, like the gymnast who has to fly up to the bar, I would do anything to lose the few pounds that would, as I saw it, disqualify me from the games.

In music I had always found the spiritual solace I longed for. In my addictions I lived in a spiritual desert and had to find water and sustenance, the spark of inspiration and some solution that would end the drama of diets, pills, plans, doctors, extreme answers, and mutilating consequences. This is the story of the mountains I have climbed and the demons I have encountered, as well as many of the diet gurus I have come to know on the path to recovery. The book is the story of finally filling the black hole in my soul that comes with untreated food addiction.

Since my first attempt to diet in the early 1960sa combination of alcohol and Atkinstrying to tame the beast that will always live inside my skin, I have tried dozens of diets and methods to control and manipulate my weight, and to shed the pounds and the shame that were brought about by the illness of compulsive overeating. After many decades of searching, I finally found the answeror I should say I was given the courage to surrender to what I knew worked bestwhich has brought me peace of mind, a clean food plan, years of remaining at the same weight, and a glow of joy and health. The discovery of a solution to my problem has prompted the desire to share what I have learned.

There are no coincidencesI found a book by Louise Foxcroft in 2012 that delved into the diet habits of people over the centuries. I have always been an activist and have talked about many of the troubling secrets from my childhood and adolescence. (Lena Dunham may have had something to do with this sudden impulse to tell more of what was buried deep in my psyche, what I never talked about in depth, even to many therapists through the years, since her show, Girls, is inspiring young men and women to own their issues.) I have spoken out about my alcoholism, and about the suicide of my only child, and what it is like to be a survivor of my attempt on my own life at fourteen. It seemed time to tell my story, and to encourage those who suffer from the same problems that there is another way through the dark night of the soul of compulsive overeating. So how did I stop?

I have a condition that I have learned is an illness, like alcoholism, like other addictions. It is not a moral failing, as alcoholism is not a moral failing, but a true disease. It is incurable unless I find a solution on a daily basis. I am going to die from this illness or one of its many side effects if I do not take care of it one day at a time, with a balanced food plan free of the foods that could kill mesugar, grains, flour, wheat, corn, and many foods to which I am allergic (most of which are in alcohol, strangely enough)and that could cause anyone with these allergies to become bulimic, anorexic, or overweight; bring on feelings of fear and self-loathing; and cause diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. What other reasons could I possibly have for finding a solution to this simple problem?