The F Word - Special Report: Food can be addictive .... and destructive

Are you underweight? Overweight? Obsessed with food, weight or dieting? Step inside a Food Addicts meeting and you’ll soon realise you are not alone

LABRADOR Community Centre, a run-of-the-mill Tuesday night, and six people are sharing stories about the thing that has ruled – and often threatened to ruin – their lives. “It had a grip on me.” “It was causing me enormous desperation.” “Life was spiralling out of control.” “I’d get suicidal thoughts.” They aren’t talking about alcohol. Gambling is not the vice that unites them.

No, in this room and on this night, these five women and one man are supporting each other in their battles against an addiction like no other.

“My name is Bella and I am a food addict,” says a woman standing at the front of the room.

“Hi, Bella,” comes the collective reply.

This is where we would have previously told you that Bella doesn’t look like a food addict.

However, if there’s one thing you learn from sitting in on a meeting of Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (aka FA), it’s that food addicts look like any of us.

She’s the not-too-fat-but-not-toothin mum in the front row.

He’s the bloke that has lost 30kg but still weighs as much as two people.

She’s the 61-year-old who hasn’t changed dress sizes in 12 years.

And then there’s Bella, who we’ve already met.

The 39-year-old with a body other women would envy – until they hear her describe the toll food addiction has taken on her life.

“A big part of this illness for me is depression. It’s huge,” she tells Coast Weekend.

“When I’d break my abstinence, I’d get suicidal. It was only suicidal ideas – I never took any action as I couldn’t do that to my family,” she says.

“But I’ve suffered like that since I was 15 … I’ve been diagnosed with everything – depression, anxiety, bulimia – but there’s never been an answer. “Until this.” ‘This’ is FA, a global program based on the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).

Members attend several meetings a week and newcomers are assigned a sponsor to guide them in their recovery.

Due to the uncontrollable cravings they trigger, they abstain from eating sugar and flour and weigh and measure each meal to ensure they don’t return to eating too much or too little.

“If I take a bite outside anything on my plan, that’s just the first bite of a whole binge,” explained 61-year-old Maggie, who has been attending FA meetings for 12 years.

“I eat particular foods that give me a craving that nothing but more food will stop. Off I go, just eating and eating. Those cravings are very

similar to the issues alcoholics face but we ring each other for support probably more than AA members because food is around us all day.

“You can somewhat stay away from a drink but we see people eating around us all the time.

“That’s where our fellow members are there to remind us that if we go back to eating addictively, we’ll be back to our misery.”

Like many members, Maggie did not come to FA carrying loads of weight.

At 170cm, she would fluctuate between 61kg and 73kg. Her issue was what she was doing to counter her food binges.

“I’ve done a bit of vomiting in the past but I mainly tried to get the weight off by running,” she says.

“I was 48 and still thrashing my body through running. My knees were just aching.

“My eating was causing me enormous desperation. It had a grip on me … life was spiralling out of control and I would need dramatic, last-minute efforts to get things done because I was always focused on food.”

Maggie attended her first FA meeting in Sydney. It changed her life. “There were these slender, trim, perky, fashionable people at the front of the room who had lost considerable amounts of weight but I soon realised it’s not just about the weight,” she says.

“What I listened to that night made me think ‘Oh, that’s what’s wrong with me’ … I realised I had an addiction.” But does she? “There’s no such thing as a food addiction,” says Sarah Harry, a specialist in body image and disordered eating who has treated many former FA members.

Sarah, who co-founded Body Positive Australia, has 15 years’ experience counselling individuals and groups with all kinds of eating and body-image issues.

“I understand people sometimes feel they’re addicted to food but it’s not an addictive substance,” she says.

“They will say eating certain foods lights up certain areas of their brain but so does hugging someone or laughing.

“If someone does have an