food addiction is not about willpower, says recovering food addict dr. vera tarman

dr. vera tarman , addiction expert and author of  food junkies: the truth about food addiction , has lived experience. she’s the medical director of a residential addiction treatment centre in toronto, and a recovering food addict who lost 100 pounds — she has kept it off for 15 years. she also has a facebook group i’m sweet enough: sugar-free for life support group as a grassroots resource network. healthing spoke with tarman about what drives food addiction, what to do if you think you may be a food addict and how people can make positive change for better health.

let’s start by defining food addiction.

dr. tarman: food addiction is compulsive eating. that could be over or under, usually it’s compulsive overeating that is uncontrollable, which is the compulsive part that causes disturbance to the person. there’s an impairment that happens and they’re not able to control it — which is what addiction is to anything, like gambling or alcohol or cocaine.

what are some of the clues that you might have an addiction to food?

dr. t.: are you thinking about food all the time or more than you want to? that would be the first thing. and then, are you behaving around food in a way that’s embarrassing, that you’re ashamed of and you don’t want people to see how you eat? you prefer to eat alone and you lie about how you eat or what you eat. it’s the same kind of behaviour as somebody who’s drinking and doesn’t want people to know.

at the height of her food addiction, dr. vera tarman was 240 pounds. supplied

are some people more susceptible to food addiction than others? 

dr. t.: the people who typically get food addiction are people who quit smoking. they’re used to having an addiction and then they figure that they’ll eat something instead. and before they know it, now they have a sugar addiction instead of a smoking addiction. or someone wants to quit alcohol and then they find that they’re eating instead. they just pack on the pounds because they’ve virtually transferred their addiction. so you have compulsive eating behaviour that you can’t control even when it’s causing you grief.

what’s your opinion on fasting? dieting?

dr. t.: i’m not a fan of diets. people, especially those who are overweight, will say that they dieted themselves into obesity. because what happens with dieting is it’s a short-term solution. when they stop the diet, they gain the weight back plus more. dieting is not only an easy way to gain more weight, but it’s also easy to develop an eating disorder or even food addiction because you’re stopping and starting and you’re putting yourself into deprivation. anything that you can’t live with the rest of your life, don’t do. it doesn’t make sense because the moment you stop it, it’s just going to come back and hit you in the face.

dr. vera tarman is the medical director of a residential addiction treatment centre in toronto and author of food junkies: the truth about food addiction. supplied

there are going to be people reading this who may start to see themselves in some of your descriptions. what should be their first step to get help?

dr. t.: i want to reassure people that it’s a spectrum with early stages, mid-stage, later stage, much like alcoholism. it starts off with drinking too much, and at some point they cross a line and then they’re in trouble. a lot of people who are in the early stage are just starting to ask questions. once you’re a food addict, you usually know you’re in trouble. but if a person is like, ‘am i in trouble or am i not?’ they should learn what they can about this so that they don’t become one.

can you share a bit about your personal experience with food addiction?

dr. t.: like many people, i did the yo-yo dieting, i was 240 pounds. i’m now just under 140. but at 240, it would go down, go up, go down, go up and i felt really hopeless and like i couldn’t control it. now that i understand that this is an addiction and treated it like an addiction, it freed me from the hold that it had on me. it also enabled me to stabilize weight in a way that drugs and surgery cannot do. so if you want to have a solution that will maintain weight and relieve you of the obsession to want to eat all the time, you need to buy into this concept of food addiction.