Tag: Food Addiction

Dear Dan Harris (and the crew at Ten Percent Happier)

I have been using your wonderful app for almost three years, listening to your podcasts, and I’ve read both of your books. Because of you and your work, I meditate daily and have the most amazing crew of teachers at my fingertips. You have probably done more to make Vipassana/Mindfulness accessible to an entire nation than any one person in a long time. 

For the entire time that I have been using the Ten Percent Happier app, I have often felt distressed by the many discussions of sugar (in all its forms), sugar addicts, and how to attempt to live without sugar. A while ago, on one of your weekly challenges, your guest suggested using behavior modification as a way to create distance from sugar intake. I remember thinking that as knowledgeable as this person is, she didn’t know or understand the definition of addiction. Yet, they seem to understand alcoholism and drug addiction. I’m quite sure that this same person would not suggest treating alcoholism by having one beer a day. The other day I heard Jeff W. talk about chocolate as if it were the same as getting a splinter (my words, not his). Maybe for him, it is. A small annoyance but not much more than that. Also, maybe for him, a small taste of chocolate is a genuine pleasure. I want to make clear that I know that no one on your show thinks of themselves as the one true answer or that they are “recommending” a certain kind of treatment. I am talking about the chatter, the back and forth of questions and answers, and the inadvertent throwing in of a substance, that in a listener’s mind, could be the same as permission if they just meditated enough. 

These smart, educated people still seem to think that letting go of sugar has something to do with willpower. Yet, in all this time, I’ve never once heard anyone on Ten Percent refer to a glass of wine (straight sugar), a beer (grains), an oxycontin, or marijuana in the same way as they talk about sugar. There is respect for the danger that those substances have on a whole group of people that you don’t seem to have for sugar. Just as you have a substantial group of listeners who are recovering from alcoholism, you also have a substantial group of people who are recovering from sugar and food addiction. I am speaking for this group of people.

I, personally, have not had sugar or grains in fifteen years. When I hear Jeff or Dan talk about chocolate, I wince but I’m not tempted to kill myself. Then I think of other people newly off sugar, listening to people who they consider experts talk about sugar as if it weren’t a life and death deal, as if you can let go one day, binge, and go right back to abstaining the next day. Back in the 1980s, I went to a one-day retreat with Jack Kornfield at Spirit Rock. One of the things we did that day was mindful eating. He had us put one raisin in our mouth and chew as slowly as possible. Many people got a great deal of pleasure out of this. Me, newly abstaining from sugar and hoping against hope that I wasn’t a sugar addict?, well it set off months of obsessive sugar thinking and binging. None of us knew any better at the time. But we do now. Jack would never have asked us to savor wine in our mouths without at least a warning that this is not appropriate for alcoholics. But I suspect, knowing Jack, he wouldn’t even take that chance. No one would. We know too much about alcoholism. Now we know about sugar addiction.

I’m not suggesting that everyone who listens to your podcasts and meditations reacts to sugar the way I do. Any more than all listeners of your show are alcoholics. Yet, you seem to respect that talking about alcohol in less than a serious way could easily trigger and harm a substantial group of your listeners, so you don’t do it.

I think you need to consider the impact that you have on your listeners when you talk about sugar. Sugar and grains are the same ingredients that are in alcohol. Why wouldn’t you give sugar the same respect you give liquid sugar and grains?

Dear Dan Harris et al, there are a ton of us out in the listening world who love you and what you are doing with Ten Percent; that you have expanded from the basics of meditation, to the teachings of Buddhist concepts, to offerings of western psychology. Why don’t you talk to us, the experts on sugar addiction? We are sugar addicts in recovery. We aren’t guessing, we aren’t opinionating, and we aren’t putting forth possible behavioral solutions unless we have personal experience. We’ve been to hell and we’ve come back. Many of us use the combination of twelve steps, meditation, and therapy to NEVER forget where we’ve been and could easily go back to. 

Please give sugar, all that white stuff, grains, liquid and hard ingredients of alcohol, the respect it deserves. As you, Dan Harris, have said many times, “sugar is poison”. When was the last time you had to use behavior modification to convince someone that it is not healthy to put cyanide in their tea? 

Just askin’

With gratitude for your app and how you have devoted your life to our betterment. Can you take the next step? I realize this is just my opinion but having lived with food and sugar addiction for all of my life, I do feel strongly about it.

Thank you for reading,

Sara Somers

Author: Saving Sara; A Memoir of Food Addition (SheWritesPress 2020). Psychotherapist in California for thirty-five years before moving to Paris.

Food Junkies Podcast: 

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/XRwm9DilTWY?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

and many other interviews I’d be happy to provide if interested.

http://savingsara.home.blog

sarasomers.substack.com Out My Window: My Life in Paris

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Hooked on Food

Michael Moss, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who wrote Salt, Sugar, Fat and his latest book, Hooked, was the speaker at the American Library in Paris author event. I wrote a review of the book Hooked: How we became addicted to Processed Food a year and a half ago and encouraged all my readers interested in both Addictions and Food, to read it. I learned he was coming to Paris to be a guest speaker at a writing retreat this week. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible for me to attend the retreat. When I learned last weekend, that he would be speaking at the Library, I was very excited. This man had thanked me on Instagram for the review and I got an image of an author that was totally approachable.

Not only did I want to hear him in person, I decided I would give him a copy of my book Saving Sara, A Memoir of Food Addiction. I could tell from his writing that he did not have addiction issues himself, at least as far as food is concerned, that his aim was to expose Nestlé, for the pimps they are (my words not his), to alert the world that these companies WANT you to get addicted to their products as it is excellent for the financial bottom line. I’ve long wanted to correspond with him but hadn’t found a way. When I met him walking in the door of the Library, after we all greeted him, I asked him if he would be willing to read my book. He said he would be honored. So I inscribed it and handed it to him.

He was interviewed by the Library’s excellent Alice McCrumb who provided an air of excitement about the book. He told us about the research presently going: on taking ‘Photos’ of people’s brains right after eating chocolate, for instance, and how the researcher can see the corresponding parts of the brain light up within seconds. Most damningly, it seems industries don’t try to hide the fact that they are working hard to find products that are convenient, cheap, and addictive. The CEOs of these industries would never eat their own food, Moss told us.

I found myself very uncomfortable during the whole talk. Looking back I realize that I had come with the intention of making his acquaintance, giving him my book to read if he was willing, and maybe forming some kind of bond with him. That didn’t happen. I appreciate the science and the research that is now going into the huge subject of food addiction. He told us that in his first book, he danced around using the ‘A’ word, In Hooked, he didn’t. He even went so far as to say that for some people this addiction is like drug addiction and that people have to look at what drug addicts do to overcome their addictions for help with food. What I finally came up with by the time I got home was that I’m so used to being with like-minded people when talking of this subject, that I’m not often in the position of learning the more scientific aspects of it. In Michael’s talk, he was talking about Big Pharma (known as the food industry), not the addicts themselves. People had come to hear the dasterdly deeds of Nestlé (which makes $63.8bn a year) and the nine other huge food companies that control the majority of what you buy from the food and beverage brands, not to hear from people like me. I was definitely the odd man out.

Near the end, one woman asked “What is the solution?’ Two days later, I’m not actually sure if she was asking about the solution to stopping production of these addictive products or the solution to helping people stay away from them. I heard it as the second. I raised my hand and outed myself as a food addict in recovery for over 17 years, and that each of us has to take some responsibility for ending the abuse on our bodies. The topic before had been that so many families couldn’t afford good food, they had to buy this cheap excuse for food in order to feed their families. I didn’t respond to that but I know plenty of food addicts who live hand to mouth who have found a way to feed their families with real food. In 12 step rooms, we’re told you have to want it bad enough. 

The thing is: I agree with every one of his findings, and I applaud him for calling this problem what it is: Food Addiction. But I don’t agree that the industry has to take 100% responsibility for our health. If I had waited until that happened, I’d probably be dead by my own hand today. I think each one of us has to take 100% responsibility for what we put in our bodies and, people like me who have lost the power to act in healthy ways, we should get ourselves surrounded by like-minded people who will hold our hands through the withdrawal part, explain to us in no uncertain terms that this disease is one of Obsession—obsessing about those foods/substances that are supposed to make us happy, find Prince Charming, etc, etc and one of Compulsion—once the substance we are allergic to, in my case sugar and grains, is in my body, I don’t know what will happen next. I’m at the mercy of my compulsion.

I felt very alone at the end of his talk. I think I brought it on myself. I know what he writes about and I’m a huge cheerleader. But I forgot what it’s like to be in the company of people just learning what is going on in the food industry and how people like me are already dying from addiction. Here is the kicker: It is easy to think “well this happened in the tobacco industry, maybe things will change.” Guess who owns some of the largest industry companies?? The tobacco companies. Tobacco stopped making the billions it was making, so they found the next best thing. Philip Morris owns Kraft. RJ Reynolds owns Nabisco. Does the average person have a chance?

Michael Moss is an investigative journalist and author. In 2010, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on contaminated hamburgers. His previous book Salt, Sugar, Fat, was a New York Times best seller.  Hooked (2021) explores our complex relationship with processed food. It explains why certain foods leave us wanting more, and reveals how our brain chemistry and our evolutionary biology are exploited by the fast-food industry.

Sara Somers is an author, blogger, and retired Psychotherapist living in Paris, France. Saving Sara: For nearly fifty years, Sara Somers suffered from untreated food addiction. In this brutally honest and intimate memoir, Somers offers readers an inside view of a food addict’s mind, showcasing her experiences of obsessive cravings, compulsivity, and powerlessness regarding food.

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For those of you following the growth of my peacocks’ tails, here are the latest photos. The feathers of the tail are at least two inches longer than last week and I could see an eye or two. On his back, the brown and white feathers are beginning to turn into blue and green shell-shaped feathers that will eventually take up most of his back.

A bientôt

Sara

Saving Sara

“Read Saving Sara to see how bad it can get before it gets great–and find out just how she did it, so you can do it too. What a great read.” –Judy Collins, New York Times best-selling author of Cravings and Grammy-nominated singer

Yes, I have written a book. Yes, that Judy Collins, the one who sang Both Sides Now and who we listened to for hours. She read it and told me how much she loved it. I have decided to announce the book on this blog, but Saving Sara and Food Addiction/Compulsive Eating will have it’s own blog starting mid-February.

From the time I was a young teenager, I always wanted to write a book. For all the wrong reasons. My father gave me a diary after we saw The Diary of Anne Frank together, and I was obviously deeply moved by her story. I was ten years old. I even read the book but, though I was inspired to write, I didn’t learn anything about writing and observing and sorting through my thoughts. I used my diary, that had a key and a lock, to complain about my parents and the world in general. Then there were long gaps of three or four months before I took up the cry of the teenage victim once again. It didn’t make for very interesting reading when I found that diary at forty years of age. However, I was impacted by the pain that my young self lived with. Sometimes, I thought I’d made it all up.

I had romantic notions of writing. I thought of starving artists living in garrets in Paris, writing by candlelight and thought how romantic. That would be one way to lose weight. As the years came and went, I set my goal of writing a great novel ten or fifteen years ahead of whatever era I was in. The truth was that I had nothing to say. I was still complaining which no matter how you twist and turn it is boring.

Then I moved to Paris in 2014. I joined a couple of organisations that taught french classes and, it turned out, they also had writing classes. With a push from a friend, I signed up for a writing class in the Fall of 2015. The only class I could find (at the late date I finally made up my mind to do it) was a class on Memoir writing. The teacher thought I was a good writer, that I had a ‘voice’. So I signed up for more writing classes. If you live in Paris and have a creative bone in your body, you take writing or art classes. There is an abundance of them. It is Paris after all. In the summer of 2016, I took a week-long writing workshop given by WICE, the same organization I had taken my first course with. I found I had something to say especially if I was prompted. The thing I had most to say about was my eating disorder that I have lived with all my life. At the workshop, I met an agent who read ten pages of my writing. She asked me if I thought I could write a book. Of course I said Yes! She said, ‘write it and then send it to me.’

It turns out that one needs more than a story-telling voice in order to be a good writer. I had to learn the Craft of Writing. I started this blog in order to practice writing. I hired a coach and learned how to set a scene, how many scenes in a chapter, how to write good dialogue, how long should an average book be. All things I’d never thought about, or was even aware of, although I read voraciously. Almost four years later, I have a finished product. The launch date is May 12, 2020. Amazon put it up on the website for pre-order last August. I have no idea why they do that but they do. Now people are calling me a writer, an author.

I have to say I’m amazed. I actually did it. Not in my forties or fifties but starting in my sixties and the book will be published in my early seventies. It’s possible to find inspiring cliches to give a person confidence and now I’m my own example of why you don’t give up and it’s never too late, you’re never too old. My parents used to say that I never finished anything. If only they could see me now. It was hard work. I almost gave up three times. My editor had great faith in me. She kept telling me I am a good writer and this was a story that needed to be told. Thank goodness for cheerleaders.

I will say more about the book itself in the next blog

For more information on WICE: https://wice-paris.org

I am a champion of independent bookstores. Of course, one can always order off Amazon but go to this website to see where the independent bookstore closest to you is: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781631528460

A bientôt,

Sara

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