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My 40-Year Journey Away from Binge Eating by Naomi Joseph, MS
My 40-Year Journey Away from Binge Eating
By Naomi Joseph, MS
Have you ever stood in the dark at the kitchen counter dipping frozen, stale challah rolls alternatively in peanut butter and jelly that was opened before the flood, while on high alert for approaching humans?
Maybe salty and crunchy is your go-to, kiechel dipped in hummus and tahini? Cheeses of all kinds. Anything resembling cake. Before you know it, forty-five minutes have lapsed and if not for the crumbs and empty wrappers strewn before you, you would have no idea what you actually ate. And while you’ve done nothing to resolve the reason you’ve commenced the coping mechanism of using erratic eating behaviors once again, you feel calmed and are ready to move on to your next task.
Perhaps it’s homework with the kids or having the in-laws over for Shabbat. Maybe you need to return to your computer to finish that overwhelming project your boss is waiting for. Using cookies as fortitude has successfully helped strengthen your resolve to move forward. Or are you really just in a gluten fog, having sufficiently numbed yourself to the underlying pain, stress, or discomfort? Can your Grand Canyon-sized void ever really be filled with all the food you’re trying to stuff in it? You pray for a way out, for a “normal” life, where you’re “normal” with food and as a result are free to live in the body that was intended for you, but you don’t know how. The habit of reaching for food to pull you through is too engrained. You can’t tell anyone about it because it’s too shameful. What would people say? Nobody wants to be associated with being gluttonous or out of control. And if this isn’t you, then I guarantee it’s your slim neighbor, fashionable aunt, successful coach, or the unassuming rabbi’s wife. You would never suspect it because they are so “on the go,” “put together,” and “make it happen.”
Certainly nobody would have suspected it of me. Yet I suffered with Binge Eating Disorder for over four decades. I was deeply engulfed in the war with food, and now I am not. If you are like I was, and are looking for a way out, know that you are not alone, and there is always hope.
Binge eating disorder, as defined by eating disorders specialist Ira M. Sacker, M.D, is eating large amounts of food in a short amount of time without feeling hungry. You can experience a lack of control, or shame, guilt, embarrassment, and the desire to hide by eating in secrecy. Negative body image and self-hatred can further enhance emotional stress, depression, and anxiety. It is at one end of the eating disorders umbrella, with anorexia being on the other side of the spectrum. Binge eating is reported to affect 2.8 million Americans – and those are only the ones who have come forward. The real number is estimated to be more than double that, and the numbers have increased considerably since the start of COVID, the world locked in with our kitchens, for better or worse. As a universal community, we seem to be at war with our refrigerators.
Yet as observant Jews, the reality of being sequestered for hours on end at our tables laden with decadent foods is anything but novel. We are no strangers to our homes being filled with Shabbat and yom tov cheer, where the guest list is as endless as the amount of tempting delicacies served. Delicious, unique dishes prepared with special care are meant to sanctify Shabbat, and we further sanctify the food by making blessings over it and taking pleasure in it. (Note how I said “special” foods, not “fattening” foods. Fattening is not part of the criteria, although it’s certainly part of the experience.)
What about the bubbah meisa that we don’t gain weight on holy days? Puh-leeze! Go to any nutritionist in any Jewish neighborhood, and they will easily be able to document otherwise. Just the challah alone can singlehandedly wipe out an entire week of careful eating and exercise.
We turn to our beautiful Jewish religion, the most omnipresent, spiritual defense we have against the negative things we want to keep out of our lives, and invite in all the good, the spiritual, Torah, and a deep, meaningful connection to HaSshem. But at the same time, we get slammed with all of this food with the turn of every Shabbat, chag, bris, wedding, vort, sheva brachot, shiur, shalom zachor, kiddush, bar/bat mitzvah, and any and all events that seem to pop up on any given Tuesday. They derail us from achieving the perfect balance our bodies were meant to be in and therefore keep us from being in a state where can focus on growing the spirituality inside of us. How can we best serve ourselves, Hashem, and our fellow man when our bodies are overstuffed with all this food? Our bodies that house our neshamas, the living, breathing, divine piece of Hashem that resides within all of us. An ironic double-edged sword, indeed.
Studies on epigenetics have linked eating disorders to both descendants, and relatives, of Holocaust survivors and descendants of Eastern European immigrants. My father, a first-generation American, does not have Binge Eating Disorder, but he is a “fast eater” – hands down an Olympic gold medalist of fast eating, his torso leaning forward over his plate on the table, with one hand bringing his food to him mouth as quickly as possible, while the other hand encircles his plate, protecting what is rightfully his, ready to swat away anyone who dares to pilfer his perfectly procured meal.
Different eating disorders within our Jewish community have been wreaking havoc on shidduchim (“Yes, Mrs. Jacobson. I know it says size 2 on her resume, but what kind of 2? Like a 0-2, or 2-4?”), fertility (I know it did for us, ten years of trying for children before our twins were finally delivered. Thank G-d!), and self-worth (“I’m not as thin as she is,” “I don’t deserve to have all of those wonderful things because I don’t look like her”), which affects an endless array of basic life choices
such as social circles, education, careers, and religious affiliation, just to name a few.
But just because our Jewish community undeniably has unintentionally inherited specific challenges when it comes to food, that’s not an excuse to keep shoving chocolate babka in our faces or throw our hands in the air and give up standing tall in the face of this particular adversity. Hashem wants us to be happy in our bodies, enjoy each and every moment we live within it, and bask in the glory of all this incredible world He has created has to offer us.
So we stand up. We employ all the willpower in our hearts. We visit the “diet-lady” (Not that the diet-lady’s ever given a fair shot. I mean…have you ever told the diet-lady you’re a binge eater?), Weight Watchers, our local diet doctors, order prepared food to our homes, enroll in the newest eating fad everyone’s on in the neighborhood…insert “diet” here. And it works! For a time. We drop weight, we get into our skinny clothes, and we swear it’s the last time! We believe with all our hearts that we are ready to begin our new lifestyle and live in the glory of this weight for good!
How long have you held onto your ideal weight? For me, it’s never more than a year. It creeps up so slowly, you don’t even recognize that you weren’t guarding the gate, and all the old habits have slipped through undetected. It could be any number of things that bring it back on. Maybe it’s chag, or you’re planning a bar mitzvah, or it’s finals, or you have family in from out-of-town, and you decide to “treat yourself” and sit down to that one piece of cake you deserve. And you do deserve it. I’m not saying don’t eat cake. But eating that cake, at that moment, as a person who is a binge eater and may not have the healthiest relationship with food, is laced with anxiety, and a complete set up. So what do we do? We berate ourselves for eating it, throw out the baby with the bathwater, and eat an entire box of cookies as a chaser because “well, I blew it anyway. Might as well.” That inevitably leads to an immediate course correction, back to out-of-control binging alone in the dark recesses of our kitchen, or the pizza shop, or alone with a newly purchased bag of Reeses’s Peanut Butter Cups in your car in the CVS parking lot. And then, of course, you feel awful upon fully realizing what you’ve done in the aftermath, so then you eat more you eat more to make yourto make yourself feel better, self feel better, which only which only makes you makes you feel worse. feel worse. So you eat So you eat more to make more to make yourself feel yourself feel better, and better, and round and round and round you go for months, years, decades, or lifetimes. And so we start again.
How tired are we of this dance? How do we end this for good? Stop the roller coaster, I want to get off.
Do you catch yourself saying things like: “I know what to do. I just have to do it”? If so, please know that nothing is further from the truth, so you can stop beating yourself up for not being perfect right now. If you’re at this stage of awareness as to why you’ve continued to binge eat, or otherwise use food to soothe yourself, give you strength, make you feel better, ease transitions, or any number of other unhealthy reasons that no
longer serve you, don’t feel too bad. I was there for over forty years, so I’m giving you permission to give yourself some grace.
The reason we binge eat has nothing to do with willpower, or an undecided heart, an overwhelming social calendar, Shabbat, not caring enough, or because we just like food. And while we can go on blaming anyone, or all of those things, let me save you some time.
We binge eat because on some level we feel “not good enough.”
In the absence of getting to the root cause of why, and how those unfounded feelings became lodged in your psyche in the first place, this maddening cycle – whether it be with food, drugs, alcohol, shopping, relationships, exercise (insert addiction here) – will continue. This is one of those times where we must look back in order to move forward toward a healthier future.
It almost always starts in childhood. It did for me. Children are wonderful observers, but due to their young development, they aren’t always great interpreters of the messages they receive. The message could have been delivered by a well-meaning parent, spiritual advisor, sibling, coach, teacher, or the bully in the schoolyard. Someone you respected. As a child, you took their word (or outright berating or abuse) as gospel, as a deficit in your character. And in the process, traded in those skewed messages for your G-d-given gifts. The very gifts bestowed upon you by the Master of the Universe that made you feel worthy and good enough. The exact gifts you’ll need to reclaim your worth and get back to that just relaxed state with food.
In adulthood, we wear these heavy loads that were not even ours to carry in the first place, emblazoned on our chests in pride, like the Scarlet “A,” as we allow them to define us. We hear them as “I’m shy,” “I’m not a great parent,” “I’m a perfectionist,” “I’m lazy,” “I’m a creature of habit,” “I’m a skeptic,” ”I’m successful in every area of my life, but weight is the one thing I just can’t beat,” and other rubbish we hide behind that keeps us from growing into the people that Hashem meant for us to be on this earth.
Nothing can be further from the truth. The truth is that you are a child of G-d. The heir of a King. You can be anything you want. If you have a burning desire to be a certain way, or do a certain thing, that is a sure sign that Hashem has put that desire in you. I promise you that He wouldn’t have, in all His infinite wisdom, put that desire in you if you didn’t already have everything inside of you to get the job done. And you can certainly get a handle on food.
I’ll never forget hearing this quote during Rabbi Alexrod’s Rosh Hashanah drasha. In Orot HaTeshuva 15:10, Rav Kook comments: “When we forget the individual essence of the soul… everything gets confused and full of doubt. This applies not just regarding the individual, but all of mankind in the aggregate. Their sin always stems from their forgetting who they are… Repentance involves a person’s first returning to himself, to the root of his soul. Once he does that, he will immediately return to G-d.”
But where do we start? There is an old saying that inspiration can’t come from within, because we have already inspired ourselves with all we have. For me, I had to look without. I found a therapist I clicked with, and together, through the pain, and the mess, we began to dig. The process was necessary and proved to be successful. It took years. I had a lot to unravel. While we all want immediate results, there is no pill to take, no quick fix, nothing we can pop into the microwave and have ready in the next thirty seconds. The process of gaining the awareness of the dark voices in your head, learning how to kick them to the curb, create new messages in their place, lean into your greatness, and take back your life will take energy, time, and money. But in the end, you will get to live the rest of your life as the incredible, fabulous, amazing YOU of your dreams, making traveling this long, winding, arduous road all the worthwhile.
I wrote my book and continue to speak out about eating disorders because I wanted to blow the shameful shroud off this very taboo topic so that people will not be ashamed to reach out for help. I figured if I could help just one person not go through what I went through for as long as I went through it, it would all be worth it.
Won’t you be that person who stands up for themselves, breaks the chain of shame, and walks into the light Hashem has put inside of you?
