Dear Action on Addiction,

Addictive overeating is a condition that probably affects millions of people in the UK today. A New York Times blogger cites a study published in The Archives of General Psychiatry, which examined the neurobiological similarities between behaviours that drive obesity and those that drive substance abuse.  I notice that your website offers advice for people dealing with substance abuse, but doesn’t provide helpful advice and resources for addictive overeating. I am sure that I don’t need to remind you about the effects of addictive overeating and the strain on the NHS at the moment caused by the current obesity crisis. I believe that by recognising and treating addictive behaviours to food we can make great progress to the psychological and physical well-being of our country.

I would like to ask if you could find space on your website to include a category around addictive overeating and point visitors to services provided by organisations like Overeaters’ Anonymous. Your users might also find it helpful to investigate therapy options with a counsellor who is qualified in dealing with eating disorders.

By recognising addictive overeating you will be helping a great many people understand that alternative help can be considered before they embark on potentially dangerous surgical interventions.

Yours with kind regards,

 

Mike Rouse
Recovering Food Addict

There’s a lot of time commitment involved, for example to the training programme. Then there’s the establishment of a physical venue for meetings, promotion, etc. I’m sure that I’d be able to be a good franchisee, but I just don’t have the time for it at the moment.

Perhaps if something happens in my life, such as a redundancy, I’ll look in to it again.

The sugars I am not giving up are naturally-occurring ones, as listed here http://ow.ly/9aP8F

• Dextrose
• Fructose (found in fruits)
• Galactose (found in milk)
• Glucose
• Lactose
• Levulose
• Maltose
• Saccharose
• Sucrose
• Xylose

Basically, I am giving up sugars that have been messed around with. Examples:

• Beet Sugar
• Brown sugar
• Cane Sugar
• Confectionary Sugar
• Corn Sugar
• Corn Sweetener
• Corn Syrup
• Dehydrated Cane Juice
• Dextrin
• Fruit Juice Concentrate
• Granulated Sugar
• High Fructose Corn Syrup
• Honey
• Invert Sugar
• Isomalt
• Malt Syrup
• Maltodextrin
• Maple Sugar
• Maple Syrup
• Molasses
• Raw Sugar
• Rice Syrup
• Sorghum
• Treacle
• Turbinado Sugar

I started running long distances whilst carrying a significant amount of weight and this had led to tension problems and plantar fasciitis. A deep tissue massage has helped relieve some of the tension in my hamstrings and calfs and taken the strain off a bit. I still can’t run – it’s going to be a few weeks yet – but I am feeling better already.

These “false worlds” of computer games can be dangerous. I remember virtually living off white toast and other fast foods so that I could spend less effort with living and more effort “in the game”. They totally consumed me and those virtual worlds were my sanctuaries – I got support, friendship and tried out a number of business ideas in the virtual reality. I was in full control inside of these worlds; little could go wrong.

But it was all just meaningless stuff. Jack, in Obese: A Year to Save my Life, learned this too. He was fortunate to have support from Jessie Pavelka – I wish somebody would have gone in to my room and unplugged the computer and helped me to get a grip of my life.

I was amazed at how well Jack did with Jessie’s support and his own determination. He dropped a lot of weight and the programme ended with him just starting out in a new romantic relationship.

Well done Jack. Your story has helped me to take a look at myself again, realise that I am slipping back in to some old habits and dedicate anew to making some long-term changes.

You can follow me on Twitter.  This blog post was not endorsed by BSkyB or the producers of Obese: A Year to Save my Life.

Exhibit 1

My first “parkrun” event was on 14 January 2012, one of the coldest days of the year so far. The mercury was just below -1 as I left the flat and got in to the car for the drive up from Kenilworth. The road was surprisingly busy around the Coventry Memorial Park and it soon became clear that this was a well-attended event.

I only just made it to the start line in time to see all the runners get underway. I had missed the briefing, but thankfully had all the information I needed from friends who are well-established at the event, one of whom was volunteer that day.

I took my place at the back of the now-surging crowd as it began to wind its way around the park’s footpaths. I was wrapped up in 4 layers of clothing and was carrying a water bottle. Because I was almost late to the start line I didn’t have time to figure out where to leave my bottle and instead carried it with me – which was a silly thing to do because the water and coldness of the day soon conspired to make my thumbs the coldest they’ve ever been. I thought about throwing the bottle to the side at one point, but you know how it can be when you don’t know the form and you don’t want to do something wrong.

I was soon out of breath 1/4 of the way around the route, so I slowed it down and found a comfortable pace. I knew I was going too slow when a particular woman overtook me. I know these events aren’t supposed to be terribly competitive, but it is a race nonetheless and it helped me get around the circuit.  By the first lap I was ready to stop, but knowing I had done over half of the job it seemed silly to give up now. By 3/4 of the way around I was in a stride and managed to sprint to the finish.

I got the system wrong, as I thought I might. I didn’t wait for my ‘token’ and instead went straight to get my barcode scanned. Thankfully, though, a volunteer thrust a token in to my hand and all was well.

My time was 34:37 and I finished in 223rd position, thankfully not last place! The whole experience was thoroughly enjoyable and I turned up the following week to do it all again.

Alas, I am now nursing a touch of plantar fasciitis so didn’t make it to the race last Saturday. But I did turn up to watch the other runners and was very sad that I couldn’t join them. Hopefully it won’t be too long before I’m back.

The blurb:

The reissue of a classic in healthy living, with more than 300,000 copies sold!
Diet/binge. good food/bad food. punishment/reward. These are the compulsive eater’s nightmares, a long-time pattern of recrimination and guilt that ultimately leads to more overeating and more weight gain. In an updated edition, here is the ground-breaking, step-by-step plan that doesn’t control eating habits but cures them instead, once and for all. Overcoming Overeating will show you how to:

• Give up dieting forever
• Eat from true stomach hunger instead of “mouth hunger”
• Stop overeating and lose weight naturally
• Move beyond a preoccupation with eating and weight in order to live a more satisfying life

The basic process involves creating a class in your CSS that is named using “ms-rteStyle” as a prefix will place the element as an entry in your Styles drop-down-list in the ribbon.

Creating a class with the prefix “ms-rteElement” will add it to the Markup Styles drop-down-list in the ribbon.

I don’t yet know the difference between the two (perhaps somebody can enlighten me) and it’s a shame that SharePoint requires the use of -ms-name: as this will cause validation of the CSS to fail, but despite that it’s a very easy method of extending the content owner’s control over their site, which has got to be a Good Thing, hasn’t it?

An example:

.ms-rteStyle-MyNewTitle {
-ms-name:"This is a Style";
color: red;
}

or:

.ms-rteElement-MyNewTitle {
-ms-name:"This is a Markup Style";
color: red;
}

Put simply, Gillian Riley understands addictive overeaters like me. She’s managed to get me thinking about my overeating not in terms of weight, but in terms of my health, which is a message that I thought nobody would be capable of getting me to buy in to.

I prefer the Kindle version as it has handy chapter links to let you jump around the book and work through the sections that are relevant at the time.