Addict Nation (31 page)

Can we, as a nation, get honest about our relationship with food? Can we surrender to the truth and acknowledge we have become powerless over our cravings? Let’s admit it’s not about being big boned or having a slow metabolism or not having the time to cook. We’re overweight—despite all the negative ramifications to our health, our appearance, and the environment—because we, as a nation, are culturally food addicted. Say it!

I am a food addict!

I am powerless over food! Tell it to a friend. And if you’re living with somebody who’s overweight or obese, confront them about it, just as you would if they had a drinking or drug problem. Don’t dance around the big elephant in the room. Don’t act like a golf journalist at a Tiger Woods news conference! Lovingly say the words. “You’re obese! I’m worried about you.”

Do a Fat Intervention

Admittedly, there are challenges to telling someone you think he or she is fat. The recipient of your honesty is liable to get very angry and/or hurt. All of society’s messages encourage us to ignore the fat issue and pretend it doesn’t exist. This can be described as cultural codependency and mass enabling. When an individual or organization deviates from this unspoken pact, all hell breaks loose.

Film director Kevin Smith of
Clerks
fame is undoubtedly a brilliant artist. He is also obese. He was flying Southwest Airlines from Oakland to Burbank and had booked two seats because “it’s way more comfortable and I have enough money to do it.” Then he decided to try and catch an earlier flight on standby. He lucked out. At least initially. He was sent in to fill an empty seat. One seat! That’s when he says an airline employee approached and ordered him off the jet. Smith became enraged! “I’m legit! I’ve passed the stinkin’ arm-rest test. And still the lady asks me to get up and come with her off the plane,” he fumed on Twitter. “I can fit into a Southwest Airlines seat, this is the important part of the story,” Smith added on his website podcast. The airline apologized, and Smith was allowed to board another flight later that day.

But did the very smart Kevin Smith take away the most important lesson from this experience? I don’t think so. To me, he sounds like a man who is still defiant about his apparent addiction to food and living in his disease. To wit, he rationalizes, “I’m a fat man. I’ve grown up fat and there are varying degrees of fat . . . Look, I’m fat, yes. But like, am I . . . John Candy yet? No.”
³
To me, that sort of sounds like a drunk who gets totally wasted at the office holiday party, but comforts himself that he still managed to keep his job. What if, instead, he had taken that embarrassing airline experience as a sign that his addiction to food was making his life unmanageable? What if he had used that humiliating episode as a wake-up call to say, “I think I’ve got a problem. I’m powerless over food and I need help.” Wouldn’t that ultimately have been a better outcome for his future?

Smith’s response was in line with the very misguided fat-acceptance movement, whose leaders argue any criticism of their weight is hate speech. That’s a very effective way of stifling criticism, but I don’t buy that obesity is in the same category as race, gender, or sexual orientation. We don’t choose our race, gender, or sexual orientation. But, with rare exceptions, we are responsible for our weight. And, as is true with drinking and drugs, taxpayers and corporations end up footing the bill for the food addict’s out-of-control weight problem. The total cost of obesity has shot past $140 billion a year.
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It’s estimated that weight issues account for almost 10 percent of United States health expenditures. Billions are lost by corporations because of the overweight or obese employee’s doctor’s visits and restricted activity.
⁵

How Do We
Get It
?

In recovery we talk about high bottoms and low bottoms. A “bottom” is the lowest place an addict reaches before he or she decides it’s time to change. One friend of mine likes to say, “You’ve hit bottom when you stop digging.” Some addicts have that moment of clarity relatively early, and they have a chance to turn their lives around before all hell’s broken loose. That’s a high bottom. Others lose almost everything before they get it: their job, their family, their home. That’s a low bottom. Even lower are those who die from their addiction. Then it’s a little too late to have a moment of clarity, and at your funeral, people will shake their heads and say, “He just never got it.”

So how do we Americans “get it” and confront our food addiction? It probably helps to break down the issue into its component parts. America’s food problem is multidetermined, meaning there are a host of different influencing factors. The root causes of an addiction can be genetic, environmental, emotional, psychological, physical, and—let’s not forget—spiritual. Usually, it’s a combination of all of the above. In order to combat an addiction, you must look at all of the causes. As much as people like to say, “Losing weight is easy! Just eat less and exercise more,” it’s nearly impossible for most people to change their eating habits. If it were easy, we wouldn’t be stuck with this epidemic. That one-dimensional approach reminds me of the naive
normies
who always ask alcoholics, “Can’t you just have one glass of wine with dinner?”

One Nation Overweight

Exactly how many people are killed because of our collective addiction to food and the resultant obesity is a subject of debate in the scientific community. Obesity has been cited as a contributing factor in anywhere between 100,000 and 400,000 deaths in the United States every year.
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“Obesity is catching up to tobacco as the leading cause of death in America. If this trend continues it will soon overtake tobacco,” Julie Gerberding said in 2004 when she was the director of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
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A battle over studies and statistics ensued. What makes it so complicated is that being overweight or obese is a contributing factor in so many different illnesses, including:

Coronary heart disease

Type 2 diabetes

Cancer (endometrial, breast, and colon)

Hypertension (high blood pressure)

Dyslipidemia (high total cholesterol or high levels of triglycerides)

Stroke

Liver and gallbladder disease

Sleep apnea and respiratory problems