Phil Werdell, M.A.

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It is my belief that food addictive denial, like the denial associated with chemical dependency on other addictive substances such as alcohol or drugs, has three layers: the false starving experience, false thinking which rationalizes overeating, and a false sense of self. What is common to all these levels of denial is that the food addict is at times powerless to see that these thoughts are not true. Unlike in common denial, the problem is that the lies or false thoughts are unconscious. Unlike psychological denial, though, the problem cannot be worked through in traditional therapy. Food addicts in their disease believe that what they are experiencing and thinking is the real truth, and it is a problem of the body as well as the mind.

The false starving experience of the food addict is a distortion in the brain much like dyslexia or color blindness. Food addicts believe they are starving, i.e., that they have to eat or something horrible will happen, when by all objective measures this is not true.

Normal eaters do not ever have this experience, but almost every food addict reports it. Though the words describing it may vary, the experience is incredibly close to how starving people react. They find themselves thinking about food more and more – eventually thinking of little else. There is a strong sense of urgency about eating. It becomes more important than anything else. Finally, starving people will break personal and social norms to get food, norms that they would never consider violating when not in the grips of this physical craving. Often without thinking, food addicts will lie, cheat, steal and at least say to themselves that they are “dying “ to eat.

What distinguishes food addicts in this state from people who really are starving, of course, is that there is absolutely no chance that they will die. As recovering food addicts are fond of saying, “No one has ever starved to death between lunch and dinner.” At the same time, food addicts need to constantly be reminded of this fact because, if their physical craving is reactivated, they will again have the thought that eating something they really don’t need is vital to their well-being, and the thought will be believable. That is what it means to have an experience of false starving.

Just as the dyslexic person cannot change the way their brain inverts letters in certain words and just as color blind people will never see colors as normally sighted people see them, food addicts cannot simply decide to change the false starving thoughts in their minds. What they can do is to stop eating the foods, e.g. sugar, that most reactivate their condition.

It is the same initial first action that alcoholics and drug addicts must take, that is, to totally abstain from the substances to which they are addicted. However, this does not change what will eventually happen in their mind if they pick their drug of choice again. The situation is identical for food addicts.