I'm a weightlifter, a lawyer and a recovered binge-eater.
Here are five things I wish I knew about food and my body

Justin Kolber

1. It’s lonely being an object

When your biggest decision of the day is whether to lift heavy deltoid press in front or behind the neck—and much more importantly, whether to scarf down pizza and donuts afterwards, your world becomes hyper small. My cycles of binging and compensation took all the oxygen. Breaking up with a loving, supportive girlfriend (twice) during law school was the first crack in my façade, reflecting my inability to be in mutuality with another human. All my relationships were with substances. Food. Weights. Movies I could quote. Things I could consume, pick up and put down. Things I could control. Even when I couldn’t. I struggled just to have a relationship with an object (read: myself). I was dating my dumbbells, cheating on my meals, and coveting my neighbor’s six-pack. 

Once I stopped objectifying my body, the things became less shiny. That peak concert experience I had been building up to? It was nice—but I didn’t rely on someone else’s creative guitar licks for my transcendence anymore. The new vintage baby blue Chuck’s? I didn’t buy my fortieth pair of sneakers. The latest Thing held less gravity. I could take it or leave it, because I had more inner substance. After recovery, I could look you in the eye and have a real conversation. That led to a real relationship, then a wife, then a house, then a dog. I became responsible to others. It happened in baby steps. The further I got from my food compulsions, the more my planetary reach expanded, until I looked around one day and saw that I was actually living what some people would call Life.

2. Excess over deprivation

I survived my food disorder by the skin of my teeth, through the William Blake method: “You never know what is enough, unless you know what is more than enough.” When I was younger, I couldn’t get enough Auntie Anne’s pretzels, especially the middle bite: Doughy, meaty and chewy. I would order a dozen for myself, using complicated cover strategies, where I acted a little upbeat but also distracted, like I was ordering for my office coffee gathering: Umm, let’s see . . . someone wanted cinnamon-sugar . . . Oh, vanilla frosted? Yeah, Adrian likes those. Yeah, twelve should be enough for everyone.

In writing about her eating disorder, Anne Lamott said that if M&M’s are your powerless snack choice, then load up an entire pillowcase with M&Ms. Well, I did that too. $96 of peanut M&Ms. I had to let myself buy all the ultra-processed comfort food I could shove into my basket (my rule was no shopping carts: if I could carry it out, I could have it). Otherwise, I was crippled in the neon snack aisle. That seesaw between complete overindulgence and utter deprivation is how I spent most of my emotional life. As a 27-year-old attorney with no self-care or coping strategies, I needed the new Funfetti Entenmann’s Pop-Ems. I needed every new flavor to feel sated. 

But ironically, buying the excess helped me heal. I finally bought enough snacks that I started to forget about them on the top shelf of my cupboard. While it wasn’t good for my checking account, it was good for my sensitive inner child who maybe didn’t get enough back when he needed it most.

3. Once you can have it, you might not need it

After enough food went stale on my shelf, and I financed the Price Chopper’s new “patisserie” wing—which by the way, South Burlington is not Paris, just call it a bakery aisle—I learned to purchase self-control, to think through the decision. I stood in those same fluorescent-lit aisles, dominated by wall-to-wall mouthwatering temptations. I broke it down into micro steps. Okay, Fruity Pebbles has a new marshmallow flavor. I’m not a child. I just argued my first case in court. I can totally buy this $6.99 box of red dye #40. Holding the cereal box, I let my fantasy play out, closing my eyes and imagining the milky spoonful of crunchy colorful crisps. Then it hit me. It was just plain corn, flavored to hook me. See next point. It didn’t taste nearly as good as this moment felt in my head. Once it reached the pantry, the food was de-magnetized. It was kind of like sex in that regard: the build-up packs the most zing—and the faker the fantasy, the bigger the regret. I put the box back on the shelf. I was done with regret. I experienced a new kind of sugar rush, or maybe a fighter’s high. I had faced my deepest desires, head-on and hands-on. 

4. You are a target market

Food decisions are not a one-way street, especially in a chain store supermarket. Food advertising is a $14 billion dollar industry, targeting children (30% of all children’s ads are snack food related) and communities of color (73% of ad spending on Black-targeted and Spanish-language TV channels comprise candy, sugary drinks, snacks, and cereal). The ads work. We are nearly 50% more likely to eat fast food after seeing a close-up commercial of a greasy cheeseburger. And once you walk into a grocery store, over seventy percent of your food options are ultra-processed, containing excessive levels of salt, sugar and fat. Snack foods like my sugary pretzels are engineered to entice. But actually, they aren’t food. They are net zero nutrition corn and soy widgets, subsidized and flavorless. The real wizards behind the curtain are the flavor houses, as they’re known, with their endless combinations of addictive chemical seasonings.

At some point, as I ripped open another package of Keebler’s newest cookie or Doritos’ spicy limon, I realized I wasn’t eating what my grandparents grew up on. I was consuming a formula crafted in a test tube by the latest food CEO hoping to profit off my predictable pancreatic insulin response. I thought, wait, is this really what I want? Who’s making this choice for me? My brain, or my brain in the palm of PepsiCo?

5. Failure is success

With all this talk about good decision-making and thinking it through, I don’t want to give the illusion of complete control, especially around substance-based disorders (of which food addiction is one variety). By age 30, willpower failed me. I could push myself at the gym, run up mountains, skip meals for days, take on what seemed like any physical challenge. But self-sufficiency only goes so far, and controlling my cupcake purchases didn’t always work. It’s not a peachy lesson, watching strong-willed people hurt themselves again and again. 

Us weightlifters live to lift to fail: Failure to get that last rep is not defeat, but a sign that we’re working the muscle to its limit, so that it can repair and be stronger for the next lift. Though I understood how this worked in the gym, it took me plenty of backslides to apply that lesson beyond the barbell.

Besides opioid addiction, eating disorders are the most deadly mental health condition (primarily anorexia), killing one person every 52 minutes. My sisters kept me alive when I almost went off the edge. And still I kept relapsing. Recovery is for those who want it, not for those who need it. When I finally asked for help for myself, without being nudged or prompted, that’s when I was ready. My final failure became my first step on the road to healing.

Today, I am a public interest lawyer, back in the food battle but on a different front.  I am part of a public protection team to protect consumers from the systemic forces out to exploit or deceive us.

I still go to the gym and enjoy a good snack too. All in moderation. It turns out Auntie Anne’s pretzels really did teach me something. The best bite of life is the middle way.