Obsessed: America's Food Addiction--And My Own (18 page)

Margo said that some 40–60 percent of eating disorders fall into that nonspecific category and suggested my approach to food might put me there, too. “A lot of my patients eat really good foods,” she told me. “They just don’t eat enough of them, and they don’t eat enough of the fats and other things that give you a feeling of fullness. When you get some fat in your gut the message goes back to your brain that you’re starting to feel full, and it will help you slow down your eating.” Without enough fat in my diet, I tend to feel hungry, so I have
to use all this willpower to keep myself from devouring more food.

A lot of my patients eat really good foods. They just don’t eat enough of them, and they don’t eat enough of the fats and other things that give you a feeling of fullness.—
Margo Maine

Margo said that most of her patients wake up thinking about food. Beginning first thing in the morning, they are already asking,
What am I not going to eat today?
or
How am I going to get rid of the calories I do eat? How much exercise can I get?
I can relate to that, because that’s exactly what I do.

Margo thinks food has a lot of emotional meaning for me, and that my obsessive focus is far from healthy. She also thinks I am undereating given the demands of my very, very long day—a power job, two kids and a husband, lots of exercise, and an incredibly active lifestyle overall. She thinks I am not just hungry, I am starving myself.

At first it was hard for me to hear Margo talk about my relationship with food, because her approach is a bit too touchy-feely for me. She talked a lot about how I should love myself and let myself be happy, and that’s not language I usually use. I’m also very uncomfortable assigning any responsibility for my eating issues to my parents because the truth is that they were wonderful and loving. I had everything most of us want to be able to give our kids: culture, travel, strong emotional ties.
Everybody in my family loved one another, and nobody screwed me up.

But it is true that I come from a dynamic, well-known family, and my brothers are successful and (I always thought) smarter than I am. That probably puts some pressure on me. “How we relate to food at this moment in time isn’t just how we feel about food now; it’s how we have used food our entire lives,” Margo explained. “You talk about everyone else in your family being brilliant and your not feeling brilliant, about having some learning issues and feeling like you didn’t fit in. Food was the thing that filled you up. You soothed yourself with food, and I think food still has that power for you.”

How we relate to food at this moment in time isn’t just how we feel about food now; it’s how we have used food our entire lives.—
Margo Maine

“I hope you feel brilliant now! I hope you feel successful now, because you certainly are both of those. But you may still be operating on that old relationship to food, which is ‘I’m not good enough’ and ‘this will fill up the empty space.’”

I was resistant to some of her ideas, but in her patient way Margo helped peel back the layers of my psyche, and I began to get some important insights. One of her questions startled me, but I knew how to answer it.

“Have you felt like an imposter your entire life?” she asked.

“Definitely, totally,” I blurted out. “I’m still an imposter.”

“That’s a common theme with a number of my patients,” Margo responded. “They can be very accomplished, bright, and attractive. No one else would look at them critically, but they
don’t believe any of it is real.” Her theory is that as women in this culture, we always have to prove ourselves, and part of proving ourselves is to have a perfect body and a perfect house and a perfect family. That rings true for me. I am always trying to please others. In my career I often did too much for too many people, just to please them and to be liked. It was a terrible cycle that was broken finally when I saw that I needed to recognize my real value, financially and otherwise.

Margo said something else that resonated with me. She said I seemed to be looking for balance and control in life, and wondered if controlling my food intake felt like a way to control the rest of my life, with its hectic schedule and huge number of commitments. Being able to eat well in a life with so much going on is really hard, and sometimes it seems to be the only thing I can really excel at.

“That’s similar to a lot of women who, like you, are not in the throes of bulimia or anorexia,” she said. “You are well enough and well nourished enough that you can live close to a normal life, but the amount of thought that goes into your relationship to food and the amount of planning and the degree to which your food intake and exercise define other feelings about yourself is significant.”

It may be that my diet needs modifying, at least according to a couple of nutritionists we consulted. My typical daily diet consists of three or four meals, plus a steady supply of drinking water. I’m up by three-thirty in the morning and headed to
work by four. En route, I’ll eat one or two apples, and by six, I’ll have a Starbucks Venti Misto, half espresso, half steamed skim milk.

My first real meal usually comes at about eight-thirty, and it’s almost always oatmeal with flax seed, honey, and bananas. At lunch I’ll generally have salad or soup. The large green salad comes with avocadoes and extra vegetables, but no dressing beyond a small amount of olive oil. If I choose a bowl of soup, it will usually be organic tomato soup or lentil.

Sometime in the afternoon, I’ll have a snack, typically either Greek yogurt, a cucumber sushi roll, or a cantaloupe smoothie. For dinner, I often have brown rice and some combination of broccoli, spinach, Brussels sprouts, or cabbage. Other favorites include beans and brown rice, broccoli and tofu, or a sweet potato and a salad. I include a lot of tomatoes and avocado with some meals, and occasionally I will eat chicken. Once a week, I’ll have a sautéed onion or spinach omelet, with five egg whites and one yolk. Usually I have whole-wheat bread with olive oil at dinner, along with a banana or apple.

I shared my typical diet with Canyon Ranch’s Lisa Powell and with nutritionist Sue Gebo, who has a practice in Connecticut. Neither of them was very pleased. “Yikes—this seems pretty restrictive to me!” Lisa said. She estimated that I ate about 1,200 calories a day, not enough for someone who exercises and considers this a maintenance menu, not a weight-loss plan.

I shared my typical diet with Canyon Ranch’s Lisa Powell . . . “Yikes—this seems pretty restrictive to me!” Lisa said.—
Mika

Both nutritionists thought I should add more calories and more variety to my diet. They felt I was eating inadequate amounts of all three major nutrients—protein, fat, and carbohydrates—and said I’d feel better and have more energy if I increased my intake.

Lisa’s biggest concern was that I was getting very little protein on most days. She encouraged me to include at least two ounces of lean animal protein, or some form of plant-based protein, with both lunch and dinner. Adding beans, a hardboiled egg, tofu, chicken, or fish to both my lunch salad and dinner meal would be an easy way to do this, she suggested. Lisa also encouraged me to include a little more fat in my meals, primarily extra olive oil, nuts, seeds, or avocado. She also wanted me to take a multivitamin-mineral supplement because she didn’t think I could meet my most basic nutritional needs on so few calories.

Sue Gebo agreed, noting that “there are several missing items that would affect satiety.” My afternoon snack did not have the right balance of protein and carbs, she said. The sushi roll had no protein, the yogurt had no starch, and the cantaloupe smoothie had neither one, unless I added milk or yogurt to it. Likewise, Sue said that my dinners needed a better balance of protein and carbs, along with some fat.

“It is no surprise that this meal pattern leaves Mika hungry,” she told Diane. Her prescription was clear: I needed more food! “The omelet is a good idea, but with bread or some other starch. She would benefit from a more in-depth analysis of her intake (provided there are clearer portion sizes on her food record), a professional assessment of her calorie needs (which would require a detailed exercise record), and a meal plan
designed around those needs to improve satiety and provide energy while preventing weight gain.”

Lisa really nailed my problem when she encouraged me to include more variety in my food choices, and said I was stuck in a rut of “safe” foods. Adding new fruits and vegetables would not only ensure that I have a broader scope of nutrients in my diet, but also make my meals more interesting.

So it looks like my agenda is to adjust my diet and maintain my weight at a healthy level—not too thin, but not climbing steadily upward, either. Margo helped me recognize that if I can accept my “set point,” my struggle will become a whole lot easier. Although my weight has been up and down since I was fifteen, I never fully realized that every time I gained weight I seemed to top out at 135 pounds. That is actually pretty reasonable for my height of five foot seven at the age of forty-five. Maybe that’s the right weight for me now. It sounded so obvious when Margo and I discussed it. She almost has me convinced that if I just let myself reach my natural set point, I will not gain more weight.

Begrudgingly, I have to admit that our sessions have given me the freedom to nudge closer to that set point. I have let myself gain a little weight, and I am trying to feel okay about that. I’m trying to be less rigid about what I eat in the hope that I can get off the hamster wheel for good.

I am known for wearing body-hugging sleeveless dresses with very high heels on TV. I noticed the dresses getting a little too tight, and I was afraid the yellow one would pop open, live
on television. I am now officially a size 4, pushing a 6, but stuffed into a size 2. Usually when this happens, I start running twice a day. Usually when this happens, I stop eating after 7:00 p.m. Usually when this happens I am very unhappy.

If you watch the videotape of the August 2012 Republican Convention in Tampa, Florida, and the Democratic Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, a few weeks later, you will see something that has never happened in my twenty-five-year career. I’m not wearing my trademark sleeveless dresses as much (they were too damn tight). I’m in loose-fitting J.Crew button-down shirts and sweaters, comfortable Capri pants, and even more comfortable flats.

What you’ll also see is a fuller face and even a little chin action. I hope you’ll also see that I look happy—or at least comfortable with myself, and proud to be just the tiniest bit plump . . . in a good way. I have never been able to reach 135 pounds and feel this good before. In fact, I am shocking myself because I should be horrified at this moment. That’s what I usually am when I hit 130 and a size 6. In the past, that’s when I have turned and started the long road back to a size 2.

Believe me, I’m not completely at peace yet with what I hope will be the new me. I find that the tyranny of thin is never very far from reclaiming me. I still struggle with the tension between accepting a realistic set point and the need to please myself, my television station, and the public by looking picture-perfect.