Compulsive overeating comes to forefront during holidays

Stephen Curran

Friday, Dec. 3, 2004 | 4:13 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

December 4 - 5, 2004

Martha admits to being slightly overweight.

At 60, an active writer and artist, Martha has taken up swimming to keep her weight in check. But she says she feels powerless against food.

It's an addiction that can reach a crisis point during the holidays for Martha and other compulsive overeaters, as the few pounds most Americans pack on in the six weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day can be only the beginning of an uncontrollable weight gain for compulsive overeaters.

"It's a slippery time of year for people in all addictions," Martha said. "It's a little bit of a danger time."

For Martha, the past six months have been bittersweet as her business has nearly tripled, but she has suffered the loss of her brother; both are stress-inducing events that she knows could have caused her to fall back on her old ways.

Martha has been a member of Overeaters Anonymous for the past 10 years. And, as the holidays begin and the extra pounds that often result start to appear, Martha and the hundreds of other OA members in the Las Vegas Valley find themselves quietly battling a condition slowly gaining acceptance in the medical community.

"It's just like any other addiction," Martha, who under OA rules would not provide her last name, said. "There are probably other people who are addicted who don't know it. Society, psychiatry and the media do not fully understand the problem. There are probably more people who are overeaters who don't know it."

The exact number of compulsive overeaters nationwide is difficult to pinpoint, Christina Lund, a registered dietitian at University Medical Center, said. Most often, the disorder is a largely psychological one, as overeaters are often overcome by feelings of guilt after eating a large quantity of food.

Lund estimated the disorder was initially thought to afflict women primarily, although more recent findings have shown a spike in the number of men who are compulsive overeaters.

OA, like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, is a 12-step program, but it functions as a support network for those fighting addiction to food.

Its members range from slender to morbidly obese. Martha, who herself once had more than 260 pounds on her 5-foot-6-inch frame, would now blend into the crowd in a busy shopping mall the day after Thanksgiving.

Most members are women, although Martha said she has seen "many men" visit meetings in Las Vegas.

A small group of women that met on a Friday morning at a Green Valley church underscored that makeup, as most members were of medium build and at least one was clearly slender.

"Nobody who knows these people could know that they are compulsive overeaters," she said. "There are people who don't show it physically but most people come into the program to lose weight and many do."

The disorder usually centers on a "trigger food" that can spark overeating habits. Often, that food is a "comfort food" an overeater remembers from childhood.

For Martha, it's any sugary food, which she said she has successfully avoided for 10 years.

"I call sugar my heroin," she said. "It's like somebody shooting up heroin. That was it. I have to be very, very careful I don't eat those foods."

It's a trigger that is not always brought on by negative emotions, Martha said. Most recently, she had to tell family members she would not attend a get-together because she said she would not be able to stop eating the food served to her.

"I had to say no to my family," Martha said. "I knew people would bring loads and loads of food. I had to tell them ahead of time."

Though technically an eating disorder, compulsive overeating differs from the more commonly known bulimia and anorexia nervosa, which themselves took a long time to gain acceptance in the medical community, Lund said.

According to the National Institutes of Health, the average American gains between 0.4 and 1.8 pounds during the holidays, a far cry from the binge eating that defines a compulsive overeater, she said.

"It's more of a psychological thing," Lund said. "With most people you're eating the extra cookies because your co-workers brought in cookies. It's a lot of mindless eating. They (compulsive overeaters) just feel really, really guilty about it."

Most people are like Las Vegas nurse Betty Parente, who waited Thanksgiving outside the Original Pancake House at Green Valley Ranch Station Casino. Parente, who had family visit her from Washington, D.C., for Thanksgiving, said she expected to gain a little weight during the holidays.

Like most Americans, Parente's family ate a hearty turkey dinner Thanksgiving night at her home, she said.

Parente said she did not know how many calories were in her dinner, but a study by the American Council on Exercise found that Americans eat an average 3,000 calories on Thanksgiving.

At that rate, a 160-pound person would have to walk about 30 miles to burn off their dinner, the study found.

"We ate a little more (than we usually do)," she said. "But we probably are going to work out a little more."