Josh, a food addict, couldn?t eat just one cookie ? he?d gorge himself on the whole box ? and the holidays only made his binging worse.
He would indulge in his “most spectacular binges” between Thanksgiving and New Year?s Day and once gained 14 pounds in one month, he said.
Overeaters like Josh will congregate today for a special Thanksgiving Overeaters Anonymous meeting to support each other on the most gluttonous of holidays.
Shirley, another OA member, said she has noticed meeting attendance spike around this time of year. Josh and Shirley withheld their full names for anonymity as practiced in OA.
Rebecca Bitzer, a nutritionist with offices in Annapolis, Mount Airy and Greenbelt, said many of her compulsive-eating patients are worried about succumbing to festive food temptations.
“It starts before Halloween and lasts until the first of the year,” she said. “Stress often triggers overeating. It?s a busy time of year, with more cooking, cleaning and shopping. People don?t sleep as well so they end up overly tired, and they tend to go to food to refuel their bodies.”
Bitzer recommends:
» Eat breakfast instead of fasting before the big meal.
» Drink lots of water.
» Go for a post-dinner walk.
Josh attended his first OA meeting Jan. 4, 1989, and has learned to stop binging to dull the pain of his unhappiness.
Seventeen years later and 80 pounds lighter, Josh, now 45, can say, “No thanks” to the extra desserts that will bombard him today.
“Somehow, I had connected eating extra cookies with feeling better,” he said. “Now I eat to live, instead of living to eat.”
If you go
» What: Overeaters Anonymous Thanksgiving meeting
» When: 11 a.m.
» Where: First English Lutheran, 39th and Charles streets, Baltimore
» For more information: oabaltimore.org
