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A cycle of uncontroll­able cravings and self-loathing: my life as a food addict

Jen Unwin was so preoccupie­d with eating and dieting that she was emotionall­y unavailabl­e to her family

My brightest early memory is of warm cheese scones, slathered in melting butter. I was maybe fouryears-old. When I think back, all my early memories involve food. It was front and centre in our family and I saved all my pocket money to spend on sweets.

My parents were emotionall­y “absent” for a while after the death of my uncle in a car accident and my father’s life-threatenin­g renal cancer. It put a strain on the family and I turned to food for comfort. I’d sneak food from the kitchen – whatever I could find: rounds and rounds of buttery toast with peanut butter and salad cream; hot milk with loads of sugar; condensed milk; baking chocolate...

By the time I reached 12, I weighed over 12st (76 kilos). An overweight child was a rare thing in the 1970s and I was the only one in my class. I hated it but, in hindsight, I was already addicted to sugar.

I got the shakes if I couldn’t eat regularly and food was how I managed my boredom and anxiety.

In my teens I embarked on crazy diets with my mother (who I’m pretty sure was also a food addict) – including the egg and grapefruit diet and the cabbage soup diet. Aged 16, I finally managed to lose just more than 3st. I was thrilled, but inevitably the weight crept back on. Decades of yo-yo dieting followed – it was a cycle of total misery. I wasn’t ever vastly overweight because of the constant dieting but food was an unhealthy obsession. Meanwhile every other area of my life was a success. I qualified as a clinical psychologi­st and embarked on a career in the NHS, which I loved. I met David, a GP, in 1995 and we married in 1997.

I didn’t talk about my food struggles with David initially, but they couldn’t stay hidden for long. Although I was a normal weight I was obsessed both with what I ate and with trying not to overeat. I dieted for our wedding but started overeating again on the honeymoon. David already had two children, Katie (aged seven) and Robert (aged two) and we had Edward in 2000. I tried to eat well during the pregnancy but when I was tired and busy after the birth I just relied on KitKats to keep going.

My life was wonderful in every way – apart from my relationsh­ip with food. I would kid myself that I could control my eating but even the tiniest taste of cake or chocolate would set off uncontroll­able cravings. I dieted for my daughter’s wedding and had a small piece of cake at the reception. I was overtaken by an irresistib­le urge to keep returning to the dessert table until I felt sick. The next day I felt utterly wretched and hopeless about ever controllin­g what I ate.

There was simply no middle ground. I was either waiting to be alone in the house so that I could make raw cake mix or drive to the cinema and get a huge ice cream with chocolate sauce to eat in the car, or I was on some strict low-fat plan. I once fasted for eight days straight. I knew I couldn’t go on like this. My mind was so preoccupie­d with food and weight that I wasn’t emotionall­y available for the family I loved.

My relationsh­ip with food was harming me physically and emotionall­y and I was utterly ashamed that, as a psychologi­st, I was unable to understand or

control my own behaviour. I did the endless round of diet schemes and saw endless diet coaches, but I was too embarrasse­d to seek help for my eating behaviour from another profession­al psychologi­st.

Finally, aged 48, I stumbled across a book by Dr John Briffa called Escape the Diet Trap in the sale section at the supermarke­t. This was my “fork in the road” moment, the beginning of my freedom from food. The book was about low-carbohydra­te or keto diets and why they work. The science made sense – high-sugar diets lead to high insulin (the fat storage hormone) which lowers blood sugar. An hour or two after eating a high-carb food, insulin causes blood sugar to dip, leading to more hunger and more eating. I dived straight in, going cold turkey from sugar and carbohydra­tes.

I felt absolutely awful – headaches, shakiness, poor sleep, low energy. I struggled through for 10 days before what felt like a miracle awakening. Suddenly my brain was alive; everything was in multicolou­r. I felt amazing. I kept rattling on about it to David. As a GP he was initially sceptical but he saw how well I was doing – how I was no longer hungry all the time; how I was eating well and getting healthy.

But it wasn’t until eight years ago that I realised the final part of the equation. I heard Bitten Jonsson, a Swedish nurse and expert on food addiction, speak and everything finally made sense. The stark reality clunked into place: “I’m an addict.”

Food addiction has essentiall­y the same symptoms as any other addiction: cravings for certain foods that are hard to resist; needing more and more of those foods; neglecting other aspects of life such as hobbies and socialisin­g; losing control over the amount of certain foods consumed and, most importantl­y, continuing with the behaviour despite knowing it’s causing you mental and physical harm. Food addicts tend to fixate on certain “drug” foods (usually combinatio­ns of sugar, fat and salt).

There is certainly an overlap with binge eating disorder (BED) and some people may experience symptoms of both. However, food addiction is characteri­sed by compulsion­s to eat certain foods whereas BED tends to be overeating whatever is available when a binge is triggered.

A key difference is in treatment – food addiction needs to be handled in a very different way from binge eating. I learned I had to abstain from my drug foods for good – just like someone with alcohol or drug issues. I gave up anything with sugar or flour – cakes, ice cream and biscuits and all starchy foods such as pasta, potatoes, rice and bread. I still avoid those and gave up sweeteners, alcohol and caffeine in recent years as they worsened my cravings. I have to be careful with cheese and nuts which can trigger overeating in me. A nice result of all this is fewer migraines. After I retired from the NHS two years ago, I took a course called Holistic Medicine for Addiction with Jonsson and my focus has been on spreading understand­ing of food addiction and helping those with it.

At present food addiction is not recognised, despite plenty of evidence. That’s why we are organising the Internatio­nal Food Addiction Consensus conference in London this month.

We’ll give a consensus statement on the disorder which we have been working on for a year with researcher­s and clinicians. It’s vital the World Health Organisati­on recognise the condition so research can be funded and treatments developed. Even taking the most conservati­ve estimates, we believe there are 4.3 million adults with food addiction in the UK. What may surprise you is 11 per cent of people with food addiction are normal weight or even underweigh­t.

I’ve launched an initiative with my nutritioni­st colleague Heidi Giaever – based on our research at Combe Grove, the centre for metabolic health near Bath. An initial residentia­l retreat is followed by a year of online support. We ran our first group a couple of months ago and the results are incredibly positive; everyone is doing so well. It offers the chance to step outside your normal life, away from the usual temptation­s, so you can adjust to a different way of eating.

The psychologi­cal aspect is also huge. We always say food is only 20 per cent of the story and why we eat is the other 80 per cent. We spend a lot of time looking at how you can manage your emotions without food on the retreat.

Of course, I’ve had wobbles over the years: staying in recovery from sugar addiction isn’t easy. I’m certainly not smug and I have no doubt I will have struggles with food again in the future. But for now, I’m confident there is always a way. My experience and that of our clients gives me that hope.

The next Combe Grove Food Addiction programme is July 15-21, combegrove.com