Anne's Story
I was born on September 22, 1959 in Pambula, New South Wales, Australia, small town near Eden where my parents, both French, my brother and I lived. We lived in a house on a hill dominating the Pacific Ocean. At a very young age I fell in love with the panoramic view of the beautiful waters. This glorious, spectacular sight of nature delighted me each morning as a toddler. After 12 years in Australia, my mum got very homesick and my parents decided to go back to France.
I was 3 years old when I moved to France with my folks. The only memory I have at that time is that I started to get sick often and that it lasted until I was 8 years old. I grew up telling myself that the shock of going to France was just mild, but thinking about it now, it is pretty obvious that it was probably more profound and much harder than I used to think. It's true that my little body was forced to adjust to the strange, new French air and climate, but I think it was also because I was greatly saddened by the consequence of being parted from the wonderful sight that I used to wake up to. The shock was also devastating for my brother who arrived in France at the age of 14 in the middle of the winter, in a foreign land where its people spoke a language he did not understand.
We moved to the countryside southeast of Paris, and lived in a house that first resembled a shack. But my parents did a wonderful job at restoring it and it ended up looking much nicer. School had always been very hard for me from the day I started my formal education. I always felt out of place, like I didn't belong anywhere. I never really felt like I fitted in, whether with my schoolmates or friends.
I never really liked where we lived either. I did not like this countryside; I guess I preferred my old, sparkling blue ocean more. But at that age, how would you define this with words? How do you describe something you cannot even put a finger on? I just knew I wasn't happy, but I had no one to tell what I truly felt. We never spoke about our feelings at home. My mum came from a Spanish family that fled from a war-torn country led by a dictator. They were tough people who did not have the time to talk about their emotions; they were too focused on trying to survive. My father... well... he was never home.
When I was 7 or 8 years old, my father got a new job with an oil company that made him travel all over the world. I hardly saw him and I missed him very much. My brother, at the same time, decided to enroll in the navy. He had such a hard time in school and with life in general. He could not adjust, so he opted to join the navy and looked for fulfillment there. So the two men of the house left home. And I found myself alone with my mum.
My relationship with mum was not that smooth. But I was only a little girl at that time and did not understand what was truly going on.
There was this strange relationship between us that I only came to fully grasp much later. I was my dad's princess and queen. When dad came home after a long trip, he always came to me first. There are a lot of details from those times that I don't remember right now, but in hindsight, I think my mum could not stand that my father gave me more attention than her. I do not dare to call it jealousy, but maybe it was the reason why we had such a strained relationship. The consequence was that she was hard on me, always talking to me in a very harsh way, as if I was getting on her nerves all the time. But I did not know. I thought it was the normal way for a mother to talk to her daughter. She scared me a lot, so I learned to never say no and to obey at all times. I did everything just to avoid conflict, just to avoid being nastily talked to.
She never supported me in my dreams and endeavors. If I wanted to do something different like sports or study naturopathy, she never encouraged or supported me. I never heard her say, "You can do it! Go for it!" Never. On the contrary, she discouraged me a lot. With my father and brother gone and an unsupportive mother at home, I didn't have anyone to turn to; I also didn't know what to do to ease the alienation and pain that I felt.
But thank God, there was food... beloved food to my rescue! Food had always been there for me, to console me and cheer me up each time I felt depressed and lonely.
My mum's healthier way of eating didn't rub off on me. She was the one who prepared the food so we had pretty balanced meals with vegetables and salads. It is at that time between 8 to14 years old that my relationship with food started to change. I started to have strong cravings and at first I only ate more of everything. Not long after that, I started to steal food.... I sneaked in the kitchen when nobody was around and would eat anything I could put my hands on. I grabbed one handful of dried fruits, a piece of chocolate bar, and one ice-cream cone maybe. I also stole sweets from a shop with a girlfriend and hid them in my bedroom at home. And I hid to eat. Even though my eating was pretty disrupted and signs of a compulsion were definitely in the air, the full-blown compulsive overeating was not there yet at this point.
When I was 14 I was plump, what with all the food I was eating. I fell in love for the first time with a boy and thought I needed to lose weight. So I embarked onto my very first slimming diet, the first in a long list of attempts to lose weight. I had no idea how to diet so having heard my mum say, "If you want to lose weight, you have to stop eating." So I ate half my usual portions and sure enough lost a few pounds. And guess what? When I realized the boy was not the love of my life after all, I stopped the diet and in no time gained back all the weight I lost from it.
I went back to my normal eating, sneaking foods whenever I could. I ate for comfort, for the soothing emotion it gave me and that I was not getting at home. Eating gave me pleasure and reassurance. Food was not nasty to me. Food was my friend and my refuge. It seemed to give me the love and affection that was missing in my life.
I do not want to accuse my mum of all the evil. She has a lot of good qualities too. She is not generous with her words; neither does she like sharing her emotions (she does not know how). But she sure is generous with money and gifts. She was there when I got a divorce later on in my life. I cried on the phone telling her I needed her help. Yes, in her own strange, motherly way she was there for me. She just did not know how to love me. She did not know any better, looking at where she was coming from. She had a very hard childhood: my mum's family were immigrants, and considered as such, with 11 children to feed. When the Second World War broke out, she was 14 and had to go to work. Her oldest sister started to work at 11. They had to in order to buy some food and survive. There was no welfare at the time. Mum worked in Paris during the German invasion. She grew up to be very courageous and hardworking. I commend and thank her for these qualities, and understand and heartily forgive her for all her shortcomings.
Boys, dating, going to school and studying hard were the stuff of my life at that time. I started to play tennis, basketball, handball and other sports, but I did not really enjoy doing any of them. My Mum pushed me though because she thought they were all good for me. I also took classic ballet lessons for 2 years, was a 'majorette' (a cheer leader) for a few years as well. But in spite of all these physical activities I still maintained my unhealthy relationship with food. The positive side of all these sports I was involved with is that they somehow gave me the habit of moving my body, which prevented me from becoming obese. Mum knew what she was doing...
I fell in love with my neighbor when I was sixteen. He was 18, had beautiful blue eyes and a nice built. He was my first true love. But I had to lose weight. I went on the longest diet I have ever done. It lasted 6 months or so. I lost a lot of weight and went down one or two dress sizes. I was totally obsessed with my weight and what I was eating. I knew the number of calories of everything I ate and noted everything in a notebook. If I had 2 cookies in the afternoon, I skipped dinner. I was not to eat more than 1,000 calories/day. To purge myself, I started to take laxative pills. I also became addicted to these pills and stopped taking them when I was 33.
In the summer of 1976, I went on vacation with my mum to the United States to visit my family there. My mum's oldest sister married an American GI she met during the war. She was a "war wife" and immigrated to the United States after WW II. Mum and she had not seen each other for 25 years! We spent a lot of time eating and I gained back all the weight that I lost for the past six months.
When I arrived home I went back to my former diet. I also knew I was not going to stay with my boyfriend. When I went to the U.S. I realized I had the world to discover. He was a countryside boy working in the fields. I put an end to our relationship and to the diet. I couldn't stop eating. I binged and binged. And put on weight.
I tried different diets here and there and lost a few pounds each time but ended up bingeing and putting the weight back on. I was in the hell of compulsive overeating. But I did not know it.
My weight went up to 72 kilos, my heaviest. Mum took me to the doctor. He put me on a diet. I was not to eat any of the foods I loved: chocolate, ice cream, cookies, bread, and cheese. He never asked me why I was eating the way I did. He never tried to talk to me to help me understand what was going on. He gave me red and blue pills instead to cut down my appetite. They were very effective. The downside is that they made me edgy, anxious, irritable. I felt dizzy getting up from a chair. But I lost weight and went down to 62 kilos.
I graduated from high school and flew to Germany for summer vacation. I was 17 and, once more, I fell madly in love with Georg. I decided to leave everything behind to go live with him in Germany. I stopped going to the French university I was attending in December of 1978, and in January of the following year I headed back for Germany. I soon realized that the guy wasn't worth all the trouble and sacrifice. After one month. I left him and moved in a small student room in Heidelberg where I stayed for a whole year. My parents were paying for everything, my tuition fees, my food, and my rent. I was indeed very lucky. It was also a great time of freedom for me.
And I binged everyday. Did I mention that I only binged on highly processed foods? Especially sweet foods so full of white sugar that they gave me a high.
I went back to France after a year. Readjusting was very hard for me. After all the daily bingeing I did in Germany, I was back up to 70 kilos. The weight gain was so obvious that my family made it a point to tell me I had to start dieting again to lose the excess weight.
I stayed at my aunt's house for 6 months in the Paris suburb. She put me on a diet of spinach, eggs and grapefruit. Nothing else. In about a month I lost 7 kilos. I was very motivated at the time because of the fact that I was living with family members. My cousin of my own age was very slim and pretty and I wanted to be like her. In France, slimness and elegance was the code. I had to fit in.
I started to work at the Foreign Office in Paris, where I also moved. I went on a crash diet. A new product, the first protein drink ever (!) invaded the pharmacy windows. The diet lasted approximately 3 months and I ended up nourishing myself only with the protein drink until the last month. I went down to 55 kilos but I was unhappy, irritable and edgy. But I was slim! I got married to a man I did not love. But he loved me like crazy. I guess I wanted to do what everybody else is doing. Get married and settle down.
Two months before the wedding, my father died in a car accident. My whole world crumbled down. The reality of death came crashing on me. I knew it was real but I didn't know how real it was 'til someone I really loved got snatched by it. In spite of my grief I still got married, but as I said yes to the Mayor, I knew I was making a mistake. It was a sad wedding without my father whom I loved so much. I still miss him after all these years. And I still cry as I write these lines. It's been 27 years.
Alternating dieting and bingeing became my whole life. I started to exercise to lose weight and I became addicted to it. There were times when I exercised for 22 hours a week. I had to burn the calories. I had to lose weight. I binged and I exercised. I exercised and I binged. I ran. I did weight training, jazz, judo, other kinds of self-defense, and aerobics.
I started to look for answers and after researching the problem and doing some reading, "I am a compulsive overeater" became evident. What took me so long you might think! Compulsive overeating was not talked about at the time. I had never heard about it, never read a line about it in any newspapers or magazines. I really had to dig to find answers.
I looked for help. But could not find any. I went to doctors who did not know anything about my problem. I was very confused. And I wanted to lose weight permanently. I thought that if I lost the weight, everything would be fine. I tried many different diets, and they worked fine but only for a few days, a week, or a month. I mention only the memorable ones here but there have been the ones I picked up in magazines, the ones school friends were on or the one I heard about on the radio. Whatever diet I tried, I always ended up bingeing and thinking I was crazy. One doctor told me: "You only have a good appetite Madame, and that is not a disease, it is a sign of good health!" Another one told me to eat whatever I wanted but not to go over 1200 calories: "You can eat chocolate if you want to, but do not eat more of 1200 calories of chocolate!" She had no idea who she was talking to. 1200 calories of chocolate are 2 x 100 g bars approximately. Who was she kidding?!! When on a binge, I could eat 10 of them!
I went to the Overeaters Anonymous for almost 2 years. What a relief it was to discover I was not alone. I met people who are exactly like me. And even if OA's concept was not for me, I learned a lot from it and from my new friends there. I am forever grateful to these people. They were there when I went through my separation and divorce.
This happened at the end of the eighties. Compulsive overeating was not talked about in France. You were considered crazy if you talked about something like that especially in a country where food is a "gastronomic culture" and where women are supposed to be the most elegant in the whole world. And you are elegant if you are thin.
In early 1989 I discovered GEFAB ("Groupe EuropŽen pour les Anorexiques, les Boulimiques et les Familles"), the pioneer group in treating food disorders on a medical level. There were only 2 shrinks available at the time and I did 10 months of therapy with a wonderful ex-anorexic shrink who co-founded the group.
At the end of 1989, I was assigned to work in Washington DC. I was in heaven when I arrived there. It had been a dream for me to go live in the US. It was a dream come true. Everything was great. Except for my compulsive urges with food.
I was still very much into bingeing. But I was in the United States and I quickly found a psychologist who conducted group therapies. I then came across the work of Jane Hirshmann, the anti-diet pioneer, who wrote "Overcoming Overeating" and whose work helped me a lot at the time. Then, a total revelation came with Geneen Roth and her wonderful books, which are in my opinion the best on the subject. I pored through a lot of her books, listened to her audiotapes, and worked on applying her ideas in my battle against overeating. I never completely adhered to it though as I felt something was missing there too, just like with everything else I was trying.
There were times I could not get to work because of my bingeing. It would suck out all of my energy and put me down completely. I had to call in sick. I felt even more terrible to do this but I just could not get myself go through the door and go to the office. It was that hard.
I did two other therapies. I attended a lot of workshops and seminars on overcoming overeating. I also took classes on kinesiology. Then I studied aromatherapy under Mireille NŽdŽlec, a French aromatherapist teaching both in Europe and in the US. I took nutrition classes at the Virginia Community College, massage claŽsses, and other classes on alternative health. I was very fascinated with the new things I was learning about natural health. Rare were the times when I did not go to a class.
I was desperately trying to get better and I was trying everything I was interested in.
I went through more hardship and grieving when a very close Aunt died in 1995. It was followed by my brother's death in 1997. Once again death came to assert its painful reality to me. I then realized how important it was to me to really LIVE my life the best I could, how important it was for me to grow and find happiness.
I was definitely more mature when I went back to France ten years later, but had retained my old destructive habit of overeating. With all my new knowledge on alternative health, I still didn't know why I was still bingeing.
Soon after my return I decided to go to a naturopathic school in Paris. I wanted to learn about natural and whole nutrition. I intuitively knew that the answers to my problems were there. I studied naturopathy on weekends for three years. This is where I learned how to change my nutrition to whole organic food. My binges did diminish but were still present and I was pretty chubby at about 65 kgs for 5'5".
I was then assigned to Brussels. The idea of whole food nutrition was already well rooted in my mind by then. I was rarely eating any processed foods anymore. But I still binged regularly on organic products. But at the end of my posting there, the urge to lose weight was so strong that I had to go back on a diet. I went on a protein drink diet (again...) accompanied by strenuous exercise. I lost 5 kilos.
New post in New York in September 2005. I was ecstatic that I was going back to the States. Yaaay! I had no idea what was awaiting me there...
I found myself in a very stressful job. I had no choice but to diminish my food intake as it would take too much of my energy that I needed so badly to face my daily load at work. I actually kept my weight down to 60 kilos and became totally obsessive about it.
I have 2 or 3 notebooks where I wrote everything I ate with daily intake calories as well as the number of calories I burned in the gym. I also tried different fat burner products, going from the chemically based ones found in the vitamins stores to the Hoodia that was very much in vogue at that time. I lost about 3 pounds with the Hoodia but they crept back as soon as I stopped taking it.
Once in a while I still found myself bingeing, though less frequently and without eating as much as I used to.
I met my second husband in New York. To make the story short, this man I fell in love with was married and was intending to go back to Australia where he spent his youth. At fifteen he went to the UK where he had a hard time adjusting and enrolled in the British army. His personal story was very similar to my brother's in so many ways it was striking.
He told me he'd get a divorce. I did not believe him. But he did. Then he left to settle in Australia. I told him he would forget all about me in no time. He said he wouldn't.
And he didn't. He came back to see me several times. I went to Australia in January 2007 for the first time after I left it when I was 3. He asked me to marry him. I said yes.
We got married on April 7, 2007 in Kalbarri, Western Australia. We moved to Sydney in September 2007. I was back where everything started.
I moved to Australia with my Hoodia pills. I was still obsessed with exercise, my weight, my eating and my calories. I was not on any particular diet but never felt at ease with food. I have never felt at ease with food ever! It has been a way of life for me for the longest time, so I thought this was totally normal. How wrong was I!
In October 2007, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, announced in his Naturalnews.com (formerly Newstaget.comŃI recommend you visit his site!) daily e-mail a Raw Food Summit online. I got very curious and interested as I read the announcement. I registered right away. For 3 weeks in a row, every night, I listened to the recorded calls. Experts in raw foods from all around the globe were interviewed and I heard these incredible stories of self-healing, tips on how to get incredible energy, not to mention delicious recipes. These people were really making a difference in other people's lives. Suddenly, I realized I wanted the same thing. I wanted radiant health, I wanted energy, I wanted to live, and I wanted to feel vibrant. I wanted to be FREE!
I started to immediately eat raw food. I can't tell when exactly, but it was sometime in October 2007. My husband followed and jumped into the raw bandwagon as well. Then a miracle happened. Overnight, my obsessions with food, body weight, self-image and exercise just disappeared. Just like that. As if a fairy had tapped me on the shoulder with her magic wand. I felt free. Finally free. I felt totally connected with the Universe. I felt in sync with life. I felt like I had never felt in my entire life. I WAS FREE!
I lost the few pounds I was fighting to keep off for so long. And it happened doing nothing except eating raw food. From weighing myself several times a week, I went to weigh myself once a month. I lost 4 kgs in a month or so, eating delicious food, without dieting and without strenuous exercise. For the first time in my life, I felt really nourished and satisfied.
A new vision quickly formed in my mind as I learned more and more about the benefits of raw food. I have read that raw food could have some really miraculous effects as it clears out and cleans our 'circuits.' The mind clears up and intuition becomes acute. Our connection to the Universe becomes very real and present. It's all true. And I have my new life to prove all these.
My new vision was to help other compulsive overeaters to heal. I have a lot of experience in the field. I have a lot to give and share. The vision of my website came clearly to my mind that I was able to write all my articles in a few weeks. In January of this year, Karen Knowler, also known as "The Raw Food Coach" (TheRawFoodCoach.com), made an announcement in her e-zine about the Dream Online Business coaching program. I signed up for this program without qualms or hesitation. The training started last February 7. My site was already up and running around that time even though I still have a lot to do to improve it.
I now have my website in English and in French. I have 2 blogs both in English and French too. I always knew it deep inside but didn't know what it was until Raw food cleared everything up for me and freed me from the prison of dieting, bingeing, compulsive overeating and hatred towards my body. I have started to coach compulsive overeaters. I know I have a mission like each and every one of us and I'm carrying it out right now.
My life has changed completely. I am where I wanted to be. I dreamed of a healthy life. I dreamed of freedom. I dreamed I would help others in some way, as this is what makes me vibrate and feel alive. I just didn't know how and I also was not ready. I had to heal myself before I could help others to heal. All my long-time dreams have finally unfolded.
I hesitated for a while to write my story. There is nothing "special" about it, nothing life threatening happened to me. Even though there were emotional issues involved, dieting is what really triggered my compulsive overeating. Later, when I made the choice to eat organic and whole but cooked food, I was still bingeing. I had worked on all the underlying emotional issues in therapies. So why was I still bingeing? I believe my body was lacking important nutrients that it found only in raw foods. Maybe I have developed a sensitivity in that regard because of the fact that I deprived my body for so long of essential nutrients from all the unhealthy dieting I did. Maybe I need more of certain nutrients than some other people. But the truth is that raw and living foods are life-saving for me. I am reborn... in my country of birth. A wink from the Universe I guess!
I still have a long way to go. Life has so much in store for me. It truly is a never-ending learning process. I am deeply grateful to the Universe for everything, for my life, for my pains and for my happiness. I hope to be more of service to others as it is now my mission and duty to be so.
I am grateful to the Rawcovery team for accepting my story and for all the wonderful work they are doing to help the people and our planet. I send my Love to all of you and I give my support to all the compulsive overeaters reading these lines.
Links
Anne is now sharing her experiences as a coach to help others, visit her site: The Compulsive Eating Success Coach