Intervention on A&E "JOSH"

For those that have an interest in the Addiction aspect of Weight gain, the A&E show Intervention is for the first time in my memory presenting a show about the intervention of a super obese man.
This show is really an excellent look into the hard core life of drug and alchohol abuse (among others) and I am looking forward to see how they present this subject. 

Below is a link to the show which will be presented next week starting Monday 1/23/08 @ 9:00 PM

http://www.aetv.com/intervention/int_episode_guide.jsp


Next, a talented singer and the owner of his own karaoke business, 22-year-old Josh is addicted to food and weighs 550 lbs. Josh's father, Rex, has the same weight problem--at 317 lbs., he's a diabetic who's had six strokes. Now, Rex watches helplessly as Josh follows in his footsteps toward an early death. Josh's mother and two brothers hope that an intervention will be a wake-up call for the whole family to choose health.

My older brother is a recovering alcoholic. I see a whole lot of the same behavior patterns in him dealing with alcohol prior to detox and me dealing with high calorie food prior to surgery. He hasn't had a drop of alcohol in 13 years and is pretty convinced that one drink would lead him down the path to an early death. I'm pretty sure I need to treat sugar the same way. I don't know enough psychology or chemistry to know whether I'm full of **** or whether there's some comonalities here.

I don't wish to stir up an argument, but speaking personally, I am SOOO tired of people tossing around terms like "addiction" when it comes to "sugar", or food in general. It's reductive, and a misuse of the term. But, whatever floats your boat... /Steve

I do not agree at all and let me tell you why I started watching the Interventon shows after I was part of an intervention- After that I spent 10  Days at the Betty Ford Clinic as part of Family Week- This was a week of intensive counseling about Addicts, speifically my brother.  When I say this was intensive counseling, I mean it. My youngest brother is an Addict and Alcholohic and what I did learn that is Addiciton is part of the bagage you carry with you your whole life. My brother manifested his issues growing up with Drink and Meth- I manifiested his with food. I can not tell you how many sessions I sat through- when I say myself in the people and counselors and sessions I attented.  The only difference is, they used a needle or a straw or a glass and I used food. By the time I was leaving, my counselor had classified me as a dry drunk (AA has this termed for someone who has all the signs of an addict but does not take drink) Addiction is addiction is addiction- it matters very little what your drug of choice is, what does matter is out of control behavior.

addiction: the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psycholgically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes sever trauma. my 2 cents Chris

I disagree as well. Addiction can be classified in several ways. For example, a heroin junkie might start off addicted to the pleasant feeling he's getting from using the drug. That's psychological addiction. But over time, his body chemistry changes to the point where he cannot function normally without heroin in his system, even though he's no longer getting the "high" he used to experience. That's physical addiction. So yes, food can become an addiction. The biggest issue is psychological, because any short term physical addiction symptoms from food are quickly overcome when you change your eating habits. However, unlike cigarettes, or gambling, or recreational drugs, etc., we must have food to survive, so there's no way to quit food cold turkey. That's been clinically proven, btw, to be the most successful method of ending an addiction - quitting cold turkey. It just doesn't work with food. That's why it's probably the hardest addiction to break, because  since you can never really stop eating, you're always going to have the possibility of relapsing into using food as a drug, and thus feeding that addiction.

I've know that I'm a food addict for at least 30 years.  I've been abstinate from sugar and whilte flour several times for as long as a year but I always end up slipping.  The major addiction programs agree that addiction to sugar and white flour is a valid addiction.  I had sponsors when I was in OA who had kicked cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol but who said that food addiction is the hardest.  Part of the reason is that white sugar is hidden in many of the products that we normally think are sugar free.  Another problem is that even if you avoid sugar and white flour, your body is always making insulin and your insulin levels make your body mimic its reaction to the addictive foods. Food addiction programs now say that relapse is part of recovery.  That being said, it is best to try to avoid relapse.  Once you relapse, you should try to be abstinent again immediately but your mind starts playing games with you.  What I mean is that your blood chemistry changes and that changes the way you think.  If you do relapse, you don't know how long it will take you to become abstinate again.  Personally, I haven't been abstinate for a couple years and it's a real torture for me. That's why I'm seeking addiction counseling with a therapist.

it's real enough my doctor wants me to speak about it to newbies in the required meetings all the time! mostly it's the women who turn to drinking. we have a tendency to just replace the addiction. the real problem is we can't stop eating! double tough. we can't just put food down and walk away.

keep us posted on how they treat this episode. interested to know the outcome. thanks for bringing up a very serious problem we can sometimes face. not everyone has this problem but some of us are cross addicted and it's a demon. i can't tell you how many in here battle this and turn to other forms of addiction. sex, food, drugs, pain meds, booze, exercise. the list if formidable. not that any of these things i listed are bad if taken in moderation. it's just when it becomes the only thing you want........carbonblob

While I agree with everything you said, I don't think being addicted to exercise would be that bad. I mean, if you have an addictive personality and you are going to be addicted to *something* anyway, exercise seems like the best choice. Sure like anything you can over-do it to the point of injury, neglecting your family, etc, but I've never actually heard of anyone exercising so much that they lost their house,  got fired from their job, got divorced, etc. I'm not saying it never happens, but it must be a pretty rare event.

good point, i think i was just trying to say we can be single minded about something. exercise was a bad example but i do exercise to the point of injury and won't back off. i think a lot of guys on here go near crazy if they miss a workout. we can't seem to realise we won't gain all our weight back if we miss a workout. fear is a real motivator. some of us get afraid to miss a workout in fear of falling off the horse or converting to old habits. it makes no sense of course but we treat it like it's a matter of life and death if we don't work out. i can get crazy like that and i know a few others in here like that. not addiction really, just a misplaced sense of priorities and judgement. think of it like eating that first piece of sugar after surgery. you think you won't stop and eat the whole bag and then buy another and another until you're at the same weight when you started! weird but that's how some of us think sometimes. so exercise is like a stop break to us. make any sense?

The best way to handle an exercise addiction is to take an interest in a variety of physical activity and rotate that activity so that you don't spend too many consecutive hours/ days on one body part or activity type.

With weights, I rotate body parts. With running technique I do drills some days, balance work some days, sprints some days, slow runs some days. Then swimming is for Sundays.

Of course, cardio or weights every day will also lead to fatigue, so it's good to either take a day off or have some low level activity. For me it's balancing on an Indo board (doesn't get me out of breath) or some kind of static running stance activity  like balancing on the ball of the foot.

Best Wishes,

Dave