Obsessed: America's Food Addiction

by Mika Brzezinski

  Remember the days when people whispered about cancer and called it “the big C,” as if naming it bestowed power? Now we’re doing the same thing with weight problems. We need to stop the whispering, start talking louder, and use the F-word: fat. We’ll have conversations about that in this book, with scientists, researchers, politicians, and friends. You and I may not always agree about how we got here or where to go next, and we may not find the final answers. But we need to take this on. We need to talk freely and without judgment about these fierce and fearsome issues: food, fat, and body image.

  We need to stop the whispering, start talking louder, and use the F-word: fat.—Mika

  I’ve written on the subject of women, money, and getting what you’re worth in my earlier book Knowing Your Value. Like that one, Obsessed recognizes that as women, we need to take control of our lives. How we eat is a very important part of that, and to make the right choices we have to confront our body image head-on. We have to create a personal game plan that guides us on how to eat and how to live, and we have to understand how that will help us love ourselves first, so that we are really able to love others.

  We also need to be honest about the advantages of being thin and healthy—an attractive body really does impact our value. Looks matter, and if we pretend they don’t, our careers are likely to suffer, which may drive some of us to overeat even more. And good looks can’t be faked. If there is a vacant hunger behind your eyes because you aren’t eating properly, there is no way to disguise it just by being thin. In this book I will be “put on the couch” by clinical psychologist and eating disorders specialist Dr. Margo Maine, who will help me get to the bottom of my own body image problems.

  As I did in Knowing Your Value, I will also offer some advice, much of it the result of my own mistakes and the lessons I learned from them. And I’ll share insights from my circle of friends on Morning Joe, who stretch from Hollywood to Wall Street to Washington, DC. Some of America’s most famous actors, politicians, business executives, and writers have generously shared their thoughts with me, and I will pass on to you what works for them.

  I want to go beyond the debate Joe Scarborough and I have on the Morning Joe set and open the floor to a bigger conversation, a dialogue on how America got fat, why the obesity epidemic keeps getting worse, and how we can turn the corner and step firmly onto the path of health. I want to talk about requiring better food labels and limiting portion sizes, restricting the sale of the huge containers of liquid sugar that we call soda pop, and so much more.

  I also want to pass on all the good advice I have been given about how to talk to your children about food, especially girls. Getting that right—knowing what to say and what not to say—makes all the difference. You need to have these conversations with your kids early and often—the issue can’t be addressed in a single heart-to-heart talk—and you need to have them before it’s too late to have an impact.

  Just as it is remains a continuing struggle for me to know my value, my friction with food will not end with the last word of this book. But I am putting this all down on paper—the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly—because I think that is part of the process of healing. If you follow the same path, take a hard and honest look at yourself, and consider some of the strategies for success described in these pages, I am confident you will get there, too.

  I hope you will also take this book and use it as a sounding board to talk with your family and your friends. Make it a title for your book club, encourage discussions in libraries and community centers, and bring it to a school board meeting to get the conversation started. Let’s push this subject out of the closet.

  Talking to women (big and small) about how we look at ourselves and how we eat and how we feed those we love is an important early step. But in the summer of 2011, I learned just how hard having a frank conversation on this subject can be. My tough talk with my dear friend Diane turned so ugly so fast that I thought I had lost her friendship forever. (Luckily I not only kept my friend, but I gained a co-author!)

  Diane Smith had been like my sister for fifteen years. When I was scared and alone delivering my second baby, she filled the void and held my hand during the pain of childbirth. We had gossiped together and supported each other through the ups and downs of our media careers. We had shared all the things two friends could share, except one. Neither of us had ever broached the subject of how we battled food and how the very different outcomes had affected our career fortunes.

  Diane’s weight had always felt taboo to me. Raising the issue seemed like a bridge too far. But now I was going to cross that bridge and burn it down. When our conversation started, I was shaking with fear, but I knew there would be no retreat back to the land of denial.

  The “Talk” (as my horrified teenage girls still call it) started on a perfect Labor Day weekend on Long Island Sound, off the coast of Connecticut. We were on Diane’s small powerboat. As my girls were laughing and teasing their dad and Diane’s husband, Tom, I looked across at her and knew that years of denial had to come to an end. I finally told Diane what I had been thinking for a decade. What everyone who knew this bright, beautiful woman had been thinking but never ever would say . . . until now.

  “Diane, you have a problem we need to talk about,” was the way I began the intervention that I feared would bring our precious friendship to an end. Diane had given me the opening when she started talking about dinner. “It’s so hard to know what to cook when you visit, Mika. On Morning Joe you’re always telling people what to eat and not to eat. You make me so self-conscious about my weight because it’s so easy for you. You’re turning into the Food Nazi.”

  I felt a catch in my throat and knew this was the chance I had been waiting for. I jumped in. “Diane, you think it’s easy for me to stay thin like this? Because if you do, then you may be one of my closest friends but you know nothing about the hell I go through every day.” Her face turned red and Diane glared at me as if I was the most clueless woman on the face of the earth. As our husbands and kids scurried to the other side of the boat, she and I started to go after one another with the intensity of prizefighters.

  “Oh please, Mika! You sit there in your Daisy Duke shorts looking incredible, and you tell me how hard your life is? Why don’t you try talking to me when you start wearing size XXL stretch pants—then you can complain. Any woman I know would kill to look like you. You really can’t look me in the face and say that you struggle.”

  I started to sweat. I was losing ground with my old friend fast. Diane had always been on my side. Was I really going to risk this friendship to tell her what had been on my mind for years about her weight, her career, and especially her health? If I was, I would be forced to tell the truth about myself, too—about the double life I had been leading for so long. How I had been tortured by my inability to escape what Kathleen Turner calls the “tyranny of thin” and my own obsessions and addictions.

  “Seriously, Mika, what would you know about being fat?” she continued. “You won the freaking lottery: great job, perfect body, and an amazing life. You walk into the room and every overweight woman dismisses you as a skinny bitch. Do you have any idea how women who look like me feel about women who look like you?”

  That was it. I broke down. With tears in my eyes, I began telling her the ugly truth about myself. “Diane, I fight with food every hour of every day of my life.” Diane leaned in close to hear me over the roar of the boat’s motor. “I am obsessed with food. I’m tortured by it.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Give me a break!”

  I was amazed Diane had never guessed it. I couldn’t believe that she had bought into the acting job Joe Scarborough and I performed on Morning Joe, where he played the undisciplined food slob and I filled the role of the hyperdisciplined health nut. Diane had never realized what was going on in my head when I chastised Joe and Willie Geist and Mike Barnicle for gobbling down Krystal Burgers. She never heard the silent voice roaring, I want that! She didn’t know I
was terrified that if I took one bite, I would inhale every burger on the table.

  “Food Nazi—are you kidding me?” I asked in disbelief. “Who the hell do you think I’m talking to from the desk of Morning Joe? I’m not just talking to you, Diane. I’m talking to myself, Joe, my kids, and everybody else in America who is tempted to shove food into their mouths without thinking about it. Food that is toxic and is going to turn us all into diabetics. Food that is causing everybody to get fatter and fatter.”

  I tried to let Diane know I was worried about her physical condition. “You can’t climb onto your boat without help. Is that how you want to live? Your whole body hurts and your joints are killing you. Why do you think that is? I am just going to say it. It’s because you are fat.”

  As she stared at me, stone-faced, I figured now was not the time to sugarcoat this health intervention. “Diane, I am terrified to tell you this but I love you too much not to. You’re not just overweight—you’re fat. You’re OBESE. Other people don’t see the beautiful person I see when I look at you. They see a woman who looks like her life is out of control, who can’t even manage her own body.”

  I couldn’t believe I had called her obese, and neither could she. Diane looked like I had punched her in the face. I had dared to use the word that, as fellow newscasters, we had used to talk about “other” people. I had dared to go where no friend or family member had ever gone with Diane. I then told her in no uncertain terms that if she didn’t take dramatic steps soon, her bad habits would break her body down and eventually kill her. “You need to change your entire life,” I declared.

  I also told Diane what she already knew: that her obesity had stopped her ascent to the top of the media world. I was so uncomfortable sharing these difficult truths that I couldn’t even look her in the eyes as it all poured out. I knew how much my words were ravaging my sweet friend. But I also knew that change was possible because I had made real, if incomplete, progress in staring down my own demons. I talked more about myself, finally telling her the truth about the glaring insecurity I’d had about my body for years—an insecurity that kept me in front of a mirror, and sometimes locked in my closet, while my tears flowed and flowed.

  I told Diane about the pain and the torment I still put myself through to stay thin enough to go on the air. I reminded her of the time I’d been told to lose weight if I wanted a new job. Back then I hadn’t lost enough weight for my employer’s taste, so I lost a career opportunity. It had been an ugly episode that stayed with me for years.

  That humiliating experience was one Diane could relate to all too well. After all, we are both tall blonde women on TV, with tons of experience and good broadcasting skills. In terms of pure TV talent, Diane trumps me in most areas, and yet one thing divides us. Diane is overweight and I am not. And every year since we met she seemed to get a little bit heavier.

  Talking about that with Diane for the very first time was raw, dangerous, and difficult. But ultimately it turned out to be the most important conversation she and I would ever have. Our day took a fateful turn when I realized that Diane had not a clue about my secret self—the one filled with food and weight struggles that were so similar to hers. Diane had no idea of the damage I had inflicted on myself and my family as I struggled alone under this tyranny. She had no idea how much she and I had in common. Really, there was only one difference between us: her eating had caught up with her and punished her professionally. Mine had not. Two different outcomes to two stunningly similar tales.

  The very real pain Diane heard in my voice softened her resentment toward me, and the tone of our conversation shifted.

  Soon we began talking about how I had won success in part because I had caved in to the pressures society places on women and manipulated my looks for the TV camera. We talked about the mixed messages imposed on women about their bodies, and how those messages are inflated to a nauseating level in the world of TV news and pop culture.

  That was the start of a very real conversation that continues to this day.

  Eventually, I made Diane an offer: she would work at changing her approach to food and exercise and lose seventy-five pounds, and I would help her do it. I decided to put my money where my mouth was, and to pay for her to lose weight. She could do whatever it took—buy a gym membership, hire a personal trainer, seek guidance from a dietitian, even seek out bariatric surgery. Whatever! I would be paying my girlfriend to start taking care of herself and to change her life.

  At the same time, I would work at overcoming my own obsession with food, gain 10 pounds, and accept the new me. My goal was a healthy 135-pound woman who ate a reasonable meal when she was hungry, instead of someone who freaked out when the scale tipped 120 pounds, fought against the urge to eat at every turn, and often felt drained by all that effort.

  Both of us would have the courage to ask for help. I would talk to professionals who would help me understand what was happening in my head and guide me on how to clear it up. Diane would finally find the support she needed to get rid of the fat. We would both talk to people who had lost weight and kept it off, and to people who felt comfortable in their own bodies, whatever their weight, and find out what insights they had to share. Together, we would reach out to people who understood that this issue goes beyond the individual and that we have to start making some changes together, as members of one society.

  We decided to make a project out of it, which is how the idea of this book developed. We researched and wrote it together.

  Our conversation on the boat started us on a journey that we hope will make us both better. Diane will weigh less, I’ll weigh more, and both of us will be a lot happier. We’re both still working on those goals, but we’re ready to tell all—to finally “go there” without holding anything back. I hope this will inspire you to examine your own lifestyle, body image, and eating habits, whether you share Diane’s food issues or mine. Our friendship is stronger than ever, and we are inspired by the courage we have seen in each other. It is our deepest hope that these pages will inspire you as well.

  Our conversation on the boat started us on a journey that we hope will make us both better. Diane will weigh less, I’ll weigh more, and both of us will be a lot happier.—Mika

  CHAPTER ONE

  MIKA’S STORY

  If you struggle with weight, I know what you’re thinking.

  Really? You, Mika? What can you possibly know about my problems?

  That’s what Diane thought, and it’s what Senator Claire McCaskill thought, too. The Democrat from Missouri said that right to my face; blurted it out in front of a thousand people on stage at the Annual Congressional Dinner of the Washington Press Foundation. “Mika, you look so beautiful sitting there in your size two dress. We have all noticed . . . your strong and consistent message of better eating and more exercise. And I would like to say, on behalf of all the middle-aged overweight women in America, JUST . . . SHUT . . . UP!”

  The crowd went wild.

  My outspoken stance on obesity and the way I describe my own diet haven’t just incited my close friends. They’ve also made me the target of online attacks and anonymous bloggers. Trust me, I hear all of you. When New York magazine published my food journal, it was welcomed with online comments like this:

  [MIKA] IS OBSESSED WITH FOOD AND RUNNING. THAT IS ALL SHE TALKS ABOUT TO ANYONE WHO WILL LISTEN. SHE HAS THIS SAD OBSESSION WITH FOOD. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WITH AN EATING DISORDER.

  That reader hit a nerve. He was right on when he pointed out my eating disorder, and I’m telling you, it’s not just one eating disorder, but many. I’ve dealt with them for years, and I am still working on my issues today.

  I don’t know what alcoholism feels like, but I can only imagine that the first drink of the day must be something like my first bite of a Big Mac, especially when I have a second Big Mac already sitting in front of me, and a large order of fries right alongside it. Binges like that were my happiest moments in high school. For someone who preaches about health
y eating, that’s a pretty tough thing to admit. But I crave junk food, and for years, through my teens and twenties and into my thirties, all I could think about was how to get more of it.

  That’s not how I was brought up. In my family, my father, mother, and two brothers ate breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the occasional snack. They ate for pleasure and for sustenance. I ate for pleasure, too, but it was really about emotional fulfillment. I ate to be happy. I loved junk food and I felt it was the one thing that loved me back. (This was mostly teenage angst. My parents, grandmother Emilie Benes, and in their own ways, my brothers, Mark and Ian, could not have loved me more.)

  No one in my family craved food except me. Everybody else ate because it was mealtime. My mother, Emilie, who is of Czech origin, would cook Eastern European–style meals, often serving the wild game that my brothers and my dad loved to hunt. There was plenty of tasty food in the house all the time, but my mother seemed to have her own eating under control. She loved delicious things, but she knew when to stop. She tried to teach me the same kind of discipline, but to no avail.

  Despite her best efforts, I was consumed from an early age with thoughts about what I could eat next. When am I going to get to the 7-Eleven? (which was conveniently located right around the corner from my house). When will I be able to get a pint of Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream, or a pizza in a pocket, or a bag of chips?

  My best friend growing up was Laura Eakin Erlacher. We met in elementary school in McLean, Virginia. “I always looked forward to having dinner at Mika’s house,” Laura remembers, “because it was what family dinners are supposed to be about. They always had the freshest food and lots of interesting conversation.”

  The food may have been fresh, but it was also unfamiliar to her. I wondered what Laura thought when my mother served the duck my father or brothers had shot earlier that day. Or venison. Really, serving up Bambi for dinner?