Follow Here To Purchase As Is: Confessions of a True Fatty

Author: Linda Misleh Wagner

Publisher: MisWags Press

ISBN: 978-0-9906352-0-0

                                                        Overcoming Food Addiction

Stories about issues around food addiction do not get more poignantly detailed and evocative as this one. Addiction to food, i.e. turning to food for solace and the consequent ill effects, from anorexia to obesity are symptomatic of a huge imbalance in the human psyche. Drug and alcohol addictions are easy to condemn as they are mostly forbidden by law. But something as essential as food? Comfort eating to cope with domestic violence and denial of one’s true standing within the family structure is an extremely common problem and requires exceptional strength and willpower for normally loving women who delight in giving, to take a stand for their own dignity.

The author, Linda Misleh Wagner was born in a loving Christian Palestinian family. Her parents subscribed to traditional Arabian values and young girls were required to have a chaperone when they went anywhere, sex before marriage was forbidden. But theirs was a very wide family circle, with many relatives and friends who met often and partook of excellent Arabic food together. So constraints on meeting with the opposite sex did not feel too restrictive.

Linda, of course, imbibed this love of good food, and she also had a tendency to putting on weight. However, during her puberty years, she could keep her food cravings under control, so as to register a normal weight. It was only after her marriage and the birth of  four children in quick succession that her battle with the bulge started. As the results of the aforesaid battle started to show on her figure, her husband got increasingly estranged, their marriage ending in a divorce thirteen years later. Linda returned to the support of her parents who lived in San Diego, leaving her eldest son, Stephen behind.

Finding financial security with her brother who employed her as a receptionist in his dental practice, she turned once again to comfort food to cover her emotional vacuum. And the yo-yo dieting programs that she unsuccessfully tried in an effort to hold on to her husband ended only in her weight escalating to unhealthy proportions.

Then tragedy struck and for the first time in her life, food could not help Linda. With this realization, Linda started on a long and eventful journey of recovery from food addiction which is still continuing as this book was being written.

This book has been written with deep emotion as the reader is made privy to see how Linda’s urge to eat got pitted against a deeper and greater love, the love of Linda for her family, especially her children.  Her struggle with food in all the phases of her life and the dawning of her realization that she refused to be a doormat to anybody, not even her children, is documented in rarely seen detail in this very well written book.

This book will serve as an inspiration and an eye opener for those who are looking for solutions to their weight  problems outside their comfort zones.They will find solace and understanding of their own situation and a realization that they are not alone in their predicament.

Warmly recommended, especially to all those yo yo dieters out there, who are looking in vain for workable solutions to their weight problems.