Chaz Bono Fights Food Addiction

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Jabberwocky

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Cher's son talks about his battle to lose weight after beating drug and alcohol addiction.

Chaz Bono may be familiar with the "Whac-A-Mole" phenomenon: you whack one addiction, and another pops up. The LGBT activist and son of Cher and Sonny Bono says he has struggled with his weight throughout his life, but his food issues were triggered after he quit painkillers, drinking and cigarettes. “I think for me the weight was the last thing I was holding on to after letting of go of drugs, drinking, and smoking,” says Bono. “That was a lot to let go of. Eating and dinner became this big event in my life because those other things were gone, and food became the only thing of pleasure I still had in my mind. And I’m Italian.”

Bono also attributes his weight gain to a hormonal imbalance, partially caused by his long-term addiction to opiate painkillers like Vicodin and Percodan, which he finally quit in 2004. Hormone specialist Dr. Eva Cwynar, who is helping develop a weight loss plan for Bono, says years of opiate abuse contributed to his weight gain, and have made it harder for him to lose the pounds. “Those drugs wreak havoc on the pituitary gland, and that upsets the body’s hormonal harmony, which impact your weight,” she says, “Those are the issues we had to go in and fix with Chaz.”

As a transgendered man, Bono says he's had a "distorted body image" since childhood. “I remember seeing this cartoon that showed a woman looking in a mirror and seeing herself as big and fat when she wasn’t in reality,” he recalls. “On the reverse the man saw a body builder in the mirror, when he looked nothing like that in reality. He was totally out of shape. That always stuck with me as to how I thought.” His weight issues were also exacerbated by growing up in the spotlight. Bono says his mother, Cher, put him on diets when he was a kid, "but it wasn’t talked about.”

After reaching an unhealthy weight prior to his gender reconstruction surgery in 2010, he is now tackling the issue through diet, exercise, and hormone therapy—but he says the greatest hurdles are psychological. “I knew I had to change my mind-set if I wanted to lose the amount of weight I needed to this time around," he says, "I’d have to really commit to whatever it took to get it off and keep it off because of the toll it was taking on my health.”
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http://www.thefix.com/content/chaz-bono-fights-food-addiction91437
 
food became the only thing of pleasure I still had in my mind.
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I can understand this, but it is really sad to me. Life is filled with so many incredible and healthy pleasures other than food (or drugs), such as walking on the beach or in a park, going for a hike, doing yoga, reading, painting, being silly with friends, watching the sun set, watching great movies, listening to music, making music, swimming, etc. etc.

BTW, I am also addicted to food. I can't stop eating. I eat every day. Sometimes, I even eat when I am not hungry, just because it looks good. Sometimes I eat in private. I feel like I can't stop eating food. I don't ever want to stop eating food.
 
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slimvictor said:
I can understand this, but it is really sad to me. Life is filled with so many incredible and healthy pleasures other than food (or drugs), such as walking on the beach or in a park, going for a hike, doing yoga, reading, painting, being silly with friends, watching the sun set, watching great movies, listening to music, making music, swimming, etc. etc.

BTW, I am also addicted to food. I can't stop eating. I eat every day. Sometimes, I even eat when I am not hungry, just because it looks good. Sometimes I eat in private. I feel like I can't stop eating food. I don't even want to stop eating food.
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You put that really really well. It's exactly the same way I felt about my dad when I was living with him (same, well similar but a bit less extreme, sort of problem). I'm glad to see your posts are as eloquent as ever :)

"Dark comedy" is my favorite genre because it's the truest to life, much more real than any documentary I've ever seen ;)
 
^ Well, thanks for the kind words!
It is a shame, but many people fail to see the beauty of life.
For me, drugs enhance the beauty of life, or loan me energy to enjoy it, but for some people, drugs ARE the beauty of life.
(Sometimes, when I am going through a bad phase/addiction, I begin to see the world in that way as well - and I know that means it is time to stop.)
 
Nice quote Capt'n :)

slimvictor said:
It is a shame, but many people fail to see the beauty of life.
For me, drugs enhance the beauty of life, or loan me energy to enjoy it, but for some people, drugs ARE the beauty of life.
(Sometimes, when I am going through a bad phase/addiction, I begin to see the world in that way as well - and I know that means it is time to stop.)
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Damn right it is. I often wonder if more people just spent more time day dreaming and began to see the world with eyes unclouded (or less clouded) by hatred, what would change? Anyways, about the addiction/bad phase remark, I think that is also very sagacious - although something most obvious, especially as a "skill," when learned in retrospect (e.g. I'm the same way now, but it took a while and a bit of suffering/loving/experimenting to get here).

Drugs are like anything else - they're things, neither good nor bad; they are what we make of them (because they, imho, do not hold meaning until an entity such as a human being(s) or society/culture/law/etc impart meaning onto them (and even them meaning is far from fixed, very rarely do we actually express it as it is in any normative/universal or even mildly enduring form); the one exception to this is certain things like mescaline and dmt containing plants that do seem to have "spirits" of their own that either facilitate or actually impart meanings of their own onto us and other things too).

What is this thread about again? ;)
 
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