In Kitchen Confidential, New York chef Anthony Bourdain lifted the lid on drug and alcohol abuse in restaurant kitchens. But when Cindy Gershen says, "We're a bunch of addicts," she is referring to food professionals with eating disorders.
Cindy Gershen runs four food businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area, goes to three meetings a week of Food Addicts in Recovery, and talks to her sponsor every morning. She has been on diets since she was nine, bulimic since she was fifteen. At 52, dark-eyed Gershen, often described as the "petite dynamo," is five-foot-three and weighs 115 pounds. She has weighed 210.
"My life consisted of dieting and binging," she says, until she discovered Food Addicts in Recovery 17 years ago. "I wanted to be small so I could curl up in your lap."
However, since childhood she has felt fat. Even next to the adult she spent lots of time with, her 300-pound grandmother, Gershen feels fat. She has tried various eating disorder programs, about which she can only say, "They made me feel shameful. You're always the patient."
When she met her husband, a pediatrician, he wanted her to rely on him, but that didn't work either. Only Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous (FA), a twelve-step program based on Alcoholics Anonymous, has worked. Now, she can talk about her eating disorder. Still, she rarely goes out to eat and when she travels, she has to stay in a place with a kitchen and cook her own food, and a place with an FA affiliate.
"I weigh and measure every meal," Gershen says. "I would completely lose myself if I didn't weigh and measure my food."
This is the successful businesswoman who runs a bakery café, a restaurant, a catering company, and a golf course banquet facility and restaurant.
Gershen gave college a shot, but lasted only a year and a half. "I couldn't sit still," Gershen tells me, adding that lots of chefs have the kind of frenetic energy that doesn't translate to sitting in class or studying. Work in restaurants turned out to be perfect. She loved the frenzied pace and long hours, and started her own business over twenty-five years ago. Her Sunrise Café became popular, but customers had to wonder about the owner, whose size made her ashamed to come out of the kitchen. "It's all getting better," says Gershen. "But I've always had to be around my drug of choice."
For this restaurateur, the battle strategy with food is a variation of "Keep the enemy close." That is, keep control. It's also about overcoming a perception of yourself, or even a real disability, and using that victory in your life's work. As a shy journalist, I know this one. Actors and comedians, too, may run for cover in their work. There are popular radio personalities who learned to overcome speech difficulties. And, many physicians are motivated by illness in themselves or their families.
In future posts, we'll meet more Foodies With Issues.
