Confessions of a Carb Queen Part Two

I’m not going to give you, dear reader, excerpts from this incredible book, "Confessions of a Carb Queen - The lies we tell others, the lies we tell ourselves," by Susan Blech and Caroline Bock, mostly because I don’t want to ruin the experience for you if you decide to read the book.

And at a more than reasonable cost of $10.85 at Amazon, if you’re at all interested in the emotional and psychological reasons why someone can become morbidly obese (468 pounds) while thinking she’s “just a little chubby” this book is a must. Denial was a large theme throughout this book.

Although a very personal memoir with a vivid inside view to one woman’s experience, this book will certainly ring true for a majority of people who struggle with obesity, binge eating, and dealing with emotions by burying them with food, and denial. Denial and miscalculated portions and calories among dieters and non-dieters alike is epidemic. Dietetic studies done with doubly labeled water, which measures exact caloric intake and burn, show nearly all subjects underestimate their caloric intake by as much as 50 percent. (See Leigh Peele's demonstration video on how small miscalculations in portion size can cost you big).

One curious twist to this book is the title itself. Although Ms. Blech gained her weight binging on fast foods laden with carbohydrates, her foods of choice were also rife with fats, sugar, and just plain high in calories. And how does she lose over 250 pounds? Ironically she’s did it by spending 2 ½ years in Durham, NC on the high carbohydrate and very low protein Duke Rice Diet. She maintains her weight with staples like rice, pasta, vegetables, and fruit. So, technically she is still a carb queen, just a much smaller one.

I know most of my readers are low carbohydrate people. But I’d suggest you keep an open mind when it comes to successful weight loss maintained long term no matter what the program. One message Ms. Blech’s book conveys is the inescapable fact that the roots of over-eating and obesity are emotional. The key to sustained weight loss is less about what diet you use and more about dealing with the underlying causes why you got fat in the first place.

Early on in this book, you learn of Ms. Blech’s less than perfect childhood (like many of us have experienced). Her mother suffered a stroke in her early forties and has spent the rest of her life in nursing facilities and hospitals. Her father raised four children on his own and Susan felt how thin he was stretched. Living in “the house without a mother” was the defining difficulty that sent Ms. Blech on a lifetime of emotional turmoil, low self esteem, bingeing and weight gain.

This memoir is so detailed and descriptive that many passages make you cry, laugh, gasp, or reread them. Ms. Blech and her sister / co-author are gifted writers. Ultimately, Ms. Blech gains control of her bingeing and her emotions. She losses an incredible amount of weight and finds her “grown up” self. One defining moment in her struggle comes after 35, while she’s been at Duke a considerable time. When her father visits and fails to say “I’m proud of you” or do or act as she wants, she binges, gains 40 pounds in a week, cries, and eats more. Her doctor’s gentle advice to “be proud of yourself” resonates to her as “Grow Up.”

And she begins to see her childhood in a new perspective. She lets go of the hurt child she was and begins taking care of the adult she is becoming. Susan Blech is a woman of great courage and naked honesty. She should be considered a genuine heroine in the war on obesity.

If this book doesn’t surprise, shock, and inspire you, make you laugh and cry, and hold you spellbound, you need to take a cue from the Tin Man.

Read People Magazine's article on Susan Blech.

More articles about The Rice Diet and their success stories.

Confessions of a Carb Queen Review Part One

Confessions of a Carb Queen Review Part One

I received this book last Friday, started reading it Saturday afternoon, and I’ve been riveted to it since. Every chance I get my head is stuck in this book.

The cover of this odd sized 5 x 5 paperback is bright pink with a chocolate brown border, sports a sprinkled donut with a bite taken out of it, and has a title gaily scrolled with girly fonts which suggests light “Chick Lit” style non fiction. The cover is totally misleading.

The subtitle is a telling clue into what you're about to encounter inside. "The lies you tell others. The lies you tell yourself."

This insightful and powerful memoir by Susan Blech and her sister Caroline Bock is at times shocking, explicit (both sexually and in it’s descriptions of excessive eating). And Susan, the auto-biographer, despite being in the throes of her addiction excesses, and denial during much of this book, is lovable and endearing, humorous and intelligent.

At times, her narrative conjures memories of my childhood and adulthood. Both sides of my family are plagued by overeating, obesity, and coping with emotions by drugging themselves with food. Many are still deeply enmeshed in this common yet shocking eating disorder and in the grips of the diseases it precipitates including diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and mobility issues.

I had my own brief episode with binge eating after my father died when I was twenty. Shocked by his sudden death and clueless as how to deal with my grief, I was adrift without an anchor. I recall eating a whole pie in one evening as a common way of coping. At the time, I thought this was part of normal behavior because I’d witnessed it so many times. Later I got too thin. Now I’m in the middle of the spectrum, measuring most of my portions most of the time, stressing high protein and weight lifting, and eating 4 to 6 small meals a day.

But I’ve witnessed the phenomenon of binge eating and overeating repeatedly in my family, and a few friends, since my childhood. Sometimes it was a case of someone grazing on copious amounts of food over the course of a trip to the buffet. (Once six of us traveled 45 miles one way to eat at the Boomtown Buffet on the recommendation that it was "The Best Buffet In Nevada"). Often I witnessed constant snacking from morning to afternoon until late in the night on copious amounts of food. This was common, acceptable and par for the course throughout my extended family.

(My father had 14 brothers and sisters, my mother had 4. I have 88 first cousins on my dad's side alone).

When I was in my teens and quite thin (I always had been as a child) one of my siblings was struggling with obesity (rare in the 1970s). I learned to hide food before going to bed around midnight in order to have breakfast at 7 am. Our kitchen was routinely ands literally emptied out overnight. It was hide food or go without.

In adulthood, my relatives still openly eat large portions. Once offering me “some French bread, butter, and cheese,” I was given a slice of each while the relative in question ate all of the rest of a whole pound of cheese, a stick of butter, and a whole loaf of French bread. In one sitting. As a snack.

My mother, who was slim and petite until her last few years, once related to me how her sister ate two heaping plates of my homemade spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic bread. Then an hour later my aunt ate a large bowl of cereal. My mother was flabbergasted. “Where does she put all that?” she asked.

I shrugged. I didn’t know then about eating beyond physical appetite, or the addiction of emotional eating, or eating to get a food or sugar high. (Carbohydrates have been shown to release brain chemicals that act like drugs).

I've known and still often witness one side of the face of overeating. The side I’ve seen all too often in the public eating habits of family, friends, and even strangers in restaurants, often flabbergasts me in much the same way my mother was flabbergasted by her sister.

I suspected hidden eating existed when I spent my younger years awakening to a stripped kitchen my slender parents always strived to keep well stocked. I know binge eating and other forms of overeating are compulsive addictions with sad consequences.

So this book should not have shocked me.

It did.

Part Two - coming soon.