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" COSMO: I can&amp;#039;t believe you called your friend obese! What did it feel like calling Diane out on her weight? MIKA: I called her fat, and I called her obese. Her eyes widened. It wasn&amp;#039;t some skinny girl complaining. I&amp;#039;m dying here. I&amp;#039;m trying to keep this [size 2 body] going. It&amp;#039;s impossible. I&amp;#039;m in my mid-40s, and I&amp;#039;m trying to be thin. I&amp;#039;m not the food police. I&amp;#039;m trying very hard not to slide into a place where I binge. It was a living hell for her. But what I&amp;#039;d been going through, it was the same thing. I said, &amp;quot;Diane, I&amp;#039;m dying here. I am hungry all the time. All I think about is what I&amp;#039;m going to eat next, when I can eat it, and what I&amp;#039;m going to do about it after.&amp;quot; She said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m getting you a therapist. The way you&amp;#039;re talking sounds really f-ed up. I don&amp;#039;t think you have to be like that.&amp;quot; I was like, &amp;quot;Yes. Yes, I have lots of eating disorders. And yes, I need help.&amp;quot; Diane and I found a direct link between very skinny women and morbidly obese women: We have the same urges. So we decided to deal with it together by writing about it. We split the book advance and each agreed we&amp;#039;d use the money toward the treatments we needed to get healthy. Diane promised to lose 75 pounds by the time the book came out, and I promised to gain weight and be happy. Q: What was the most surprising thing you learned while working on the book?  A: The science. I felt like a stranger writing down strange things on paper. Ew, she has eating disorders, and she&amp;#039;s crazy. I had instincts about food and what it was doing to me. We have all the science in the headlines to show how addictive junk food can be. My behavior was crazy. I&amp;#039;d eat two Big Macs and two fries in one sitting, and I&amp;#039;d still be hungry. There had to be more than me being a pig. Something was happening in my brain and in my body. I was sure of it. I wrote it down and then looked at the science. You do a bit of scratching and the science comes pouring out. I think it&amp;#039;s going to be like the tobacco industry. The food industry is going to get in line or they&amp;#039;re going to get the pants sued off of them. Q: I was struck by how open you are about your food issues and struggles in the book. Are you nervous about exposing yourself? A: I was like, &amp;quot;This is it. It&amp;#039;s time.&amp;quot; When I was reading the book out loud for the audio version yesterday, I was crying. I realized so much of my life has been consumed by something I should be embarrassed about, a sign of weakness, a failing or a pathetic quality. Reading it coupled with the science and the conversations I had with other women, it all makes sense now. There&amp;#039;s value in what I&amp;#039;ve been through. EDs affect women of all shapes and sizes. I think that&amp;#039;s important to talk about because so many women need help. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am not well. I will always have an eating disorder. I feel much more at peace. I know exactly what&amp;#039;s happening. I would say I am less in control in a good way. Being so in control is exactly our problem. Someone with an eating disorder is so in control that they control themselves into being half-dead. It&amp;#039;s a more easy, relaxed feeling that I have now.  Q: How would you describe your food issues? A: I&amp;#039;m always grabbing my side and squeezing it and feeling like there&amp;#039;s an inch I need to get rid of. In the past, those moments were followed by binging and starving myself. I&amp;#039;d gorge on the most unhealthy foods and then extreme exercise or I&amp;#039;d starve myself afterward. I&amp;#039;d have little tricks, like, run 10 miles and then have the whole pizza. Or eat the icing off multiple cupcakes and then not eat breakfast. Eat a whole pan of brownies, then starve myself for days. I&amp;#039;d always look for a way to undo my gorging. Now? I try to think about how I can eat a meal that is healthy and satisfying and doesn&amp;#039;t make me feel sick mentally, emotionally, and physically. In the book, we do something really different. We draw a direct link between skinny women and morbidly obese women. We do the same thing with food. We celebrated that. And now let&amp;#039;s deal with doing it together. Q: Was it hard writing about this? A: A couple of times in the writing process, I found myself falling back. Talking about the pizza and the Big Mac takes me back. I am salivating right now. I used to make brownies and eat the whole tray. I get so embarrassed. That&amp;#039;s not what someone like me is supposed to do. It&amp;#039;s serious. This book has made me really look at myself from different angles. It made me confront those urges again and again...and fall back a few times. I think it would be like an alcoholic writing a book about drinking, and that addiction is so powerful...how can you not relapse? Sometimes I wonder what I could be if 75 percent of my life wasn&amp;#039;t obsessed with food. I have an incredible life! I could&amp;#039;ve enjoyed it more. I have a successful career, but I could&amp;#039;ve done more, I could&amp;#039;ve contributed more to society. I don&amp;#039;t want my kids to grow up like this. It&amp;#039;s ongoing for me. My goal was to gain weight and to love it. That was our deal, that I would be a little portlier and happy. I am trying. Q: You say that people may notice your jawline is a little softer, your chin slightly rounder. Have you put on weight since starting this project with Diane? How much? Are you a different size? A: I&amp;#039;m going to walk to the scale right now and tell you. I used to be 118 or 120. I&amp;#039;m doing a half-marathon in April. I&amp;#039;m training for the marathon, so I&amp;#039;ve lost weight. Now, I&amp;#039;m...I&amp;#039;m at 130. I&amp;#039;m a little bothered by that. I thought it would be 127. Even now, my head is not where it should be. I know that I look great\u2014I know that&amp;#039;s a healthy weight. There will always be the EDs in me wondering if now I should not have dinner tonight. But I will. And that&amp;#039;s the difference between me before and after the book. I will have dinner tonight...and maybe even a little chocolate afterward. And that&amp;#039;s that. I&amp;#039;m not going to live in such a rigid fashion, because I can&amp;#039;t. This is my set point where I&amp;#039;m meant to be, where I won&amp;#039;t get heavier but can still eat. Q: Do you have a body role model? A: Three of them. Susie Essman. I love everything she has to say. She doesn&amp;#039;t have a problem. She is the greatest comedian and is so comfortable in her skin. She&amp;#039;s not super skinny, she&amp;#039;s not obese, and she&amp;#039;s good. She exudes amazing messages. She&amp;#039;s hilarious and nice and comfortable with herself. Kathleen Turner. She called it a tyranny of being so thin. It&amp;#039;s ridiculous. She says that the roles she gets now have more texture figuratively and literally. Women in TV look like they don&amp;#039;t eat because they don&amp;#039;t. Gayle King. She&amp;#039;s like &amp;quot;I like to eat and that is that.&amp;quot; She told me this story about how when she was in a hotel, she ordered so much for breakfast that room service thought it was for two people. I have been there myself\u2014ordering enough for two and eating it all by myself. You know you&amp;#039;re going to be alone all night and you can go to town. It&amp;#039;s amazing what crazy things you can do in a hotel room that have nothing to do with sex. But Gayle told the story without shame\u2014she was laughing out loud. She&amp;#039;s comfortable in her body, and it&amp;#039;s inspiring.   Diane Smith  Q: What was going through your head when Mika called you out on your weight? A: At first, it felt like a punch in the stomach, and it was so mortifying. Then I saw her eyes filling up. I saw her pain. She was saying it to me because she gets it herself. I&amp;#039;d been thinking, She&amp;#039;s so lucky and look how perfect she looks. It made me take a step a back and not feel angry. There&amp;#039;s almost nothing she could say to me that could upset me, except maybe that, and then when I saw her pain, I understood. Q: How shocked were you to learn Mika had a food addiction? A: I was shocked. I had no idea. When we would see each other, it would be for several hours at a time, and you wouldn&amp;#039;t really know how deeply pervasive it was. It was something\u2026so surprising to me. Q: Was it incredibly surprising to hear all these other luminaries you spoke with had issues as well? A: I don&amp;#039;t think I was completely surprised because, in my life, I had these problems. It didn&amp;#039;t strike me as unusual that it could affect anyone else. Q: What was the most surprising thing you learned while working on the book? A: I think that what really stuck with me was that for my whole life I&amp;#039;d been blaming myself [for my weight]. I still take responsibility. But I was surprised at the science and opinion about how many factors go into a person&amp;#039;s and nation&amp;#039;s obesity. My issues and Mika&amp;#039;s went along the timeline with how people started changing their eating habits with what the food industry was putting on shelves. I&amp;#039;m not shying away from responsibility or saying anyone but me made me overweight, but there are a lot of other factors at work. I was also shocked about this: There&amp;#039;s so much discrimination against overweight people. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. How are they discriminated against when they&amp;#039;re the majority? It&amp;#039;s a really weird conundrum. How much do women suffer in terms of discrimination? Lower pay, not being able to get jobs, not getting promoted. It was really shocking to me because I never felt that personally in my life or in my work. Interviewing one of the researchers, she said, &amp;quot;Diane, you haven&amp;#039;t felt that discriminated in your life because you&amp;#039;ve been on the air in Connecticut for so long that people came to love you and overlooked your weight.&amp;quot; Q: Where are you now in your weight journey\u2014emotionally and physically? A: Mika challenged me to lose 75 pounds by May 7, and I&amp;#039;m at 70 today. I will be at 75, no doubt. I&amp;#039;ve decided to do better than that. I&amp;#039;m hoping by the fall to get to 100 pounds. I feel like a different person now. She&amp;#039;s such a good friend to me. I&amp;#039;ve gained and lost and gained and lost my whole life, but this is different. When she challenged me, I couldn&amp;#039;t fail. I couldn&amp;#039;t fail in her eyes. It was such a motivator. She was so there for me. She&amp;#039;s my cheerleader. She e-mails and calls me; we do it for each other. I think I helped her a lot too. The therapists that we work with, nutritionist that we spoke to\u2026they&amp;#039;ve made us realize that we had a problem. Mika thought that her eating issues were in the past and she&amp;#039;d kept it under control, but she had a long, long way to go. She&amp;#039;s turned around quite a bit. Q: Beyond Mika&amp;#039;s support, was there anything different about losing weight this time? A: Two things. The trainer who I found was supportive. I was so demoralized. I broke down in tears. &amp;quot;You just show up,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;This is my burden now. We&amp;#039;re going to get to where you want to be.&amp;quot; I really felt a huge feeling of relief. You know you&amp;#039;re overweight\u2026.I did feel really ashamed. I think I found the right program to join to lose weight and change the way I eat. I go there every week, and I see a nurse and a doctor and a behavior-modification specialist. You learn what&amp;#039;s wrong with your eating. You retrain your mind to think about what&amp;#039;s healthy. All those people made a huge difference. Frank Bruni always says you have magical thinking that today you&amp;#039;ll fall off the wagon\u2026tomorrow morning, you&amp;#039;ll start a diet. I had to be accountable to someone. I had to get with the program. For others, it is something different that may work, but they need help and support. They may need online communities. Q: When did the weight loss begin? A: We had the talk on Labor Day 2011. Late October 2011, we got the book deal. I had hip replacement surgery in October 2012. It wasn&amp;#039;t until May 2012 that I was really able to start working out. Most has come off since May 2012. I probably could lose it faster, but slow and steady works for me. Q: Are you happier now? A: So much happier. Last night, I was the emcee for a dinner. Six hundred women were in the audience. I emceed it before, but this was a different experience. I came back and climbed up on the stage. I walked up with no effort. I was really able to enjoy the evening because I didn&amp;#039;t have pain in my knees or hips or feet. I wasn&amp;#039;t embarrassed about cameras zooming in on me. I feel like a different person. I feel like I have my life back. I couldn&amp;#039;t even walk my dog more than a block before. I spent every weekend in a chair except to make dinner or use the bathroom. On weekends, my husband said to me, &amp;quot;You spent the whole weekend in that chair\u2026working, reading the paper.&amp;quot; Bit by bit, my weight had been robbing me of my life. I just can&amp;#039;t go back to that place. It happens bit by bit that you withdraw. I&amp;#039;ve always been a person who goes out full-tilt all the time. I physically couldn&amp;#039;t keep up with what my career and social life were making of me. [Eating right] is never going to be second nature. The one challenge is to be really mindful and keep track. I eat when I&amp;#039;m stressed, when I&amp;#039;m happy. Any emotion triggers me to walk to the fridge or go out to eat or stop for a snack. My challenge is to eat mindfully and remember that portions really do matter. Q: Do you have a female body role model? A: Susie Essman. She&amp;#039;s on stage and TV all the time. She&amp;#039;s really comfortable in her own skin. She&amp;#039;s comfortable in her body. She doesn&amp;#039;t worry about the camera angle. She maintains a healthy weight. She doesn&amp;#039;t let weight impede or hold her back in any way. Nora Ephron, Mika&amp;#039;s friend, is another. Before she passed away, she said to me, &amp;quot;Get your weight under control: This is a transition to adulthood. You can&amp;#039;t eat everything you want.&amp;quot; She had a great body, wore great-looking clothes, and was proud of how she looked. She loved food. She was a real foodie. She found the balance between cooking and loving food and knowing when you have to stop. I want that balance. I don&amp;#039;t want to eat fruit and salad every single day. I want to achieve that balance. She was so frank with me. She pulled no punches. We talked to her on the phone. &amp;quot;Why are you fat? How did you let this happen?&amp;quot; I could feel Mika cringing; she gasped a little bit. Nora said, &amp;quot;You quit Weight Watchers. Why?&amp;quot; Q: Has your husband joined you on this getting-healthy journey? A: In our house, we call it the Mika Effect. Since I started losing weight, my husband has lost weight. He decided to do it too. So many women have a partner sabotaging them. My husband didn&amp;#039;t do that. He&amp;#039;s lost 45 pounds. Q: What was a typical day like for you, eating-wise, before you got portions and emotions under control with help from your experts the past year? A: I would often tell myself: This is the day I get back on track. I would start out okay\u2014with a small, healthy breakfast, or on bad days, I would skip breakfast and just drink coffee or iced tea. I would get very involved with work and forget lunch until it was late and I was starving. At that point, I wanted a big deli sandwich or something like that. Sometime later in the day, I would be hungry again, and I would crave cookies or chips, which I could get in the cafeteria at work. The minute I walked in the door after work, I would be at the refrigerator door, eating bread and butter, cold cuts, or anything else that was handy and easy to scarf down. If it was in the fridge, I might have peanut butter and jelly by the spoonful. Just because I didn&amp;#039;t keep junk food in the house didn&amp;#039;t mean I couldn&amp;#039;t find a way to binge. By dinnertime, I wasn&amp;#039;t really hungry, but a glass of wine generally gave me an appetite and I would have a full dinner with another glass of wine. Even though my husband tried to cook healthfully, with lean meats, fish, and veggies, there are plenty of ways to overeat\u2014too much pasta on the plate, take-out a few nights a week, that sort of thing. I wasn&amp;#039;t consuming massive amounts of food, but it was more than enough! Q: Can you give an example or two of when you felt happy, sad, or stressed and what types of foods you craved and ate? A: This emotional eating is something I discovered Mika and I had both been doing since childhood and continued into our adult lives. When celebrating a good report card, my Mom might have taken me out for an ice-cream cone. As an adult, on a day I wanted to celebrate good ratings for a TV show I had produced and hosted, I went out for a fancy dinner or stopped by the supermarket and picked up the treats I usually tried to avoid\u2014 ice cream, cookies, chocolate, extravagant take-out dishes for a special dinner at home. Years ago, when I was living alone after getting my first TV job, especially after my boyfriend was killed, I would wander the aisles of a 24-hour supermarket at midnight and buy all the junk food I wanted, and I would eat some of it in the car and the rest when I got home. Q: Were there specific foods you tended to binge on? How did you feel afterward? A: I could binge on anything that was handy. If I had a choice, usually bread and butter or chocolate...like the giant-size pack of dark chocolate M&amp;amp;amp;Ms, which I could polish off in one sitting or during a long drive. I would feel frantic to get at the food and happy while eating and then immediately miserable after...physically and emotionally. I was so angry that I could not get this behavior under control. Q: Mika talks a lot about using exercise to undo her binges. Did you have an equivalent\u2014would you justify overeating by promising yourself you&amp;#039;d go on a diet the next day? A: Always! And I usually would. It might last a day or so, and then I would be offtrack again. Frank Bruni talks about giving yourself permission to overindulge by promising you will starve the next day. That&amp;#039;s what I did, and I have adopted his term for that: magical thinking. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/advice/a4355/mika-brzezinski-eating-disorder/>