In college, I didn't speak for an entire month. I wore headphones on campus and during grueling workouts at the gym, chomped heaps of dining hall chicken breasts alone, sat in the back of class, and did stealth runs for vending machine candy using cargo pants to hide my shame snacks. No one noticed.
I have always been that way. Since I was five years old watching He-Man transform into a mega-muscular hero, I have been the quintessential target market for the media-led ripped male lifestyle.
I was sold on all of it: the 80s action movies, the sinewy 90s comic book cover images, and the supplement market's promises to shred me up. Imagine my shock and horror when puberty turned me into a gangly and hairy teen wolf. Nothing like the smooth and sculpted torsos of my childhood icons: Conan the Barbarian, Mr. T, the Incredible Hulk, and Rocky Balboa. A kaleidoscope of ab-filled images had created a washboard floor with no ceiling in my impressionable psyche. And that was before TikTok workout videos.
I felt—no, I knew—that I was weak, ugly and puny. And I had to do something about it. My high school mission was to fix myself: creatine-fueled solitary weightlifting sessions, followed by force-chugging plasticine-flavored 3,000-calorie weight gainer shakes.
Though I worked out in a bubble, I wasn't unique—millions of my steely brethren were changing their eating habits to increase muscle size or tone—nearly 50 percent of men report doing so according to one study, while one-third of teenage boys are taking steps to bulk up.
As a college gym rat lifting 7-10 times a week, my chest grew while my world became hyper-small: chasing six-pack abs, extra lean protein, and fragile self-centered egoism. I was so alone and afraid of being rejected that I had to squeeze my biceps before walking into a room.
My muscles were my armor, my obsession, and my only identity. The relief switch? Processed binge food.
By now, we all know that snack food companies are vigilantly targeting us. But from ages five to 30, I didn't. I thought my shame-spiraling processed food addiction was a personal choice and a personal malfunction.
In law school, my biggest decision of the day was whether to lift a heavy deltoid press in front or behind the neck—and much more importantly, whether to scarf down twelve Auntie Anne's pretzels afterward.
They were my kryptonite, with the middle presenting the premier bite: Doughy, meaty, and chewy. I used complicated cover strategies to obtain my obscene amounts, acting upbeat but also distracted like I was ordering for my office coffee gathering: Umm, let's see, someone wanted cinnamon sugar. Oh, vanilla frosted? Yeah, Adrian likes those. Yeah, twelve should be enough for everyone.
When I became a lawyer, I learned that food decisions are not a one-way street. Snack foods like my sugary pretzels are engineered to entice. Actually, they aren't food. They are net zero nutrition corn and soy widgets, subsidized and flavorless—until the flavor houses, as they're known, get a hold of them, with their endless combinations of addictive chemical seasonings.
In her recent study, Dr. Maria Gombi-Vaca, an Assistant Research Professor at University of Connecticut's Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health, shows how the nature of ultra-processed food turns snacking into overeating.
"Ultra-processed snack-type foods are convenient, ready to consume, and energy-dense, which can contribute to overeating and excessive calorie intake. The link between snacking behavior and the consumption of ultra-processed foods is especially strong among adolescents. This is in part due to marketing strategies that target youth, influencing their food choices and, in turn, the quality of their diet."
But during my binging, I was blissfully unaware and happy to trade my health for the numbing respite of more Fudge Grahams. Had I kept going, I would be suffering from the long-term effects of an ultra-processed diet.
According to the latest and largest study of over 10 million people, consuming ultra-processed food is associated with 32 health problems, especially heart disease-related deaths, Type 2 diabetes, and common mental health issues like anxiety and depression.
At some point, as I ripped open another package of Keebler's newest cookie or Doritos' Spicy Limón, I realized I wasn't eating what my grandparents grew up on. I was consuming a formula crafted in a test tube by the latest food CEO hoping to profit off my predictable pancreatic insulin response. I thought, wait, is this really what I want? Who's making this choice for me? My brain, or my brain in the palm of PepsiCo?
Learning about the industrial food system behind my addiction helped, but it wasn't enough. I passed the bar, but I couldn't pass up the 100 Grand bars.
I embraced the William Blake method: "you never know what is enough, unless you know what is more than enough." For me, that was about $96 of peanut M&Ms. I started to let myself buy all the comfort food I could shove into my basket. As a 27-year-old attorney with no coping strategies, I needed the new Entenmann's Funfetti Pop-Ems.
But ironically, excess also eventually helped me heal. I finally bought enough snacks that I started to forget about them on the top shelf of my cupboard. While it wasn't good for my checking account, it was good for my sensitive inner child who maybe didn't get enough back when he needed it most.
After enough food went stale on my shelf, and I financed the Price Chopper's new "patisserie" wing—which by the way, South Burlington is not Paris, just call it a bakery aisle—I learned to purchase self-control, to think through the decision. As I entered the familiar fluorescent-lit battleground, the brawl was stacked against me.
Standing in the cereal aisle, I felt the wall-to-wall temptations dominating me, so I broke it down into micro-steps. Okay, Fruity Pebbles has a new marshmallow flavor. I'm not a child. I just argued my first case in court. I can totally buy this $6.99 box of red dye #40.
Holding the cereal box, I let my fantasy play out, closing my eyes and imagining the milky spoonful of crunchy colorful crisps. Then it hit me. It was just plain corn, flavored to hook me.
It didn't taste nearly as good as this moment felt in my head. Once it reached the pantry, the food was de-magnetized. It was kind of like sex in that regard: the build-up packs the most zing—and the faker the fantasy, the bigger the regret. I put the box back on the shelf. I was done with regret. I experienced a new kind of sugar rush, or maybe a fighter's high. I had faced my deepest desires, head-on and hands-on.
With all this talk about good decision-making and thinking it through, I don't want to give the illusion of complete control, especially around substance-based disorders, of which food addiction is one variety.
By age 30, willpower failed me. I could push myself at the gym, run up mountains, skip meals for days, and take on what seemed like any physical challenge. But self-sufficiency only goes so far, and controlling my cupcake purchases didn't always work. It's not a peachy lesson, watching strong-willed people hurt themselves again and again.
Us weightlifters live to lift and to fail: Failure to get that last rep is not defeat, but a sign that we're working the muscle to its limit, so that it can repair and be stronger for the next lift. Though I understood how this worked in the gym, it took me plenty of backslides to apply that lesson beyond the barbell.
As an athlete, I was unaware that we are two to three times more likely to develop an eating disorder than nonathletes—especially in sports like bodybuilding, wrestling, boxing, cycling, swimming and track, all of which I dabbled in.
Eating disorders are a silent scream. Male eating disorders are skyrocketing since the pandemic and are silence compounded—men being less willing to talk about it, and more lonely and isolated than ever. Just like I was.
Besides opioid addiction, eating disorders are also the most deadly mental health condition—primarily anorexia—killing one person every 52 minutes. My sisters kept me alive when I almost went off the edge, and still I kept relapsing.
I learned that recovery is for those who want it, not for those who need it. When I finally asked for help for myself, without being nudged or prompted, that's when I was ready. My final failure became my first step on the road to healing.
Today, I am a public interest lawyer, back in the food battle but on a different front, no longer alone nor paralyzed in the candy aisle. I am part of a public protection team that protects consumers from the systemic forces out to exploit or deceive us.
I still go to the gym and enjoy a good snack too. All in moderation. It turns out Auntie Anne's pretzels really did teach me something. The best bite of life is the middle way.
A practicing lawyer in Vermont, Justin Kolber is a recovered ripped dude, an athlete, activist, and author of 'Ripped', a memoir about the dual extremes of muscle and food disorders.
All views expressed are the author's own.
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