CALIFORNIA, Pa.— Dr. Christina Fisanick-Greer reached her breaking point in 2013.
Greer, an English professor at California University of Pennsylvania, recalls sitting in her living room at 3 a.m. watching “The Notebook,” and crying as she ate her fourth bowl of buttercream icing.
She wasn’t crying about the movie.
“I was so sad and depressed because I felt I could not stop eating. I felt like this food had so much control over me,” said Fisanick-Greer.
At 39 years old, Fisanick-Greer was 28 years into her struggle with food addiction.
She would consume a large bucket of chocolate-covered almonds during the hour-long ride from Cal U. to her home in Wheeling, W.Va. She ate five grilled-cheese sandwiches at a time. She hid in the kitchen after a birthday party and ate more than a half-sheet of leftover cake. She downed a container of Pringles potato chips and a bag of caramels for a snack.
Over the years, Fisanick-Greer tried starvation diets, binging and purging, diet pills, cellophane wraps.
Fisanick-Greer, who grew up in a dilapidated mobile home in rural West Virginia and dropped out of high school after she became pregnant at age 17, overcame many obstacles, including the deaths of two of her children, to earn a doctorate in writing. How, she wondered, could she “be defeated by a grilled-cheese sandwich?”
