I Swear to Tell the Truth, the Whole Food, and Nothing but the Body

DON’T DO IT, JUSTIN. But I need it. I was sitting in the parking lot of Dunkin Donuts in South Burlington, Vermont. My rusted Toyota Camry was filled with fast food takeout containers, as I debated how to order two dozen donuts just for me. I was an OB—original binger. There were no self-checkout kiosks or DoorDash. I had to stare down a human being right in the eyes in order to obtain my obscene quantities. Rule one was obvious: Don’t just be my true self. Hi, I’m a 28-year-old lawyer, and I’d like to eat twenty of your delicious donuts really fast and then feel like killing myself, please. Maybe I should pretend like I’m ordering for my office’s Friday morning coffee gathering: Umm, someone wanted powdered-sugar … Oh, bear claws? Adrian likes those. Yeah, two dozen should be enough for everyone.

I can run up mountains, bench press 300 pounds, do 100 pull-ups, crash my snowboard over and over to learn a new trick, and endure all kinds of physical pain—but procuring food in front of another human being cripples me. Shame pain is inescapable.

I grabbed my donuts using the No-Frills technique—super-fast and low in tone—then hustled back home alone. Hunched over my dingy red couch, I hurriedly dug in, popping my glazed donuts whole like a sad circus pelican. Then, I moved onto the salty main event: two supreme pizzas that I had pre-ordered for delivery. Food isn’t supposed to taste this good. Then again, as quickly as I speed gulp everything, do I really taste it? Why can’t I stop? I assumed it was my weak willpower, clueless to the studies showing that ultra-processed food can be as addictive as smoking or gambling. Pizza ranks number one in addictive foods, with its holy trinity of cheese, crust, sauce—high fat, high carbs, high salt.

At least I wasn’t truly alone that evening. My childhood companions are always with me in my DVD collection: Conan the Barbarian, Mr. T, The Incredible Hulk, Rocky Balboa, Neo, and Johnny Utah. Tonight’s viewing was Point Break. It seemed like a goddamn Oscar-worthy picture when consumed alongside fried dough. A washed-up law school graduate who learned to surf as an adult and solved bank heists? And more importantly, served up Keanu Reeves’ dramatic, whimpering, long-eyed vacant stares into a camera? Johnny Utah, you’re my spirit animal.

* * *

I‘VE BEEN LIKE THIS for as long as I can remember. I grew up in the steroidal boom of the 1980s, on a steady diet of ripped male torsos: live action wrestling, barbarian cartoons, and an endless stream of R-rated Jean Claude Van Damme kick flicks. My mornings were spent alone chomping down sugary cereals with my hunky bare-chested idols. Left to my own interpretations, those ab-filled screens created an image in my psyche of a washboard floor with no ceiling. I learned that muscularity equals masculinity, and that real men rescue people in distress from other bad men. Which meant I needed to be a good man, the hero. And that starts with the body. Like He-Man, my childhood mantra was “I have the powerrrrr … to get ripped.” That was pretty much it. By age twenty-eight, I was still unconsciously and relentlessly pursuing little five-year-old Justin’s five-year plan to be a warrior in fuzzy boots. Part of that included law school, thinking I would fight injustice.

It was a tough paradox for my sensitive nature. I wanted to help people, but I avoided conflict. As a lawyer, I fight with my words. And maybe a little bit of my physicality, just for show. Let’s face it, I am tall, and if I wear the right posture, the one we’re supposed to, and act like I have the confidence I project—with my broad shoulders back, chin up, chest out—you might think I was a V-framed warrior in a suit coming to take your testimony. And I was. I had patience—the slow needling kind.

But don’t be fooled by my ripped muscles. My outward success belied my inner contradictions. Sure, I could take your deposition, but afterwards, I take off my tie in my old beat-up Camry carpeted with sunflower seed shells and begin the real battle—breaking down in a fit of steering wheel slamming repressed rage and tears. All over whether I was allowed to eat greasy pastrami on rye and jelly-filled powdered donuts.

Of course, I didn’t have this level of self-awareness at age twenty-eight while I sat there numbing myself with donuts, pizza, and Point Break. The point of food and body obsessions is to avoid that knowledge. Bury it and keep it buried in my ever-expanding football-gut. Stay the hell away from myself. But it never lasts …

* * *

BY THE NEXT MORNING my numbness wore off, and I was back to myself. That meant a sugar hangover and crippling stomach bloat. On the plus side, being at the bottom of a pendulum swing gave me more jolt than a double venti morning macchiato. Eating a shitty greasy meal was a reason to eat healthy the next time. Screwing up was a welcome, distracting raison d’être. A mission, a purpose—it staved off contentment, boredom, and death.

Crap. I was late to work because of my extended morning bathroom time, yet another embarrassing byproduct of my condition. I had recently gotten my first real job working for a small boutique law firm doing business litigation. The sole partner saw some potential in me that I didn’t.

At the firm, the days added up. I started putting in long hours, nights and weekends. Hustling for dollars and approval. On top of that, I was busting my elbows and kneecaps at the Vermont Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gym. My new co-worker suggested it—“keep our bodies strong, right?” he had proposed. Sure, I wanted to fit in. Plus, I worked out. How hard could it be? In addition to the long workdays, I was Muay Thai kickboxing on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

One evening at the gym, our Brazilian coach Javier gathered us around. “Justin, you gonna spar with Iron Ryan tonight,” he said. Pronounced with a hard J, Javier’s nickname was La Foca, meaning “the seal.” At only 5’6” with jet black hair and wild eyes, Javier was a world-class surfer and was known as the slippery seal on the grappling mat. Javier’s lessons included wisdom like, “hey guys, you don’t have to eat the pizza all the time or drink the beer all the time. Just have the one. I go out with my wife. We just have the one.” He also encouraged us to participate in the Burlington Brawl—an upcoming amateur MMA fight. Javier’s brawlers all talked about making weight and what they were not eating in order to do so. No ice cream, sweets, or snacks. No carbs. Definitely no pasta dinner with the kickboxing girls after training. “What’s the worst thing gonna happen?” Javier counseled. “You not gonna die. Maybe you get choked out…maybe you get knocked out. But you not gonna die!” Hmm. Okay. Except I didn’t really want to brawl and get choked out, so I stuck to practice. I looked over at my sparring partner. Iron Ryan was tall as me, with a long, pointy beard wrapped in a rubber band. How is this supposed to go? Do we shake hands? I gave a little wave. Why was I smiling? I am such a dork. While sparring, Iron Ryan broke my big toe with a big kick.

It didn’t take long on the kickboxing-attorney-at-law treadmill for my old law school habits to resurface. And, being no longer ensconced in the gentle rhythm of academia, the Nine-Nine Life was rear-naked choke-holding me, squeezing my windpipe and extracting ever more precious minutes and hours out of me. I didn’t realize I was getting burned out and reverting to my only sources of comfort. Salt, sugar, and fat—plus the gym. My body was no temple, I treated it like a casino.

* * *

AS THE WEEKS TICKED BY, my sugar hangovers started to interfere with my morning sharpness at the law firm. The partner noticed me coming in late. My new solution was to stop eating altogether, though I called it intermittent fasting—with “intermittent” meaning starving myself for 24 hours after every failure. Each order of barbecue chicken tenders and M&M cookies reset the clock. I kept track of it all, filling up my kitchen calendar with a deranged scrawl of Xs and frowny faces. X was a good day, I made it 24 hours with no food. The frowny face meant I gave in and ate. It was a tic-tac-toe challenge board of relapse and self-loathing.

The frownies were winning, covering four to five days a week. Ignore the pain, I told myself. Javier was right—what’s the worst that’s gonna happen? Maybe you pass out… but you not gonna die. I have to work harder. Two Xs in a row. 48 hours of no food. Fasting. Starving. What’s the difference?

During that time, I also read about the Master Cleanse. It totally made sense to me. I used to obsessively clean our childhood house as a kid. I was the miracle mopper of our kitchen floors, why not my insides? Vermont pure maple syrup gave me an extra edge, I thought, as I mixed my lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and filtered water. I am pure. After four days, I snuck an olive. Then a pickle. Then a buffalo cheesesteak. Another frowny face. Reset the cleanse clock.

* * *

PRACTICING LAW ON AN empty stomach was fascinating. Because I was no longer using my salivary glands, I needed to chew extra gum at the law firm to hide my bad breath. The first twelve to fifteen hours were the hardest. With no meals to break up the day, time became a standstill gelatin, neither liquid nor solid. I had to track my hours for the firm in tenths-of-an-hour increments so that I could get paid for writing a six-minute email. But I no longer needed the timekeeping software to remind me because my stomach howled in sharp pangs every fifth minute. Ignore it, ignore it. Time was the real enemy. Keep writing the brief. Don’t go downstairs.

The firm had a break room stocked with large tubs of chocolate caramel pecan clusters, cases of peanut M&Ms, popped potato crisps—it was a Costco snack-lover’s dream. During the day, I avoided it like a French medieval oubliette: a self-torture snack dungeon. After sunset, though, that’s when my fangs came out. I transformed into a calorie vampire, draining the snack room of its high-fructose corn syrup, then scurrying out to my rusted Camry with arms full of empty Costco containers and pockets stuffed with crumpled candy bags. A hunched-over trash goblin, hoping I didn’t get caught robbing my own firm of its garbage. And let’s be real, a whole barrel of pecan clusters for the road. An important rule of binging was hiding the evidence. It’s better to eliminate the entire container than to leave a ransacked box or bag.

I acquired that lesson as a traveling snack hunter. When I visited friends and family, I ate their kids’ mini muffins and Cocoa Puffs in the middle of the night, then hid and cringed during the next morning’s investigation: “why is there only one brownie left?” I learned the best way to conceal my tracks was by finishing the whole package, even when I didn’t want to, and packing the empties in my luggage. It’s easier to assume it simply got eaten earlier than you remembered, maybe by “one of the kids.” But if you saw the open box of mini coffee cakes with only two left instead of the full twelve? You’d know something was totally awry.

When I visited friends and family, I ate their kids’ mini muffins and Cocoa Puffs in the middle of the night, then hid and cringed during the next morning’s investigation: “why is there only one brownie left?” I learned the best way to conceal my tracks was by finishing the whole package, even when I didn’t want to, and packing the empties in my luggage.

AFTER SIXTEEN HOURS of self-imposed famine, it started to become easy, almost sublime. I was good at bench pressing. Now I was getting good at starving myself. Before I knew it, I was up to three days of no food. These were not peaceful, spiritual fasting periods, with restorative sauna sessions and a nap. No. Each day I was commuting through morning traffic to a busy law firm, churning out major stress briefs, grappling with sweaty dudes on a grubby mat, and lifting weights in a neon fluorescent gym. All done with zero calories.

Months went by like that. Good phase, Bad phase. Email clients through mind-distracting hunger, spar with Iron Ryan at the gym, gorge on weekend takeout. I almost passed out at work. Then I actually passed out at kickboxing class. This got my attention. I knew I had to make some changes. But how?

While stuck in Burlington traffic one day, I noticed a bumper sticker ahead of me: “Both what you run from and yearn for are within you.” Hmm, what was I running from? Definitely sugar. Maybe love too? My mom taught me they were synonymous and that’s okay; chocolate was her love language. I’ve spent my life believing I deserve neither love nor sugar. But maybe I yearn for them as well? Sitting there in my old Camry, surrounded by my mountain of car trash, the empty Styrofoam made its point. No one was forcing me to eat sugar or deprive myself of it—nor was anyone knocking down my door offering me love. Let’s face it, I was pretty un-date-able, sitting in my car with zip ties for door handles. It was all up to me. I vowed to start trying.

My first act of self-love was finally getting a therapist. With glasses, short brown hair and all-knowing eyes, her first lesson was to try and show me that my Good Phase was the Bad Phase. Depriving myself of carbs and calories was setting me up to binge, she suggests. Being in peak physical shape on a random Tuesday wasn’t healthy—it certainly wasn’t required. The body can’t handle that level of deprivation and intensity 24/7 in perpetuity. I wasn’t a competitive bodybuilder or Olympic athlete—and even they have off-seasons, she tells me. Okay, I guess that made sense. But still, I liked my good phase. It felt good. Clean.

I just want to do a little better, I responded. Give me another chance. Another cycle. I can do it. It’s just willpower, right? I was disciplined. (I was also bargaining.) She stared at me.

* * *

MY VERSION OF doing better: go to the bookstore and read a self-help book on eating disorders. I figured the study approach worked in law school. One suggestion in the book was naming your affliction “Ed” and talking to it. What purpose does Ed serve in your life? Ed is there for a reason, let’s unearth it.

Okay Ed, get ready for drastic measures. It was time for legal action. I filed my next case: Justin Kolber v. Justin Kolber ED. Presiding Judge Kolber will hear the evidence on a bench trial. On a snowy Vermont day, the court issued its order in my tiny Burlington apartment. A unanimous verdict:

Whereas this Court has found sufficient evidence that Defendant Justin Kolber Eating Disorder (“JKED”) has breached his contract not to binge and in the event of breach agreeing to do anything necessary to avoid another cycle, and this evidence having been submitted by Plaintiff Justin Kolber satisfying the burden of proof that restricting and “no carbs” has not contributed to a happy, joyous and contented life (nor even physical satisfaction in fitness, self-satisfaction, female relationships or otherwise), and that JKED does not have the power to change on his own.

Therefore, this Court hereby orders that: (1) JKED shall eat at least three meals daily, each one including complex carbohydrates; and (2) JKED shall avoid “trigger” or “binge” foods (simple carbs: sweets, cookies, chips, etc.). SO ORDERED. Honorable Justin E. Kolber.

Typed, printed, and signed. Hell yeah. I was proud. Holding my printed court order, this is what success looked like.

The compensation for my case? A bunch of bingeing and depression. Seriously, how did I lose my own lawsuit? I was plaintiff, defendant, and judge. And mere days later, I was still starving and bingeing? I held myself in contempt.

Defeated yet again, I came clean to my new therapist. I wondered: why is momentum the hardest force to change? She said it’s because my acts of momentum were happening unconsciously. Therapy is about bringing to the surface my unconscious momentum.

But how do I know that’s true? I asked. It felt like it was really me choosing chocolate ice cream sandwiches in the moment, not some buried force or even little five-year-old Justin.

She gave me those knowing therapist eyes, and as soon as I asked the question, I could glimpse the answer. Too many years had gone by like this. The pattern revealed the truth. Compulsion is not a choice. I learned that the unconscious is real. Like gravity or climate change, I didn’t have to believe in it in order for it to be true—or to affect me.

From that point on, I only wanted to be bound by the things I choose. I was bound by what I inherited, or was taught, or consumed unconsciously and ferociously. I don’t blame anyone. I take responsibility for my choices. Choosing changes everything.

* * *

THE BURLINGTON FOOD CO-OP was my new source of sustenance, community and spirituality. My meals were becoming slightly more manageable. I figured organic produce was the secret. I also ran into Iron Ryan, except he looked different. No beard and he must have gained thirty pounds. Still Burlington brawling? I asked. Nah, he answered. He was just Regular Ryan now. That was probably good for him. Me too, I said, I quit the BJJ gym.

The co-op entrance was a wholehearted collage of yoga flyers, volunteer opportunities, meditation groups, and inspirational quotes. This one stuck in my ribs:

It’s okay if you don’t save the whole world…

It’s okay if you only save one person…

And it’s okay if that one person is you.

Whoa. I thought I could save others by being miserable—like the tortured heroes from my childhood comic books—grinding myself down in the wheel of doom and spitting out justice for you.

It doesn’t work like that. I might take on your case, but I can’t save you. I couldn’t save my dear friend Brooke from her anorexia. I can’t save anyone, nor do I have to. But I do have to save myself. And to do that I first have to know myself.

From the womb to the near-tomb, I was shaped by television, movies, songs, and the culture. My childhood heroes, He-Man, Spiderman, and the WWF. My conscious consumption of those same icons as an adult telling myself I am Conan, William Wallace, or Johnny Utah. I’ve always had a squishy self-membrane. Clearly, since a few bumper stickers and well-placed quotes can make me think I’m gaining wisdom.

The real wisdom was coming more slowly. Through therapy, I recounted all the identities I’ve had, like the teenage weightlifting, weight-gainer gulping skinny longneck; or the snarky law school city slicker in a blazer; or most recently, the deflated-stomach, Muay Thai kickboxing attorney-at-law. And always, the solitary gym rat. All the diets, cleanses, and meal plans; all the clothes, hairstyles, and outfits; all the weights. The real weight of my armor. Being myself wasn’t about building myself up or finding what I like and putting it on. It was about shedding the outer shells. And rather than mimic Hulk or He-Man, who transformed violently by ripping off garments and identities, I embraced a gentle process—a gradual falling away of the rag doll pieces of me.

Thirty years old was an auspicious milestone to do it too. Was I really ready to give up my armor? A seed was planted. As they say, I wanted to want to change.

* * *

STANDING ON THE Winooski bridge overlooking Lake Champlain on August 5th, I thought: This is it. I can’t go on anymore. Don’t worry, I wasn’t there to jump. But I was there because I was out of ideas. I was done. I had quit the law firm. I wasn’t making progress in my life. I wasn’t even part of life. When your biggest decision of the day is whether to lift heavy deltoid press in front or behind the neck—and much more importantly, whether to scarf down pizza and donuts afterwards– your world becomes hyper small. My cycles of binging and compensation took all the oxygen. All my relationships were with substances. Food. Weights. Movies I could quote. Things I could consume, pick up and put down. Things I could control. Even when I couldn’t.

I saw it now, I really did. I was out of control. I saw my powerlessness, my helplessness, my failures. I saw it all. Staring at Lake Champlain, I also saw something along the horizon, dancing across the whitecaps and blue ripples of lake water. They looked like kites. But larger. They were real kites. Attached to people. Attached to boards. A flying ballet of kitesurfing. The kite surfers were right there, yet I felt a million miles away. That will never be me. Watching those colorful kites awakened me. This must be true freedom. And I wanted it. Badly.

And in that moment, I knew that I was going to choose life. Real Life, not the Ripped Life. I wanted to live for something. A sincere purpose. More than my stupid donut missions.

This was the end. And the beginning. My final hangover. My final bellyache. No more surprises. No more big deals. At least, I hoped.

That night, I took my first step on a million-mile journey in a fluorescent-lit church basement. A support group meeting. I overheard a cool-looking buzzed-head guy with tattoos and crystal bracelets talking about kitesurfing that day. He kind of looked like my childhood friend James with broad shoulders and pale freckles. Wait … was he really kitesurfing earlier? And then the meeting started. Everyone went around the room introducing themselves. I didn’t know who or what I was. So I started with the truest thing that came to mind.

“Hi. I’m Justin. I’m new here. And I think I need some help.”

* * *