Today I want to talk about the notion that addiction is progressive. It’s a progressive, incurable, fatal disease. 63 percent of deaths worldwide are attributable to diet-related diseases. Most people don’t reach end-stage food addiction, but some do. I did.

It may start as an inability to control how much you eat… at least sometimes. You may feel a loss of control—but you’re still living a functional life. Maybe weight is creeping on, but maybe not.

Then you move into the mid-stages, where it impacts more areas. Maybe you don’t enjoy social engagements as much. Possibly you don’t like to eat in front of people or don’t like how your body looks. Maybe it impacts your performance at work, or your relationships.

At the end of the road with food addiction, it’s mental madness, with massive binges that take days to recover from. I remember packing my binge foods in a garbage bag when I resolved to quit and bringing it out to the dumpster. And then I’d return later to retrieve all the food from the dumpster. The next time I resolved to quit, I dumped vinegar on everything before throwing it away so I couldn’t retrieve it from the trash and eat it later. That’s late-stage food addiction.

I remember in my 20s, I had to take a semester off from my PhD program because I was bingeing so badly.

Many people come to Bright Line Eating early in the disease rather than as full-blown food addicts. To be a food addict, you need to be experiencing clinically significant impairment or distress.

If you’ve tried to quit and it doesn’t last, or you lose control over what you eat sometimes—those are addictive symptoms, but you need clinically significant impairment or distress to have an addiction.

In my experience, addiction always gets worse. The prefrontal cortex, which should rein in these impulses, just gets weaker and less functional over time.

I was well into my recovery journey before I heard someone say addiction is progressive. But then I heard a magic truth: recovery is progressive, too.

At first, the benefits of recovery are small and coupled with challenges. All the sights and sounds pull harder, and the brain really wants what it wants. It doesn’t like dopamine downregulation. Cue reactivity peaks a short time into abstinence.

But it feels good to lose a little weight and write down your meals. Moments of peace start creeping in. You start to notice that overpowering cravings turn into simple food thoughts. There’s a difference between intense cravings and a food thought that you can block out. That’s nice.

Habit stacks start to form, and you get traction with other things. Your mood gets better, your outlook becomes more positive. Maybe you pick up a meditation practice or become more productive. You weigh and measure your food and before long you weigh and measure your life. Maybe you learn when it’s time to say no, thank you.

The vagus nerve develops. This is the nerve that goes from your organs to your brain, and it’s the way the brain communicates with your organs and vice versa. The gut and heart, which have their own nervous systems, bring info up to the brain—these are actually 90% of the signals the vagus nerve sends—and these connections start to strengthen.

New horizons open. Suddenly, you're taking a painting class, picking up your cello, or meeting a friend for a walk. You’re showing up for yourself and others.

We become more ambitious and able to charge what we’re worth. We earn more money. These benefits all compound and accrue. With food addiction slipping away, we address other addictions. Our self-esteem builds. We find ourselves reborn.

I’m thirty years into the journey, and recovery hasn’t gotten boring for me yet. To my knowledge, addiction is the only disease that, when treated, leaves you better off than before you caught the disease. Let that sink in.

That’s why I still proudly claim the label of an addict, because my recovery means the world to me. It’s who I am. It’s what I love most in life. I am an addict, and I’m in recovery. I love this path that I’m on. It keeps getting better.

Take a look at yourself. Maybe it is for you, too.