This lifestory is a excerpt from the book: Binge Free; Triumph Over Binge Eating. Here you will get to know me from the perspective of my battle with obesity and food addiction; my new book, Depression, When the Darkest Hour is Every Hour, will speak to that specific part of my process.

 

I was born in Caracas, Venezuela on October, 1966. My father was a big-shot Latin-American singer back then, and my mother was (and still is) an actress. So I grew up around a lot of actors, singers and that whole entertainment industry. Apart from the poets, starlet's, booze and assorted eccentrics, there was ALWAYS food around. My mother didn't want to feed me regular baby food, so she would take the time to make her own from mashed fruits and vegetables. I cannot remember much about that time ...  the only thing that I recall vividly was that my father was never there.

 

He was at the height of his fame, and he just didn't have time for a baby and a wife. He would rather spend the time out drinking and womanizing. That vacuum from his absence was very strong inside of me, even from an early age. And, from as early as I can remember, I loved to eat. I was the kid who always wiped his plate clean. And that always brought smiles from mom and my grandparents, so I was only too happy to oblige. When it looked like my father had no intention of ever coming home (he moved in with another woman and just left), me and mom left Venezuela and went back to her country of origin, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

 

Puerto Rico is a territory (commonwealth) of the United States, so based on my mother's citizenship I was born as a U.S Citizen Born Abroad. I don't recall exactly, but I think I was around four or five years old when we left Venezuela. I was always in emotional pain. I always try to ask myself how it is possible for a little kid in second grade to walk around full of anguish, sadness and despair.

 

I would surmise that all of this came as a result of my father leaving. But the pain was constant and intense. My mother's acting career flourished as she started to appear in a variety of Spanish soap operas and television shows. At the time she also sang and had recorded various albums ... so she was doing well and was always there for me (and still is!). My grandparents took care of me most of the time. I was full of mischief, always playing pranks of them, my uncle and the dogs (which hated my guts). One of my favorite pranks was to lightly flick the Cocker Spaniel's testicles and then run away as he angrily barked and chased me down.

 

One time the dog cornered me in the kitchen and I climbed on the counter covering my privates and yelling for help. “Ampi! Ampi!” I cried out. Ampi is what I call my grandmother, short for her full name which is Amparito. To this day (Ampi turned 90 years old this year!), she tells me, "I thought that dog was going to bite off your little wee-wee."

 

He should have. That was a lousy prank. But my main pastime was eating. Food gave me the hiding place and medication that I needed. For a great part of my childhood my grandfather ran a little food shop from the house. Kids would come up to the kitchen window and order candy, sodas and fried goodies. Needless to say, I ravaged the candy when no one was looking. It was not unusual for my grandparents to find tons of candy wrappers under my bed. "You're eating all my profits!" grandpa Joe would shout. I could not stop. I was not even ten years old and already was a food addict.

 

And that wasn't all. When I was around seven or nine, my grandmother and mother owned a clothing store. It was located in a shopping mall. In the back of the mall was a man in a hot dog cart selling pig skin and other ridiculously-fattening foods. I would walk over to the cart and buy the biggest portion available. The man would serve the food on a paper plate and cover it on top with another one. As eating utensils, he’d give me four or five toothpicks. Then I’d walk back towards the clothing store, grease sliding down my clothes and onto the ground. That walk from the cart to the store was like a heroin addict who had just bought his fix and was preparing to get his fix. The sense of desperation was always there as I walked towards the store.

 

The smell of the fat made me crazy. By the time I got to the store, I was literally salivating like a dog. I would walk into the store, ignore everyone around me and walk straight to the storage room in the back. I would close the door behind me, sit down on a bench that was there, place the plate on a table, grab the toothpicks and start eating and eating and eating like a slob as the grease covered my clothes from top to bottom. Oh, and along with the junk food I would always buy a Diet Soda. Ampi would look at me and laugh. "That is some diet Robert," she would say. 

 

They saw me as just a young boy with a big appetite. But the sickness was already festering inside of me. My mother went on to remarry, but the father image that I longed for did not materialize. In fact, there were periods of mental and even physical abuse. I retreated further into my shell. Girls did not like me, I had no friends and became a total outcast. This went on through high school. After school, I would often hide under the bleachers to eat glazed donuts and drink soda pop. And cry... I was a lost child.

 

At school, things did not go very well. I was this dark-skinned, chubby kid that nobody wanted to play with. Yes, I was always the last one picked for the team. It was humiliating to end up in a particular team by default because nobody ever picked me. I was actually pretty athletic and strong, but always choked under pressure. I recall always feeling inadequate, ugly, weak an unworthy. This translated to lots of bullying and very few friends. The kids called me "the ugly fat cow" and other such colorful names. Anytime I’d walk by they would greet me with "mooo, mooo, mooo." At the time there was a children's game called Hungry Hippos. Every morning, when I got on the bus to school, the kids in the bus would start to sing the Hungry Hippos song from the commercial.

 

No problem. I could always hide-and eat. Many other things happened at this time, including my mother getting a divorce. I was motivated for a season and lost a lot of weight, mostly due to my huge love for Rocky and Sylvester Stallone. I drove my mum nuts playing the Rocky soundtrack day and night and watching the movie over and over. I was grasping for a father. But Stallone wasn't around (and neither was Rocky), so the little kid eventually relapsed into binging. I regained all of the weight I had lost... and then some.

 

By this time I was in my late teens and had gone off to Los Angeles to be on my own. I did ok at first and started to get in shape and do some acting. I played in numerous rock bands. Like they said in the movie Goodfellas - "It was a glorious time." I met a lot of celebrities (Slash and Axl Rose from Guns N' Roses were my favorites), had hair down to my waist, rode a motorcycle and felt like I was on my way to doing something positive with my life, especially in music as a singer, guitarist and composer.

 

But the food addiction and binging had other plans. Increased alcohol consumption led to weight gain which led to demoralization which led to a full-blown relapse into binging. This time, however, I was going straight to hell. By 1990, I rarely left my trash, cockroach-infested apartment. I would drink beer and eat pizza (or any other junk food) until I passed out. I would wake up on the floor, get up and do it all over again. I tried to commit suicide various times by slashing my wrists but never got the nerve to cut really deep. I started to appear at county hospitals and mental health clinics, bloated like a pig and feeling like the lowest of the lowest form of human filth. By the time my stint in Los Angeles was over, I had given up on music, acting and just stayed in my tiny apartment in Santa Monica Boulevard eating, drinking and chain smoking.

 

Sometimes I ran out money and would call the pizza man and then beg him to give me the pie and that I would pay later. I was blacklisted by pizza delivery restaurants within a ten-mile radius. Desperate, I’d walk into supermarkets and stuff frozen pizzas and beer in my pants ... a thief and a drunk.

 

There was a Carls Jr. burger joint down the street from where I lived and I would often dumpster dive in the middle of the night in search of any burgers that might not have sold and been thrown out. A few times I’d hit the mother lode and find dozens of burgers in the stinky, filthy trash bin. I would take them home and eat them like a freak, downing them with beer - usually stolen from some convenient store or market. On more than a few occasions I would walk into a restaurant, gorge on everything they had and then run out without paying the bill. I thought it was funny and that I was very slick. But it wasn't funny. It was pathetic and I feel very ashamed for having behaved that way. In truth, I had become a monster. I was soon evicted from where I lived and my girlfriend at the time had moved on.

 

My food and alcohol addiction had destroyed everything and anything good that came into my life, including my relationship with Travis, my only son. Binging did that to me ... in the throes of the sickness, I cared about nothing or nobody, not even my own son. So I flew back to Puerto Rico with money my mother wired to me; every dime that I had had been squandered. I left Los Angeles in shame and completely defeated... a shell of a human being. When I got back to Puerto Rico I initially had to move in with my mother. That was hell for her because every night I would binge and drink myself to oblivion. I would often vomit all over the living room, bring all kinds of lowly characters into her home and basically make her life a nightmare.

 

I had numerous odd jobs and was fired from all of them. I would disappear in the middle of a shift to binge. Or I would not show up at all. I stole from several employers so that I could buy more food and beer. I stole from my mother for the same reasons. She got wise to my schemes and started to lock her bedroom door. We lived on the fourth floor of a condominium, so I would climb out on the slim ledge, slither my way to her bedroom window and climb in. Once I slipped and nearly fell backwards, which would have been certain death.

 

This was my situation:

 

Every night I had to have a full-blown binge and booze party, and I was willing to take from whoever so I could get my poison. This is all to my shame. Over the following years, after numerous trips to a variety of mental health clinics, doctors and even exorcists, I was lucky enough to start a journalism career in San Juan - God always showing up in spite of my behavior. I can only say it was a "God" thing because one day I was working in the sun mixing cement and the next day I was in an office writing business stories. I was taken there. I don't recall having the ambition, energy or vision to do so.

 

Things went really well and I seemed to have found my niche as a writer, which apparently I did to the editor's satisfaction. But that feeling of "not being good enough" was always there. Anytime something good happened in my career (awards, raises, praise from colleagues), I would minimize it and set out to prove everyone wrong. I would slide into a binge and disappear from sight; I’d lock myself in my apartment to drink and eat. The bottom was me not bathing, shaving or changing clothes for days, sometimes weeks at a time. I would spend weeks alone in my apartment living off of pizza, cheeseburgers and Chinese food delivery. I would order an Xtra large pizza every day and eat it in its entirety, as well as liters and liters of beer and soda.

 

Sometimes I would get so sick that I would actually vomit all over myself while gorging. I did not care. I would just continue to eat. Wouldn't even change my shirt. In my mind, I was garbage and did not deserve even the slightest of human dignities. How can a human being sink so low? My only exposure with the outside world was my daily trips to Dunkin Donuts to buy a dozen pack and some apple fritters. I wore only black, oversized clothing, most of which was badly stained by icing and grease from the pizza, beer and Chinese food. I was the 'man in black' or as my friend Tim said, The Prince of Darkness. Walking death... Black shorts or sweatpants and a black T-shirt. That was my uniform. Several times I started to plan more suicide attempts. The only thing that held me back was knowing the horrible pain that my death would cause for my precious mother.

 

Eventually (and not surprisingly), I lost my journalism career, my home, my fiancée and ended up living in rescue missions, Christian homes and anywhere that I could crash. I smoked two packs a day of Marlboro Reds and was drinking heavily as well as binging nonstop. My mother was the only one that could stand me. I was obese, dirty, smelly and lost in chronic depression, bitterness and hatred. I was dead in life. Many well-intentioned men tried to help me, but I was unwilling to listen or have any type of accountability in my life.

 

Some years later I moved to Florida because all of my bridges had been burned in San Juan. NOBODY wanted anything to do with me. The last straw was a massive binge and drinking bender that I had in my beach condo where I ended up running down the halls naked and urinating on people's front doors. One neighbor had left the door to his unit open and I walked in and raided his refrigerator. Later that night I wondered into the lobby of a prestigious hotel near the beach and proceeded to make a terrible scene, flicking cigarettes behind my back, yelling obscenities and stealing other people’s drinks when they weren’t looking.

 

Totally disgusting debauchery of the worst kind.  The spectacle was such that even my editor and colleagues heard of the debacle, which culminated with me skidding out of the parking lot (and barely missing the valet parking booth) after being told that the police were on their way. Needless to say, I was fired from the paper, my beachfront condo was foreclosed, my vehicle was repossessed, my girlfriend left me and I was banned from various hotels in the area, as well as blacklisted by most of the island’s journalism industry. Having again burned all of my bridges, I left in ignominy and relocated to South Florida. When I got to Florida I 'sort of' calmed down enough to secure a job at a great business newspaper.

 

I was overweight but was in somewhat more 'control' than before. Today I know that is not the case. The binge monster was doing pushups, waiting for the next bender. Everyone in that newspaper was very good to me. But, again, I had to prove them wrong. So, one Friday I went home to drink and binge and disappeared for weeks. They tried to help... but I was trapped and simply could not stop eating. I recall waking up (or coming to) and seeing boxes and boxes of pizza and assorted garbage all over the floor; the stench filled the room with the undeniable scent of imminent death. I looked in the mirror and saw a horribly bloated, greasy face with deep, dark circles around the eyes. I looked like something out of Night of The Living Dead.

 

By then I was 90 pounds overweight and very sick from intestinal toxicity and a liver condition that was getting worse. One day I started fasting basically out of desperation, but was consumed by horrible withdrawal symptoms before I could finish even eight hours without solid food. It was like being stabbed all over my body... the detox pain was intense. I was puzzled by the bad breath, white-sticky tongue, metallic taste and dizziness that I experienced. Research later led me to the realization that the symptoms were a reflection of just how toxic my body and digestive system had become. By that time I had spent nearly 25 years binge eating and drinking with very little interruption. I had no social life and hardly any friends. For all I cared my life was over. How dark it gets before the dawn! In an ultimate low, I received the grace, strength and resolve to launch a 40-day water fast. The start of the fast was hell. I quit smoking cold turkey right then and there.

 

The symptoms hit me hard and I was against the ropes many times. I don't know why I was doing this.  I just knew that I had to. I could sense in my spirit that this was my chance to find some sort of life. It was very hard and painful - especially during the first 11 days of cleansing and detoxification. But I was reborn. Fasting for weight loss, health and fitness has changed my life. It worked when traditional diets did not. I realized that, as long as I kept putting food in my body, I was not giving it the opportunity to cleanse from all the toxicity that had built up over the years.

 

My complete lack of control with food was a problem that only fasting was able to break. It forced me to navigate through the pains and discomfort of cleansing and detoxification. Only then did the chains of food slavery break and I was led to freedom.  Once the fasting was over, I found - to my astonishment- that I was no longer willing to just put anything in my mouth. The sacrifice of fasting and cleansing gave me a new perspective on food. This new perspective, in turn, gave me a fresh sense of discipline that had otherwise eluded me.

In short, for me diets did not work because, in reality, what I needed was to stop eating altogether for a season so my body could cleanse and heal. I tried all the diets, believe me. Yet I only grew fatter and more frustrated. Each failure usually restored me to the previous undesired weight and added another 10 to 20 pounds.

 

Later I realized that, at least for me, fasting and cleansing had to come BEFORE I could stick to any diet - no matter how good it was. Having lost nearly 100 pounds through juice and water fasting, I now dedicate myself to helping others interested in improving their health through this amazing, life-giving discipline. Let me be clear: This is not to say that fasting is THE ONLY way to overcome binge eating. It is not. I am not here to force you to fast for 40 days like I did. If you do, then God bless you and I'm here with you.

 

What I wish to present in this book is what I went through AFTER that initial fast, the process of staying free from binging... the physical and emotional/mental tools that I learned to prevent a relapse.

 

THOSE are the tools that have given me my miracle. Anyone can lose a lot of weight, through fasting, through diets... whatever. But keeping it off and NOT falling into old behaviors? Now THAT'S the real challenge.  It won't be easy. You have to get to the point where you are sick and tired of being sick and tired. At that point, there is no other option but to press on and do whatever it takes to find freedom. And I am not cured of food addiction. I will be a food addict for the rest of my life. But, one day at a time, I choose to NOT take that first careless bite. That does not mean that I am a killjoy either.

 

I do have my treats once in a while, but I do it with structure (check out my book How to Cheat on Your Diet (And Get Away with It!).

 

Here’s the bottom line: The mental food obsession has left me. I rarely get obsessive thoughts about food anymore. I have made contact with the God of my understanding and am constantly working to overcome limiting thought and behavior patterns. I strive each day to be a better man. In this book, I want to give you hope! I want you to know that no matter how low and hopeless you may feel, you CAN overcome and find freedom just like I did. I pray that you may be filled with strength, wisdom and determination to seize your freedom

from binging.

 

 To be continued!