On Thursday, March 1, author and speaker Kimberly Day will be visiting Behrend to speak on behalf of body image and food addiction. However, Day is more than just an advocate for the cause as she has learned about and struggled with aspects of food addiction throughout her life.

       

Growing up as the granddaughter of the first woman to open up a General Nutrition Center, GNC, outside of Pittsburgh, Day worked in her grandmother’s Erie-based store speaking on the benefits of natural health starting at the early age of 11. Fast forward a few years and Day had graduated with a Master of Arts after discovering her journalistic, writing, and speaking skills.

       

As the winning recipient of the “Best Television Commercial” by the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters, Day has used these skills to work with several celebrities to promote eye health. She has since extended this work to her true passions, natural health and nutrition, and written thousands of health-related articles with other experts in the field. She was notably a founding contributor as an author for livestrong.com and has also co-authored several books. Her third book in the works, Feeding Your Addiction, is her debut as a solo author.

       

However, what remains constant throughout her work is her dedication to being an advocate for body image and food addiction. As someone who has struggled with both bulimia and later binging without purging, she feels that college is a time where we are faced with many stress triggers and a place where we must face the consequences of our actions. Often times, this leads to turning to food as a coping mechanism. “We've done a great job detailing the dangers of alcohol and drugs, but not food,” she states. “Let's face it, your dealer is down the hall in the vending machine, at the corner store, even in the dining room.” By helping college students to identify that food can be used in the same way as drugs and alcohol, Day hopes to spare at least one person the pain and struggle that she has endured. She also hopes to take this addiction “out of the shadows of shame and into the light of reality.”

       

If she were to pinpoint one goal it would be directly in relation to the obesity epidemic in this country – or, as she sees it, the food addiction epidemic. “It's the only addiction we talk about in reverse,” she says. “With opioids, we don't say we have an overdose epidemic; no, we call it what it is... an opioid addiction epidemic.”

       

When the idea that she was possibly struggling with food addiction first crossed her mind, she researched the topic until she came to some shocking, but very realistic, conclusions. She discovered that the impact of foods breaking down into sugar affects the exact same receptors in your brain as using opioids. In fact, your brain identifies both sugar and heroin in almost the same ways.

       

From this point on, Day knew that she had an addiction – as painful and challenging as it was for her to admit this to herself. She used her natural inclination of writing to begin her path to recovery as she started her blog, Confessions of a Food Addict.

       

As Day commonly says, “Food addiction is America’s most rampant and yet most misunderstood addiction.” Spanning from anorexia and restricting food to bulimia to binge disorder, this is very much a spectrum disorder with the common thread being an obsession with food. The only difference is whether the addict chooses to not eat, purge, or binge. In her speaking and writing, Day hopes to help users identify the “why” to their addiction. From there, she works with these individuals to create new coping mechanisms, new behaviors, and healthier ways of living their lives. Those who are interested in learning more are encouraged to attend Day’s presentation.