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More important, she has a new sense of self-worth and enjoys life. Since then, she has lost - and kept off - 65 pounds from her highest weight of 213 pounds and hasn't eaten sugar in 26 years. Until she went to her first Overeaters Anonymous meeting in 1989, Tina thought she was "the only one who ate an entire half gallon of ice cream and then went and ate a bag of candy," she says. Still, for Tina and others, defining their problem as an addiction provides validation, support and a path to recovery. "We definitely need more research on the topic," says Ashley Gearhardt, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at the University of Michigan who studies food addiction and treatment. Tina considers herself a food addict, a term that's more controversial than drug addict or alcoholic, since the scientific jury is still out on whether or not people can be addicted to food the same way they can be to drugs and alcohol. "It was, 'How can I get more food without people knowing?'" "I didn't care that I was at my best friend's wedding or first Communion," she says. As she got older, the compulsion to eat and inability to stop took a significant toll on her health, career and relationships. When her brother bought one ice cream, she'd buy two. As a kid, she'd sneak downstairs and eat her aunt's lunch. In retrospect, Tina has always been that way. Needless to say, "It didn't have to be gourmet," says Tina, a 65-year-old retired educator in the Boston area who, like others in this story, requested to use only her first name to protect her privacy and honor the guidelines of Overeaters Anonymous, to which she belongs. She's eaten a loaf of bread with mayo in one sitting, fished food out of the trash, eaten it off the ground and shoveled it in when still half frozen. Tina is a "bag open, bag empty" kind of eater.