Massachusetts writer Michael Sinert is a 2016 graduate of the Memoir Incubator at GrubStreet and the 2016-17 fellow in nonfiction at the Writers’ Room of Boston. He’s currently completing a memoir on his twenty-year, life-and-death struggle with binge eating disorder, from which this essay is excerpted. A onetime newspaper reporter, bankrupt shipping entrepreneur and taxi driver, has an MBA from Northeastern University and can be found at www.michaelsinert.com and on Twitter @mikesinert.