Some are creatively talented.
Some have lots of smarts.
Some have drive.
And some relate to others particularly well, allowing them to be helpful to a range of personality types.
Phil Werdell was all of those, and more — innovator, treatment provider, educator, and founder of the Food Addiction Institute.
He was also technically challenged, not wonderfully organized, and not always easy to live with. He was no saint.
But quite a few people think of him that way, at least a little, especially among the more than 5,000 late-stage Food Addicts whom Werdell counseled over more than 30 years.
Phil Werdell did not set out to work with Food Addicts. After graduating Yale, where he was a Scholar of the House, he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for study in India and a Corning Fellowship to study international business.
He was a leader of the national student educational reform movement in the ‘60s, working on teams that created new “learner-centered” and performance-based liberal arts colleges in the ‘70s, and was vice president of the first stand-alone college with individually designed AA, BA, and MA degrees.
He wrote about this work in dozens of books, reports, and articles.
After 20 years in that field, at age 46 and aided by a severe health incident, he spent almost two years focusing primarily on his health.
It wasn’t until he started treating himself in the addiction model that he was able to achieve an 80-pound weight loss from 1986 to his death in 2023.
Just as Phil’s addiction brought him to his life’s work, my addiction brought me to Phil. I attended one of those intensives in 1999 in southern Indiana. I was a hard case that covered a lifetime of hurt and negativity.
By the second of the five days, I had determined I couldn’t find help there, gone on a futile march toward the Louisville airport until I realized that just wasn’t going to work, and sequestered myself behind a closed door, unwilling even to eat (imagine, for a Food Addict!) if it meant reentering the community.
I wanted help — I’d spent thousands and burned vacation time to get there — but put up roadblocks to getting it. Phil would not be denied, however, parrying every one of my blocks until he found a way to reach me. (Hint: Yes, it involved an abstinent meal.) After that, I was able to return to the group and begin again.
The experience of so many people with Phil is encapsulated by Cassie Segal, who, with her husband, is the institute’s chief financial supporter:
“I think of Phil as my teacher, not only from his enormous understanding about Food Addiction, but how he showed unconditional love to all.”