However, retreating behind ignorance of the consequences only perpetuates the cycle of mindless eating, yo-yo dieting, and morning-after recriminations-and deepens its hold. The overeater, faced with desire that seems difficult, if not impossible to extinguish, sees no recourse but denial. In a society that worships svelte bodies and self-control, we are merciless toward those who appear to have neither. Overeating is among the most insidious of cravings, a form of suffering that carries much shame. The Buddha identified three poisons that constitute suffering: craving, aversion, and ignorance. For compulsive overeaters, however, a cookie is the culinary equivalent of a loaded gun: one bite can send them spiraling into a hell realm of insatiable desire. Eating it brings a moment of enjoyment-or, at worst, guilty pleasure-then they give it no more thought. “It’s just a cookie, after all.”įor many people a cookie is just a cookie. We eat out of habit: “What’s a movie without a bucket of popcorn?” We eat to be polite: “I don’t want to insult my hostess.” Sometimes, we eat in response to a vague feeling of lack, or a fear that there won’t be enough in the future: “I’d better take one before they’re all gone,” we reason. Often we associate eating with happy times and try to recapture good feelings by consuming certain foods. CNN reported that in the days after September 11, consumption of ice cream and sweets rose dramatically in New York City. In times of stress, nearly everyone turns to food. Eating soothes emotional discomfort and offers escape from unpleasant feelings of anger, disappointment, agitation, fear, pain, sorrow, loneliness, or simply boredom. Why do we eat, anyway? Clearly, physical hunger is not the only drive. When we can relate to the body and our appetites with compassion and acceptance, we will no longer have to live at such a distance from ourselves. What is required is a shift in perspective that allows us to understand the nature of craving and to welcome the body, whatever state it is in. Rather, it is our thoughts about it that undermine our sense of well-being. ”įrom a Buddhist perspective, however, the body is not the problem. Duffy, the protagonist of James Joyce’s short story “A Painful Case”: “He lived at a little distance from his body. Ironically, the more we focus on the body, the more alienated from it we become. The tag line says it all: “Respect yourself in the morning.” Food-the primordial form of nurture-is becoming a primordial source of suffering. A bikini-clad model is shown reclining pinup-style, an enormous, icing-covered croissant balanced on her hip. Judgment for dietary indiscretions is swift and harsh: a recent print ad for Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain health bars suggests how culturally ingrained this view has become. We weigh ourselves against impossible standards, and when reality falls short of our expectations, self-doubt-even self-hatred-is quick to follow. Whether we are ordering a five-course dinner at the Four Seasons or eyeing a plate of Krispy Kremes, our hunger seems to have far less to do with nourishment than with the gratification of desire. Denying the body with one hand, we stuff it with the other-then second-guess every morsel we consume. Increasingly, we exist in a love-hate relationship with our bodies and in a state of conflict over food. Two-thirds of the population is overweight, nearly a third clinically obese meanwhile, our ideal of physical beauty keeps getting thinner and thinner. For much of the world, getting enough to eat is the problem. Yet how often the matter of “enough” trips us up. “Knowing how much is enough when eating.”
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