Weighty Matters and Good Food

Theme song: Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk

I wanted to talk about weighty matters for a couple of reasons.

I get inspired by whatever is happening in my own life. Right now, I want to lose weight and just sharing that information and what it means for me makes it easier. I can count on you for ideas, encouragement, and even well-intentioned argument.

I share my experience so my readers feel less alone. I know the chances are excellent that if I'm having a problem, someone else is having it, too. Sometimes it is difficult to make the personal universal, but that is my goal. I hope to set people at ease and encourage them to be open with themselves about their own lives.

I can write about this issue of weight gain because I think I found a solution, and I'm feeling a little more at ease with myself as a result. This "feeling a little more at ease with myself" is great news. Some wise people told me that, in my 40s, things were likely to get emotionally easier and here it is: a new-found ease and sense of authenticity that seems to have materialized effortlessly after years of effort.

So. I have almost always been uncomfortable with my weight and with the appearance of my body. Although my mom made an effort to foster my self-esteem, family and societal forces were such that all of us women worried about our weight. It's so typical! We all know the drill.

When I realized my marriage was over I lost so much weight I could see veins in my chest. My knuckles hurt. The texture of my skin changed. People told me I looked great!

Despite all the pain and terror I was experiencing, I also felt free--and beautiful. I could feel inside, from very early on, that the chaos, and the sense of freedom I was feeling, would be temporary. I knew this was a period of my life to treasure, and I did--in no small part because I had treasure to spend as a result of my divorce settlement.

I knew the day would come when I would need to buckle down and, instead of flying free and feeling beautiful, find a way to survive in a San Francisco that was still recovering from the 2008 crisis.

Here are a couple of quotes, from Vanity Fair, that sum up the situation:

1.

You'll have to be prepared to say that we are not a good society--that we are an anti-human society. We are not good to each other. Our tribalism is about an extremely narrow group of people: our children, our spouse, maybe our parents. Our society is alienating, technical, cold, and mystifying. Our fundamental desire, as human beings, is to be close to others, and our society does not allow for that. - Sharon Abramowitz, anthropologist

2.

The economic and marketing forces of modern society have engineered an environment promoting decisions that maximize consumption at the long-term cost of well-being. In effect, humans have dragged a body with a long hominid history into an overfed, malnourished, sedentary, sunlight-deficient, sleep-deprived, competitive, inequitable and socially-isolating environment with dire consequences. - Journal of Affective Disorders, 2012

Living the way we do encourages a survival mentality.

Survival is not a creative place. It is, in my case, a stiff, contracted, angry, and fearful place. This is not to say that there aren't some good things about being a survivor. Survival is an instructive place to visit, but I don't encourage people to live there.

It's sad but true that in a society like ours survival is where a lot of people are. Most people, in fact. In case you didn't know (or maybe you don't agree), inequity is unfair and unjust. But that's how it is, so we as a global community will continue to live with it until we change it or we die, whichever comes first.

I do not feel I have a tribe, as such. But I do have a few very precious friends and some amazing resources that help me get by. I do rely very heavily on meditation, yoga, and prayer. Lately, I've begun to understand the true value--and importance--of fun.

Still, for the past couple of years, when I felt alone or I was scrambling to finish a deadline, I found food comforting. You know: I've given up drink, I don't have much money to shop, and I'd be a hopeless gambler. As far as addictions go, food is safe, quick, and relatively harmless.

Addiction of any sort, though, is part of the survival loop. Surviving is not my goal. It's not my dream. It's not what I was put on earth to do. Gobbling food to quell fear is not the same as appreciating the earth's bounty and my animal role in the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. It's not the same as gracefully bearing in mind that my body is, in fact, a temple.

As humans, we are blessed (a difficult blessing!) with more freedom of thought, feeling, and expression than other animals. We can make more choices than others can.

I'd like to be fully human. I'd like to explore all reaches of this thing called being human, which means accepting my impending death, the reality of society as it is and not how I would like it to be, the exigencies of my animal form, and my capacity for spiritual and creative reach. Part of that is eating neither too little nor too much, or at least eating as a result of hunger and genuine desire rather than as an escape.

I know. Weight can be a weapon in our cold, technical, and mystifying society. So the point is not to judge fatness, but to encourage each individual to look inside and outside with the aim of discovering, not just an individual answer to the questions of what to eat and how much to weigh, but the answers that makes you most fully human. And to be human is to connect your answers to the answers of those around you.

We are at a moment in history in which, with so many of us fighting for survival, we are not thinking creatively or collectively. As you make your best efforts to be fully human, nourish yourself with faith, courage, and not too much or too little good food.