Where the Battle Is Joined

Well, this is a very hard thing to do, as any fat person will testify.  That one-week stint I was hoping for in the last post didn't happen. I have been able to do a day at a time, but no more than that.  I guess the reason there are so many fat farms and reducing programs (an old fashioned expression there!) and diet books and diet food manufacturers and even diet TV shows is because this problem is darn near intractable!  Do I have the magic formula? Apparently not.  But I haven't given up hope yet.

Compulsive eating is an addiction. That much is clear.  Beyond that, what's the best way to get over it? There is no completely effective method--so far, anyway.  The brain is definitely involved, but sometimes it seems as if other body systems, such as the endocrine system, are also involved.  I try to learn about the science of the problem, but I don't get very far because a lot of it is over my head. But I haven't given up there either.

I do know that I have to go on trying, and that I must make an effort every single day.

It's funny how powerful the urge to overeat is sometimes. For me, the most compelling "argument" my mind comes up with is the one that likens compulsive eating to enjoyment: "Come on! Live a little! Life is short! What's the harm in a little bit of ice cream?" If it were only a little bit, there wouldn't be a harm. But unfortunately, it's not a little bit. A little bit leads to more and more and more and pretty soon a little bit of ice cream becomes a daily pint of Ben & Jerry's.  Or instead of leading to more ice cream, the notion of "enjoyment" becomes a piece of pie, or a donut, or a handful of cookies, or a bowl of popcorn--all on the same day. And that day stretches to another and another and another until a month of "sundaes" has gone by.

I'm not sure I'm doing much good complaining (whining?) about how hard it is, or confessing to multiple failures to maintain control. It does help to continue to focus on the problem, though, because then I don't lose track of the goal: to solve it.

Of course, the world of advertising and marketing does not make it any easier. In fact, they all want to encourage this behavior of compulsive eating because it is profitable. Look around you--we compulsive eaters wear our addictions on our sleeves, as it were.  "We like to eat," we say, "We're going to eat."  And the marketers say, "Let us help you! What can we do to make it easier and more satisfying?"

There are lots of ways to make compulsive eating more satisfying (and therefore more profitable). One of the most effective, of course, is to up the taste concentration, so that each bite is more satisfying than it was previously with the same product. One of the ways manufacturers do that is to increase the concentration of sweetness with high fructose corn syrup.  What a marvelous product! It's not only cheap, but easy to add to all manner of foods, from bread to yogurt to meats.  And of course, all sweets can stand to have their sweetness increased. So easy! So satisfying! So profitable!

But food makers also increase the concentration of fat in foods to make them more satisfying. It's funny to me that at the same time they are boldly declaring that some foods are fat free, marketers are also showing glistening pictures of hamburgers piled with cheese, bacon, and avocado, or french fries drowning in hot cheese sauce.  "Hey!" they say, "We'll give you whatever you want! Diet soda? You got it! Cheese fries? That too!" They are not trying to help. They just want to make money.  Can't blame them, you say? Okay, but don't expect them to care if you're slowly killing yourself by packing away too many units of energy that you'll probably never take out and use.

It's kind of like those hoarders. I know I've made this analogy before, but bear with me a minute. Picture the guy who can't throw away newspapers or magazines. He's got so many there is hardly an aisle left to walk through in his house. He'll never read them, but more and more get added because he can't stop. No one comes to visit him, and he's in danger of dying from a fire because there is so much combustible material his dwelling will go up like a torch. Plus he's got all his exits blocked. Or, he might die from a pile of magazines falling on him. And no one will hear him cry out for help because all the paper insulation is muffling his voice.

Is that so different from the person who is hoarding fat cells? She'll never use them, at least not as they were originally intended to be used--to survive in the wilderness over a period of scarce food supplies. They're just sitting on her body, her physical "house," making it difficult to move around and putting her in danger of dying from being crushed by the weight of those useless containers of energy. Yet she keeps adding more of them because she can't stop. Or she gets rid of some of them in an effort to "diet," but then before long, more are added until her "house" is full again and she's back to living in that tiny space between the stacks.

Oh, it's easy to see what the problem is. But when the urge is upon you, it's hard to think of why it's not a good thing to give in. And that's where the battle is joined, after all.  In those synapses, those tiny spaces in your brain where the compulsion was born and lives on, never quite extinguished, always coming back, day after day, year after year to try to regain control of your life.

*Sigh* And so it continues . . .

Try and Try Again

Well, I got about five days into recording my eating when things fell apart again.  But that's longer than I have been able to do for a while. I'm going to try for a full week this time. We'll see what happens!