Eat, Drink, and Know Yourself Intimately

And God’s Gift to us is to eat, drink, and find fulfillment in our work.
- Ecclesiastes 3:13

Caption: Life - Before the onset of societal conditioning

Food and shelter. There was a time (millennia ago) when those two simple goals were all we strove for.

I’ve nothing against evolution, but it seems we may have overplayed our hand when it comes to the quest for improving our circumstances. Besides, when you stop and think about it, isn’t having easy access to food and shelter pretty glorious? You need not have ever been deprived of these two necessities to realize how patently awful everyday life would be without them.

For the past century or so, a cushy life of convenience has become the American norm, so we seek other mountains to climb, records to break, things to improve - whether it’s a flashier car, younger looking face, or less baggage to account for when we step on the scale.

While there’s nothing wrong with wanting better circumstances, these days, I find myself asking…to what end? Especially with the recent profusion of GLP-1’s on the market. Those subcutaneous weekly shots to the stomach that diminish appetite and incur weight loss are all the rage (#NotANewsFlash). Remember when weight-loss schemes were comparatively easier to swallow, like those popular appetite-suppressing caramels during the 70s? I long for those innocent days.

Just about all of Hollywood has cartwheeled onto the injection bandwagon. And I’m going to take a cynical guess that most of them aren’t in the diabetic zone - a minor detail! I have a hunch that this sudden stampede centers around the quest for that most valuable of all human qualities: appearance. Legions of showbiz types (politicians and talking heads are included here) who were once average-sized are now emaciated; those formerly zaftig are now average-sized, and actresses of a certain age – there’s no delicate way to say it - look like cadavers. Yes, they’re all thinner, but none look especially vibrant or healthy. It’s an evergreen side effect of a sudden drop in weight that all the filters in the world can’t remedy.

Tempting as the idea is to rapidly vaporize fat, the list of possible side effects (that’s a hard no for me on the prospect of stomach paralysis), coupled with the fact that these drugs are still relatively new (translation: we’re the guinea pigs) has me backing away, even as I emit an envious sigh over the sudden svelteness of the injected.

But beyond those red flags, I’ve learned my lesson. It happened way back in the 90s, when another weight-loss drug du jour burst onto the market – again - largely untested.

There I was, Thanksgiving day 1994, in a most unfamiliar role: that of dining spectator. It was a first for me as I ignored the bountiful savannahs of dinner rolls, mashed potatoes, fragrant turkey slices, and antique gravy boats that used to mesmerize me.

Instead of grabbing a plate, I was handing them out to family members, as well as proffering napkins and missing pieces of silverware the way a dining room attendant on a cruise ship might do. ‘This stuff really works,’ I mused to myself silently, noting the promised effects of Fen-Phen had officially kicked in. My GP suggested I give it a whirl because of the pill’s promise of appetite diminishment and weight loss.

While it was great to not, for once, be whipsawed by my desire for food, there was something about this newly bestowed state that didn’t feel right. How could it? It was drug-induced. A quickie way to solve a problem that, let’s be honest, is extremely challenging to tackle to the ground in the long-term.

As much as I wanted to shed weight, my gut told me this wasn’t the answer, and as usual, my gut predicted an accurate forecast. My doctor thought I was reckless for abruptly cutting the cord with Fen-Phen, arguing that I hadn’t given it a chance. But a few years later came the news of users experiencing serious complications and even death from heart valve damage and other maladies. This was followed by the predictable tidal wave of personal injury lawyers offering big payouts to the damaged and bereaved.

But good old tenacious Big Pharma…they’re not going to let a little thing like that deter them. We can add to the ‘death and taxes’ list, revamped and re-engineered weight-loss drugs storming the market again and again, as something we can always count on. And despite the downsides, we flock…understandably.

It’s not fun carrying around excess weight; it’s a load that’s both physical and emotional. Couple that with society’s disdain, and you’ve got yourself a burden. I don’t judge anyone for seeking solutions apart from exercise and revised food choices; they’ve been known to work swimmingly while in states of elevated dedication, but elevated states are, by nature, temporary.

The waters of life’s oceans can be volatile. All kinds of curve balls come our way. And there’s that other inconvenient truth that our bodies unavoidably change as we age. Temptation, as it is wont to do, has upped its game at the supermarket and fast food joints. It’s easy to see how overwhelm and self-dissatisfaction can send us careening towards an ‘easier’ answer.

As writer Jennifer Weiner (who made a name for herself in the world of the ‘fat chick lit’ genre) said in a recent New York Times article: “these drugs are designed to quiet the food noise. What goes without saying…is that hunger is the enemy and a woman’s job is to repel it, control it, fight it off, push it down.”

Dr. Kate Manne, professor of philosophy at Cornell University adds, “…to call something noise is to go beyond describing it: It’s to invoke the normative claim that simply loving food, letting food occupy our thoughts and responding to our hunger is suspect. It isn’t.”

From my own vast wellspring of experience, I’ve concluded it useless to try and fall out of love with food. When I accepted certain things about myself, plus realizing how normal it is to be emotionally intertwined with food (hint: the biology of survival instincts play a key role) then I more easily came to a place of equilibrium and was willing to lay my weapons down. Hunger is an intelligent force to be respected, not reviled. Not to mention a valuable barometer of our needs – both physical and emotional. I’ve decided, after too many battles of trying to lock my love of food in the dungeon (always followed by wanton binges), that I’m better served by administering some old-fashioned TLC instead of GLP. How else will something as intimate as feeding ourselves ever change for the better without some self-understanding and empathy?

Changing who I am for the sole purpose of being more liked is not something that’s OK with me. And I’ve seen it time and again, with myself and observing others: incurring weight loss at a break-neck pace almost always backfires. The truth is we come in a variety of shapes. The human body is in a constantly transient state: we age, sag, acquire infirmities, and yes, for some of us, our weight is subject to fluctuation. We’re people - not statues.

There’s something in me that has always resisted the handcuffs of surgical procedures or pharmacological interventions - my brief flight of fancy with Fen-Phen was enough.

Besides, there are so many other arenas in life where I prefer to direct my energy, like, say, gratitude for the simple things. Food and shelter will always be at the top of my ‘Thankful For’ List. And on a holiday weekend earmarked for the adoration of food, I think I’ll just be thankful for what I have and leave it at that.

My own homemade version of the Whitman Sampler