A New Twist On Eating

One of my strongest memories of eating in the cafeteria when I was in college is of the voices of women debating what to eat. Sometimes the question was something like, "Should I have ice cream or cheesecake?" More often than not, what I heard was, "I can't eat that many calories. I've already had 500 today." There were others who ate what they wanted, but then exercised like crazy. One woman who lived down the hall from me ran an average of 6 miles a day and went to an aerobics class. I thought she was just really into running until she told me that she hated it. When I asked her why she exercised so much, she said something like, "I love desert, and if I don't exercise, I'll turn into a cow." I don't think I knew anyone who could eat a brownie without worrying about gaining weight afterwards.

Things haven't changed all that much over the years. While I do know a number of women who neither starve themselves nor obsess about their weight, I still see women panic about getting large servings of food in restaurant, deny themselves a piece of chocolate for fear that it will go straight to their hips, or express guilt as they eat. And who doesn’t get a bit nervous, at least momentarily, when they put on a pair of jeans or slacks and they are a bit on the tight side? And of course, the cookies, chocolate, and extra snack food that abound during the holiday season don’t help those too tight jeans fit more comfortably. The holiday season is just about over and almost every woman I know is worried about all the weight they gained since Halloween. This is the season when many women plan drastic, “take it all off” diets which are doomed to fail.

Some of this food guilt and obsession relates to cultural factors that go beyond gender. In our society, eating is seen more as medicine to be taken in measured doses in order to survive than as something to savor and enjoy. Many people deny themselves desert or other types of food, including things like potatoes, because the particular food doesn't have the right combination of vitamins, minerals, protein, fat, sugar, or whatever nutritional aspect they focus on.

The guilt in our society over eating "the wrong food" can be incredible. Research has found that many people feel guiltier about eating a brownie than they do about cheating on their spouse. The downside of all that food guilt is that the stress over eating a brownie is more harmful to the body than the brownie itself. This guilt effect doesn't just relate to food that's been eaten. Often, fear of violating food "laws" leads people to deny themselves food, or at least certain types of food, altogether. When taken to an extreme, this sort of denial can have a very powerful effect on the mind and body. One study found that after a short period of eating a “starvation diet,” the research subjects began to obsess about food and lost interest in other facets of life, including sex. The subjects, in a relatively short period of time, adopted attitudes and behaviors similar to those of anorexics. Interestingly enough, the research subjects in this study were men*.

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