How’d that happen?!?
The Diet Cure arrived from Amazon yesterday, and I started skimming this afternoon. What I read was really very interesting, so I’m going to experiment with its recommendations and report back later this week.
In the meantime, I’ve been holding on to a couple of snippets related to comfort that I thought worth logging here. Now, as I mentioned earlier this week, I happen to believe that the physiology of overeating or compulsive eating is a major reason it’s so hard to overcome.
That’s also a reason why I tend to agree with the folks who believe in the commonality of addictions. Sure, a crystal meth or heroin addict has a problem that is considerably different (at least in degree) than I may have with my overeating. But I wonder if it’s not like the difference between heart attack and cancer. Both can be fatal, and both are largely attributable to choices in lifestyle. It’s just that one tends to take longer to kill you than the other.
Yet while I strongly believe in the physiological contribution to overeating, I also strongly believe that there are both spiritual and psychological components too. The following both address this, and they both resonated with me in a big way.
First, in late November, Oprah had a show on the subject of sex addictions. I actually haven’t watched the whole thing yet, but I noticed that the expert she had on, Rob Weiss, the founder of the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles, had a great way of explaining addiction to things other than drugs and alcohol:
I think of sex addicts as being drug addicts—only their drug is their own neurochemistry … It’s what turns them on. … I talk to guys who say that hours and hours and hours go by, and they’re not even aware of the time change because they’re so filled with adrenalin and dopamine and serotonin.
Hmmm. Sounds like a good description of me in the late afternoon as I contemplate a binge, obsess about it, and then give in to it.
But Weiss also adressed the underlying reason for doing this (not online):
Weiss: I want to say something about the emptiness inside of these two guys. These aren’t bad, sleazy guys who are doing horrible things because they don’t care about their partners or their lives. But they’re so empty inside. … These are men who don’t draw comfort from human relationships. They can’t really get the stuff that we get when we’re intimate.
Oprah: And you wouldn’t be able to do it because you were disconnected at an early age.
Weiss: That’s right. They never learned it. And so for them, this is comfort.
I just ran across a very similar sentiment in Deepak Chopra’s book Peace Is the Way. This may seem strange, since the book is really about a shift in global human consciousness as a way of achieving world peace (I’m a Unitarian Universalist, and we’re discussing the book in a church group).
In a section of the book relating to materialism, Chopra writes:
I’m not trying to demonize material progress. … But to fall short of your spiritual potential is the most basic sign of alienation. … When you are ungrounded, you forget who you are. Outside forces toss you around. You retreat into various distractions that feebly compensate for the immense power and authority you have lost.
I once heard a worried disciple who stood up during a talk by a famous spiritual teacher. “I want to live a spiritual life, but I have to be honest,” he said. “I don’t want to be poor. I don’t want to be unfortable and miserable.” The audience tittered nervously … but the teacher shrugged. “Why give up anything? Until you achieve unity, your comforts are all you have.”
What I really like about these is that both suggest (to me anyways) that the path to spiritual growth — and ending food obsession and compulsive overeating — isn’t necessarily dealing with all the demons from childhood. Obviously, some have to be dealt with (one of these days, I may have to re-read the book The Invisible Masters for new insight).
But for a lot of us, we might be better off learning the skills we need to provide our own sense of security and comfort. Eating in a way to feel good (read: less crap, more good stuff) is a start. But after that, there are very many interesting paths to explore.