Religion of Thinness

Infusing a Little Loving Kindness into the “War on Obesity”

“You’re a big-fat-meany!” I overhear my six-year-old yelling at his older brother. Somehow, their peaceful game of chess has deteriorated into a power struggle. My nine-year-old is quick to fire back: “Yeah, we’ll you’re a big-fat-meany too! And who cares if we never play again!” 

They’re in the living room, and I’m in the kitchen, separating chicken bones and gristle from meat to use for soup, so I holler to them: “hey guys, please work it out without name-calling.” After a short silence, I hear their voice tones start to soften. Still, I feel a mix of sadness and horror. While neither of them is overweight, studies suggest that a growing number of their peers are, or will be. And no doubt many of these kids face a lifetime of ridicule and derision as labels like “big,” “fat,” and the like become some of the most powerful put-downs. 

The Spiritual Dimensions of Recovering from an Eating Disorder: Transforming Suffering and Finding New Sources of Meaning

There is a Sufi aphorism that says: “Love the water more and the pitcher less.” Muslim scholar Amir Hussain interprets this to mean that “Too often, when people seek to quench their thirst, they focus on the outward form of the container that holds that water rather than on the water itself” (Oil and Water, p. 176). This is precisely what happens to people who struggle with body image and eating problems. The attention devoted to creating a “good” figure (the “pitcher”) diverts energy away from cultivating a deeper sense of meaning in life (the “water”). The goal of losing weight becomes all-consuming, and the result is the feeling of being eternally hungry (or, to stay with the water metaphor, thirsty).

Relinquishing the holy grail of thinness is far from easy for those who pursue it with religious-like fervor. For however debilitating it can be, an obsession with weight functions as a profound source of meaning, giving those who aspire to a “good body” something to strive for, a goal by which to measure their success and worth (or lack thereof). Indeed, it’s virtually impossible to let go of this purpose-giving preoccupation without finding and/or creating new sources of meaning to replace old attachments and mental habits. This is what makes recovery from an eating disorder a spiritual journey. It is an ongoing process of learning to transform the very pain and emptiness that the obsession functions to cover into a new source of personal growth and well being.

Some people who struggle with eating/body image problems know exactly where the suffering they seek to avoid came from. For example, they can trace it back to a particular person, family situation, and/or incident(s) in their life. For others, however, the origins of their distress are more nebulous. This was the case for me as a young adolescent. My parents, though not perfect, were responsible and loving. I didn’t experience psychological, physical, or sexual trauma. I was successful at school and had plenty of friends. Still, there was a significant part of me that was hopelessly unsatisfied, a part that felt empty, anxious, insatiable. While I projected this dissatisfaction onto my body (with more than a little help from the media images I uncritically devoured), I sought to escape the internal void through food and the quest for a body that would somehow make me complete.

I spent much of my freshmen, sophomore, and junior years of high school bingeing, purging, and wishing I were thinner. By the summer before my senior year in high school, I was scared. I hated feeling so out-of-control; I hadn’t menstruated in years; I was getting cavities for the first time; and I was terrified that someone would find out about my shameful food rituals. I became so afraid of what I was doing, that somehow I managed to stop my bulimic behavior. For the next year, I still counted every calorie and policed my appetite with rigor, but I no longer resorted to gorging and vomiting, and this was a tremendous relief.

Still, the real process of healing for me didn’t begin until I started college. It was there that I discovered new sources of meaning. For the first time, I encountered a world of interesting ideas and supportive friendships. I became aware of society’s injustices towards women and other “others,” and I learned to question some of the religious beliefs I had accepted without question. In the process, I started to envision my life as having a purpose larger than the size of my body. I wasn’t sure what that purpose was, but I knew, in the idealism of my college youth, that I wanted to help make the world a better place. The sense of emptiness wasn’t gone, but through my education, particularly my study of philosophy, history, literature, and religion, I was beginning to understand that it was something to be explored, rather than avoided. This insight this opened up new possibilities for self-knowledge and self-definition.

 

My own experience illustrates the spiritual process of finding/creating a larger sense of life’s meaning to replace the never-ending pursuit of a “better” body. However, I don’t mean to suggest it as a norm. As a professor, I know plenty of young women for whom college has not been a time of flourishing but rather a time of exacerbated struggle with body image and eating problems. Indeed, there is no one-size-fits all method for finding/creating a deeper sense of purpose in life. Nor is there a universal answer regarding what that purpose might be. Ultimately, the search for a larger sense of meaning is a spiritual journey that each person must travel in her or his own way. Whatever the particularities of your path, you will need enough courage to let go of the security of easy answers and enjoy the mystery of life’s great questions.  

Many people come to a spiritual path in life because they are unhappy. What they often discover is that this very unhappiness—that feeling of perpetual dissatisfaction—offers enormous possibilities for personal growth. This is precisely true in the case of eating disorders. Both the suffering they cause and the suffering we seek to avoid through them have enormous potential to transform us. Such suffering can open our minds, expand our hearts, and free our spirits—if we are brave enough to be present to it. Pain itself will not change us. But becoming conscious of it, sitting with it, getting to know it, and eventually letting it go can help to wake us up spiritually. As the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr points out, “Spirituality is what we do with our pain.”   

Some of the most simple and effective spiritual tools for transforming pain and finding new sources of meaning are the “big questions” we can ask ourselves. These include: 

• •    What is most important in my life? 

• •    To what should I devote my energy and attention? 

• •    How should I deal with suffering? 

• •    To what or whom am I accountable? 

• •    How do I understand my life’s purpose?

For those who have devoted much energy to losing weight and “improving” their bodies, such questions may seem impossibly large or immensely heavy (puns intended). And, of course, they are—if you assume the goal of exploring them is to arrive once-and-for-all at an absolute answer. But if instead you approach them with a sense of adventure, they can replenish your sense of purpose in life, reminding you that life is much bigger than the size of your body, and it’s worth the risk to explore it more deeply.

    

Whether you are new to a spiritual path, or a veteran traveler along the way, you can use these questions to keep you grounded in and motivated by an awareness of what is sacred in your life. And when you’re feeling lost and/or insecure, it may help to remember something Zen teacher Bernie Glassman observed, namely, that “there is little energy in answers.” This includes the “answer” of a “perfect body.”

More than an Image: Becoming Mindful of Your Body from Within

More than an Image: Becoming Mindful of Your Body from Within

One of the consequences of living in an image-saturated society is that many of us develop a rather superficial, image-oriented relationship with our bodies. Our nearly non-stop exposure to advertisements, TV, films, the internet, and other media trains us to see, understand, and experience our bodies as “moving pictures”—that is, as images for others to view—rather than as the moving home and ground of our being. 

Moving Beyond an Eating Disordered Definition of “Healthy Food”

In this series of blogs (started January 18^th), I’ve been encouraging you, the reader, to forego the standard New Year’s promise to improve your figure and focus instead on practicing peace with your body by treating it with kindness and giving it the care it needs. This suggestion has special relevance during Eating Disorders Awareness Week. Yet some readers have worried that my emphasis on being kind to your body and critical of our society’s devotion to thinness somehow endorses an unhealthy lifestyle. Perhaps this concern is a reflection of just how much our culture—from the popular media to conventional medicine—encourages a disordered approach to food and eating by promoting the assumption that being “healthy” automatically means being thin. 

To challenge our culture’s obsession with thinness is not to endorse a lifestyle that promotes obesity. Rather, my suggestion is simply that, in the long run, cultivating a nonviolent relationship with your body is actually a more viable road to overall health (physical, mental, spiritual) than torturing yourself with restrictive diets and weight-loss fantasies. 

In fact, a crucial aspect of pursuing this kinder, more peaceful approach to your body is eating foods that genuinely nourish your body and spirit. This means that instead of deciding what to eat based primarily on caloric, fat, or carbohydrate content, you try to eat foods that maximize your physical health. It also means eating them in a way that is attuned to how much your body really needs and that enhances your sense of gratitude and pleasure. 

Let’s start by defining “foods that nourish your body,” that is, those that help keep your body well-functioning, strong, well, and energized (notice: I didn’t say “thin”). Perhaps the simplest way to identify what kinds of foods belong in this “healthy” category is to look for foods that are real. According to author and food activist Michael Pollan, “real foods” differ from the “edible foodlike substances” that line the aisles of most supermarkets today (see In Defense of Food, p. 1-2). Real foods are those that haven’t had the life force processed out of them. They are not filled with additives to enhance their taste, color, and/or shelf life. They do not contain ingredients that are nearly impossible to pronounce. They have not been modified to make cooking easier. And they typically don’t come wrapped in shiny labels that make spurious-sounding claims about their amazing health benefits. In short, real foods are whole foods, the kinds people have eaten for most of human history (i.e., prior to the rise of industrial agriculture, nutritional science, and commercial food markets). As Pollan points out, they are foods your great grandmother would have recognized. And they have been rapidly disappearing from the American diet in recent decades.

 

To be sure, defining “healthy foods” as “whole foods” is hardly news these days. Yet strangely, this is not the definition that comes immediately to mind for a lot of folks. Instead, the term “healthy food” conjures up an assortment of items that are fat-free, and/or sparse in calories, and/or low in carbohydrates.     

In our weight-loss obsessed society, “healthy food” is often defined by an eating disordered mentality, in which “healthy” means first and foremost foods that won’t add to your girth, and/or foods that might even help you shed pounds—regardless of how processed they are, how they were grown, how far they were transported, or how many artificial additives or unpronounceable ingredients they contain. Indeed, a $60 billion a year diet industry would have us believe that aspartame is a “healthier” choice as a sweetener than a calorie-laden whole food like honey or maple syrup. In this eating disordered paradigm, a box of “non-fat” cereal, whose second ingredient is high-fructose corn syrup (that cheaply made sugar substitute, which is heavily processed after being produced by land-destroying industrial agricultural methods), is better for you than a bowl of plain oatmeal and raisins.

Now some of you may say: “Okay, but who wants to eat a bowl of plain oatmeal and raisins for breakfast?”

The point here is not that everyone should be eating oatmeal and raisins for breakfast (though perhaps that wouldn’t be a bad direction to take). Instead, I’m suggesting something bigger, namely, that whether or not a particular food is nourishing depends on much more than the amount of calories, fat grams, or carbohydrates it contains. 

To be sure, “healthy” may be an accurate descriptor for a variety of non-fat, low calorie whole foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables (particularly those grown without corporate-made pesticides and fertilizers). However, it is a questionable designation for any number of manufactured “diet” foods, despite the miraculous health benefits their labels promise. Ultimately, if we want to make healthy food choices, we need to break the automatic associations between “healthy,” “lo-calorie,” “no carbs,” and  “fat-free,” particularly when it comes to processed foods. 

At the same time, the reality that, given the choice, many of us would gravitate towards corn-syrup-filled cereal (rather than oatmeal and raisins) intimates the extent to which commercial food markets have tapped into our survival-based, biological predilections for morsels that give us extra layers. It behooves us to understand this conundrum if we wish to move beyond an eating disordered definition of “healthy food” to a more holistic paradigm.

 

There’s little question, for example, that the fast-paced growth of weight-loss industries in the second half of the 20th century paralleled the expanded manufacturing and marketing of highly-refined, sugary, salty, fatty, high-calorie foods. According Pollan, these items “push our evolutionary buttons”—our innate preference for certain tastes. But they do little to satisfy our nutritional needs, and this may be one reason we are prone to consume them in large quantities. In In Defense of Food, Pollan quotes renowned biochemist Bruce Ames, who suggests that the insatiable hunger many people experience when eating highly processed foods, “may be a biological strategy for obtaining missing nutrients” (123-124; 150). It makes sense that a body that is largely fed on sugar, salt, and fat is not getting sufficient nutrients and will be inclined to continue eating in the hope of obtaining them.

Because whole foods are more nutritious and generally higher in fiber than their processed counterparts, they tend to be more satiating in the long run, and we are less prone to over-eat them. This points to the spiritual benefits of eating real foods. When you leave a meal feeling satisfied instead of still craving, you are free to move on and engage in other meaningful, creative aspects of your life. Anyone who has ever struggled with compulsive eating understands the advantages of this approach. But even if you have never suffered from wanting to eat more right after finishing dinner, you may recognize the benefits of feeling satisfied and energized by a meal.

Whole and fresh foods also have the capacity to make you more present to the process of eating because they tend to demand more effort to consume. Consider the effort it takes to chew a carrot as opposed to a cookie, or a mouthful of brown rice compared to white). By requiring a little more exertion, whole foods offer you the opportunity to slow down and enjoy what you’re eating, to notice when you have had enough, and to be grateful to those who grew, harvested, cleaned, and prepared your meal. 

In many ways, our relationship to food is an expression of our relationship to life. Perhaps more than any other daily activity, what we eat reflects our values and connects us to the rest of the world. Whether our approach to eating is characterized primarily by fear, suspicion, calculation, and control, or openness, gratitude, enjoyment, and presence is manifest in the choices we make day in and day out. Choosing foods that nourish our bodies and spirits is not just a way to practice peace with the physical dimension of your existence; it is also a way of expressing our gratitude to life, for life. How wonderful to have that opportunity to feel thankful and connected to this creative power three times a day, 365 days a year.

When Already-Skinny Women Obsess about Thinness: Time for a Little Soul-Searching

This is the third in a series of blogs designed to elaborate my suggestion (originally posted January 18^th) that you make a different kind of New Year’s resolution in 2010—one that replaces the conventional pledge to downsize your figure by going to war with your appetite with an alternative commitment to practice peace with your body. 

From Punishment to Pleasure: Developing a New Relationship with Exercise

Last week I posted my blog encouraging readers to stop criticizing their bodies and start critiquing our society's obsession with thinness in the Huffington Post. I must say I was intrigued by how many readers  responded to this suggestion with anxiety that I was somehow (intentionally or not) promoting obesity. I'm grateful for a chance to clarify this point. In my view, refusing to participate in our culture’s obsession with thinness doesn’t mean abandoning the pursuit of good health. My suggestion is simply that practicing peace with your body—i.e., developing a more harmonious, kind, nurturing, accepting, and loving relationship towards it—is a more viable path to health than going to war with your flesh by getting caught up in weight-loss aspirations and fantasies of thinness. In fact, one of the best ways to practice peace with your body is to give it the exercise it needs.

Exercising in a way that promotes harmony, kindness, nurturance, and acceptance of your body may require a paradigm shift in the way you think about and pursue fitness. Studies suggest that the vast majority of women who work out do so with the primary aim of losing weight or maintaining their figure. In a society that idealizes the slender body, exercise has become virtually synonymous with burning calories. The problem is that this approach turns the pleasure of physical movement into a form of punishment. According to this mentality, you need to spend hours pounding the treadmill to “atone” for the “sin” of having eaten dessert.  But the “sacrifice” of your sweat is worth it because of the feeling of “purity” it engenders.

The religious overtones of such a workout ethic are not coincidental. This weight-loss oriented approach to exercise is an integral part of our culture’s widespread devotion to thinness. Advertisements for fitness programs or products encourage us to seek redemption by burning fat. “Health” magazines proffer 10-minute workouts that promise not only to “tone your body” but “lighten your spirit.” In short, this commercially-sponsored, exercise-to-lose weight paradigm reflects and embodies the quasi-religious, cultural myth that being thinner will somehow “save” you, that with every pound you lose, your problems will also disappear.  

Unfortunately, this sacrificial-punitive approach is hardly enticing for those who would most benefit from more hearty physical exertion. Nor does it offer much wisdom or balance for those who are prone to working out excessively. And yet, this is the dominant way exercise is thought of and pursued in our image-obsessed culture: forget about how your body feels before, during, and/or after a workout; the crucial thing is how it looks—and this is especially true if you’re female.

Advertisements for fitness products and programs contribute to the notion that the ultimate purpose of exercise is losing weight and being “attractive.” “Join Now! Shed Pounds! Look Great!” a commercial for a fitness center entices. Shamelessly, such rhetoric conflates physical fitness and appearance. Despite the reality that neither health nor beauty come in one shape or size, the message we get from popular culture is remarkably consistent: exercise>lose weight>be healthy>look good>feel better. Indeed, the ubiquity of this formula obscures other approaches to exercise, particularly those that do not put you at war with your body. 

The subtle violence embedded in the exercise-for-weight-loss paradigm is captured in the metaphor of “burning.” Whether you are encouraged to burn calories or fat itself, such rhetoric tacitly fosters a antagonistic relationship with your body, as if your body were “the enemy.” Ironically, this very antagonism is at the root of many unhealthy eating and exercise habits.  

Developing a more harmonious relationship with your body means learning to enjoy physical activity that gets your heart beating. This is where this paradigm shift comes in. 

What if, instead of seeing exercise as a road to thinness, you focused your attention on the ways it makes you stronger, increases your energy, relieves stress, strengthens your mind/body connection, and thereby promotes your general well being? 

When it is not tethered to the goal of weight loss, pursuing fitness can be a source of integration, pleasure, and healing—a way to practice peace with your body.

    

Exercising for energy, stress-reduction, and strength can take multiple forms. The key is to find activities you enjoy. If you’re not inclined to working out at the gym, you might join an athletic team, practice tai chi, play tennis, or go golfing, hiking, dancing, or rollerblading. You need only observe the natural tendency of children to run, jump, skip, and play to understand your body’s need to be physically active. This need does not disappear as we grow older and spend less time at the playground, and our spirits suffer if we ignore it. Whatever you do, let go of thoughts about burning calories. Simply take pleasure in the opportunity to move and be more present in your body.

Enjoying your body through exercise depends on knowing its limits. Exercise does not have to be overly taxing to be effective. Anything from mowing the grass to going for a walk can give you a way of processing distressing thoughts and difficult emotions. If you have a history of exercising excessively, your challenge is to pay attention to the physical cues your body gives you. Instead of adhering to rigid time or distance requirements you may have established for yourself, you can practice being flexible by slowing down and taking a break when you start to feel tired or achy. If you’re worn out from running, for example, you might shorten the distance, slow your pace, or try walking instead. These are acts of kindness towards your body that can replace the punitive habit of pushing it beyond its limits. The point is to find forms of movement that harmonize with your actual physical needs, rather than adhere to some ideal or standard you have in your head. 

While for some people exercise can be addicting, others find it nearly impossible to get moving. This is not because they are “weak-willed” or “lazy.” Exercise resistance is a complex problem and there are many reasons to feel unmotivated. Traumatic experiences that involved our bodies, including unwanted sexual experiences, can impair our connection to the energy that moves us. Many of us grew up with social or familial messages that reinforced an inactive lifestyle. Some of us who enjoyed playful activity when we were younger lost interest when it became focused on competition. Whatever your physical history, identifying the impact of such experiences is a vital part of re-inhabiting and enjoying your flesh.  

Practicing peace with your body means finding a balance between the activity and the rest you need. In this paradigm, overall health—mental, physical, and even spiritual—replaces weight loss as the primary goal of exercise. Of course, this approach does not preclude the possibility of losing weight as a result of physical exertion; it simply doesn’t make it the primary or ultimate goal.   

When exercise is not motivated primarily by a drive for thinness, it can be a kind of spiritual practice. Think of the way that physical exertion changes your breathing. Is it any coincidence that, etymologically speaking, “breath” and “spirit” are connected? When we get the exercise we need, we breathe better, and our bodies/spirits are healthier because of it. 

If it sounds strange to think of physical exercise having a spiritual dimension, this is only because the dualism of our modern mindset (i.e., since the time of Descartes) convinces us that our “bodies” and “minds” and “spirits” are unambiguously separate. But the simple fact that exercise—when done for the sake of pleasure, health, energy, stress-relief, and strength—makes you feel better is a testament to the deep and indivisible connection between these various aspects of ourselves.  

Stop Criticizing Your Body and Start Critiquing Our Culture's Devotion to Thinness

In my last blog, I encouraged you to make a different kind of New Year’s resolution. Instead of vowing to do whatever it takes to lose weight and “improve” your figure, how about committing to practicing peace with your body? In other words, why not make a conscious effort to accept, appreciate, nurture, and enjoy body you have? 

Beware of the New Year’s (False) Promise of the Born-Again Body

It is already past the middle of January. Is it time to re-evaluate your New Year's resolution?

A New Perspective for a New Year

Starting the New Year with a New Perspective

To whom does your body belong? 

The answer to this question seems so obvious that I find myself reluctant to ask it. Everybody knows that each human body belongs to the person who inhabits it (or who is it, depending on how you understand embodiment). Isn’t it abundantly clear that each person is the owner and master of her or his own flesh? Doesn’t your body belong exclusively to you?

Body Image and Images of God

Does your image of God impact your relationship with your body?