I Am So Popular: Eat Sh*t And Die

Two years ago, when—after having gone way back up and then way back down the scales again like some pianist with an awesome ape index—I got down too low courtesy of the Divorce Diet which consisted of 1.5 cartons of cigarettes + 15 pots of coffee + 4 small yogurts per week for six months. Some people eat a lot when they are stressed out. I stop eating altogether. Forty pounds disappeared almost overnight. Back then, Warren use to pick me up and throw me over his shoulder and lug me around. This was very funny to me and made me feel like Tiny Dancer was written just for me. But I also remember, as I examine the little love handles that have popped up since then—which have necessarily put an end to the caveman game— how crazy not eating can make you.

These days I am neither underweight nor overweight—I am at the place where my body is most comfortable. To maintain this, I must perpetually pay close attention and exercise a good bit of restraint. Which is why, on any given day, I can name for you exactly what I put in my face and also where I fell off the wagon of control I am forever attempting to perch upon. The other day, for example, I had lunch with my son at Upper Crust. Whatever vow I made to order only one small item totally went to hell when I heard myself ask for the fruit nut roll (a rich buttery pastry embedded with chopped apples, nuts, sugar, and cream cheese) and a large bowl of cheese soup (thinner but no less dangerous than queso, what with half-and-half and cheese as the two main ingredients.)

Last week I wrote about the upside of recently ingesting the books The Omnivore’s Dilemma and The End of Overeating. Since then, I also saw Food, Inc, the documentary expose about how a handful of major corporations control the vast majority of food that is available to us. It’s not really news that a bunch of money hungry fuckers are completely about the bottom line, and the bigger our collective bottom line grows, the clearer the indication that they are winning. I’ll let you check out the books and movie yourself to witness the hell of slaughterhouses, the cruelty of mass-producing animals for meat, and the pure evil of Monsanto. But I do want to share a bit about the psychology and chemistry of eating that I picked up.

These factors fascinate and horrify me the most because I am both a psychology junkie and an addict, dating at least as far back to binge drinking I began at fourteen. I quit booze over a decade ago. And I quit cigarettes, too, for six years, until adding them back in three years ago and struggling, nearly every day since, to quit. Addiction is a real, true thing, a fucking nightmare, and I don’t care what kind of super willpower you possess—we are all hooked on something whether it’s work, knitting, relationships, chemicals, or group meetings for addicts. It is our nature—if you are a human, you are an addict.

The End of Overeating does a great job, naming companies, restaurants, and specific menu items that are purposefully designed to trigger both the strong emotional associations and brain chemistry that prompt us to eat addictively, long after our stomachs have had enough. And The Ominvore’s Dilemma examines how “storied” food gets us all worked up, too.

So, for example, let’s say you pass a display of rhubarb pies just sitting there with a small sign indicating their price. You might stand a chance of glancing and walking on by. But imagine—and this happens a lot at Whole Foods— there is another sign, one that describes the rich, luscious rhubarb, the secret family recipe used to make the pie, and a reminder that rhubarb is seasonal and “the perfect summer treat.” It’s hard not to get sucked in by a narrative. (For more proof, check out the Significant Objects project.)

While reading about all this has certainly (at least temporarily) heightened my awareness, in the big picture, knowledge and application are two very different beasts. Which probably explains a little game Warren and I have started playing lately, in which we identify food we are about to eat by its components of evil and then we go ahead and wolf it down anyway. So while I really am being more cautious these days, reading ingredients labels more closely and buying more organic and local food, I still get triggered into comfort food scarfing more often than I’d like.

Even so-called “healthy” foods pose a trap. To illustrate my point, let’s revisit the Peanut Butter POWS saga. Peanut Butter POWS are Whole Foods’ brand organic answer to Peanut Butter Cap ‘n Crunch. For a couple of months I fell under the wicked spell of this cereal, lied to myself that because it was organic it was “good” for me—in fact it is saturated in cane juice which is still a sugar— and often ate 3/4ths of a box in one sitting.

I finally had to shake myself awake and stop allowing the POWS into the house—really. And upon reading The End of Overeating, I understood just why they had such a strong pull: they are absolutely the perfect salt/sugar/fat combo. I got so possessive of my stash that some mornings I’d wake up to discover Warren had depleted my supply during a midnight snacking frenzy and this would make me contemplate kicking his sorry ass to the curb. DON’T TOUCH MY PEANUT BUTTER POWS.

The point of all this is not to be a total downer, just another reminder that knowledge is power. We need to remain vigilantly aware that food corporations use psychology to trick us into sucking up mounds of what is bad for us. And we need to remain equally vigilantly aware that images in the media—particularly of women—constantly pummel us with the message that if our clavicles aren’t protruding, no one will want us. And then, we need to use psychology to fight back.

That, according to The End of Overeating, comes in the form of rules. You can make rules anyway you like. For example, I have my rule banning Peanut Butter POWS, because I am POWerless over them. And I have another rule that I’m not allowed to be upset that those tiny post-divorce Levis no longer button up since I started eating regularly again. (I’m trying to apply another rule whereby every time I want a cigarette, I must stop and imagine being forcibly sodomized by Joe Camel. Such is the pull of nicotine that, alas, rather than being angry with Joe in my visualization, I’m beginning to enjoy an S&M fantasy with him— Fuck the motherfucking tobacco industry and its motherfucking motherfuckedness!)

Save for a small handful of us (in my imagination all of them holier-than-thou and enrobed in too-expensive yoga clothes as they over-masticate their macrobiotic meals)—some days it seems we are all screwed by the things we put in our bodies and by the amount (or lack of) these things. Fortunately, human nature also dictates that we all love a challenge and we all admire against-the-odds success stories (getting back to those Before/After women’s mag articles). And so I say unto you, in the words of the French (those fuckers who butter their brie sandwiches and stay skinny nonetheless): Bon apetit! Just be careful out there.

Spike Gillespie blogs at KnitBuzz and SpikeG.com. She misses her Peanut Butter POWS. And she's teaching a writing workshop Sept 4th - 6th. Email spike@spikeg.com for details.