I’m very tired this morning; the worst Santa Ana winds in several years kept me awake much of the night. This morning, I had to move dozens of palm fronds just to get the driveway gate open. And there’s talk that the mountain trails will be closed due to fire danger until we get some more rain. What a difference from last year’s torrential downpours!
Our "Fast Relief" project at All Saints Church was successful on a number of levels. We raised a few thousand dollars for Episcopal Relief and Development. Of equal importance, the twenty-seven high schoolers and the three adult leaders who did the fast had a terrific experience: physically and spiritually challenging, yes, but immensely rewarding. I’ve always liked the power of a shared painful experience to bond people together. And I suppose I’ve also liked doing these 30-hour fasts (this was my sixth year in a row participating through All Saints Pasadena) because it represents how radically different my own attitude towards food and hunger has become in recent years, especially since my conversion experience began.
I posted last week about eating disorders, and I’ve written about food and body issues several times. (BTW, see this fine response from Jen to that post and those who commented upon it.) So…
Growing up with a very unhealthy set of attitudes towards eating and my own flesh, I tended to experience food privately. As an adolescent, I became a private binger, starting with (I kid you not) my regular breakfasts in junior high school of 8-12 Hydrox cookies and two big glasses of fruit punch. They say adolescent boys daydream about sex a lot, and I’m sure I did — but even in the throes of puberty, my waking and sleeping fantasies were as often about sugar as they were about girls!
When I first began to diet and exercise compulsively in my early twenties, my "food" experiences were again private. Like many folks with eating disorders, I became good at "pretending to eat" while actually consuming very little. (I rarely threw up my food. It wasn’t for lack of trying; I never have been able to make myself vomit on command, despite countless sad attempt in my youth.) I binged alone, starved alone, exercised alone. I didn’t talk to many folks about food because (and here’s where being a male hurts), frankly, we don’t live in a culture where young men are given sanction to complain about their bodies the way that women do.
When I first began to take steps to get over my eating issues, I had a "food sponsor". I called this person, a woman I’d met through mutual friends, every day. I practiced what she called "declaring your food". I told her exactly what I’d eaten, and I also told her how much I’d exercised. My food and workout behavior ceased to be my own private concern. I found a group of folks with whom I was able to share my own anxieties and my progress, and I discovered (as is the way of such things) that my fears and obsessions were not all that unusual. That was humbling, in that I had a rather grandiose perception of my own "terminal uniqueness"! I began to experience food as a shared experience with others, realizing that how I ate did affect everyone around me. If I binged or if I was starving myself, my close-knit community of folks with "food issues" would know — and I would be setting a poor example for those newer to recovery than myself. (Most folks who know the language of Twelve Step will know the program I’m talking about, but I have an odd compunction about not naming the actual program. The tradition of anonymity in Twelve Step programs is very powerful still.)
Bottom line: over the years, especially since coming to the church and to Christ, I’ve seen some huge changes in my relationship to food. From a global perspective, my food choices (and those of other affluent First Worlders) have consequences for folks everywhere else. From a social perspective, my food choices affect those around me — if I’m eating to soothe myself or starving to punish myself, my friends and family are going to be impacted in ways of which I am not even aware. And from a Christian perspective, I’ve come to see that we are called to eat and fast in community. Jesus may have fasted for forty days alone, but the Bible is filled with stories that illustrate the importance of eating in fellowship with others. Food is not, it seems, intended to be one’s private pleasure alone.
The difference between starving myself in isolation and fasting in community is enormous. The former was an entirely self-centered activity, as I sought to make my body fit a particular and elusive standard that, if ever achieved, I believed would bring me an enduring sense of peace and joy. When I fast as I did this weekend, with "my kids" and fellow volunteers, I fast to raise money. I fast to express solidarity with those hundreds of millions around the world for whom genuine hunger is not a choice but a daily reality. I fast to draw closer to God, as my hunger gives me a heightened sense of dependence and vulnerability. If I’m feeling hungry and a bit weak, but am still needed to entertain and inspire teenagers, then I’m going to have to rely more than usual upon Him! And I fast to have a shared experience with people whom I love, knowing that communal discomfort has the power to bind us together.
I’m grateful that my experiences with food have changed so radically since my adolescence. I no longer have Hydrox and fruit punch for breakfast. I no longer get "high" on solitary self-deprivation. I do still choose to go without food for a day or two from time to time. But now, that choice is exercised publicly, in community, and it is done in solidarity with those who suffer far more than I. It has damn all to do with staying thin and fit, and everything to do with building the Kingdom. That’s an amazing blessing.
There was a book review in the New Yorker recently that added to the multitude of theories about why Americans are getting fatter: it’s because we’re eating alone. “The social setting was understood to set moral limits on consumption. The shared meal marked the beginning and the end of eating: there was a time to eat and a time to stop. The meal defined the when, the what, the how, the how long, and the how much. You adjusted your consumption to those who were eating with you. … We’ve been told that an index of our times is that we “bowl alone”; something similar might be said of our gastronomic habits. We eat alone and we get fat together.”
I tend to think that generally Americans live unhealthy lives: too much frantic rat race, too much television (I got rid of mine years ago), too much alienation, etc.
I tend to think that generally Americans live unhealthy lives: too much frantic rat race, too much television (I got rid of mine years ago), too much alienation, etc.
Apologies in advance if this is totally incoherent…
It seems to me that the isolation vs. community thing is one place where the male experience of eating disorders really differs from the typical female experience. Guys may be supposed to have perfect bodies, but they aren’t supposed to let people know that they worry about it. That’s vain, so they starve in secret and pretend they’re exercising for some other reason. White, middle-class women, on the other hand, are taught from childhood that dieting is an intrinsic part of womanhood. I remember sitting around the lunch table in elementary school talking about our “diets,” not because any of us thought we were fat, but because “dieting” was what grown-up women did. It was like playing house: when I grow up, I will have a job, I will get married, I will be on a diet. By high school, many of us really were on diets. Many of us learned to think of the natural state of our grown-up bodies as fat. I absolutely did not starve myself in secret. I starved myself in public, the whole time receiving tons of positive attention from my peers, because I was the best, most successful dieter in my school. When I was anorexic, it was the first time in my life that I was the absolute best at something that really mattered to my peers. And I still think that hating and disciplining our bodies can be something that brings women together and creates a sense of shared experience. I still sometimes feel like when I take a cookie at office staff meetings, I’m putting myself outside the community of women. I sometimes feel like, if I admit that I’m pretty much ok with the shape of my thighs, I’m shutting myself out of the club.
I’ve actually decided that I can’t safely fast, so I don’t do it. Picking and chosing is one of the nice things about being a Reform Jew. But I think that for women, the difference is probably between starving in community in a destructive way and fasting in community in a positive way, rather than starving in isolation and fasting in community.
Erm, make that some women. Must remember that my experience is not universal!