Obesity and man’s search for meaning
Scarlett: As God is my witness, as God is my witness
they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all
over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie,
steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.
“Gone with the wind” (1939)
As God is our witness, we
did not go hungry again. In 2011, every third American is obese. In 2008 I was
obese too. Now, after losing 50 pounds, I want to help others to do what I did.
And people do ask all the time: “How did you do it?”
And I always answer:
“Gradually...”
What else can I say? I
don’t represent the 50-billion weight loss industry. I have nothing to sell. I
have no easy answers. What I do have is
a story. And it starts with Victor Frankl.
Victor Frankl was a
Holocaust survivor and the founder of Logotherapy , the “Third Viennese
School
§
Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable
ones.
§
Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in
life.
§
We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we
experience, or at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of
unchangeable suffering
In concentration camp, Frankl have set up a
suicide watch unit and all of suicide attempts were reported to him. He has
noted that only the people who could not find a meaning in their life would
commit suicide.
But what does a suicide in
a concentration camp has in common with an obese American? We have our food, we
have our freedoms, and we are not killing ourselves, right? Wrong! Obese person doubles a chance of an
early death, so becoming and staying obese is literally a suicide. Every
unnecessary bite you take while being obese is a little suicide.
Why do we do it? What
makes us overeat? What makes us turn to food for comfort? We were born like this.
For a baby, all the best things in the world are delivered in one magnificent
all-inclusive, all-you-can eat package: food, drink, warmth, love, security,
comfort and cure.
But then things get
complicated… We have to work harder to get what we want.
We develop our tastes and
ambitions, we become sophisticated and picky. We grow. And sometimes the growth
hurts. When it happens we want to run for cover, we want to hide; we want to
nourish our body and soul. And naturally we turn to what always used to work.
We turn to food. There’s nothing wrong with it as long as it does not happen
too often: our bodies need to store some fat to recover, to get ready for new
challenges and the next spur of growth.
But if we recover too much, if we fail to challenge ourselves, if we
forget to grow we become obese.
Obesity is a metaphor for unrealized
potential.
Obesity is a symptom of
overindulgence and fear.
Obesity is the most
visible form of escapism.
Why do we overindulge? Because
nourishing a body is easier than nourishing a soul.
“What am I hungry for?” –
It’s a much tougher question to answer metaphorically then literally.
Especially if you are standing in a middle of an all-you-can eat buffet.
Literally, you can eat almost anything. Metaphorically, you are hungry for
perfection, for excellence, for the ultimate you. And it does not come cheap.
It takes all of your fat, all of your muscles and bones. All of your blood,
sweat and tears. All of your minutes and years.
There is one question that
can help cure obesity and here it is: “Why am I here?”
Logotherapy tries to
answer this question but you don’t need a therapist to keep pondering, to keep
wondering, to stay curious. And as you keep asking yourself: “Why am I here?”,
and as you keep answering this question with every action, you melt and
crystallize. You show up.
Curing obesity is not
about figuring out how to lose 50 pounds, it is about figuring out what to do
with the remaining 180. It is not about building muscle, it is about doing
something meaningful with your life.