Guacamole fulfillment

an argument in favor of eating too much

TW: this essay discusses various aspects of binge eating, ( in an informative and I hope ultimately empowering way) if you don’t want to think about it, feel free to skip it.

Sometimes my partner and I sit on the couch, order more Thai food than the two of us can reasonably eat, and enjoy an evening talking to each other, talking to the TV, passing plastic take-out containers back and forth, and reclining, bellies stuffed beyond the wellness worlds description of ‘full’ until we are lulled to sleep, each successive episode’s credit music rolling over us like so many fried tofu squares over noodles. Given the popularity of both food delivery and streaming services, I can only assume that you too have had this experience, either solo, or in company. I like to call it relaxing. I think a lot of people (and wellness/psychology influencers) would call it something else.

In my work, clients often tell me in a voice that suggests they are confessing, hushed, lest the food police are bugging our zoom calls, that they 'binge'. They describe eating too many sweets after dinner, or standing by open refrigerators with last nights leftovers disappearing from a tupperware still cold. They order take-out and eat it all themselves. They go to restaurants knowing they’ll eat everything they order. They eat beyond being full. They eat with a mixture of longing and shame, of pleasure and guilt. They eat while worrying it is doing them harm. They eat knowing they will wake up full of regret, resolve never to do it again, or to do it less, or know they’ll do it again but still eat, already remorseful before they’re even past full.

I actually have only one client with a true binge eating disorder, as diagnosed by a mental health professional.* To my knowledge, all these people who tell me they are ‘binging’ are just eating a lot sometimes.. which is not the same thing.

For the sake of setting a base point I looked up the definition of binge eating.

Binge-eating disorder is a serious condition. It always involves feeling like you're not able to stop eating. It also often involves eating much larger than usual amounts of food.

Almost everyone overeats on occasion, such as having seconds or thirds of a holiday meal. But regularly feeling that eating is out of control and eating an unusually large amount of food may be symptoms of binge-eating disorder.

People who have binge-eating disorder often feel embarrassed or ashamed about eating binges. People with the disorder often go through periods of trying to restrict or severely cut back on their eating as a result. But this instead may increase urges to eat and lead to a cycle of ongoing binge eating. Treatment for binge-eating disorder can help people feel more in control and balanced with their eating. - Mayo Clinic

And this from KidsHealth.org had all the same language with one addendum

They also binge at least once a week for several months.

When my partner and I stuff ourselves silly, we don’t regret it. It isn’t a guilty secret we share. It’s not a thing we do every night nor is it something we try not to do but eventually give in to either. It doesn’t ‘harm’ us in any way (beyond maybe gas?). If anything, it’s something we both perk up to when the other suggests it. It’s usually on the heels of some stressful work week or circumstance, or even after the extended visit of a loved one, the words ‘should we just order Thai tonight?’ an invitation to completely relax: no cooking, no dishes, no work, no to-do lists, just TV and take-out, the sticky greasy balm of sweet relief.

Diet culture, the shiny food tracking subscription laden arm of patriarchy, would have us believe a ‘good’ life, an admirable life, is one without peaks and valleys, without stress, only aspiration. Diet culture packages the normal ups and downs of life as either goals or problems. One we must strive for unceasingly, the other is to be solved at all costs.

We are taught that emotions should not be trusted, and ideally, not even responded to. In response to such an inhumane decree the late night, feeling sad, stressed, lonely eat-a-lot becomes a place for shame and distress instead of compassion and curiosity. And the other eat-a-lot moment is also marked wrong, the one I think might be most common, the one you enjoy.

Sometimes, a lot of times, when we eat more than we are hungry for, when we eat when we aren’t hungry at all, it’s really fun and delicious. Sometimes when we are sad and we eat a lot, in the moment of eating, before diet culture rears its head, before all the wrappers are in the trash.. we feel better. How could this be bad?

Oh I forgot! Because supposedly eating a lot could make us fat, or fatter than we already are. And even though we are all supposed to know that there is nothing wrong, or ugly, or unhealthy, about being fat, we also all know that we are terrified to become it or feel some level of shame to be it. That is oppression. That is patriarchy. We fear a thing that is not in and of itself bad simply because we have been taught that we are bad and that bad things will befall us if we are it, or called it, this amorphous unmeasurable thing (remind again.. what exactly makes someone fat? BMI that is proven bad science? a number on a scale that doesn’t account for height, bone mass and muscle? Faulty clothing sizing? A bully shouting fatty??) That is propaganda. The best defense against it is information.

Eating-a-lot-sometimes does not have any lasting effect on your body (our metabolisms do an amazing job at self regulating short term behaviors) otherwise all of our weights would be surging and plummeting wildly whenever we were low on groceries or finished the cupcakes our friend brought over. I know! ..you are saying NO it DOES affect my body.. I can SEE IT the next day! the next hour!…Can I tell you something? Something that will relieve a burden from your shoulders? A weight from your chest? You are not an expert at this. You don’t know how fat cells work. You don’t know how the endocrine system functions. You don’t understand how the balance of minerals like sodium and potassium can change your appearance, your digestion (bloating), and god-forbid you weigh yourself each day (or at all - please please stop doing that!) how those combined electrolytes, recovering from the salt content of a large meal, can add as much as ten pounds of WATER to your body in as little as an hour. That’s not a bad thing! That’s just A THING. One of the many magical ways our bodies simply function (AND how quickly that water dissipates, reason 1 million and 5 not to weight yourself). We can look at the sky and say it’s cloudy, it’s sunny, it’s raining, and though we may have a preference for one over the other we can’t, and don’t, fault the sky for being exactly what is supposed to be. That is our bodies. Amazing systems which do incredible work keeping us alive and balanced both in collaboration and often despite our best efforts to thwart it (anyone have a grandpa that spent his entire life living off cigarettes, beer and slim jims but still lives?) What miracles we are.

Eating-a-lot sometimes might be one of the reasons you have gotten fat or are fat or might get fat in the future.. but it is not the only reason. If eating-a-lot is happening all the time, and doesn’t feel relaxing, delicious and joyful to you, then the eating-a-lot is the not the problem. The problem is why you are regularly feeling a way that only eating-a-lot seems to quench (in the short term), and figuring out what and why that is, and changing that instead. (no amount of locked away cookies or firm resolve will untangle that problem).

I think what is very hard about this, is, because life is stressful, because this world is painful, we are often not feeling emotions that we are trained to think are OK. We are feeling sadness, grief, anger, fear. We have a sense of loneliness, loss, apprehension and unmet desire. And then we eat in accordance with those feelings. We soothe with action that is similar in bottomless depth and breadth to those boundless feelings, we eat-a-lot. Ultimately, that doesn’t feel good because we don’t feel good. That is not a fault. That is not a pathological issue that only a strict regime, a prescription, or a mantra might fix. It is part of life. It is the pain of living. It is the cost of being a person who cares about others, who cares about yourself, who holds values beyond purchases, meal prepping and better self-care schedules.

Every day we eat emotionally. Every day we respond to our emotions when we eat. Any morning that you wake up fresh and energized you eat emotionally and in relation to your physical needs. You just happen to eat a meal that matches a relatively neutral mood, so toast and eggs goes unnoticed. Even when we feel we don’t have the skills, capacity or interest to connect to our emotional states when we feed ourselves, I posit that still, we do, more often than we think. The hurried, stressed state of mind which colors our first meal of the day, in that many people opt to skip it in a bid to make it to work on time, may not be a pure emotion, but it certainly is a state we attune to. We should not blame and shame ourselves for emotional eating. Eating with emotions is what we are designed to do. It is how we connect to the world and most certainly the food we imbibe to live in it.

Patriarchy has no stamina for chaos and so cannot make room for the things that chaos invites; love, connection, community, interdependence. Patriarchy abhors the unpredictable, like … menstrual cycles, and interacting with humans. Patriarchy says we have succeeded when we need no one and no thing, when we are fully self-made and all our wants can be fulfilled by meal kits and self discipline (read saying no to everything which doesn’t fit our pre-measured plans). Therefore patriarchy has no tools for us when our hearts are broken, when our minds swirl with worries about the world and everyone in it. Patriarchy wants us to believe that these feelings are foolish. That if we applied ourselves hard enough, we could weather the worst news, the most terrible day, and still get our steps and our smoothie in.

There is no amount of protein you should eat every day. There is no amount of carbohydrates or sugar molecules to either consumer or deny. Life is much harder because it’s actually much simpler. Listen to your own body, observe your energy, sensations and rhythms. Learn to make choices based on those. That is hard to learn. But once you learn it, possible within one lifetime, it is actually very simple to employ. In fact it’s not only simple, but it’s also free ( patriarchy hates when you don’t have to buy stuff). The challenge, and where the predation can occur, is that generally, because we are all homo sapiens reading this, our needs will be very generally the same. But one person’s, every night, after work fast food inhalation is not the same as another person’s, once a week M&Ms after dinner over-do.

Last night my boo and I ate a large bowl of homemade guacamole with chips (and some carrots too) for dinner. That was our entire dinner. Neither of us are very thin nor fat. We are both physically active but not regimented. We like to eat a lot sometimes and we just as often plan vegetable based meals and no booze nights in response to our needs, physically and emotionally.

I recently looked up what ‘indulgence’ actually means. Historically it was a term used for leniency and even legally meant that debts were given an indulgence period - ie more time - to be paid. Its synonyms are tolerance, fulfillment and kindness. How differently we might feel if instead of saying ' oh I really INDULGED last night! I ate so much pizza!!' we said - 'Wow I really fulfilled myself last night! I enjoyed all my pizza!' or 'I really was kind to myself last night! I ordered pizza!'

Binge disorders are real. I am not saying they aren't. But I think the flip side of a culture that finally has words to describe the many painful and confusing aspects of our human psyche means that we are quick to label anything we fear might not be 'normal' as aberrant and in need of fixing.

You haven’t made a mistake by over-doing it. There’s nothing wrong with you because you went too far. There isn’t a special method to learn to be able to have total control at all times. We live in constantly shifting, completely mortal bodies. Hunger is not a weakness, fullness is not a sin, eating past fullness is not any more or less terrible than doing any-other-thing-a-lot, either because you like it or are suffering from life within it. It is just life and we, and it, are always changing.

Please enjoy your Pad Thai, your guacamole, be happy when you are experiencing deliciousness. Continue to simultaneously seek to understand your needs. Everyday we set our plates with our emotions. Let us stop pretending they aren’t there and instead make a space for them at the table.

*I recognize, by default, most people suffering with disordered eating are not easily sharing it, so I’m sure I have many clients with disordered eating. I always proceed with new clients with this in mind. However, it is also interesting to me how many people self-diagnose behavior as pathological and in need of being ‘fixed’.