Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food

Mindful Eating

Nowhere are the elements of the human condition we call unawareness, addiction, and delusion more poignantly and tragically manifested nowadays than in widespread disregulations and disorders in our relationships to food and to eating. These pathologies of  imbalance  are  driven  by  many  complex  factors  in  society  itself.  Sadly,  they  have resulted in  cultural norms  that support particular brands of  delusion, obsession, and endless preoccupation with how much the body weighs. It manifests as a gnawing and pervasive, if  sometimes submerged and disguised or overcompensated-for, discomfort and dissatisfaction with how one’s body looks and how it feels inwardly. This pervasive dissatisfaction nests itself within ordinary concerns about one’s appearance, but is compounded by desires to fit into an idealized model of how one should look and the impression  one’s   appearance  should  make   on   others  that  shape  and  trump  the authenticity of one’s own interior experience. This dissatisfaction in the mind lends itself to  pathologies  associated with  body  image,  distortions  in  how  one  perceives  oneself inwardly and outwardly, and with deep issues of self-worth. Catalyzed in large measure by ubiquitous  media  exposure,  it  is  prevalent  even  in  children  and  adolescents, and  is pervasive across the life span and right into old age. The sadness of it all is immense and needs to be met with boundless compassion and self-compassion, as well as effective strategies for restoring balance and sanity in our world and in our individual lives.

It is well known now that these pathologies of imbalance are manifesting as never before in a number of epidemics in both children and adults, in both males and females. One  might  say  that  the  entire  society  suffers  from  disordered eating  in  one  way  or another, just  as, from  the  perspective of  the  meditative  traditions, we  suffer from  a pervasive attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. As is made clear in this book, the one is intimately related to the other.

One  manifestation of  our disordered relationship to food and eating is  the obesity epidemic of the past twenty-plus years in the United States. This phenomenon is driven by a host of  complex factors and compounded by increasingly sedentary lifestyles in adults and children, coupled with a ubiquitous availability of processed foods and by a farming and food industry that is the admiration of the world in some ways, and which runs amok in others.2 The extent of the epidemic in obesity can be gauged from graphic displays of  the rates  per state in  the United States, starting around 1986.3  It  is  now spreading to other countries, particularly in Europe. This epidemic has been driven in part by the phenomenon of supersizing, as so graphically illustrated in the movie Supersize Me, in the ever-expanding notion of a reasonable portion size (and even plate size) for one person, by increasing inactivity, and by the endless availability of high-calorie, low- nutrient foods. Many medical schools are developing research and clinical programs to better understand and deal with this growing phenomenon in both adults and children, and some are even reaching out in imaginative collaborations with forward-looking elements of the food and restaurant industries.4 Clinical programs for children abound.5

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