The Next Serving

Back when he was struggling to overcome bulimia, Elton John once said that he used to eat an enormous serving of curry thinking only about eating the next one. He said something to the effect that his mind was on the upcoming second serving before the first one was in the toilet. The point of what he was saying was that he wasn't even enjoying the first one, but rather focusing on getting more.

I mention this because I have also had many times where my focus was on the quantity of what I could eat, not on what I was actually eating. I could enjoy a candy bar more if I knew there was more waiting for me. The sheer notion that another round was available made eating the first one more gratifying. It's as if I couldn't enjoy anything as well or as much unless I knew there was a "buffer" zone of more on hand. Rather than deriving value from the actual sensory delight of the food I had in hand, I focused on the entire quantity.

One of my psychology professors so long ago once tried to make this point in a different way. He said that 'fat people think about food all of the time, except when it's right in front of them.' I found what he said insulting and judgmental, and I immediately rejected it as yet another thing that people without weight problems said about those with them because they didn't really understand us. The fact of the matter is, he was right, but how he said it and who it was coming from ensured that I would reject the message.

This notion of extracting pleasure only from copious amounts of food or feeling dissatisfied with a small portion is something that pervades a lot of Western cultural thinking. You often hear people complain about recommended serving sizes on food packages and say that the companies conceptualize a serving size as far too small to satisfy as a means of skewing nutritional information so that it appears more favorable. Perhaps the fault lies not with our food manufacturers, but in ourselves.

"Enough" is a highly subjective term based on body frame size, activity levels, and gender, but the truth is that most of us have formed our ideas of how much food is enough to satisfy (regardless of food type) based on cultural norms and life experience. If you are served huge portions in restaurants, you come to think of that as "enough". If your family eats heaping amounts of food, that is what you tend to think of a "enough". The bigger the cultural serving size norms are, the more people will require to satisfy their conceptualization of what portions they should eat. In many cultures, the norm for portion sizes is far smaller than that in the U.S., and that is why so many American tourists complain about them.

Of course, people like old Elton and I have disordered eating. If we are focusing on the next serving while we're supposed to be enjoying the first one, we're dealing with an issue that is beyond portions. It has to be addressed before portion control can be considered. Frankly, I've thought about this and I have not come up with a definitive explanation as to what causes this sort of thinking. Perhaps it's about growing up poor and trying to get your share. Perhaps it's about needing a feeling of being over-full or extracting gratification from the oral sensation of eating more so than the enjoyment of the food itself. Perhaps I starved to death in a past life and that part of my soul won't be gratified until it has eaten enough for both lives.*

I don't know what caused this tendency to attend to the food I don't have rather than what I do have. However, for me, the cure was mindful eating and a fair amount of self-induced therapy where I kept telling myself that "more is not going to be better." And the truth is that more really isn't better. Paying attention to the food is better. I'm doing this more and more with every bit of food I eat and it really does help. I don't know if the root cause may yet come back to bite me in the ass and I may find my ability to focus on what I am currently eating unraveling. For now, I just want to be aware that it was once the case, and could be again unless I continue to cultivate a different perspective every time I approach food.

*For the humor impaired, that is a joke.

Bulimia

When you can't control your eating and you're desperate to lose weight, there are a lot of imprudent things that you can do to try and deal with your situation. One is starting to smoke. Smoking increases metabolism and suppresses appetite. A lot of the ever so slightly voluptuous women in Hollywood who become thinner after they become more famous are helped along by picking up this nasty habit. They trade in one problem for another.

It's also possible to start throwing up after you eat (bulimia nervosa). I will admit that there have been times when the thought that the answer to my problems could be as simple as putting my finger down my throat or taking some ipecac after binging or eating too much. This "solution" is very dangerous, of course. It carries a lot of health issues, one of which is heart problems.

In the end, I just couldn't manage to do it, appealing as it was to have my cake and not get fat from it, too. The bottom line is that I'm just not the type of person who can force myself to vomit up the food I've just ingested. Perhaps it has to do with growing up poor and not feeling that it's okay to spend money on food then flush it down the toilet. I could also simply have been frightened of the consequences, but I don't recall that being a part of my thinking process at the time that I rolled the idea around in my head.

Just today, I had a revelation. I was watching an old re-run of the medical drama "House" and he was sitting in the clinic with a patient and said that her bad breath and gnarly-looking fingers indicated she's been regurgitating her food. I had known for quite some time that both of these were signs of bulimic behavior, but hearing it said aloud made something click in my mind about a client of mine.

I sometimes meet with a client in a small space and she often has very bad breath. In fact, the breath issue is so bad at times that it lingers in the air after she has left unless I specifically air out the meeting room. I'm sure that anyone who uses the room immediately afterward can smell it as some odd funk. I didn't think much of this because she's not the only client I encounter who has halitosis. However, she is the only one with deformed fingernails and chewed up fingertips.

I had noticed both the breath and fingers for quite some time, but I never put two and two together. This particular client is quite slender, though certainly not emaciated. I'm pretty sure that she is selectively purging her meals. I mainly think this because she is not engaged in any work or hobby that would explain the condition of her nails and fingers. The worst finger of all is the index finger on her right hand, a prime candidate for sticking down her throat.

I like this client and now I feel sorry for her as well. She's always been friendly to me and we've gotten along well. She doesn't appear to judge me by my weight despite being thin herself. I now wonder if she might have some hidden understanding and compassion for what I face.