Mindless Munching, Eating Disorder Recovery, Economic Consequences, Getting Better Anyway
Mindless Munching is the topic of a Wall Street Journal May 13, 2008 article by Melinda Beck.
Mindful Eating
Her article, “Put a End to Mindless Munching,” is a credible piece on mindful eating. I’m glad to see this perspective on eating move into greater public awareness via this well respected news publication.
My gladness has several aspects. One, information about paying attention to the specific details of your eating experience may help you develop a valuable exercise that can bring you to a normal and healthy way of being present for your genuine experience and genuine body need for nourishment.
When you practice mindful eating you can discover what food can offer you. The other deep yearnings you have that are not satisfied by food are then exposed so you can learn to address those needs in a more life enhancing way.
If you have an eating disorder, mindful eating can show you the power of your resistance to being present in this world.
Moving through that resistance, gently, respectfully and with compassion for yourself Is fundamental for eating disorder recovery. If you actually eat mindfully you will be vulnerable to your own feelings, which is the beginning of recovery work.
This information is important and the Wall Street Journal is an important periodical. But it’s not known as a health journal. The reputation of the WSJ is built on its being a fair and in depth business journal.
Mindless Consumption in our Culture
So while Melinda Beck is writing about ending mindless munching with reference to food, the fact that her article appears in the WSJ connects her writing to business.
I am so very glad to see this. Endless munching can refer to eating mindlessly at anything, i.e. mindless and endless consumption with little or no criteria for stopping. You can buy and the fact you have no more money doesn’t stop you. You can buy on credit or borrow.
Mindless consumption involves a lack of recognition of what you truly need in terms of objects. It is based your need to not be present as the vulnerable and feeling human being you are.
When your goal is to be and remain in a kind of invisible oblivion, unknown to others and even yourself you must maintain mindlessness. If you stop munching, you might feel something, and those feelings cannot be tolerated without the healing that comes from recovery work.
Clutter as Part of Mindless Munching
So you collect, you buy, you have a clutter problem. You attempt to declutter and even hire declutter specialists. Clutter means different things to different people.
Clutter can mean piles of paper and magazines. It can mean too many cars, too many houses, too many dresses or shoes. It can mean too many dogs or cats. It can mean too many lovers or even too many children. It can certainly mean too many husbands or wives. It can mean too many dishes, too many tires on the front lawn, too many trash cans, too many arguments, too many, too many, too many, too many…..
And every aspect of “too many” has a financial consequence. Have you ever looked at the clutter in the back of your closet or in your bathroom cupboard and wondered how much you paid in dollars for all that stuff?
This brings me to a third aspect of my gladness about Melinda Beck’s article. Its placement in the WSJ brings up for consideration the economic ramifications of mindless munching in our culture.
Eating Disorders as an Economic Force
The existence of full blown eating disorders in an every increasing segment of our population brings prosperity to many industries.
Three Eating Disorder Areas of Purchasing Power
1. Diets:
Think of everything associated with diets: Pills – aka drug companies; Exercise – machines, health clubs, shoes, exercise fashion, designer water, walking meters, magazines, personal trainers, classes, lectures, tapes, cds and dvds; Books – diet book are almost always in the top ten bestseller lists
2. Binges
Think of what appeals to you when you are vulnerable to a binge experience: “Super size me” items in fast (and not so fast) food restaurants, Junk Food – what a huge industry. In a world where food that maintains life is becoming scarcer, we have industries pumping out non-nutritious and even dangerous consumables geared for mindless munching on a grand scale: candy, cookies, chips, sodas and items all sorts of edibles considered “munchies”.
3. Body Image Distortions and Concerns
Skeletal bodies held as a beauty standard which encourage endless obsession on achieving an unachievable body without surgery, starvation, and serious health risks that can be lethal.
Pandering to this obsession creates an endless array of items and services that can be and are purchased by women with eating disorders. Some of you will undergo surgeries of various kinds to add, remove or reshape body parts to achieve a look not achievable by a normal human body. And of course, drugs again come up as an aid to achieve a skeletal look.
Every item and service listed above involves buying, selling as part of huge industrial efforts.
I would very much like to see the Wall Street Journal present a well researched article that provides the financial consequences to our culture if eating disorders and all purchases that are part of living an eating disordered life, stopped. Where would our nation be without mindless munching?
Hope and Reality
I wish the world stood outside the consulting room waiting to greet with cheers the woman who emerges with more health and eating disorder recovery as she exits the healing sanctuary to take her full place in society.
The reality is that powerful cultural as well as personal challenges need to be confronted as you move on your eating disorder recovery path.
My hope is that true eating disorder recovery will stimulate and influence a cultural recovery. My hope is that someday we all can live mindfully and healthfully together in a culture that depends on each of us to be healthy and fully present human beings.
My determination now is to help women strengthen themselves to the point where they can recover from an eating disorder despite oppostional cultural pressures. In other words, it would be nice if we lived in a nicer world. But we don’t. And you can get better anyway.
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6 Responses to “Mindless Munching, Eating Disorder Recovery, Economic Consequences, Getting Better Anyway”
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“My hope is that true eating disorder recovery will stimulate and influence a cultural recovery.”
Well said. Cultural recovery is as important as individual recovery. If we can create a world that’s not obsessed with thinness, perfection and appearance, maybe the pressures that trigger so many people into starting an eating disorder will fade away.
Jess’s last blog post..Duchess against fat
Thank you for your comment. By brining up causation, you raise another aspect of the discussion.
I believe that cultural pressures exploit eating disorders. And I believe that many cultural forces serve to maintain eating disorders and therefore delay treatment.
How much the culture contributes to actual causing eating disorders is something I’m still thinking about.
I agree, however, with what you say. The more health and respect for healthy living we can bring to individuals and the culture the better off we will all be.
Joanna
I would very much like to see the Wall Street Journal present a well researched article that provides the financial consequences to our culture if eating disorders and all purchases that are part of living an eating disordered life, stopped. Where would our nation be without mindless munching?
My best guess is that more people would make choices that really make them happy. My second best guess is that there would be a lot less debt in society overall and that impulses would be able to be thought out a bit better.
Of course, even with where I’m at making those choices is blatantly overwhelming; but that doesn’t mean I’m not making them anyway…
sarah’s last blog post..Eating Disordered Thoughts that Creep Up
Your comment bring up challenges that face both us as individuals and our culture as a whole.
What is happiness? How do we think about our lives if we are not in debt?
What are the benefits of impulse control? How do we raise our awareness in terms of making wise choices?
I agree that addressing these questions can feel overwhelming. But when you post your response and I answer you and others read what we say, we are making small but important inroads into making our challenges manageable.
Thank you for posting!
Joanna
It’s interesting, isn’t it? I’ve been sitting in an airport now for almost 2 hours, about to embark on a journey, one that I’ve held myself back from for quite some time - I’m flying 5 states away to sign a lease on a new apartment; the official move will be sometime next week.
Everything is upside down and twisting around on itself but in a way that feels freeing. But ultimately, it’s my choice to look at it this way.
Happiness isn’t all or nothing; impulses shouldn’t have to be now or never. There’s so much gray space in between that it’s almost unfathomable. When caught up in the all or nothing, when focused only on the here and now or the then and there, all that in between space makes it really easy to get lost. I think that has a lot to do with the ways in which so many of us (myself included, sometimes) go through mindlessly - sometimes it’s hard to believe in all of the potential that’s there.
sarah’s last blog post..Eating Disordered Thoughts that Creep Up
I’m glad you address this issue. Lately I have thought a lot about the environmental ramifications of eating disorders, clutter, mindless consumption. Until now I have hesitated to write on it, as I didn’t want to lay a guilt trip on those with eating disorders. EDs cause enough troubles and guilt! But it really is worth thinking about, and could be a motivating factor in health. Not only do we help ourselves be the best we can through recovery, but we are also doing something for our planet.
I have always preferred simplicity and tend not to buy things unless I really need them. It is truly amazing to see how much is accumulated unnecessarily. My mother has a clutter problem, and I find it so sad. Not only is there so much money wasted, but resources were wasted to produce those useless products, and her apartment is so full that she can barely move around. I feel like I can barely breathe when I visit her. Then, when the clutter is cleared out, the garbage mountains grow. It is a serious problem on many levels.
To recover and become aware of one’s own needs could be the beginning of the next revolution!! Not only to recover regarding food, but to recover and save our inner selves and our planet. The world population continues to increase. So many people are starving while others live in surplus. There is a lot of work to be done! Nevertheless, the main motivating factor remains selfish: recovery is for one’s self. I didn’t do it for anyone but me. Only when I take care of and love myself can I even begin to think about others and my planet. As in recovery, every little step or gesture helps.
Martha
Martha’s last blog post..More Info on Avoiding a Binge