Hungry for Healthy Co-Existence

Who among us doesn't scratch an itch automatically? Who among us, in civilized Western culture, doesn't reach for an analgesic when in pain, a person with whom to share our sadness or fears or something to eat when hungry? It is natural to seek a homeostatic, peaceful, happy, pain free existence. In this country we not only have the means, generally speaking, to be pain free but we consider it our right.

Awhile ago, while I sat meditating and enjoying a peaceful place in my mind, I experienced an itch. I scratched it and two simultaneous things happened: I was both physically relieved and yet emotionally disappointed that in scratching my itch, I lost the meditative bubble I was in. Right then and there I decided that the next time I felt an itch or pain or cramp I would not seek to relieve it but instead seek to befriend it. And the next time it happened, I did just that. I acted counterintuitively and experienced myself in a whole new, very conscious way.

It was sort of like staring down a friend, this befriending my itch. I "stared" at it, smiled at it, thought about how it felt, thanked it and eventually it went away, satisfied and maybe bored with me. A week ago, I took the opportunity to similarly befriend hunger. When my pants felt tight to me the night before, I wrestled with depression at gaining back some of pounds that eight years ago I had lost and kept off. My initial thought was to "go on a diet", a common knee-jerk reaction to unwanted weight. My next thought was, "But how? I am already on the diet that has kept me from gaining back the entire 60 pounds I'd lost." The answer that came to me wasn't entirely new: it wasn't so much about what I was eating as how much and when. Creeping into my day were snacks that I would grab at the slightest hint of hunger and often times when no hunger at all was present. I just wanted food.

I have known that I am in a relationship with food that serves as a friend when I am sad, a comfort when I am depressed, a comrad when I am angry. But something seemed different this time. The word "hunger" kept coming to the forefront of my mind. And I wondered, "What is my relationship to hunger?"

I had to admit to myself that I see hunger as the grim reaper of daily existence. I am in dread of the feeling of hunger. I will avoid it at all cost, including using diabetes as an excuse to "have to eat". I have labeled hunger as a very bad thing, a thing I have the right never to feel. In fact, hunger has been so forbidden to me, that I have rarely felt it at all in the past few years...maybe rarely throughout my entire life. And for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. With hunger labeled as "bad", food then was labeled as "good", the white stallion, the knight in shining armor coming to rescue me from the clutches of evil.

But I asked myself, "What if hunger is neither good nor bad, but just a neutral indication of the body's need for sustenance? And what if food is neither good nor bad but just the neutral substance that chemically sustains a chemically-based human body?" This thought changed everything for me. Suddenly I wasn't the middle guy between two warring factions. I realized that I could stare down hunger in much the same way as I stared down the itch. The difference, of course, is that I will not let hunger just go away as the itch does, since it serves the purpose of keeping me alive. But certainly I can have a different relationship with it, one in which hunger is not the dictator of my eating, just a messenger. The relationship I want to have with hunger is a reciprocal one, a co-creative one, a balanced one, a respectful one. I want to cease being co-dependent to hunger as I have been to so many other things in my life where I have been unconsciously living, unaware of my actions and the reasons for them.

This new relationship to hunger is only one week old. Patterns 57-years-familiar to me will be hard to break. These things take time. But if hunger is no longer something to fear, that is the beginning to a much healthier co-existence with eating. I am excited and now realize I can work similarly with sadness, grief, anger and fear.