The Trouble With Thinking About Appetites
I am prone to getting lost in my thoughts and feelings. Perhaps that’s why I write so much about mindful movement — it is the quickest route home to my whole self that I know of. And yet, as is the human condition, I often need to be reminded to practice what I preach.
I am working on a book that considers appetites, and I have been spending a terrible amount of time thinking about how in the US we tend to treat appetites for food, sex, love, and care like dangerous things.
It shouldn’t feel subversive to listen to our bodies, but for many folks it is. For me, it is hard to hear myself whispering kindly to my body in an attempt understand what hunger and fullness feel like under the chorus of conversations (in the media and with loved ones) about drugs that induce weight loss by tricking our bodies into feeling full. While I am working so hard to learn and hear my body’s cues for hunger and fullness because I am so disconnected from myself in this regard, I keep getting the message from the world at large that fat bodies ought to be tricked into small appetites. Then I wonder about the consequences of such a thing.
I read, think, and write to find answers. Sometimes I get somewhere, and other times I get real wound up until my eyes can’t focus and I am completely overwhelmed.
