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2. I'm in control. Succumbing to the desire to overeat may be a straightforward way that people demonstrate power. Life is complicated and fraught with compromises, unmet desires, and nettling disappointments. We cannot make other people do right. Friends, neighbors, spouse, children all may resist our will, but, darn it, that chocolate cream pie is going to know who's boss.Overeating can become a secret, habitual way to reassure yourself that you are not powerless, that you can subdue and conquer as much food as you choose. Viewed in this light, anorexia has the same root as gluttony: a desire to demonstrate control. Women starve themselves to prove that they are the Empresses of Ice Cream, wielding a scepter of iron rejection where a plumper sister might choose the tactic of conquering by consuming.

3. Squirrel away. A related impulse is the need to hoard. Perhaps a cream pie this perfect will never cross my path again; it is only wisdom to tuck away as much as possible before the waiter clears the plates and we must part forever. Hoarding food discloses our need to establish ourselves as independent resources, free from dependence on God. There is an intrinsic mistrust of his ability to provide, though he owns the cream pies on a thousand hills.

4. Boredom. A constant stream of pleasant sensations coming in may help keep more troubling self-confrontation at bay. The continuing work of repentance is lifelong, and comparatively less jolly than a bag of gumdrops; those gumdrops may be just enough to keep us distracted one more day. Bishop Brianchaninov, cited above, insisted that an evil of gluttony was its ability to dull the mind. Pennsylvania pastor Pat Reardon says, "When people ask me why God seems so distant, I ask them 'How much TV have you been watching? What thoughts are you allowing into your mind?'" We could add: and how much idle junk food do you nibble for no apparent reason?

5. Big. The title is clumsy, and forbidding, but Fat Is a Feminist Issue delivers a startling insight. Author Susie Orbach writes that many dieters self-sabotage because the fail to realize that "compulsive eating is linked to a desire to get fat. … Many women are positively afraid of being thin." This strikes us as hollowingly counterintuitive, but Orbach's research is intriguing. She has women imagine themselves in a social situation; they are to envision every detail of dress, posture, with whom they talk, how others react to them. Orbach has them imagine themselves in the same situation but immensely fat; then she has them repeat the exercise, but imagine themselves with ideal slimness.In a culture where slimness equals beauty women have powerful reasons to want to be thin; but, surprisingly, when they imagined it, they did not enjoy it. Slimness was associated with being "cold and ungiving," "self-involved," burdened with other's expectations, the object of unwanted desire from men and uncomfortable jealousy from women. The fat self, on the other hand, was relaxed, free from unwanted sexual attention and the need to compete, and able to talk comfortably with others.As the study demonstrated, another reason people subconsciously desired a greater girth was because they sensed that, as a result, they had more authority. One woman put it this way: "The fat in the situation [made] me feel like a sergeant major—big and authoritative. When I go through the fantasy of seeing myself thin, what immediately strikes me is just how fragile and little I feel, almost as though I might disappear or be blown away." Men have as many reasons as women do—maybe moreto want to be bigger. Our attempts at self-control in eating fail, in part, because part of us really doesn't want to risk shrinking. We want to be big.A "Bizarro" cartoon by Dan Piraro showed an enormously fat man looking into a refrigerator, while a smaller man stood nearby, holding up a finger of admonition. "You are what you eat," the scolder said. The fat man replied, "Good. That makes me omnipotent."

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August (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44