A Secret

Here’s a secret. I don’t talk about it much because even for me I consider it weird. I’ve never heard anyone else with this issue, past or present, so I mostly keep it to myself – for fear of people shrieking “Freak!” and grabbing their pitchforks.

The secret is, for a long time, I didn’t enjoy food. Could I taste food? Certainly. Did certain tastes disgust me? For sure. Could I tell when a food objectively tasted pleasant? Yes. But I wasn’t excited about food. When I heard people describing food they were eating as delicious, amazing, and talking about getting goosebumps from eating I was mostly just confused. I thought they were exaggerating, because I had never experienced any such thing. Food was fine. Sometimes it was good. But it was never the moaning-in-delight event that I saw it described.

Is Obesity Merely a Gluttonous Love for Food?

This might seem odd, if you know my history. For quite a long time, I was obese – with my highest weight at 240 lbs paired with a height of 5’1″. You could obviously say – how is it possible to get to that weight without enjoying food? Obviously you were eating too much. Probably true. But I didn’t eat because I enjoyed it – I ate compulsively, to quell the raging hunger. Sometimes I ate out of boredom (or so I thought, as soon as I changed my diet this went away). I would eat the same size meal as other people, but soon would be hungry again. (Apparently this isn’t actually unusual among the obese – who knew!)

I’ve seen some people blame obesity on food tasting too good. Or, hyper-palatable if you like big words. Sugar, salt, and fat: a sinful cocktail of hedonistic delight bent on making us consume more and more. Maybe that’s partially true – but it wasn’t so for me.

Is Blandness the Answer?

I’ve seen some respond that the “cure” to obesity is to only eat bland things, so you’re not tempted down the path of actually enjoying the food you eat. Obesity is obviously a disorder of gluttony (and sloth, can’t forget that one) so to cure it you must do as all animals do and only ingest boring things, lest you tickle your fancy a little too much, resulting in a binge that negates all your previous restriction. Perhaps a tasty bite here and there – but only in moderation! Whatever that means.

I think this argument is a bit odd. All you have to do is watch an animal about to eat – try it with your dog. Make as if you’re about to feed them some meat, some raw steak perhaps. Allow them to sniff it, let them know what they’re in store for, and then look at them. Do they seem bored? Uninterested? On the contrary, I’d say they look pretty excited, ready to chow down, salivating at the idea of getting their teeth in some nourishing food. (Granted you could argue that our pets are becoming obese, but I highly doubt that’s due to feeding them steak – that’s a topic for another day, however)

You can do this with sheep, too. My mom has a farm, plenty of sheep, and she’s pointed out that lambs wag their tails when they’re nursing. Not only that, but older sheep do it too, if they find a particular plant that they like (clover for example, although apparently it varies by sheep) they’ll wag their tails like the happiest little ruminants in the prairie.

She’s also noted that the chickens express great joy when they come upon a tasty frog, or a mouse-y morsel ripe for the picking. Shrieking in triumph, before quickly trying to snatch up and hide their find from the rest of the flock. Are they suffering from gluttony as well then? Where is their obesity, when faced with an abundance of clearly hyper-palatable food?

Food is Supposed to Be Pleasurable

We’re programmed for it. If food weren’t exciting, enjoyable to experience, we wouldn’t seek it out with quite so much fervor. Certainly if we were starving, but what other way do we have to tell good food apart from excellent? Fresh from slightly off? Nutritious from something not worth the energy spent to chew it? A mix of pleasure and disgust helps us distinguish this. So where’s the problem? I’ve seen one possibility aimed at the food companies engineering frankenstein monsters of MSG, corn syrup, and flavoring for making nutrient void foods that taste like foods we’d naturally find pleasurable. Or engineering fruits to be bursting with sugar beyond what is natural. Maybe. But, I think blaming food addiction, or obesity, on gluttony, lack of willpower, and food that is too pleasurable is akin to blaming sex addiction on sex being too pleasurable. Can it possibly be so simple? I don’t think so, not much is.

If this were the case, then why do many lose weight – dropping from obese to normal weight – by switching to food laden with fat, and red meat, and hedonistic pleasures? Many find ketogenic (high fat low carb) foods to be the most delicious food they’ve ever eaten, and some even use sweeteners, with great success. I’ll admit though, I still wasn’t deriving noticeable pleasure from ketogenic food either. I could tell it was better quality than what I had been eating before, but despite no significant change in enjoyment I lost weight. A lot of it. Even stranger than that – my compulsive eating stopped, I no longer felt the urge to eat when I was bored, one or two meals a day sufficed without need for snacks (although I still did occasionally). It was like my hunger had turned from a constant 11 down to a more reasonable 5, no willpower needed.

Why Did I Say Used To?

At the beginning I said I didn’t used to enjoy food. Following the logic or proper grammar, this must mean I currently do. So what changed? Did I finally force myself into realizing that healthy green leafies are delicious, or undergo some sort of radical treatment to fix myself? I guess you could claim the latter. The fix?

I stopped eating plants.

That’s right. Soon after starting a carnivorous diet, I noticed that I started to become excited about my meals. I looked forward to them! Unheard of. Moreso than that, I found myself experiencing the delight in eating that I had assumed was exaggerated. I got goosebumps eating pork. I shivered eating a tasty bit of animal fat. I danced in place while indulging in dairy. Not only that but not only did I not gain weight from this sudden hyper-palatibility I lost weight. My appetite was the clearest it had ever been – making it unmistakable when I needed food, crystal clear when I was done (even in the middle of a plate of food!), and blissfully silent inbetween meals.

So what changed? To be honest, I have no idea. Could it have been that the hyper-palatable foods of the prior ages fried the pleasure center of my brain somehow, resulting in a need to “detox” with less pleasurable (ha!) meat and dairy? If this were the case, if I went back to omnivorous fare would I enjoy it? As it turns out, I’ve tried this, and I’m immediately sent back to a place of lack of excitement, lack of pleasure, and so-so feelings towards food.

So what’s the conclusion? Am I freak? A one-off case? Perhaps some sort of demon who can only delight in the pleasures of animal flesh?

All I know is I’m happy to be able to delight in food, exactly as I’m meant to.