The Committee on Food

I am currently the heaviest I’ve ever been, so I can’t honestly say that what I’m about to tell you is any kind of a sure cure for unwanted weight gain. What it is, I hope, is some insight into the complicated thinking we do about eating and its consequences. I am also not a young man, so it has taken me a while to get this heavy, and to think these thoughts, and to find the time to think them through and write them down.

Whenever I am deciding to have something to eat there is inevitably a complicated discussion about it going on in my head. I refer to the various elements of that discussion, “voices” if you prefer, as the “Committee on Food.” I find that I have five distinct considerations in mind when I’m deciding to eat, and they don’t always pop up in the same order. For convenience sake, I’ll assign an order here, but your experience may be much different.

First, can I afford it? Free food jumps in value here. Whether “free food tastes the best” is true or not, sometimes perfectly good food options are simply out of my price range. That can be literal, as in I only have cash, and very little of that. Or emotional, as I’m not willing to pay fifty dollars for a steak at a restaurant when I can grill one at home for much less myself. The cheapskate in me won’t let me “waste” that much money, though I’ve certainly spent a lot of money on sushi from time to time.

 Second, can I make it myself? Regardless of price, some foods are best prepared by experts [see sushi above] and I have a hard time resisting expertly made treats. The gourmet in me wants to eat the especially yummy, can’t-get-it-at-home, foods. I have never, ever, been seriously tempted by someone else’s version of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That treat I do best at home. Come over sometime and I’ll prove it.

Third, am I hungry? I can eat when I’m not hungry, and sometimes we eat to be polite, or because it’s been the right number of hours since the last meal, or because trying to function with low blood sugar is a bad idea. But am I actually hungry? When you’re actually quite hungry almost any food seems like a good idea.

Fourth, is it “bad” food? Some foods will always be a bad idea, no matter who you are or how your digestive system works. I won’t name names here, but I can say that there’s a specific breakfast cereal that I used to love as a kid that was not good for the quality of the domestic atmosphere in the hours following. It doesn’t matter if other people are eating it, or if it’s free, or if I’m starving. For me at least, it’s bad food, and so no longer counts as food at all.

Fifth, is being cranky worse than eating too much, or putting on weight? Ideally, our individual moods and happiness are not dependent on overeating, but the process of under-eating often leads to crankiness and damage to the domestic tranquility. If eating something will lighten my mood, maybe that’s the greater good. It doesn’t have to be a whole chocolate cake, mind, but a timely snack might easily save a marriage. And so on.

Lots of reasons to eat something, or to not eat something. I hate the idea of needing to buy new larger clothes [see cheapskate above]. I also prefer moving more easily and getting approval from my doctor. And in all of these things I suspect I’m a lot like other people. The problem for me is that when the discussion in my head is going on about this food or that food, or is it time to eat again, I fundamentally enjoy food. The voices that say “NO,” just speak too quietly, or get drowned out by all the other voices approving the opportunity. And realistically, our bodies need/want food.

So, what can I do? I have found it helps to just wave off certain foods, even if they’re not officially “bad.” No ice cream in the house, or fried chicken, or chips. Some restaurants get the same treatment. I hardly ever eat fast food, and then only because I’m on the road and it’s what I can find. We also have fabulous restaurants in my hometown, so lots of perfectly normal places never even get considered. No point in considering them, I know I can do better.

I can also exaggerate what things are “too expensive.” When I’m attentive to prices at the grocery store, it’s easy to see how eating out costs more. I don’t begrudge the restaurants the money, but I can often appeal to my inner thriftiness to at least postpone the pleasure until some other day. And don’t get me wrong, good food is full of pleasure. Nutrients, and necessity, and health, but mostly pleasure. And that will always make it harder for the committee to tell me not to eat it.

I should say too that food includes drinks, especially boozy drinks with lots of calories. I remember a warning poster once that showed the equivalence between certain drinks and hot fudge sundaes. Like many people, a beer now and then is quite easy to agree to, but hot fudge sundaes seem like a pure surrender to weight gain. Looking at the equivalence chart, I’m afraid my thought was not that I should avoid both booze and hot fudge sundaes, but rather that I should substitute an ice cream treat for a casual beer more often.

Whether the choices you make are steak, sushi, beer, or ice cream, it seems that the main challenge is to be clear-eyed and intentional. Our choices have consequences, and pleasures, and the worst thing we can do is be absent-minded or thoughtless about the process.

The Good Job

In the past, when households were more likely to have just one wage-earner, the idea of “the good job” would have referred to a job that was just better than some previous less desirable jobs. These days, when it’s far more common to have two employed people in a household, the good job often refers to the one that is providing the health insurance. Of course, the quality of “goodness” can be attached to many traits, and many of those are crucial to the functioning of a relationship in which one or both of the workers are also artists.

This issue came up at the International Wood-fire Conference at Waubonsee Community College in 2016. It was part of an overall discussion about the gender imbalance in wood-fired ceramics, and the degree of privilege required for anyone to attempt to build and maintain their own wood-fired kiln and shop. To put it bluntly, men can build these shops when their wives have a “good job” that provides a steady monthly income and the ever-vital health insurance. It helps too to have the down payment for land and materials.

For a few years now I have been the one with the good job. Not a great job, mind, but a steady paycheck, health insurance, paid leave time, and no need to bring any of that work home with me or even think about it past five o’clock. That last part can be vital because I’m also still a working potter and I very much need my evenings and weekends to do all the things that get inventory made and sold.

I’ve also fielded questions about whether or not being a full time potter would be a good job. I did that, for six years, and for most of that time my wife had “the good job” that provided the health insurance and the regular rent money. When she no longer had that job, our “health insurance” was MasterCard and Visa, and our rent payments were sometimes tardy. It was not good.

Being a full time potter can be a great job, but it’s also always TWO jobs, or as many as twenty-two jobs, all rolled into one life. The major split though is the half of you that makes the pots and the half that does the marketing, transporting, and selling. Even if you only sell your work through galleries, some part of you will have to handle the paperwork with those galleries, recruiting those galleries, and re-supplying those galleries.

And then there’s the part of you doing the accounting. Well, maybe you can hire an accountant. Or if you are very lucky, and very privileged, you’ve got a spouse that can do the accounting for you. Love them extra for their help.

Any job can be a “good job” compared to one that’s worse. Ideally, every job would be a good one, but that doesn’t seem to be how things work. Good luck with yours.