Gluttony is different from sloth: Induced exercise, part 2.

(Part 1)

By now I've written a great deal about my forty-odd-pound weight loss and my struggle to conquer gluttony---what I called my diet of "not eating so damn much."  (see the categories Weight loss, Weight maintenance, Gluttony.)  I have written only a very little, so far, about the role that induced exercise (defined in part 1) played in my improved health.    With this series I hope to explore it a little bit.

I spent a few days thinking and came to my first conclusion:  The analogy "gluttony is to overeating as sloth is to not enough exercise" -- does not work.  I tried to draw on what I've learned about the relationship between gluttony and overeating, and apply those lessons to sloth and lack of exercise, and very few obvious parallels can be drawn.  So let's contrast them instead.

1.  Overeating/gluttony are usually problems of excess, and nonexercise/sloth are problems of negligence.  Overeating and nonexercise are both patterns of bad decisions.  But overeating is a pattern easily described as choosing too much of something that's necessary, and nonexercise is a pattern easily described as choosing to do too little.  You don't have to describe it that way; you could say that gluttons choose to eat when they ought to choose to fast, and slothful people choose to remain still when they ought to choose to move.  But the minute you try to write about them with any clarity, the awkwardness of the sentences make it obvious that gluttony and sloth are natural antiparallels rather than parallels.  (Why else would I have to coin a weird word like "nonexercise?"  Do you prefer my second choice, "sedentation?")

2.  They can't be broken down into similar categories.  Unless you are a very holistic person, physical activity or nonexercise can often be divided up into stuff you do for fun, stuff you have to do anyway for your daily work, and stuff you choose on purpose because it's good for your body  ("induced exercise" or deliberate resting).  Food and fasting may not split up evenly along those lines, certainly not in the same way.  

3.  The vice isn't related to the behavior in the same way.  Eating more food than you need is a decent measure of gluttony.  Eating less food, almost by definition, makes you that much less gluttonous.  But slothfulness isn't automatically fixed by adding exercise.  Sloth has to do with not doing your duties, spiritual and otherwise, because of their laboriousness.   If you get some exercise, but you still go home and flop in front of the TV instead of helping with the dishes or horsing around with your children, you're just as slothful as you were before.   Sloth and nonexercise are only directly related insofar as it is your duty to get yourself into better physical condition.

4.  One change may be more drastic than the other.  Ending overeating requires "only" paying deliberate attention to something you have to do regularly anyway, and have been doing since the day you were born.  Ending nonexercise may require you to introduce whole new activities into your life.  A corollary:  It is possible and fairly straightforward to eat less food without affecting the people around you much at all; it is hard or even impossible to add exercise "quietly" unless you live alone.

5.  Fighting gluttony fits much more comfortably into the everyday Catholic religious context.   We have a religious tradition of ordinary people's fasting to gain spiritual benefits and strengthen us against vices.  We don't have a religious tradition of ordinary people's physically exerting themselves for that purpose.  Now, mind you, we do have a religious tradition of physical penance, hair shirts and other sorts of self-punishment, but that's not exactly what you call widespread today, and anyway a hair shirt is not exactly what you'd call aerobic.  Anyway, my point is that we have a lot more direct experiences to call on, and more well-known spiritual benefits to gain, associated with eating less and with fasting.  We don't have so many associated with physical exercise.  

None of this is to say that it is impossible to connect gluttony/overeating with sloth/nonexercise.  You can make it fit, I think, but you have to push reeeeeeal hard.  I think it's better to abandon the gluttony template and start fresh when it comes to thinking about sloth and physical movement for health.

Comments

[Christy P]

"We don't have a religious tradition of ordinary people's physically exerting themselves for that purpose. Now, mind you, we do have a religious tradition of physical penance, hair shirts and other sorts of self-punishment, but that's not exactly what you call widespread today, and anyway a hair shirt is not exactly what you'd call aerobic." Ah yes, but historically people were a lot more active as a part of their daily work than they are today. It's time to create a NEW tradition to fit with the way the world has evolved (can I say evolved on a Catholic blog, or should I select words more carefully and just say changed??)

[4ddintx]

"Fighting gluttony fits much more comfortably into the everyday Catholic religious context."

Interesting point. I was just talking to my sister yesterday about making a discipline for Lent be exercise related. I am thinking that any discipline can be for spiritual good and God did give us bodies to take care of. Plus, when I do something for Lent (make a promise to God) it's much harder for me to back out. I know I need to add induced exercise into my life for the longterm and Lent seems a good time to start. Very timely for me that you're discussing this!

"it is hard or even impossible to add exercise "quietly" unless you live alone."

This made me wonder if how induced exercise effects my whole family (dh and 6 kids) is part of why I've had a harder time fitting it in and sticking to it than eating healthier.

Tabitha

[bearing]

Christy, the Catholic Church has no anti-evolution teaching. Cf. a decent article here,

http://www.catholic.com/library/Adam_Eve_and_Evolution.asp

[bearing]

Sounds like Tabitha, thinking about using physical exercise as a Lenten discipline, is trying to do what Christy suggests, creating something new.

I don't know if it works to call it "creating a new tradition" -- tradition by definition is something that evolves along with and concurrently with the world it's in

And yes, I think "evolves" is exactly the appropriate word. Inventing something new to fit into the new world is rather anti-evolutionary!

But you can do a new thing in a traditional spirit. I would be trying to look to the example of other physical penances (including fasting) to see how those physical, corporeal activities were understood to act upon the spirit, or to be an act by the spirit. How does the physical act become more than physical, transcend it? How has that always ("traditionally") been understood?