What this is not.

I seem to have been added to a few blogrolls in the last several days, because there's been a giant uptick in my traffic.  (Or maybe it was just the Blogger outage.  Thank you, Typepad!  Fifty bucks a year has so far been pretty well spent.)  Maybe we have some new folks around?  

In the last post in the "acceptance" series, I identified a particular habit of mine (gobbling pinches of shredded cheese out of the bag while cooking, even though I always drop cheese on the floor) as an example of gluttony according to my own expanded definition.  A commenter disagreed with me:

Surely you *could* eat cheese while cooking and not get in on the floor. It's not *that* difficult. So "This isn't so much a problem because of the cheese calories" really doesn't ring true. It IS the calories that are the problem, no? That's the whole point of these posts.

I answered in the combox, but I've been thinking.  I wrote the posts, didn't I?  So don't I get to say what "the whole point of these posts" are?  

Okay, then, Erin, be more clear.

Ahem.

This is not a weight loss blog.

I'm glad I lost forty pounds in 2008.  But one thing I've tried to re-iterate over and over -- and you'd probably have to look at old posts to see it, I know, so if you've just arrived, it may not be obvious -- is that weight loss only came for me when I turned my attention to rooting out the habits of gluttony.  

I won't lie.  I pay a lot of attention to the weight.  It is hard work keeping it down.  I've written about that.  

Wanting to look good provides me a strong motivation to work on gluttony.  I think I've been clear about that!  

But I'm also interested in gluttony's technical definition as a vice, a fault, a sin.  It has consequences for my health and my relationships, sure.  Most sins do.   That's why we always have mixed motives in rooting sin out of our lives.  But I'm aware that gluttony has a spiritual component.  And I want it out of my life even if I never gain another pound from it.

As I've gone on blogging and blogging about gluttony, even though I am now at a healthy weight, I have seen a new dimension to these posts emerge.  I have a question which is emerging as a sort of obsession.  I bring it to prayer over and over again.  I write about it over and over again.  You could even say that it is the real point of these posts.  And that point is to figure out this:

How can I use what I've learned about gluttony to defeat my other besetting vices, faults, and sins?

 

So, no.  The calories are not the point.  Not at all.

Comments

[Susan]

I laughed at this post because I wonder if I'm personally responsible for your traffic uptick :) Probably not but I have been doing a lot of reading here the last couple days. I used to wander over here fairly regularly in 2008 and then never really made it back during a couple years of drastic blog-reading reduction. My four kids have all been sick this weekend and I've been parked on the couch with my laptop catching vomit and clicking around. I made it back here eventually and remembered how much I'd liked your approach to everything. I never, never, never would think of myself as the "engineering type." Not even a little bit. But your analytical approach to homemaking and weight loss really click with me. I've been really encouraged reading through some of your archives and some of your more recent posts the last few days. I need to lose about forty pounds and I've been consistently exercising for a couple months now. I think, I hope, I'm ready to do some hard work about my eating habits. I really appreciate your thoughts on gluttony and I look forward to reading along if you share the answers to that last question you asked. I think I can see in my own life that while I struggle mightily with gluttony, it is closely related to other spiritual struggles and sins. I wonder if tackling weight loss and regaining my health and energy will allow me to begin work in those other areas as well.'

Thanks for all you've shared here.

[MelanieB]

You're name does keep popping up on blogs I've been reading. Mrs Darwin linked to you recently. Also, Kate Wicker mentioned you on her latest blog post. And I think I saw another link to your blog somewhere else this week but I can't remember where. One of the Bettys? Betty Duffy? Betty Beguiles?

[bearing]

Both Bettys did. The vanity/weight loss posts touched a nerve maybe ;-)

I have been thinking that it seems I am a part of a little blog-reading, blog-commenting circle of women, and I need to list who you all are who are all reading each other's posts and generating conversation on the same topics along with me. MrsDarwin is one, you are another Melanie, and Kate, and I've been reading Jennifer Fitz more lately, and the Bettys...

[lisa]

Oh yes, I get that this isn't a weight-loss blog. I came over from Simcha's blog a while back, so I get the whole gluttony thing, too. (That last sentence maybe came out wrong, but hopefully you know what I mean.) When I wrote "these posts," I meant this latest series on maintenance, not the whole blog.

The thing is, you rather pointedly called someone out not long ago who wrote that they exercised to be healthy. You said something like (paraphrasing), "Not buying it. You want to look good."

I guess I'm just feeling the same thing about all your protestations about how you're concerned about the gluttony coming back, and calories aren't the issue. You wrote a few posts ago that you were literally losing sleep over your maintenance struggles, and my guess is that what's keeping you up at night is that you're worried about getting fat again.

And I'd hasten to add that I don't see any problem with that whatsoever! One can be concerned about gluttony, as the sin of gluttony, and also concerned about it as something that tends to make us fat.

[MrsDarwin]

I love "the Bettys". More charming than "the Bobs" from Office Space, and much more glamorous.