Can insulin resistance cause gluttony?

Before we consider whether people who are sick with insulin resistance develop gluttony as a symptom -- let's consider gluttony in healthy, non-obese, non-insulin-resistant people.

"Pure" gluttony, in other words.  Gluttony that's not mitigated by illness.

And we'll use my own definition of gluttony.  Which, by the way, doesn't contradict Aquinas's definitions of "too much, too soon, too eagerly, too daintily (pickily), too expensively" -- it's more that it attempts to clarify them, to show what's meant by "too..." in these clauses.  That is,

 

Gluttony is eating behavior that flouts the restraints

of charity, obedience, resources, health, duty, or manners.

First let's consider a physically healthy person with normal hunger pangs.  When his body runs short on fuel, generally close to mealtime, he starts to get hungry and think about food.

If the healthy, hungry person is not a glutton:

• he is willing to share some of his food with other people
• he is willing to follow household rules such as "don't spoil your dinner" or "don't eat those crackers I'm saving for the party" or institutional rules such as "employees may not eat at their desks"
• he is willing to resist desires for food that doesn't fit into his budget
• he is willing to resist desires for meals that he believes won't promote health  -- even if what he wants is to eat a big bag of chips, he can choose to eat (say) a few chips and some fruit or nuts instead; he knows to stop eating or drinking when he's had so much that he'll feel sick
• he is willing to resist eating if it's not "permitted" -- he is willing to fast from meat on Lenten Fridays, or he is willing to resist eating factory-farmed meat if he believes it's not ethical, or to fast for a number of hours before a medical test, etc.
• he is willing to eat with attention to social norms, e.g., slowly enough to carry on a conversation and to keep from making a mess, and observing cultural norms of graceful dining.

If the healthy, hungry person is a glutton:

• he may say "No, I don't have enough to share; get your own" and may even steal food
• he may not care about rules for when, where, and what may be eaten, and may sneak food 
• he may spend too much money so he can eat the food he wants to eat, when he wants to eat it
• he may care more about eating what he wants to eat than about eating food that will support his health, and may eat or drink so much that he feels physically ill later
• he may complain that it's unbearable to observe required fasts or to abstain from proscribed foods
• he may be focused so narrowly on eating and drinking that he doesn't care if he spills, slurps, belches, or ignores his dining companions

Healthy people, who know better and have free will, commit all these acts from time to time -- and I name these acts "gluttony."  You have seen one balancing a cheeseburger on his steering wheel while he changes lanes.  You have read one griping about Ash Wednesday on her mommyblog.  You have caught one taking the last helping of mashed potatoes without asking if anyone else wants some. One has eaten the cookie dough out of the bowl even though it has raw eggs in it.  Another has said "yes, please" to that tasty stuff that gives him heartburn.   Another has woken up with a terrible hangover.  

Who hasn't done this kind of thing, once in a while? 

But some healthy people do this a lot, and I name them "gluttons."

What is it that turns a healthy person into a glutton?  Concupiscence.  Selfishness.  Narcissism.  Short-term thinking.  Habit.  Mistaking other people's reasonable desires and needs for unreasonable demands.    Mistaking his own wants for needs that must be gratified.  Deciding that the rules don't apply to him, or that it's okay as long as he doesn't get caught.  

Most of us do this at least once in a while, but some do it constantly.  Some have fallen into a habit of gluttony.

+ + +

It's important to note that the gluttonous behaviors listed above are gluttonous no matter how hungry the person happens to feel.  They would be gluttonous if the person was only feeling a bit peckish.  They would also be gluttonous if the person had missed a meal and felt positively ravenous.  The culpability of gluttony is mitigated somewhat when hunger feels unbearable, but the behavior is still gluttonous.  

This happened to me the other day.  I came home from church at 12:45 and was feeling woozy from low blood sugar.  (Something about the timing of the eleven o'clock Mass ruins me.  I can't quite figure it out.)  Mark went upstairs to take care of something or other and left me searching  irritably in the kitchen; while children clung to my legs and whined for food and milk, I whined back at them that I had to eat my own lunch first and then I could take care of them.  In one sense, I really did need to eat first, and my judgment was impaired.  But I could at least have asked Mark or an older child for help instead of just yelling.  So, yeah.  Gluttonous, even when very hungry.  But it's not too surprising that I got gluttonous just then, because I was in a weakened state.

So.  Gluttony is more likely when you're weak from feelings of hunger.  It's also mitigated  -- we're less culpable when we're in a weakened state.  

But it's more likely.

And if the insulin-resistance crowd is to be believed, then people with insulin resistance spend a lot of time in that weakened state.  They get hungrier, and they get hungry more often.  So they're maybe more often tempted to behave gluttonously:  eating uncharitably, breaking rules, ignoring manners.

Their guilt is mitigated because they are weak.  God knows they are weak.  God knows that illness makes it harder for them.

But they still have to live with the consequences imposed by nature.

And one of the natural consequences of frequently indulging in abnormal behavior is that it becomes its own new norm.  It becomes a habit.

Just as a healthy person who ignores constraints too often can develop a habit of gluttony, a sick person, giving in frequently to strong temptations that overcome the "shoulds" and "oughts," can develop a habit of gluttony.  

And after a while, the sick person might start to believe that hunger is not resistable under any circumstances.  The sick person might start to fear the discomfort of hunger.  And isn't so much sin grounded in an unreasonable fear of suffering -- even slight suffering?

She can't give some of her French fries to her children, because she might be too hungry later.  She can't resist storing some snacks in a desk drawer, though it's against workplace rules, and she rationalizes that she (unlike those others) really needs it.  She can't wait to get home for lunch even though she and her husband agreed to curtail the restaurant budget.  She always has to finish the first plate of food before she comes up for air and conversation.  She must taste the soup one more time to make sure it's good enough before she serves it.  

Frequent out-of-line behavior, in response to frequent understandable weakness, becomes frequent out-of-line behavior, in response to... less and less.   Habit reinforces habit.  And many gluttonous indulgences makes one glutton.

Years of insulin resistance, of unrestrained eating in response to physiological weakness, can -- I think -- generate more unrestrained eating in response to the force of habit.  That habit may stand between the sickness and the cure, and I suspect it can even persist after physiological "cure" has been achieved.

Comments

[Patty]

I've been following your blog for...quite a while, esp. the eating/not eating so much parts. I am fascinated by all this. I have been struggling with gluttony/insulin resistance/sugar addict type problems forever and ever. Long story short, I finally got so sick of my (climbing) weight I decided to do South Beach again. Almost two weeks into phase 1 I find some days I *forget to eat until mid-afternoon when the kids arrive at home looking for food. Then I think, "Oh yeah! Better eat something". I know I have to eat to maintain my health but the old obsession with food is *gone. The idea that I now have to remember to make myself eat is simply astonishing to me. Is this part of the process of learning how to eat to live rather than to live to eat? I'd love to hear your thoughts. And I also wonder what will happen when I start adding back foods otherwise not "allowed" in phase 1. Hmmm.

[bearing]

I'm not sure, Patty, because I wasn't one of the people who succeeded (for long) on South Beach or Atkins. I am not the person to ask about how to deal with "phase" diets. I did manage to lose about 20 pounds on Atkins between two of my pregnancies, but was back to where I was before post-pregnancy.

It's a balance between the biochemistry and the psychology, I think. If I *could* have given up carbs, I could eat more and be less hungry than I am now. But it was mentally easier for me just to learn to eat less of everything. I really struggled on the "phase" diets; I think they contain traps that I was too easily caught in.

I definitely think they are worth a try, because I do know that many people have found that they can work really well with them. I'm not one of them. There's something about the "you only have to put up with this stringent phase-I diet temporarily and then you can relax and do the easier phase-II diet" that messed with my head.

For me, it made so much more sense to work towards a permanently sustainable way of eating -- and it turned out I was fortunate to find one on which I could maintain my weight, not without effort.

This is probably worth a post of its own.

[Patty]

I agree about aiming for a permanently sustainable way of eating, and South Beach phase 1 isn't it. For me, it appears that I needed to do something dramatic (like stop eating everything but eggs, meat, nuts and vegetables) for a period. I fully expected this was going to be HARD, so I am truly shocked at how disinterested I am in food. Only a couple weeks ago I thought about food and ate a lot. I believe I am dealing with some food allergies (wheat, dairy, other things?) and will be seeing an allergist next week to hopefully get more insight into that question. Maybe that has something to do with it? When I start eating a wider variety I am going to be very careful about what and how quickly I add foods back into my general food rotation. I want to see how I react to each item. I think there is something very significant about how quickly the obsession with food disappeared after I stopped eating everything except what is on my list above. More will be revealed! Thanks.

[bearing]

Allergies and food intolerances bring in a whole new world of complication. You definitely have to be careful about re-introducing things if you are going to try to suss out a food intolerance that's causing part of the problem.

I don't have any specific food intolerances that I know of, and so the thing that turned out to be sustainable was a balanced-but-on-the-low-carb-side menu. It was much easier for me personally to learn to eat smaller, but normal-looking plates, than it was to say "No pasta, never again." If it made my weight loss slower, so be it.

[Patty]

I wonder if it might be easier for me to say, "no pasta, never again" than eat less pasta. Whether it's a food allergy or intolerance or sheer lack of will power, it's *that difficult to stop eating pasta/bread/cookies once I get going. I have no trouble stopping eating when there are no starches on my plate.

I ate some fruit today, and ended up eating some ice cream this evening. It was a small bowl of ice cream, and I was very aware of the fact that I wasn't allowing myself another one despite the fact it was an all you can eat fundraiser. Baby steps. Allergist next Friday. We'll see what he says. Thanks for your time.

[Delores]

that is a great definition of gluttony!

[bearing]

Thank you, Delores! I have more coming on this topic.

[Marie Miller]

Gluttony is considered as an illness but now there's another meaning of it- a person is healthy and will be having no Disease such as gluttony if he/she will share.