The Third Deadly Sin
Gluttony
I am still scratching my head trying to figure out just WHY this particular bad habit is considered a “sin.” The nearest I can come to an answer is that this is one of the most obvious ways to see that people are not taking care of themselves. Not taking care of the gift they have been given of a body, a mind, and a life. And since the result of habitual overeating is almost inevitably becoming overweight, this is a fairly obvious physical clue that something may be wrong, whereas things may not always be so clear when dealing with other physical or mental problems. And since this was deemed bad enough to be one of the Seven Deadly Sins, obviously overweight persons have been dealt with harshly for thousands of years, with the excuse that we have been told it is a sin, and therefore must automatically be bad.
But I really won’t go into the semantics of the actual sin here. Obviously I do not hold similar beliefs to the system that created these sins, so I will just take it at face value here and go forward from there.
I suppose I am certainly guilty of this sin. I freely admit that I am overweight. I don’t like it. I do the best I can. I lose and gain the same 25-30 pounds over and over again. Since I don’t smoke, and I don’t drink, and I don’t do drugs, when I get stressed out, I eat. It’s definitely a learned behavior. I have tried many times over the years to change my habits, to do other things when I am stressed. I do go to the gym, I walk, especially with the stroller, I eat a lot of salad, I drink a lot of water, I slip up every so often like everyone. I do really well for a little while, then BAM! another stressor appears and I head right back to the old habits. Of course, I think that in most instances, overeating and emotional problems/stress go hand in hand. I have a lot of work to do on my MIND before I can truly conquer the problems of the stomach. But maybe acknowledging the problems is the first step to vanquishing them. And until such time as I am able to get a better handle on those problems, I would rather have an eating problem than a drug problem. :LOL:
