Many of us tried to direct our interests during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic towards new hobbies, some of us focused on our health, while others relieved their stress about what is happening around the world and the unknown fate, by focusing on food.
reported Research That the number of people who overeat due to stress and anxiety increased during the pandemic period, and with the closure procedures and the imposition of curfews in some countries, the rates of excess and excessive weight increased.
In a newspaper article, writer Sam Anderson says:The New York TimesHis experience with the weight he gained during the pandemic, stressing that losing weight and considering it as a criterion indicative of a person’s psychological health or self-image is not proven.
He says he only realized how much weight he had gained when he took a trip to a US beach, and discovered that his bathing suit was no longer an option, and when he went to buy other clothes, one of the clothes shop workers advised him to use a weight-loss app.
He adds that he has started using the app. “I felt silly about it, so at first I didn’t tell anyone. Yes, I found it offensive to be overweight, but I found it offensive to worry about my weight gain. I wanted to lose weight but didn’t want to admit that I was going to lose weight,” he says. Even in front of myself.
After trying the application, the writer was able to lose weight, to the astonishment of his family, and even his wife, who asked him if he was hiding his cancer from her. Anderson reached an ideal weight, but he wondered: “What next?”
Then Anderson delves into the depths of philosophical questions, in which he raises the relationship of man to his body: “Is it a cohabiting partner? A pet? A twin? A team member? A competitor? A parasite? A vessel for containing the soul? Is the body essential to the soul? Or is it just a shell that envelops us?” Is the body a side of the mind’s coin? Or is it the whole coin?
And he replies, “I don’t know. None of us know. This is one of the disturbing oddities of being human. It’s impossible to think using your body; you can only embody your body. And so we walk around with this feeling of alienation, this basic disharmony, a duality that goes right down to the roots of Western culture.” .
He asserts that, “In our culture obsessed with numbers, people tend to use ‘weight’ as a diagnostic shortcut for the disturbing relationship between mind and body. It is a kind of stock price: a number that, publicly, indicates the general health of our private situations.”
Then he moves on to describing his relationship with food, noting that since his childhood the subject of food was devoted to pleasure, noting that his grandfather once told him, after drinking a glass of apple juice: “I drank it for pleasure, not for its health benefits,” and says: “Yes, I enjoyed drinking it.” Why should that be out of the ordinary?”
But he says that as a child he enjoyed eating the meals of his classmates, who were racing to see how many real cakes he could eat, and admits he loved the attention he got from it.
And he added, “But I did not like my obesity,” noting that when he was in the sixth grade, he stood during the shower, looking at his body, holding his stomach, repeating: “This is not me.” Then, at the age of twelve, he began playing sports, and when he reached secondary school, he reached the “required weight”, and began repeating the success story sung by weight-loss applications, “I managed my will, and I lost weight.”
“But did I manage to get over my weight? What the diet stories tend to neglect is that after food restriction, people gain weight again. The life story is much longer than the story of dieting.”
He says, “I will still be fat Sam. I will also remain the one who is ashamed of fat Sam. My feelings for my body form a chord of many tones, not all sounding good together. I am, at once, the one who wants to swallow the world and is responsible for preventing myself from Swallow the world. Perhaps this means that I will always be dissatisfied, in some way, until the moment it is all over. And I will have to learn to be satisfied with this.”
And he ends his article: “But as for the present time, I will wake up and try to guide the fat Sam with a number of limits. I will bring a plate of yogurt with green grapes and ten almonds, which (fatty Sam) will eat with gluttony and with indescribable joy. And together, Sam and I will think of this yogurt for the rest Today, we will fall asleep thinking about it, excited to go back to the kitchen and eat it again.”