Buddhist thoughts about food.

I was wandering around some of my favorite sites, and came across the Buddhist meditation on food:

This food I take
not for play,
not for fattening,
not for beautifying,
not for intoxication.
But only for the
continuation and
nourishment of
this body.
For keeping it unharmed,
for helping it to
lead a pure life.
Thinking, I shall
destroy hunger.
Thus will I be free
from bodily troubles
and live at ease.

It's beautiful, but you might be surprised to learn that I found it on a site for the EDs anorexia and bulimia. Yes, one of those infamous "pro-ana" sites you hear about. Now, I've been to them, but don't always like them. This one isn't what most people think it is, however. It's a support group for people struggling with these diseases. I can go two ways on it. It's mostly populated by teen girls, followed by young women in their early to mid-20's. Then there are boys of 16-18, and a very few young men.

They're all so desperate, and lonely. They talk of their families calling them "slimfast girl," "fatty-kins;" they speak of bullying by fellow students and older siblings (who are invariably prettier and thinner), and mockery by mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and other mostly female members of their families, who often have EDs themselves.

They need support, and they get it from each other. However, I get nervous about kids--and most are kids--in that mindset inspiring others to do the same. On another such site, I was in a chat with an older anorexic, and we were talking about recovery. We discussed threats by docs of involuntary hospitalization unless we'd eat or get our BMI's up to 17, 18, or so. A girl--I could tell she was very young--jumped on us like glue, begging us to tell her our "secret" of how to be so thin. She said she weighed something like 135 and would kill herself unless she got to 100. I told her she was a normal weight for her height (which was something like 5'3") and she should keep her weight normal, eat fresh vegetables, yadda-yadda, the whole nine yards. She became desperate--"Please, PLEASE, tell me what you do to lose weight. I need to know!" Finally, I just left the chat room after telling her the same thing several times. I couldn't take it anymore.

After I left, I wondered what happened. Did some young anorexic come in and tell her how to vomit efficiently? Did she give her the 2-4-8-2, or 2-4-6-8, or on-and-on diet? (Going from 200, to 400, to 800, and back to 200 calories a day.) Did they give her support to stay healthy and get even healthier, or did they "support" her in her dream of getting to 100 pounds?

That's what I mean about being of two minds about these places. You must let them come to their own decisions for them to accept who and what they are. However, they're still mostly children, and this can turn into eating-disordered children talking to other ED kids and getting into a world of trouble.

Just as I don't believe talking to obese people makes you obese, I don't think that a normal girl can be talked into anorexia. But a girl can learn how to fake out their doctor's office during weigh-ins; how to vomit easily; how to hide evidence of not eating from her parents (who usually aren't looking for it anyway), etc. So if they're on the path to anorexia or bulimia, they can be taught how to get there sooner and more efficiently.

I wish we were all like the Buddhist meditation, unattached to food. I wish we could all think of food as nourishment, and while it's a pleasure to nourish us, it's nothing more than that, like the pleasure of seeing a daffodil in spring. You recognize it and enjoy it, but you don't live for it. There are more important things to live for.

I haven't read my blogs today--it was a crazy one. I'll get to them by tomorrow, by hook or by crook.