"I'm only human"

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="272" caption="Vitruvian Man, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice Italiano: Uomo Vitruviano, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venizia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)"][/caption]

This has become one of most often-used excuse for everything from overeating to goofing off.  And I don't want to hide behind that one.  That said, there is one area of my diet/eating style that befuddles me: If I am successful in keeping my food/eating commitments for even a single day, I assume an attitude of "Gee, that was easy!" and conclude that since it was no big deal, I can do it again at anytime, and therefore can go ahead and indulge.  That, of course, doesn't help, because it produces the logical next feeling of guilt.  There, I did it again! I'm no good, I can't stick to it, it's bigger than I am.  I wrote the book on focusing on things other than food or eating; focusing on gratitudes; on friends and relationships; on hobbies and pastimes.  And yet, here I am being "human."  I despise that excuse, because it is so final, so definitive: In effect, being human is all we can be.  We will never be anything but human.  Does that limit us?  It shouldn't.  On the contrary - being human is an inspired, evolved existence, one that should propel us to be better than simple automatons in the way we conduct ourselves in relation to our environment, in the way we behave, in our choices.  Indeed, as humans, we have choices that go beyond our baser instincts, therefore, being human elevates us, rather than condemns us to an existence of simply responding to our urges.

Eating=Weight; Weight=Body Size

All the media efforts notwithstanding, it is very difficult to make a direct connection between eating and weight, or between weight and how I look.  The connection only exists intellectually.  It's what we've been taught.  The reality is that we are attempting to connect two things remote from each other: weight is quite a remote effect of how much and what we eat; and weight is also a remote measure of what our bodies look like. 

Consider, for example, the immediate effect you would get by putting your hand on an open flame.  Cause and effect would occur instantly, and the learning "curve" would not even be a curve.  But if you don't like the way your body looks, changing it requires a leap of faith.  You are asked to suspend your instincts and trust in some intellectual instruction to manipulate your eating.  Eating is to a large degree instinctual, and retraining your style of eating takes a great deal of effort.  But the most difficult part is to connect the dots: how much food you are eating+what kind of food you are eating=how much you weigh=what your body looks like.

This is a stretch, by any account.  Is there an easier, softer way?  I suppose the only way is to restructure our thinking, our attitudes and our language.  It is through language that we communicate words (and ideas/concepts) such as "losing weight" when what we mean is "have a smaller waist."  This is quite inadequate, of course, because we are doing battle with our instincts to try to achieve something physical that matches an outer model.