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What's In Pandora's Lunch Box?
12/21/07
The Emotional and Psychological Side of Weight Control
By Colleen Laing
A 1950's movie poster shows a woman shrieking, leaning backwards, with her hands hiding her face. She's a victim; she cannot escape the horror.
The perpetrator lurks in the shadows. Its threatening presence draws inexorably closer. It's wrapped in a pleated paper cup, batting it's frosted eyelashes, and tantalizing her with its vanilla bean and white sugar scent. Against her will, against every moral fiber in her body, she is drawn to it.
Yes, she will eat this cupcake, and then another and another. She'll hate herself not only after, but while she's eating it. She'll die a little inside with each moist, tasty, overly sweet bite. But she'll keep going and going.
Why?
Why does food have this power over our protagonist? Just like every recurring nightmare, the bad guy has the power because the victim gave it to him. Did the cupcake force itself on her? I know it feels that way, but it's not.
Things started getting out of control when our protagonist, let's call her Lola, decided that cupcakes are bad. They're baaaaad. Naughty. To be avoided at all costs. Off limits forever. Amen.
When Lola sublimated her desire, it became illicit. She could not be a good person and have a cupcake. Cupcake eating is shameful and weak.
Human nature being what it is, cupcakes are now more alluring to Lola than they have ever been before. The cupcake begins to tantalize her, becoming a need, a craving, an inevitability.
At this point the cupcake becomes an animate object, stalking Lola's dreams, appearing in her cupboard, even forcing itself upon her in the grocery store. And if she eats one she is bad, she has failed.
So, hey, if you're goin' to hell for one cupcake, might as well make it worth the ride and eat at least a dozen, right?
Next time... How to get out of this trap.
