I Learned This about Food
First given in a dramatic presentation at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, New York City.

Aesthetic Realism, founded by the American philisopher Eli Siegel, has identified contempt as the "disposition in every person to think he will be for himself by making less of the outside world." My life can be used to understand one form contempt can take in a person, and also the best thing in us—our hope to like the world honestly.

In An Outline of Aesthetic Realism, Mr. Siegel writes about food:

A child grows from 12 pounds to 80 pounds through making the world himself. In eating anything, we assimilate the world; that is, the world becomes like ourselves.

I learned from Aesthetic Realism that whenever we see food, there is a question that is not stated but should be: Is this a chance for me to respect the world or have contempt for it? My attitude was to grab disproportionately and then dismiss.

For ten years—from age fourteen to twenty four—I suffered from a combination of the eating disorders anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Anorexia is self-starvation and excessive weight loss. Bulimia is eating non-stop, then disgorging all of what you eat.

I thought this would never change, and the side effects were devastating. I suffered from hair loss, loss of periods, dizziness, kidney infections, dehydration and cysts on my knees from excessive exercise. At this time I was very depressed and lonely, and my parents were desperate. They took me to doctors, psychologists and weight control centers. I took diet pills and later was addicted to speed.

A psychiatrist told me I was suffering from chronic depression, and his plan was to enter me into group therapy and administer antidepressants. This frightened me more, because no one had a clear explanation of the cause or seemed hopeful that my trouble about food would stop. I couldn't read, couldn't care deeply for a man, and I couldn't sing, something I had once loved to do. I spent most of my time alone.

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