Eat for Nutrition and Pleasure

Liposuction is the most popular cosmetic surgical procedure performed in the United States. Liposuction, often termed liposculpture , can be used to enhance body shape. It is not a weight loss procedure. Obesity may be the single greatest problem in the United States. In the future, with young people becoming obese at ever increasing rates it will be the single greatest health problem that we face. What may not seem like a paradox, is! That is, people have increasing weight with disproportionate body shapes and it would seem logical that removing fat would be an appropriate antidote.
Here comes the paradox. I have often said that a person who enjoys food can enjoy life, and one who does not is doomed to deprivation. Of course, I did not say eat to excess. Yet, there are some truths that need to be addressed to understand how food contributes to our welfare and how it may detract.
First, food is necessary for survival. I will let it go at that. Second, we have 5 given senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and hearing. All except sound is involved in eating and even that can be argued to have a role. To deprive the senses is to reduce the experience of life. Third, quality of life is significantly impacted by each of us surrendering to sensuous pleasures (in a non-injurious manner) and I do not know of anything more sensuous than the pleasures of eating. Withhold from enjoying the lustfulness of eating and you must withhold all pleasures of sensuality.
Age is a determinant of how and what we eat. Hormonal changes in the maturing body make men out of women and women out of men. The older one is, the more amorphous body shape becomes. Accompanying physical sexual indeterminism is a desirable increase in weight which is necessary to project a youthful appearance. As experience matures our senses, there is an opportunity to develop gustatory appreciation rarely possible in the young. Caviar and champagne anyone? Antithetically, a reluctance to evolve and enjoy eating because of fear of weight gain accomplishes the opposite of the desired outcome. Old people who are thin look older.
Lastly, many in American society eat too much and get little pleasure from their experience. Oversimplified, these people are trying to fill an emotional hole and much like Sisyphus they are doomed to roll the stone up the hill only to see it roll down again in an endless sequence that defines their lives. It is beyond this discussion to lecture on the merits of intelligent eating and exercise. Rather, I choose to emphasize the following:
Eating is as essential to emotional well being as it is to physical survival.
Eating may be the single greatest pleasure of life from which all other pleasures derive.
Gaining weight in moderation is healthy and not gaining weight is a sign of impaired health.
For those who choose, liposculpture is an excellent enhancement which may diminish the gender changes of age and weight gain; it is never a solution for weight loss or a substitute for intelligent eating and exercise.
Whether to eat to live or to live to eat is not the question. To comfortably indulge one’s senses to promote emotional well being, is.