Sunday, October 10, 2010

The Fight Between Desire and Knowledge

The other evening I was preparing soup for supper, and Ricki walked in , asking if she could eat a soy patty. I agreed, but indicated that if she did, she would need to choose whether to eat bread with the soy or with the soup. She said “Oh, I’ll save it for the soup.” I was genuinely surprised at this, being a very rare occurrence of any ability by Ricki to postpone gratification, or to even attempt to forego unneeded calories..
However, if I thought that Ricki was making progress in controlling her eating, I was astounded when she unabashedly served herself 4 slices of bread to eat with her soup (before I intervened).
What was interesting was to see the interplay between her knowledge that overeating is bad, and her desire to overeat. A real tug of war. But she was not as adapt as most of us in camouflaging our indiscretions…..

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