Overeating and overreading

Gerhard and Gert differ in their excesses.

...

Gerhard: I need to lose weight.

Gert: You could start by eating less.

Gerhard: I NEED food. Keeps me alive.

Gert: If you weren’t so, well, BIG, you wouldn’t need to eat such amounts. It’s chicken and egg.

Gerhard: I know people who eat heaps. Okay, so other factors come into it. Anyway, how about YOUR excesses? You READ way too much. You’re a book glutton.

Gert: At least I READ all the books I buy.

Gerhard: You do. I grant you that. Makes you a bit of a rare bird. But don’t you feel your swells a bit after reading?

Gert: Like getting an OBESE HEAD? I will say at times I feel a bit overwhelmed and can scarcely waddle – mentally.

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Voice-over

Excessive intake of food, excessive intake of knowledge. One grist is concrete, the other abstract.

The more we shove in, the more we push out?

Could that be why the ascetic who eats a little, then ruminates, who reads a little, then meditates, is neither fat, nor big-headed? And often lives long?

Less can be more.

Dieting by diversion

Janet and Gladys are in a meeting. Both sometimes worry about getting overweight. Janet shows Gladys the story about Nancy Makin.

...

Janet: Did you see this article about the woman who lost weight without even trying? Went down from 500 pounds to 170?

Gladys: I saw the story yesterday. And didn’t go outside for twelve years!

Janet: And then got help by chatting anonymously online.

Gladys: So the Internet helped. People communicated with her because of what she wrote, not because of what she looked like.

Janet: The bit I liked was that as a result she didn’t diet, or have surgery, or take medication to slim down. She did something else and she forgot about binge eating.

Gladys: Like the best way to get what you want is to help someone else get what they want.

Janet: Not quite the same. Maybe a closer analogy is to get better at another language by studying something else in that language.