On Appetite
“He’s out of surgery but he’s not hungry.“
If you’ve had a loved one in the hospital, or if you’ve been in the hospital yourself, you’ve seen the tell-tale signs of appetite. Appetite is an indicator of health and trajectory. When a patient in the hospital regains their appetite, appetite signals that they’re regaining health and getting back on their feet. When a patient does not regain appetite, it is a sign of trouble.
Appetite is one of the signals/signs of health. Guard your appetites. The Bible says, guard your heart. But is it a declaration of guarding your tastes? Your appetites? And we’ve all known someone who disliked alcohol or tobacco, but kept going and grew to love it. Same with coffee. Who likes coffee when they first taste it? Decades down the road of drinking coffee, my coffee is so strong, it’s embarrassing. But it didn’t happen in one day. And no one will drink my coffee and I don’t offer it to anyone because of the embarrassment of people trying it. “You like this stuff?!!!! Wait, you made it this way??!!!”
Health is indicated by an appetite for healthy food, healthy relationships, healthy struggle.
We tend see our appetites as concrete. Appetite gets noisy and appears unmalleable, immovable, and permanent. (Songs like John Mayer’s, “Who you love,” George Strait’s, “You Can’t Make a Heart Love Somebody” and Selena Gomez’s, “The Heart Wants What It Wants” are signs that this phenomenon is prevalent.)
What if we see appetite as malleable?
To what extent is your appetite malleable?
When appetites are loud, how can you manipulate them? Can you view the appetite as something outside of yourself? Like a pet or another person who shows up.
______________________________________
What if tactics exist to shape appetite?
1. Order matters….Dessert first will wreck your appetite. I’ve stopped eating sugar and bread during the week. It not only changes my nutrition right now, it changes how I desire food in a few hours. Friday night and Saturday morning, I eat sugar. But my appetite has changed. I don’t even crave sugar any more. And when I eat sugar, it’s not as satisfying as it used to be.
2. Degree matters….the slippery slope is real. Can you set your appetite today one degree back into alignment where you want to be? And vigilantly guard your appetite from the bad appetites of the past?
______________________________________
I’m reading Augustine’s Confessions these days. Here are a couple of excellent quotes about appetite from my new friend Augustine:
“The memory must, instead, be a kind of mental belly, where happiness and sorrow are like sweet and sour food, which—once they are digested—are retained but no longer tasted.”
“Our world ambitions left a sour taste in our mouth, by Your merciful provision.”
And a quote from the Apostle Paul:
“Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.”
Perhaps our days are shaped by our appetites. And our appetite for appetite. What if we can shape them more than we know?