I have been pudgy for about 20 years, starting when I become a full-fledged emotional eater due to events in my life that I have written about recently. Emotional eating is a habit I learned from my mom and other family. To make things worse, we are genetically-predisposed to fatness, although that does not mean one has to overeat and gain weight. It is still a choice.

I understand now that overeating affects more than my own health. It contributes to global warming. As I wrote my posts about reducing my carbon footprint and developing a 2019 carbon budget that reduced the tons of CO2 that my activities emit, metaphors for dieting kept popping up in my brain. Gluttonous images persisted as I delved into the agricultural sources of carbon emissions, which is shocking. I started to piece together this new aspect of overeating: when we demand and eat more food, especially in a culture highly dependent on animal products (including dairy), we support a food production system that is contributing to global warming while also reinforcing food inequality.

I had already come to understand that overeating is also overspending, at least in my case. At the grocery store, I might buy goodies and other stuff that I don’t need to buy or eat. Eating out, even fast food, is great for quick meals and satisfies the need for emotional eating but costs money that I don’t need to spend. So I have been working on that. My big treat once a week now is the $1 chicken nuggets with zesty sauce from BK. Occasionally I buy a real lunch or breakfast at a restaurant.

So, I broke the link between overeating and overspending. Overall, however, I am still eating more than I need, and I am increasingly uncomfortable knowing that it is contributing to global warming and food inequalities. Here are some statistics resulting from an international study:

• Thirty-nine percent of adults worldwide are overweight, 13 percent even obese – with the trend increasing, says the World Health Organization (WHO). My emphasis: 39% of people are overweight, more than one-third of all humans. 
• At the same time, 795 million people are starving. Still, 1.3 billion tons of food are thrown away every year
• Almost 20 percent of the food made available to consumers worldwide is lost through overeating or waste alone.

After reading that study and other articles, I realized that over-eating is a form of food waste. American waste and over-consumption is legendary. We waste about 141 trillion calories worth of food every day. That adds up to about $165 billion per year — 4 times the amount of food Africa imports each year. You can find this stat and some other interesting yet startling information at One.org. 

And then, there is the matter of moving food via fuel-guzzling transport systems to white privilege people. I am not going there at the moment, though. I need to focus on overeating and an important question I am debating for myself:  Could my concern about reducing my carbon footprint provide the motivation to eat less?  I don’t seem to find motivation in the fact that eating less is better for my health. I get too many emotional benefits from eating. Furthermore, I have bought into the common notion that modern medicine will keep me alive as it did for my mom (pacemaker, defibrillator, artificial heart valve, titanium bones, etc).

So, again, will my previously touted concern for the greater good be enough to make me overcome the deeply ingrained habit of overeating? I am hoping the answer is yes; however, compared to living within my new carbon budget, not overeating is going to be a big challenge. It is so ingrained, so much a part of me. This whole carbon footprint thing is starting to pull me outside my comfort zone. But that is the point really. After decades of easy living, we all have to make the effort and it is going to hurt. But don’t feel sorry for me! My discomfort seems so trivial compared to that felt by the people around the world who don’t have enough to eat.

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