"The people who become addicted to food are the people who are missing love"
The people who become addicted to food are the people who are missing love. They start substituting with food. Osho says, “If you are really loved, you cannot eat too much. You will be surprised by this psychological discovery: that the people who are loved and are in love eat less. They eat always in a proportionate way. People who are not loved or are not in love eat too much.”
“It can fill them, can give them a feeling of being full, and they are feeling very empty because love is missed. Have you not watched it? Girls when they are unmarried are not fat; once they get married, they start getting fatter and fatter, and uglier and uglier. Why? Now there is no problem -- they have attained. And once they are married, the desire for love disappears. They become settled in the routine of life, they start taking everything for granted.”
“Love and food are deeply related, joined together. Hence it happens that whenever somebody loves you, you don’t eat much. If a woman is loved she remains lean thin and beautiful. If she is not loved she starts becoming fat, ugly, goes on accumulating; she starts eating too much. Or, vice versa too: if a woman does not want to be loved, she starts eating too much. That becomes a protection -- then nobody will be attracted towards her.
Have you watched it? If a beloved comes to your home, a friend has come, and you are so happy, and so full of love -- that day, appetite disappears. You don’t feel like eating -- as if something more subtle than food has fulfilled you, something more subtle than food is inside you and the emptiness is not there. You are full, you feel full. Miserable people eat too much, happy people don’t eat too much. The more happy a person, the less he is addicted to food -- because he has a higher food available: love. Love is food on a higher plane. If food is food for the body, love is food for the spirit.
Now even scientists are suspecting it. When a child is born, the mother can give just milk, bodily food. She may not give love -- then the child will suffer; his body will grow but his spirit will suffer. Just bodily nourishment is not enough: spiritual nourishment is needed. If a mother only gives food and not love then she is not a mother, she is only a nurse. And the child will suffer for his whole life -- something will remain stuck, ungrown, retarded. The child needs food, the child needs love: love is needed even more than food.
When a child is born, the mother can give just milk, bodily food. She may not give love,- then the child will suffer; his body will grow but his spirit will suffer. If a mother only gives food and not love then she is not a mother, she is only a nurse
Have you watched it? If a child is given love he does not bother about food much. If the mother loves the child she is always worried that the child is not drinking as much milk as he should. But if the mother is nonloving then the child drinks too much milk. In fact it is difficult to take him away from the breast because the child becomes afraid: love is not there, he has to depend only on physical food -- the subtle food is missing.
And this goes on happening in your whole life. Whenever you feel that you are missing love, you go on stuffing your body with food -- it becomes a substitute. Whenever people feel empty and they don’t have that thrill that love brings, that zest that love brings, that energy that love releases, they start stuffing their body with food. They have fallen back to their childhood; they are in a regressed state.
Children who are given enough love are never addicted much to food. Their spirit is so full: the higher is available -- who bothers about the lower?
Remember, all the religions have talked about fasting for a certain reason. Unless you are taken out of your food obsession prayer will not happen. Hence, fasting gives a great possibility to pray. I am not telling you to become a fast-addict. I am not telling you to start torturing yourself. But if you are a food-addict then fasting is the medicine. If you have been eating too much ten bring a balance.
Eating too much you remain too attached to the physical... and you cannot fly into the sky. You are too burdened: a little fasting will be helpful. And in fasting people have observed that their prayer becomes very easy, simple; it is no more a problem. Because when you are not burdened too much by food and the body, the spirit is weightless, can fly: the spirit has wings....”
J P Vaswani
