Fasting: The hunger that isn't hunger and the eating that never satisfies

Source: When my father taught me what real hunger is

I remember one night standing next to my father's chair while he read the newspaper. I said, 'I'm hungry,' and my father replied, 'No, you're not hungry. Go downstairs and find something.' I didn't understand that there was a difference between being hungry and wanting to eat. To me, the two were always the same. He explained to me that hunger is something you feel in the stomach, a real ache of emptiness, while the desire to eat is just boredom of the mouth. He spoke from the experience of someone who grew up in the Great Depression, where hunger was not a choice but a state of being. For him, my complaint was a kind of luxury I couldn't even grasp.

(Roxane Gay, *Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body*, 2017)

Explanation: The body as a fortress: When eating becomes fasting in reverse

In 2017, Roxane Gay wrote a book that is essentially Kafka’s dark twin: not “I couldn't find food that suited me,” but “food cannot fill the void.” Gay writes about a body she built as armor, as a fortress, after surviving sexual trauma. She gained weight—not because she loved to eat, but because she wanted to disappear. This is fasting in reverse: eating as an act of self-destruction, not pleasure. And only in retrospect does she realize that her body was a script she wrote in an attempt to control something when everything was out of control.

Perspective: The cycle of illusion: Between the gym and the fast-food joint

Body image has always been an important part of self-esteem, and the two shape each other. Low self-esteem can take a toll on the body through obesity or anorexia, and vice versa—a tendency toward weight gain or extreme thinness leads to poor body image. In our world, where self-esteem and body image matter so much, the psychological and physiological struggles only intensify, and we find ourselves sinking into them. In a confused world, gyms stand right next to fast-food joints, and walking and cycling paths are lined with cafés offering wonderful croissants so riders have a place to rest... Eating becomes a comfort, and exercise becomes a comfort from the comfort.

Going Deeper: Not by bread alone: The desire searching for meaning

The verse teaches that “man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord does man live” (Deuteronomy 8:3), meaning that life is not mere 'biology,' but 'meaning.' Human beings are defined not only by the faculty of speech, but primarily by will and longing. Animals have instincts and drives; human beings have will, not merely desire. This longing is raw, an active searching, a craving looking for an address—much like a pregnant woman who craves something and doesn't know what. To satisfy that longing, the easiest default is opening the fridge—maybe there's something satisfying in there; or maybe at the mall, or in a museum or library. Longing always moves through the body, through life itself, and food, for better or worse, confers meaning. The verse hints at this: meaning is not in the bread, but perhaps in the matzah (a play on motza, what proceeds), the bread of affliction.

Culture: Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights: When gluttony and fasting meet in hell

In the famous painting by Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, the pleasures of life are depicted by a circle of men riding bizarre beasts in an aimless procession, alongside naked figures, abundant fruit, and birds. On the right panel, Hell unfolds, where sinners are condemned to strange, gruesome deaths. Gluttony—needless eating—is no different from fasting; both are consumed with destroying the body and destroying meaning. Eating disorders emerge in response to longing, and this psychic longing transforms into physical pain—which, in the eyes of religions and individuals alike, endows it with meaning.