Counting Calories

I cannot become obsessed with the elements of my body that are real as defined by sight, touch, taste and smell, but only the signifiers that give feedback to my body image. These signifiers range from "state of body" feelings, to how one actually sees their own body in a mirror, all of which can radically alter as a day progresses as the body image is constantly reevaluated by my own conscience.

I cannot become obsessed about how my body feels, but only the body image itself. One might argue that using substances to change how one's body feels can be obsessive to the point of addiction, but it is clearly changing the perception of feeling, not the direct feeling one recieves from their body. Alcohol, when it is in our bloodstream, changes our bodies directly and immediately but more importantly it changes how we perceive our bodies. It is the impact on perception that is essential, not the dehydration, high blood pressure and impaired mental faculty.

In the same way, I won't exercise because it makes me fit, I will exercise because it allows me to change how I perceive my body image. I seek to be fit based on a measurable signifier. Enhancing the body image is dangled like a carrot. In Six Sigma speak, it is the statement "anything that can be measured can be improved". This might seem childish to those who are are comfortable with connecting the body, the signifier and the image, but for me, these are very different spheres and connecting them as related goals is impossible.

That is why I feel drawn to a a web site like this (www.fitday.com). It allows me to understand why the calorie counting craze has been so strong in our culture, all the way back to when my mother diet-ed in the 1970s. It allows you to create a portrait of your body image that is at once removed from the body itself and yet a perfect system for modifying, comparing, and adjusting. Always ripe for revision as I constantly alter my image defined by graphs of intake, output and waste. By modifying this image, I percieve I am changing my behavior.

Does it really change behavior? Of course not, but it does create obsessive behavior. What will drive me to change my behavior? Only when I willingly commit to the worship of the body image, one which I am constantly rejecting. It is a crisis of faith, one that posits that if you believe in the body image, you can attain the body image which is forever your true mirror.