If you're anything like me, you might haved entered January looking a little more like Saint Nicholas, with that famous belly that shakes like a bowlful of jelly, than you did just a few weeks back. The seemingly endless round of holiday parties, cookie exchanges and yummy homemade gifts always do a number on my best intentions to have a healthy holiday season. January is the inevitable time to regroup and think about how to reverse some of that year-end weight gain. Lots of us will have made resolutions about slimming down and getting into shape, and many of us are already wondering how we're ever going to keep those resolutions.
It's a great American tradition, right? You overindulge and then you think of ever-more creative ways to shape up (and then you feel bad about it if your best intentions don't lead to real change). That's all well and good, but I sometimes get a little uneasy when I think about the other major story that's more hidden in our culture: hunger. Real hunger, brought about by poverty and underemployment and homelessness.
It's such a jarring dichotomy, and so perfectly illustrates the strange world in which we live--a world so full of cheap and filling food that many people have trouble keeping weight off; a world in which obesity contributes to some of the deadliest and most pervasive diseases faced by our population; a world in which being thin is such a status symbol that some people starve themselves in misguided attempts to look cool or sexy; a world in which far too many people go to bed hungry; a world that cannot figure out how to make sure that all children start their school day with a full stomach. How does one find a healthy balance in such a world?
I think one of the reasons that the media spends so much time on these two problems is that they're intractable. The poor (and the hungry) we will always have with us. So too with our love handles and beer bellies: it seems we will always have them with us as well.
A few years ago Weight Watchers started a campaign called "Lose for Good" that confronts our society's twin problems of obesity and hunger in one coordinated effort. The idea is that the company donates money to two hunger-fighting organizations (Share Our Strength and Action Against Hunger) according to the amount of weight that members lose during a set period of time. More pounds lost equals more money contributed. Since the program began, Weight Watchers has donated about four million dollars to these charities.
Additionally, members are encouraged to bring in food donations that can go to local organizations. A Weight Watchers center in Warson Woods (of which I am a member) collected food for the food pantry run by Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Webster Groves. During the seven weeks of the campaign, the group lost 3388 pounds and collected 900 pounds of food.
It was inspiring to hear of people bringing in food that equalled in weight what they had lost through hard work and detrmination; it somehow made very real the connection between the good they were doing for themselves and the good they could do for others. For me, it was a reminder that the best things in life--love, generosity, kindness--are never a zero-sum game. The more I give away, the more there is for me and for everyone else.
Now that the holiday season is behind us, many people who have been focused on helping others during the months of November and December will not put charity or outreach at the top of their New Year to-do lists. Frankly, those things kind of fall off the radar once the 100 Neediest Cases no longer show up in our daily newspaper and the Salvation Army bells no longer ring in front of every grocery store.
But we ought to find ways to get helping others back on the radar. Food pantries, feeding centers, and homeless shelters need help all year long; in fact, some extra shelters open up just during the winter months to try to keep people off the streets when the temperature plunges. And in the summer there are children who are lose their chance for a free school lunch, sometimes the only nutritious meal they eat all day.
It's not too late for us to add to our just one more resolution to our list: to find regular ways to support one or more of these organizations, all year long. Your place of worship probably collects canned goods for a local food pantry; can you get in the habit of bringing in at least one item every week? There are so many easy ways to make small, steady contributions, and some of them are even free. For example, you can go to The Hunger Site and click on a button, and a cup of food will be donated to a reputable charity. One cup of food per click. Maybe that's the only way to end hunger in our time--one can, one cup, one click, one resolution at a time.
