As obesity rates skyrocket in America and health experts provide statistics on our burgeoning rolls of flab, the correct understanding of why a person is overweight is drowned out by the innumerable gnashing of jaws eager to force down that last pound of greasy burger.

Telling a person to eat a smaller portion of that greasy burger, however, or even to exercise more addresses not in the least the motivations for gorging on that burger.

First to understand is that you have a wrong relationship with food and that the food isn't the problem. What is wrong is the wrong that enters into you when you eat: pride, forgetfulness, guilt, and other failures of the human spirit. You overeat to reinforce this wrong in you. Overeating even serves to redirect the blood away from the brain to prevent you from realizing this.

Eating should be a little thing, but it has become a big thing. We should eat only to revitalize us towards achieving higher levels of human existence, such as understanding why we had formerly eaten too much.