Five ways to tell if you’re a glutton (even when food isn’t the problem) …

Chef Chris Cosentino, Food Network star and executive chef at San Francisco’s Incanto restaurant, once came up with a practical solution for people who occasionally indulge until an ordinary waistband becomes an enemy. He created the “Gluttony Pants,” trousers equipped with three buttons that allow the waist to expand as the meal progresses. The buttons are labeled “Piglet,” “Sow” and “Boar.”

There is something funny about pants designed to accommodate overeating, but there is also something revealing about them. Gluttony may be one of the few sins for which people are willing to design more comfortable clothing. Christians can be quick to identify and condemn certain behaviors as sinful while treating gluttony almost affectionately, as though excessive indulgence were more of an amusing personality trait than a spiritual problem.

Pastor Tyler Edwards of Crossover Church tells a story that captures just how easily excess can become entertaining when there is always a little more available:

Have you ever been to Lamberts Cafe? If not, I highly recommend it. The waiters wear suspenders and bow ties, the meals are served on metal skillets. The drinks come in the largest plastic cup you will ever see, and there are peanuts on the floor. It is a haven for gluttony. The portions at Lamberts are about three times the size of what a normal person could consume. In addition to that they continually toss rolls at you, offer you fried okra, potatoes, and various other side items. As if that was not enough however, everything is all you can eat. If you order a steak and somehow manage to eat it all, they will bring you another one.

A few months ago my wife and I were out of town at a marriage seminar in Branson. One of the nights there was a date night. So we went to Lamberts Cafe for dinner. I ordered a steak and somehow managed to eat all of it. I had four barrel-sized glasses of sweet tea and a small mountain of fried okra. The waitress brought out another steak as if to say: “I bet you can’t eat this! Oh yea, you can eat that steak, sure – but can you eat this steak?” Like any reasonable male would look at this and say, no, I don’t need it. I am full. No need to try and challenge me to eat more I am bigger than your games.

Actually I dove into that steak like a diver into a pool at the Olympics. I was not about to be scared off by a second steak, and I ate almost all of it. Bad move. I ate WAY more than I needed to. As a result my stomach was killing me. By the time we got back to the hotel, I thought I was feeling better. So we went to the hot tub to relax. Instead of relaxing though, the hot tub broiled the two steaks I had eaten and left me feeling really nauseous. It was terrible. I could not get up in the morning for the first session of the conference on account of my unbearable stomach pain, and it was all Lambert’s fault.

The humor works because almost everyone understands the experience. There is a point at which enjoyment has already done its job. Hunger has been satisfied, pleasure has been experienced, and nothing of value is gained by continuing. Yet something inside says, More.

Food makes the problem easy to see, but it can also make gluttony easy to misunderstand. Gluttony is larger than the dinner table because human appetite is larger than hunger. People consume comfort, entertainment, possessions, luxury, stimulation, attention, and experiences. Whenever a created pleasure offers another helping, the appetite for more can appear.

Consider information. In 2019, a single minute of internet activity reportedly included 188 million emails, 18.1 million text messages and 4.5 million YouTube videos viewed. Forecasts of the expanding digital universe became almost absurd in scale. Estimates projected hundreds of exabytes of new data being created every day by 2025. An exabyte is so enormous that comparisons themselves become difficult to comprehend.

And nearly all of this abundance can now reach a device carried in a pocket. A phone can function as an encyclopedia, library, newspaper, theater, classroom, shopping mall, and almost bottomless stream of novelty. Yet unlimited access to information has not produced unlimited wisdom. It has made possible a distinctly modern form of excess: consuming another article, another video, another opinion, another notification and another explanation without ever stopping long enough to understand what has already been taken in.

The Apostle Paul was addressing a particular problem in the church rather than predicting the internet, but one line from his description has an uncomfortable resonance in an age of endless information: “(Such women are forever following new teachings, but they are never able to understand the truth.)” 2 Timothy 3:7. Information can be valuable and learning can be virtuous, yet even learning can become consumption without digestion. A person can know more and more facts while becoming no wiser.

That broader understanding of appetite makes the question more uncomfortable and more useful: How can a person tell whether gluttony is actually present in his or her life?

1. You regularly go beyond enough. Gluttony begins with excess. Proverbs speaks directly about people who indulge beyond proper bounds: “Do not carouse with drunkards or feast with gluttons, for they are on their way to poverty, and too much sleep clothes them in rags,” Proverbs 23:20–21. The pairing of drunkenness and gluttony is significant. Both show a legitimate human appetite being allowed to move beyond appropriate restraint.

Excess cannot be identified merely by looking at quantity in isolation. A celebratory feast may involve more food than an ordinary Tuesday dinner without making the celebration gluttonous. A person may spend an entire Saturday enjoying a hobby without having an excessive appetite for leisure. Circumstances, purpose, and proportion all have to be considered.

The revealing question is what happens once reasonable sufficiency has been reached. Do I regularly continue because there is a legitimate reason for more, or primarily because more gratification is available? Do I often recognize that I have had enough and then deliberately push past enough anyway? In what areas of my life do I routinely take more simply because I can?

Those questions apply just as readily to a shopping cart, streaming service, or luxurious lifestyle as they do to a plate.

2. Enough rarely feels like enough. Excess describes what a person does; insatiability reaches deeper into what appetite demands. Ecclesiastes captures the problem in a simple sentence: “All people spend their lives scratching for food, but they never seem to have enough,” Ecclesiastes 6:7.

There is a difference between enjoying more and requiring more in order to feel satisfied. Healthy enjoyment can reach completion. A good meal ends. A purchase serves its purpose. Entertainment has been enjoyed. Rest has restored energy. The experience can be appreciated without immediately demanding another dose of it.

Gluttonous appetite has trouble arriving at that point. Satisfaction keeps moving just beyond the next indulgence. The person may have plenty and still experience life principally through what could be added.

The questions become intensely practical. Can I enjoy something good and genuinely say, “That is enough”? When I receive what I wanted, am I satisfied, or does my attention quickly turn toward the next opportunity for gratification? Have I gradually increased what I consider necessary for comfort, pleasure, luxury, or enjoyment?

The ability to recognize enough is closely connected to contentment. Paul wrote, “Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have,” Philippians 4:11. Contentment does not require rejecting pleasure, it allows pleasure to remain pleasure without turning it into a demand for more.

3. Your appetite has become difficult to govern. A person may have powerful desires without being controlled by them. The decisive question is whether desire remains governable.

Proverbs gives a vivid picture of life without that restraint: “A person without self-control is like a city with broken-down walls,” Proverbs 25:28. In the ancient world, a city without walls was exposed. It lacked the boundaries that protected what was inside. The image makes self-control much more than grim determination. Boundaries preserve order.

The same is true of appetite. Someone who governs an appetite can enjoy something and can also limit it. The person can postpone pleasure when something more important requires attention, stop when continuing would be excessive, and abstain when indulgence would be unwise.

That makes several questions especially revealing. When I have a sound reason to stop, can I stop? When wisdom says to wait, can I wait? Can I willingly go without a pleasure I strongly enjoy, or does my mind immediately begin constructing reasons why this occasion should be an exception? When my considered judgment and my appetite disagree, which one usually wins?

An appetite becomes dangerous when it acquires veto power over good judgment.

4. Self-control disappears in the presence of gratification. Self-control is tested where desire is strongest. It is easy to believe an appetite is under control when nothing desirable is available. The more revealing moment comes when the food is on the table, the sale is one click away, another episode begins automatically, the upgrade is affordable, the vacation can be made more luxurious, or another hour of comfort is available.

This is why the Bible can speak so simply about physical indulgence: “Do you like honey? Don’t eat too much, or it will make you sick!” Proverbs 25:16. Honey was good. The problem appeared when enjoyment ceased to have an appropriate boundary.

Self-control allows a person to make that distinction while the pleasure is actually present. Do I establish reasonable limits and then honor them when gratification is available? Do my standards change once I begin indulging? Do I repeatedly explain away limits because I want what lies beyond them? Are my boundaries being set by wisdom, or by how much gratification I can obtain before something forces me to stop?

A person who can stop only when the package is empty, the account is depleted, the program ends, exhaustion arrives, or some external circumstance removes the opportunity has reason to ask whether self-control is really setting the boundary.

5. Gratification is taking a place it should not have. The most serious indication of gluttony appears when appetite begins reorganizing life around itself. Paul describes people in stark terms: “They are headed for destruction. Their god is their appetite, they brag about shameful things, and they think only about this life here on earth,” Philippians 3:19.

Calling appetite a “god” shows how far ordinary desire can rise. Something created to be enjoyed has acquired authority. Gratification no longer receives an appropriate place among other goods; other goods begin giving way to gratification.

One of the best ways to discover whether that has happened is to examine what repeatedly gets sacrificed. Does satisfying an appetite consume money that should be stewarded differently, time that belongs to responsibilities, attention owed to relationships, sleep needed by the body, generosity that could have benefited someone else, or energy needed for worthwhile work? When gratification and a greater responsibility compete, which one repeatedly receives priority?

The object can change while the underlying problem remains recognizable. One person can organize life around food, another around luxury, another around entertainment, another around comfort, another around possessions, and another around an endless appetite for stimulation or information. In each case, the crucial evidence is found in what appetite is permitted to demand and what the person repeatedly gives up to satisfy it.

Gluttony deserves more serious attention than an expandable waistband and a joke after Thanksgiving dinner. Created pleasures are gifts, and the capacity to enjoy them is part of being human. But a gift is enjoyed most freely when a person can receive it gratefully, delight in it appropriately, and then let it be enough.

Perhaps that is why the ordinary word “enough” can become such a searching spiritual word. The person who can say it freely is able to enjoy abundance without needing to be ruled by abundance. The person who consistently cannot say it may have discovered something about appetite that deserves far more attention than the size of a meal.

Scotty