Ok, I should be showering, so I'll make this quick. Regular writing is one of the pluses of this convalescence, but Fuzz has offered to drive me to my community choir rehearsal tonight to help with my boredom. I can sit and sing only as much as I feel up to.
Sheila brought up a good point in her comment on Whew. Overeating is sanctioned, unless it makes you gain weight, and that's why so many become bulimic (overeating usually in secret and then doing something to oneself to "get rid of" the food, by purging or abusing laxitives, or fasting for a long period), and that's a whole other thread I'd like to get into some time. It was quite a revelation when I discovered just how much I had in common with bulimics and anorexics, and indeed have exhibited many of those behaviours at one time or another. It was just always less frequent than the bingeing or overeating so for years it never entered my mind that that might be what I was doing.
Now, I don't know if it actually happens as much as I think, as I am convinced the world revolves around me, but it seems that when you are overweight, people scruitize everything you eat in public or even put on the conveyor belt at the grocery. Around the age of 10, I vaguely remember my mother, in some irritation, telling me to stop eating while her family visited. I was surprised, because I didn't think I was eating differently than usual, but whether or not she meant it, I got the message there was something to be ashamed of. I was already learning the dieting dance by that age, so I knew to be ashamed of my appearence.
When I was an adult, I could do things like closet eating, and even go to the extent of creating stories like "Oh yeah, I'm buying these bags of cookies, a litre of ice cream and bucket of fried chicken because my family of 6 is having a party" when I was actually going home to eat as much as I could before Fuzz came home... I know a guy through OA NYC who says he'd rotate his evening purchases through local delis and tried to give the clerks the impression that he was a party planner for adolescents!
Honest, I don't know how many times I went through drive-thrus doing an act of ordering a couple of meals or a dozen donuts, making it sound like I was trying to remember what a bunch of people had told me to buy. In reality, the clerks probably could care less, and if they didn't, why do we care anyway? Oh, that is an interesting aspect of our problem, actually... no, I'll write about that, later, later.
1 comment:
I swear honey, people have more sympathy for crack addicts, heroine addicts, alcoholics, you name it, than they do for compulsive overeaters. Not whining, it's just true. Everyone knows it's true. They just don't want to admit it. :)
I know exactly what you mean about feeling like everyone is watching you. They're not. Trust me. But it certainly feels that way at times.
Sometimes they are though. I remember the time that my exhusband's mother in law counted how many rolls I had eaten at dinner. "You had four rolls at dinner!" "You counted?" "No, my mother told me." "Your mother. counted. how many rolls. I had. at dinner.?"
Should have been the first clue. 7 years later he actually wanted alimony from me, a lowly secretary. Anyway, that's beside the point.
There is a point somewhere. Ok, here it is: we feel like everyone is watching us because we ourselves are so obsessed with food. We've been trying to lose weight for God knows how many years. And one mustn't forget that food is way more than just food to us. It's everything. :)
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