I Battle With Weight Issues
Food pushers can be a real problem around the holidays. People feel they must get you to eat all that delicious holiday food. You are scoffing at tradition and scorning their hospitality if you don't.
"Aunt Minnie's feelings will be hurt if you don't try it! It's our special family recipe."
"No, no, I won't hear of it. Nobody diets at my house!"
"Come on, one piece of cake won't hurt you!" (Sometimes they appeal to other guests for their opinion about it. Someone always says, "It's all right just this once.")
"It's a holiday! You can diet tomorrow."
"Now come on, we're ALL having a piece! You're making us feel guilty!"
(This, I admit, is the one I've been weakest about--It's like you are purposely making everyone feel bad at a festive occasion. If you hold out, you lose points with this group).
Then there's the ones who just keep putting the desert in front of you. You keep handing it back, but they refuse to accept it back. They act cute, like it was a joke. It winds up back on your plate no matter what you say or do. You are stuck with the cake in front of you. You will have to stare at that piece of cake (or make a point of not staring at it) until everyone is finished eating. If you really want to eat this rich calorie dense food, you will need a lot of extra willpower, plus you will endure much teasing throughout that time. ("We're all waiting for you to eat it...! Come on now, you know you really want to eat it!") This is the one that makes me very angry--fortunately, too upset and angry to eat anything! So I guess that this one is the least destructive to my weight loss struggle...But it makes me quietly angry every time.
The same people who would never think of offering an alcoholic beverage to someone who just got out of an alcoholic rehab program, who would never even consider offering cigarettes to a person trying to quit smoking, will cheerfully move heaven and earth to get a fat person to eat rich food they're trying to avoid.
My theory is that if you are the fattest person in the room, they don't want you to lose weight because it shakes up the social pecking order; if you get slim, they might now be the fattest person in the room. They (perhaps unconciously) like you being the way you are, they're comfortable with it and they don't want you to change.
Years ago I figured out that there is no compromise with these people. They are going to get you to eat their cake (or pie or special scalloped potato recipe) no matter what you do or say.
Your choices:
Eat the cake, hate yourself later.
Eat the cake, then exercise like crazy or go on a fast the next day.
Refuse the cake adamantly and don't cave in, be the center of what will rapidly become a small embarrassing scene (most of the time, everyone will take the hostess's side)...But DO NOT eat the cake.
The latter is the best approach in terms of sticking to your eating plan. If you cave in, even once, you will never be let alone in such situations in the future. But you will have to deal with being embarrassed, as well as putting out extra willpower, and you will have to deal with using extreme and repeated assertiveness. If, like most of us fat people, you are also awkward socially, and coming from a low status social position, it will not add up to a fun time. In fact, if you do not stick to your diet, you will have nothing positive to remember about this social event at all--the best motivator for sticking with it and not caving in.
In other words, there is no good, happy or easy way out. You will have to pay extra social dues for taking good care of yourself...or be a fool and cave in. And the person teasing you and repeatedly placing the cake before you will, ironically, have no respect for you if you cave in.
I am considering being more aggressive (as opposed to assertive) with such people. Like getting up and taking the cake back into the kitchen, waiting there, and then confronting the cake pushing hostess when she goes into the kitchen.
My fantasy: Hostess puts cake on my plate for third time while she teases me about it and everyone laughs. I pick up the plate, quickly turn it over, and SMASH it down flat against the dinner plate or the table. Then I get up, get my stuff, and make like a tree and LEAVE. It's a great little fantasy but I doubt I could actually do it. Fun to imagine--fat chick strikes back.
I've attempted to talk to people ahead of time, explaining that I have a health problem I'm addressing, so please understand that I won't be eating desert or other calorie dense foods. It has never worked; they just agree with you, confide that they, too, have to watch their weight, and assure you they understand... and then they wind up pushing rich food at you anyway because "just this once won't hurt!"
The worst ones, of course, are the ones who have serious weight issues themselves; your diet makes them feel guilty, so getting you to eat what you shouldn't makes them feel better. If they can prove that it's impossible, then they don't have to do it themselves.
I have decided to limit my social life to those who are willing and able to support my attempts toward better health and happiness. I just get too angry with the food pushers. It ruins my dinner. I don't have that many friends, but at least I will know that my friends are on my side, not on the side of the drug companies, the surgeons, the sugar cartel, and the high fructose corn syrup brightly dyed food companies. I need real friends, not people who enjoy my lower social status.
"Aunt Minnie's feelings will be hurt if you don't try it! It's our special family recipe."
"No, no, I won't hear of it. Nobody diets at my house!"
"Come on, one piece of cake won't hurt you!" (Sometimes they appeal to other guests for their opinion about it. Someone always says, "It's all right just this once.")
"It's a holiday! You can diet tomorrow."
"Now come on, we're ALL having a piece! You're making us feel guilty!"
(This, I admit, is the one I've been weakest about--It's like you are purposely making everyone feel bad at a festive occasion. If you hold out, you lose points with this group).
Then there's the ones who just keep putting the desert in front of you. You keep handing it back, but they refuse to accept it back. They act cute, like it was a joke. It winds up back on your plate no matter what you say or do. You are stuck with the cake in front of you. You will have to stare at that piece of cake (or make a point of not staring at it) until everyone is finished eating. If you really want to eat this rich calorie dense food, you will need a lot of extra willpower, plus you will endure much teasing throughout that time. ("We're all waiting for you to eat it...! Come on now, you know you really want to eat it!") This is the one that makes me very angry--fortunately, too upset and angry to eat anything! So I guess that this one is the least destructive to my weight loss struggle...But it makes me quietly angry every time.
The same people who would never think of offering an alcoholic beverage to someone who just got out of an alcoholic rehab program, who would never even consider offering cigarettes to a person trying to quit smoking, will cheerfully move heaven and earth to get a fat person to eat rich food they're trying to avoid.
My theory is that if you are the fattest person in the room, they don't want you to lose weight because it shakes up the social pecking order; if you get slim, they might now be the fattest person in the room. They (perhaps unconciously) like you being the way you are, they're comfortable with it and they don't want you to change.
Years ago I figured out that there is no compromise with these people. They are going to get you to eat their cake (or pie or special scalloped potato recipe) no matter what you do or say.
Your choices:
Eat the cake, hate yourself later.
Eat the cake, then exercise like crazy or go on a fast the next day.
Refuse the cake adamantly and don't cave in, be the center of what will rapidly become a small embarrassing scene (most of the time, everyone will take the hostess's side)...But DO NOT eat the cake.
The latter is the best approach in terms of sticking to your eating plan. If you cave in, even once, you will never be let alone in such situations in the future. But you will have to deal with being embarrassed, as well as putting out extra willpower, and you will have to deal with using extreme and repeated assertiveness. If, like most of us fat people, you are also awkward socially, and coming from a low status social position, it will not add up to a fun time. In fact, if you do not stick to your diet, you will have nothing positive to remember about this social event at all--the best motivator for sticking with it and not caving in.
In other words, there is no good, happy or easy way out. You will have to pay extra social dues for taking good care of yourself...or be a fool and cave in. And the person teasing you and repeatedly placing the cake before you will, ironically, have no respect for you if you cave in.
I am considering being more aggressive (as opposed to assertive) with such people. Like getting up and taking the cake back into the kitchen, waiting there, and then confronting the cake pushing hostess when she goes into the kitchen.
My fantasy: Hostess puts cake on my plate for third time while she teases me about it and everyone laughs. I pick up the plate, quickly turn it over, and SMASH it down flat against the dinner plate or the table. Then I get up, get my stuff, and make like a tree and LEAVE. It's a great little fantasy but I doubt I could actually do it. Fun to imagine--fat chick strikes back.
I've attempted to talk to people ahead of time, explaining that I have a health problem I'm addressing, so please understand that I won't be eating desert or other calorie dense foods. It has never worked; they just agree with you, confide that they, too, have to watch their weight, and assure you they understand... and then they wind up pushing rich food at you anyway because "just this once won't hurt!"
The worst ones, of course, are the ones who have serious weight issues themselves; your diet makes them feel guilty, so getting you to eat what you shouldn't makes them feel better. If they can prove that it's impossible, then they don't have to do it themselves.
I have decided to limit my social life to those who are willing and able to support my attempts toward better health and happiness. I just get too angry with the food pushers. It ruins my dinner. I don't have that many friends, but at least I will know that my friends are on my side, not on the side of the drug companies, the surgeons, the sugar cartel, and the high fructose corn syrup brightly dyed food companies. I need real friends, not people who enjoy my lower social status.
70-79, F
