No dieting friends allowed
Half of Americans are dieting these days (not an official statistic) — and I can’t handle being around any of them. That rules out a lot of potential relationships! But really… I don’t handle being around dieting well. I don’t need anyone around me counting calories or skipping meals. Why? Because:
1. I’ve spent enough time in my life counting calories (and want those hours back!
2. It’s triggering
3. I feel guilty for eating more, weighing more, needing more, wanting more, thinking I deserve more, etc
4. Paranoia that I’m eating too much
5. I’m a little competitive
I’ve been extremely lucky to find very normal eaters for friends… relatively healthy eaters, but non-dieting friends. We get ice cream, go out for pizza, have snacks, etc. And this is all so so so helpful.
I visited family a couple of weekends ago, and my two younger sisters are dieting. I don’t think they have eating disorders (knocking on wood). One is out of college and the other is half-way through. Yes, I know that 1/3rd of women at Renfrew are now adults… but I’d like to think that they would have shown disordered behaviors by now were either of them prone to developing an ED.
My parents don’t discourage the dieting… actually I’d go so far as to say that they support it. You wouldn’t think this would be the case after having one daughter in and out of treatment facilities for most of high school… but I guess my parents never really did get involved with treatment. Anyway, when I told my mother that my boyfriend would be coming, she was excited to bake because “no one around here eats anymore.” Yes, this was going to be a problem…
The drive to my parent’s house was eight hours, and apparently my boyfriend does not like to stop for meals or snacks along the way. Notice that unless we were driving in the middle of the night (which we were not), this interferes with the “normal eating” model.
I realize that it’s probably normal for people to skip an occasional meal (I’ve talked about this before), but sometimes I feel like I should wear a sign: Warning: Do not approach if you do not eat 3 meals and a snack.
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[...] [Technorati] Tag results for mental health wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt Half of Americans are dieting these days (not an official statistic) — and I can’t handle being around any of them. That rules out a lot of potential relationships! But really… I don’t handle being around dieting well. I don’t need anyone around me counting calories or skipping meals. Why? Because: 1. I’ve spent enough time in my life counting calories (and want those hours back! 2. It’s triggering 3. I feel guilty for eating more, weighing more, needing more, wanting more, thinking I deser [...]
[...] [Technorati] Tag results for mental illness wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt Half of Americans are dieting these days (not an official statistic) — and I can’t handle being around any of them. That rules out a lot of potential relationships! But really… I don’t handle being around dieting well. I don’t need anyone around me counting calories or skipping meals. Why? Because: 1. I’ve spent enough time in my life counting calories (and want those hours back! 2. It’s triggering 3. I feel guilty for eating more, weighing more, needing more, wanting more, thinking I deser [...]
yes! I want to be able to screen potential friends immidiately of this. Right now I work with ten women and I feel like seeing and hearing more than one at a time talk about dieting just might kill me. And it kills me to always have to explain to my husband why I can’t be best friends with his new friends’ wifes because all they want to do is diet and complain about their bodies. It’s too much these days.
Yeah, this is a major difficulty in life. I have at least one friend, of whom I am very fond, who is always going on about how “bad” she’s being because she’s, you know, daring to eat food. While she’s pregnant. I really like her, but sometimes I find being around her insanely difficult, because it’s all I can do not to scream “SHUT UP!”
I agree 100% with this post. I absolutely can’t stand when people talk about their bodies or dieting. If they know my history, I feel way too awkward talking about my hatred of my body or food or dieting, and even if they don’t, I just don’t want to talk about it. Also, even if I know my friends are getting in a normal amount of calories through snacking or drinking calories, I still can’t stand if they want to skip meals. I feel like if I am making the effort to get a meal in, they need to do it as well! I feel like as the one with a history of an eating disorder, I should not be the one suggesting we stop for a meal!
Along the same lines, I can’t deal with the new law in NYC that all fast food places must post the calorie contents of all their foods. Just when I am finally starting to not add up every calorie I eat, there is a law put in place that encourages me to start doing so again!