Tag Archives: secret eating

A Quick Transaction

In the here & now, ,

Well yesterday was testing, I seemed to spend pretty much the whole day vexed with one thing or another. My mum had lost one of her hearing aids when I went to collect her after lunch, which is unfortunate because the one she wears in her other ear is currently away being repaired, so with no help in either ear it’s fair to say we’ve had easier days when it comes to communication.

God knows where it’s got to. She thinks she put it in a safe place, only now she can’t remember exactly where that was. She was frustrated because she couldn’t hear anybody and by the end of the day, I was getting that way myself. And then I felt guilty. It’s not her fault, you know? Mum gets very confused these days although to be fair, even before old age messed with her memory my Mum’s safe places had a lot in common with the fucking Bermuda Triangle .

The day wasn’t helped by my decision to burn fourteen of my thirty three points on a big breakfast. I had no weeklies left, so I sailed really close to the wind, in fact I went over by a couple of points at the end of the day. I’d done a supermarket shop, so the fridge was full and the cupboards were looking healthy which is always dangerous when I’m starving. Eating a big breakfast meant that I wasn’t hungry at lunchtime, so I just grabbed a piece of fruit, and ate dinner around 4.30pm, which used up the rest of my daily points allowance. By 8pm I was ravenous. And skint. No food budget left at all.

That’s the point at which the Asshole voice woke up and spied a window of opportunity. Why don’t you have something to eat? This is ridiculous! You’re hungry, and you’ve had a really tough day…nobody would blame you for going over your food budget just this once and you’ve only really bought healthy stuff so what harm could it do? You’re a grown woman, it’s not right that you should have to sit there and starve! 

I resisted all evening. Right up until the moment I went into the kitchen to pick up my bag so I could take it upstairs with me to bed. On the way past the food cupboard I accidentally ate three walnuts and a drizzle of organic honey. As you do. And that little indiscretion pushed me three points over what I’m allowed for the day. I mean, I appreciate that doesn’t sound a lot but it’s almost ten percent over. It’s the start of the slippery slope. That’s all that was racing through my head as I lay in bed last night and reflected on the day.

I’m chasing two pounds this week. Going over my daily allowance isn’t exactly going to cover me in glory, is it? I won’t be doing a victory step-on after I’ve recorded the number on Wednesday if I let that frame of mind take a hold, you know the one that thinks it’s okay to push the boundaries.

In the back of my mind yesterday as I stood in front of the cupboard and pushed those walnuts into my face, tipping my head back so I could squeeze the honey straight into my mouth I was transported back to those days where that kind of action was familiar. It was a quick transaction, you know? A swift surreptitious snack in the half light of the under-cupboard halogens, out of sight of anyone. Well, anyone except the dog, who heard the food cupboard open from three rooms away and immediately assumed the position by my feet like a one-dog SWAT team just in case anything got dropped.

Also in the back of my mind was the intention to knock those extra three points off today’s total…sort of like a loan that has to be paid back. This morning, I can see that for exactly what it is…a fine example of broken thinking. The Asshole was behind that pearl of wisdom, in a move designed to undermine today too. Go to bed feeling like you messed up and start the next day feeling disadvantaged and with an even smaller food budget than usual…way to go to set today up for a fail too. But at least I see it, right? I know his game, and he can fuck right off.

Yesterday’s gone. All I need to do today is colour inside the lines. Stick to my food budget, and make good choices. It’s all okay…I can do that 🙂

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Man Marking the Muffins

Freeform thoughts, , , , ,

bun

So it occurred to me that being a food hoover is far more complex when you’re a human being than it is when you belong to some other species. Bit of a random thought, but it popped into my head last night when I was cooking tea, having narrowly avoided tripping over the dog for about the tenth time.

Had anyone been observing the two of us as we moved about the kitchen, it must have looked a bit like a sort of clumsy ballet. Whenever there’s food, or the smell of food, or even the hope of food, my four legged fur baby welds himself to my side and develops eyes in the back of his head so he’s in exactly the right place at the right time to take advantage of anything which might come his way, either by accident or design. I take a step, he takes a step. I turn around, he turns around (unless the food is actually visible in which case he removes all risk of missing anything by walking backwards).

Even as a puppy he was solely motivated by food – within 3 days of coming home he’d pee on the puppy pad and then go wait expectantly by the fridge, and his love affair with chicken and sausage in particular continues to this day. Incidentally so does mine, but as a fat girl I’d die before being quite so obvious. As a skinny girl, you can get away with knocking people out of the way like skittles to get to the cake…people will smile and tease you about how you can love cake so much and stay so trim.  “You must have a worm inside you, ha ha ha”... As a fat girl, no chance. Those same people wouldn’t tease you at all, they’d probably just shake their heads sadly and think “No wonder…”

I’m convinced that’s why a lot of fat folk eat in secret, as though it’s something to be ashamed of. Or maybe it’s because we think people won’t notice that we’re fat if they never actually see us put anything in our mouths…that’s asshole logic if ever I saw it. But I for one have lived it! Eating publicly can be difficult when you’re bigger than the average bear – imagine two people walking away from a fast food counter with overloaded trays, one fat girl and one skinny girl…only one of them is going to feel self conscious, judged, ashamed that she’s not about to eat salad. Am I right?

So how come a slavish devotion to food is cute in a dog but shocking when you’re just a fat girl who can’t get it under control? Why does one provoke smiles where the other provokes scorn and judgement from the world in general? I’d hazard a guess that it’s because we’re supposed to be the ones with a fully formed thought process and a sense of reason – don’t get me wrong, dogs are bright but they’re not likely to think things through in a ‘better not have another bonio if I want to wear my favourite collar at the weekend’ kind of way. But we are, we’re supposed to have it all figured out.

But what if your thought process is broken? What if you have an asshole who lives inside your head and relentlessly kicks all reason into the long grass till you can’t get to it..? What then.

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