Meet & Eat

Social events are hard. When I’m eating by myself, I can usually make good choices about foods that fit into my eating plan. Whether I DO make those choices is another matter sometimes, but I’m aware even when I eat poorly that the pressures to do so are coming only from within me.

But being with other people—that gets complicated for me. Like yesterday. I was invited to give a talk over the lunch hour for one of the treatment teams where I work. Lovely, warm people all, and they had informed me that they do a lunch potluck, so I could come and be part of that before my talk. So nice! But such a minefield too. People always want you to try their stuff, and there’s such social interaction around tasting this and that and asking for recipes, etc. I find that I do pretty well on a controlled-carbohydrate diet a la South Beach or Atkins, so I’ve been restricting the carbs pretty severely this week. And let me tell you, it was Fiesta Carb-o-rama around that table. Pasta salads, chips and dip, rice salads, cookies…all stuff that just did not work for me. It’s not like I was hungry—I knew this was coming up and had pre-eaten my own lunch (cheese, hard-boiled eggs and steamed broccoli) before coming over. But I just don’t deal with the social pressure that well. I came out of it pretty unscathed, overall; I had some sugar snap peas that someone brought and a few tablespoons of tabbouleh (made with whole grains, so not as bad as it could be). I’m glad that I was the one talking for the hour, so I had an excuse to not dive in headfirst.

That was just a one-time deal. The tougher thing I do is a weekly dinner I go to at a halfway house that’s part of the mental health program where I work. I’m the staff psychotherapist for the residents of the house, and we meet weekly for dinner and a house meeting/therapy group. Each week one of the residents cooks the meal that we all share, and it’s quite a point of pride for them to do a good job. And there are some fine cooks in this house, let me tell you. You wouldn’t think a bunch of addicts early in their recovery would have found the time to discover and embrace their inner kitchen magicians, but damn. I’m thinking maybe they need their own show on the Food Network. (Having written that, I’m now having fun making up names for that show in my head—heh.)

So the general yummy-ness of the food is an issue, but the harder part is that pressure to ooh and ahh over the food and to eat lots of it, and to be sure I’m equally complimentary to everyone’s culinary efforts. I just haven’t figured out a good way to negotiate this situation, and I basically end up eating a lot of stuff that tastes great and keeps me fat.

Part of the issue is that I just hate talking about my attempts to change my eating habits. It would probably solve the problem were I just to say, “Oh, thanks, but I’m on a diet.” But I feel like making any kind of a public proclamation of my intent renders me and my obesity (as well as my attempts to address that obesity) too damn public. I’d rather have people think that I am just too busy and cool and interested in deep and important things to give my fat a thought.

Le sigh.

That said, though, I’ve been doing pretty well this week. I’ve met my goals thus far: I’ve brought lunch every day so far, and I’ve not had any fast food. I’ve also felt in control of my eating, for the most part. No binges, and I’ve been keeping the carbs to a minimum for the moment.

Hope everyone’s week is going well!