..and other ways people react to you. But what about when you are not living up to your current outer appearance due to lifestyle changes? Care to share any fun stories? I'll start off...
Unloading my cart of nothing but organic fruits and vegetables in front of skinny people who are buying a lot of high sodium frozen meals and other junk food. The cashiers always point out how healthy my groceries are.. sometimes they even ask me what I'm going to do with all this produce.
Haha... feed it to your goat, clearly! Sometimes people are funny!
I had a similar experience the other day with a cart full of produce, other whole foods, and my 4 year old. The cashier wrinkled her nose and said "Didn't mommy buy you anything to eat?" My 4 year old looked at her funny and said "Yeah! All this yummy food!" Duh, lady!
lol - i shop 2-3x a week and the first thing i do is load up the front of the buggy with meat from the discount bin: sirloin and rib steaks, sometimes pork or lamb chops, stew beef, burger, whatever.
when i get to the cashier, someone will nearly always comment on the amount of meat - that's when i say "yeah - it's for the dog" and point to the front window where he'll be waiting patiently.
..and what about when you are not living up to your current outer appearance due to lifestyle changes?
Even at my fattest. my food choices didn't reflect my outer appearance.
And I think that's what more people need to understand. Not everyone who eats only "healthy" food will be thin, not everyone who eats crap will be fat, and not every fat person eats crap. It is possible to be active, eat healthfully and still be fat (when you're eating more than you need, that doesn't mean you're getting the extra calories from junk or that you're lying in bed all day doing nothing).
Even the reasons one person is fat can change over a lifetime. When I was in high school and college, I was quite active and yet I was extremely obese, because I was eating 24/7. In college and graduate school, I did eat more crap - because crap was often cheaper, and I still ate healthy by many people standards (My favorite cheap meal was green beans cooked in tomato sauce with onions and poured over an small baked potato for lunch. For dinner I'd choose a bigger potato and a salad).
I wish I had a dollar for every time someone said to me (or about me) "You eat so healthy, how can you NOT be thin?" or "You seem to eat so healthy, you must eat a lot of junk when no one is watching, right?."
Junk food has never been a large part of my diet, but I do think I was born with a very different appetite and view of food than most people. For as long as I can remember, I've been hungry and food-focused 24/7. I always want to be eating, and I always want to try something new. The food doesn't have to be high calorie for me to like it, but if I don't put a great deal of effort into resisting, I would be eating non-stop from my first waking moment in the morning to my last moment before falling asleep at night. If there werew a way to eat 24/7, I'd be the person to discover it.
No one else in my family w\has ever been this food obsessed (I was adopted so maybe some of this is genetic). I have always been hungry sometimes while also being full. Also to a much greater degree than anyone in my family, I've always wanted to try new foods, and liked almost everything I ever tried (with a few notable, but weird exceptions like applesauce, which I practically have a phobia toward. I can't even look at applesauce or smell it without getting nauseous).
Regardless of my weight, or my dieting status, I've always had strangers - both customers and clerks- comment and ask about my grocery choices. Mostly because of my intense drive for novelty, I often have several "strange" items in my cart. Sometimes they're strange to me. I may have no idea what I'm buying, but I'll look it up online when I get home. Other times they're items that I love, but aren't familiar to many folkks, such as Ugli fruit (pronounced Ugly - and they are sort of looking like an unriped AND spoiled grapefruit) - I always get comments and questions every time I buy one of these. When I reply that it's an Ugli fruit and tastes like lemonade, people often say "Uggh, I wouldn't eat it, it looks gross."
I'm the person who is always holding up the line, because the clerk can't identify the strange fruit or vegetables in my cart, I may or may not be able to name for them. Or the name I know it by isn't the name in the grocery clerk's book so they have to call a manager over to help them find it.
I don't mind the curious questions, even those that seem rude, such as one of my personal favorites: "Have you always eaten like this or are you on some weird diet?"
I have a friend that's SO serious about her weight loss goals that she seems scornful that I'm not as strict about my plan as she is. I told her that I read somewhere that a healthy option for when you want ice cream is to top it with fruit instead of chocolate/sprinkles/whatever, and she acted like I was crazy for even thinking about it! Like, ice cream is ice cream no matter what and there is no possible way to make it a more nutritious/healthy dessert, and that if I eat that ice cream, then I'm going to fail at losing weight and it's going to sabotage my whole plan. She claims she's not stressing about it, but I seriously think her secret goal is to come out on top of me with her weight loss goals.
My other favorite is my grandma: she'll fuss at me for being fat, or we'll talk about my weight loss plan and how I'm struggling to keep from "cheating", and then she'll turn around and offer me cake (or other sweets). Or I've gotten in the past, along with my mother, "Give it to Lauren (me) or Terri (mom)! They'll eat it!" or my grandfather, who used to wouldn't accept no for an answer when it came to food and was shocked that I was actually turning down his offer or said that I wasn't hungry. Because, you know, being fat means you're ALWAYS hungry. *eye roll* People are just ignorant; you have to let it roll off your shoulders.
Hm my fam always wanted me to eat a ton, but also called me fat, but then the second I lost, they call me too skinny. One example was when I said I didn't like turkey and my grandmother laughed at me and said "then why are you so fat??" and uhh kinda waited for an answer.
I was angry, and I'm still mad...but now I am thinking, well I can't choose my fam. I moved out, and I am glad about that, but I still see them once a year. If people are unapologetic about who they are (and they sure are!) that's that. I am working to be less of a people-pleaser, I realized that I did everything to fit in, and it never even made me well liked and I were to choose to eat because someone pushes me, it certainly won't be for people who laugh at my weight!
Last edited by pixelllate; 03-11-2012 at 08:48 PM.
I usually buy only fruits and veggies at the store, not only because I prefer to eat fruits and veggies over meat (most of the time) but because it's really all I can afford to buy.. and I get a lot of comments and questions. Before my fiance and I moved to Texas (where going to the store is a couple hour venture) I went grocery shopping every day for fresh produce to eat, and the clerks asked me every day what I was going to make and how the meal from the night before was.. and one time I heard the clerk behind me telling the person at their register that I came in every day to buy produce (because I had chit-chatted with her before she had someone in her lane) and the lady said, without even trying to be remotely quiet, "If all she eats is produce, why is she so fat?" Well.. that lady didn't know that I'd been a LOT fatter than that before I started doing that. I told her, since she didn't try to make an effort to be quiet about her comment- I just decided to tell her, that I didn't always eat well and maybe if she incorporated some veggies into her diet that she wouldn't sound like such a hypocrite.
The things I eat definitely don't match my appearance.. but I'm okay with it. I've gotten better at fielding questions and comments about it by people, and some day it won't seem so odd to bystanders - because of my size- that I'm only buying fruits and veggies most of the time.
I've always been into eating healthy food (just way too much) and I try not to think about what others think. If someone wonders how an obese person can eat fruits and vegetables it's a reflection of their ignorance. For every fat person ignorant of what they eat there is a thin person who is equally as ignorant. Whenever I see a blissfully skinny person walking down the street eating a loaded ice cream cone I feel a token rise of jealousy, then I swallow it and remind myself of how beautiful I will look when I'm thin.
we went out shopping and i was looking for some weight lifting gloves because for some reason it just tears up the skin on my hands. they only had size medium, and size extra large. men's sizes. i've got big hands, and need to get men's sizes anyway, but i needed a large. when we went looking for a sales person to help us out to see if they had any in stock or would be getting some soon, he asked my husband when he would need them and after looking at his hands asked if he tried on a medium! i'm almost 100lb heavier than my husband, so obviously i couldn't have been the one in the market for weight lifting gloves!
i was quite miffed when we walked away. no point in correcting the guy.
I've always been into eating healthy food (just way too much) and I try not to think about what others think. If someone wonders how an obese person can eat fruits and vegetables it's a reflection of their ignorance. For every fat person ignorant of what they eat there is a thin person who is equally as ignorant. Whenever I see a blissfully skinny person walking down the street eating a loaded ice cream cone I feel a token rise of jealousy, then I swallow it and remind myself of how beautiful I will look when I'm thin.
I don't get jealous of the junkfood junkie thin folks, because there are a lot of blissfully ignorant thin people dying slowly of diabetes, autoimmune disorders, cardiovascular diseases and other "invisible" diseases, because they don't realize that thin doesn't mean healthy.
I think the thing that makes me most uncomfortable is when I go swimming at the gym... people stare. One time this guy watched me the entire hour that I swam. I am not sure what he was thinking and I was the only person in the pool. Another time I had 2to guys watch me for 45the minutes then when I got out of the pool and went into the hot tub they asked me "what are you training for, you've been swimming really fast nonstop" and I just had to giggle. It was flattering and I explained I am doing it for weight loss but most of all because I love it.
I too get strange comments about the amount of healthy food I buy.... people like to stereotype others but I try to be nice and compliment everyone because no matter what you weight you're bound ti be dealing/struggling with something.
Wow. I seriously think my head would pop off like someone squeezing a grape if anyone said a fraction of the sh** you guys have endured. Seriously. One guy in my class made a comment that was supposed to be funny about a self portrait sketch which wasn't even weight related. It was something like "Who's that good looking person?" to my sketch. Oh hardy har. Everyone looked at him like he was an idiot. I gave him a look that said exactly what was on my mind but my mouth had so graciously filtered. Nothing was said verbally but all was understood.
Even when pregnant I didn't get people coming up to me, trying to touch my stomach. I think I have a very good "I don't put up with crap" look permanently affixed to my face! I applaud everyone's self control and not going off on the ignorant and rude.
I've always been into eating healthy food (just way too much) and I try not to think about what others think. If someone wonders how an obese person can eat fruits and vegetables it's a reflection of their ignorance. For every fat person ignorant of what they eat there is a thin person who is equally as ignorant. Whenever I see a blissfully skinny person walking down the street eating a loaded ice cream cone I feel a token rise of jealousy, then I swallow it and remind myself of how beautiful I will look when I'm thin.
We don't know if that person is blissfully skinny-they could have lost weight when they were younger. Plus a lot of succcessful dieters here have treats sometimes and balance it out by eating healthy most other times. I used to feel that way until I lived with very skinny people and saw that they would do that balance-basically what most diets tell you to do at maintenance, but they did it unconsciously. Not every thin person is like this-you can be at all health levels, but seeing a person eat unhealthy food can sometimes give the impression that all they eat is unhealthy food, when it could just be an occassional treat.
I did a long stint of vegetarian/vegan eating because I did NOT have my dx yet and I wanted to reduce hormone load esp when TTC and pregnant. I was a smaller plus size than I am now but still plus size.
People always assumed the supreme loaded pizza was for pudgy me, and the vegetarian/vegan pizza was for my tall lanky spouse!
If you didn't eat that you wouldn't be fat...
