Originally Posted by saef:
It's an epidemic. I'm convinced of that. About 95% of the women I meet have extremely conflicted feelings about food. Even those women who are "normal" weight or even underweight. Many feel guilty about eating nearly anything at all. (As healthy females, we apparently should subsist on de-ionized air & pure spring water.) Particularly if someone sees them eating. It's like they have to say, "Yes, you caught me -- I'm eating, but I rarely ever, ever do this & you just happened to catch me during a weak moment, when I was famished. See I'm only eating a tiny bit, enough to sustain a bird. And it's completely healthy."

I'm angry about this, actually. How did so many of us get to be this way?

It comes out in social situations, when we're observed by other women. That's the thing that makes me angry.

Sometimes it's like scene in Henry Jaglom's movie, "Eating," where a group of women celebrate & cut a cake, and pass around a slice of the cake, and the slice goes round & round the room, and only one woman -- an older woman, the oldest in the group -- is willing to dig in.

Other times it's the complete opposite -- it's like everyone looks around, nods to one another, as all assent, and all give their permission to one another -- and then all dive in, like a football scrimmage, tacitly agreeing that anything goes, it's binge time.

I don't know which situation scares me more. I'm exaggerating both, but there are waves of these feelings passing over a group whenever two or more women get together to eat.

Hysterical...but true!!!!

Originally Posted by Thin4Good:
That is pretty bizarre. The only thing that happens to me is with people that know me. I am constantly around people eating pizza and cookies that I truly don't want anyway and someone almost always apologizes to me for eating the "bad" food in front of me. Really. I'm not tempted at all. It's ok. ;)

We have Pizza Fridays at our house every Friday night. My husband, son, sister-in-law, and two brothers-in-law all eat pizza and fries. My other son, who doesn't like the pizza eats pasta. I usually eat cottage cheese or ground turkey and veggies (either frozen mixed veggies or sauteed mushrooms on the stove). They are used to it. They never apologize for the pizza or for eating what they want. Why should they? We all eat whatever we want.

I even pick up the pizza and fries for them on my way home from work! :dizzy:

We are all responsible for our own behavior. I'm not sure why anyone would apologize to anyone else for how they choose to live their lives. Weird.