No Fuss, No Muss

I was not surprised to see a series of articles in the media a few months ago that made this claim: as our friends’ weight goes, so goes our weight. It seems that having heavy friends increases your odds of being heavy yourself and vice versa. Is it as simple as birds of a food feather tending to flock together? Or do we somehow influence each other’s propensity for attracting fat cells?

You may remember a previous post in which I lamented my husband’s love of pasta. For me, pasta is a gateway drug, a sure path to an overnight three-pound gain. In the years since I reached my goal weight, I’ve lost count of the number of times he and I have had the same tense discussion about which restaurant we should go to – the place famous for its spectacular salads or the place where you can get a big honking bowl of spaghetti, dripping in butter and meatball-laden tomato sauce? On any number of these occasions – too many I’m afraid – I’ve caved and gone to the pasta place. For to do otherwise would be to make a fuss and making a fuss is something I abhor.

You could say that the reason I was so heavy for all those years was precisely because I didn’t want to make a fuss. In my former fat life, I was the epitome of unfussness. I generally ate whatever was put in front of me. Or whatever my companion – friend, co-worker, or husband – wanted to eat. One of the most difficult transitions for me since becoming thin has been to learn to object, to say, “No, I don’t want that.” And to stick to it. It’s hard because it feels unnatural, but also because most of the people in my life still like to eat the way I liked to eat before my weight loss. To come out as a person with a different way of eating is to risk making a fuss, sometimes a big fuss.

Oh. Yuck.

It’s obvious that I alone am responsible for what I eat. And that is exactly how I would describe these last five years. I alone. Feeling like a stranger, someone who just doesn’t get the lay of the land anymore. It often seems that there are only two choices before me. One is to fit in, go along, and eat what everyone around me eats; this is the path that leads back to 250 pounds. The other is to make a fuss, be the odd gal out, and stay at my current lighter weight. It’s not how I imagined my life as a thin person, back in the bad old days when I was fat. Then, it was an indisputable truth that being slender lead directly to being deliriously happy, confident, and satisfied. No fuss, no muss.

Of course we tend to weigh what our friends weigh. In this food saturated culture, how could it be any other way? The challenge for me now is to learn how to live in this land of excess without becoming an example of it. It’s an interesting dilemma. I can’t wait to see how it turns out.