Breakfast!

Here was the scene that greeted me when I came into work this morning:

 What you are seeing is a spread, approximately ten feet long, of every type of baked good under the sun. There were cookies, donuts, brownies, muffins and strudel. There was an especially crumbly, flaky, sticky little pastry whose name I could not quite recall. The shiny items towards the end of the lineup were bagels of every variety, with abundant cream cheese and butter. The inspiration for all of this was the celebration of National Boss Day.

I have to admit that I was a bit scared when I saw this baked goods blowout. The very foods that have been my life-long nemeses were laid out in front of me, beckoning.  One of my co-workers said, “Sandy, have something to eat!” When I demurred, saying that I couldn’t eat those kinds of things, she said, “Oh, come on, one little piece won’t hurt!” Hmm, where have I heard that before? But then came the kicker. When I replied, thanks, but I think I’ll pass, she said, “We got fruit salad, you can have that.”

Sigh.

Yes, I can have fruit salad. I like fruit salad. And I’m sure that the intent behind this breakfast bonanza was genuinely well-intentioned, an expression of caring and camaraderie. But, forgive me for saying this, it seemed particularly cruel to ask a former fat girl to pass through a gauntlet of ganache on the way to the lonely bowl of mixed fruit. It’s kinda like inviting a recovering alcoholic to a wine tasting, telling them not to worry, we got you a carton of grape juice.

In my last post, I talked about how our culture seduces us with non-stop food porn. As my experience this morning shows, it’s not just the mass media, it’s us too. We do it to ourselves. A person who has lost a lot of weight, and who wants to keep it off, has to deal with this daily assault on the culinary senses. It’s one of the main reasons that so many people regain in my opinion. To add insult to injury, the companion paradigm is that obesity is a personal problem. So we surround the newly slender person with temptation at every turn, and when they finally cave, it’s their own fault! Then we wring our hands, wondering if we’ll ever find a way to help obese people conquer this problem. It’s positively diabolical. And by keeping obesity an object of personal shame, we never have to look at the milieu that fuels it.

By the way, if you’re wondering how my office adventure ended, I didn’t eat anything. My willpower prevailed. And I felt like a complete and total schmuck.

But a thin schmuck.

My Big Fat Job

My job is making me fat.

It’s not what you think. It’s not because I sit around all day staring at a computer. Or that I put in such long hours that I can’t find time to exercise. It’s not even because I’m so stressed out from work that I have to eat all night to cope. What is it then, you ask? It’s quite simple.

My co-workers keep bringing in food.

I often wonder what drives them to do this. Surely their jobs aren't so onerous that the only way they can bear to come in at all is to have lots of delectable edibles to distract them from their miserable lot. Surely they aren’t so lacking in creativity that they can’t think of ways other than eating to mark the birthdays, weddings, new babies, retirements, and myriad other joyous celebrations of their colleagues; after all, we could make the birthday guy or gal wear a funny hat all day and blow party horns at them every time they pass by. That would be fun. And of course don’t forget the holiday spreads, the Christmas cookies, the Valentine’s Day chocolates, the bagels and cream cheese for National Bosses Day (a real holiday, I assure you!), not to mention the bumper crops of zucchini bread at harvest time.

But you know what the real rub is. It’s not just the preoccupation with food, rather the type of food. No one says, “Hey, make sure you have a piece of Joe’s birthday salad!” No, my little one, to celebrate, the food must be decadent, for everyone knows that vegetables make lousy party companions. Instead, there must be a plethora of cakes, pies, cookies, banana nut breads, muffins, donuts, and brownies, along with the obligatory bowl of melon and grapes, the token nod to “healthy food.”

For the longest time after I reached my goal weight, I found it hard to deal with the relentless onslaught of “goodies” that had such a bad effect on me. I worried about whether my co-workers would be offended if I said no, until I realized that was more about me and my fear of making fuss than anything else. So, for a while, I tried just saying in the politest way, “No thanks.” That worked for most people, but every now and then I’d encounter a real pusher, someone who would say something like, “Oh for Gawd’s sake, one little piece won’t hurt you!” I was a bit flummoxed about how to deal with that, until my nutritionist suggested this gem. “Just tell them it gives you gas. They’ll be too embarrassed to say anything else.” Gadzooks! Why didn’t I think of that?!

What seems to work best for me is to approach the most prolific of the office bakers ahead of time, tell them that I won’t be participating in these types of events and that they shouldn’t take it personally because it’s just something that I need to do for me. Recently I overheard someone saying, “Don’t expect Sandy to have any of those cookies.” It seems I’ve become “that” person, you know, the big, wet blanket for everything fun. Sigh.

Nobody said this was gonna be a piece of cake. Arghhhhh! Not cake!