Hell is other people

A thought from the author of Beyond Chocolate:

"Or to be linguistic about it, "L'enfer c'est les autres", according to Jean-Paul Sartre. I used to agree totally. I longed for the house (or at least the kitchen) to be mine, all mine! Then I could eat. In a mindless, numb, rhythmic dance, my hands and mouth forming a ceaseless conveyor belt to my bored and beleaguered tum. I looked forward to the rest of my family going out together and leaving me at home "doing my homework". Overeating on my own was my way of rebelling against my mother's policing of every mouthful and every mealtime. ("Only one potato for Josie!") I never learned what was enough for me, or what I did or didn't like. I would eat anything and everything as soon as her back was turned.

She's been dead for 26 years now, but I've kept her memory green by giving other people the right (even though they're unaware of it) to dictate how free I feel about eating. I live with a slim partner and his slim children, and I still don't feel comfortable eating with them.

But now I'm looking at my relationship with food in a new way, I find other people a great source of information. I never noticed before, but some of them (the young ones particularly) are obviously "doing" the Beyond Chocolate principles. When I ask the children what they want for lunch, they go into a daze for a minute and sometimes tell me to ask them again later. This used to annoy me, but now I understand and respect what they're doing - tuning in.

I went to lunch with some married friends of mine last week and noticed they checked with each other what they'd be having for dinner before choosing from the menu. Advanced stuff!

When he's hungry, my dearly beloved wanders slowly about the kitchen, one hand on his tummy and the other had pointing at various kinds of food. For each one, he swings his "tummy hand" out to the side, as if he's opening a door, and points inside. ("I'm checking what shape the hole is.") He always takes the time to find out what and how much he's hungry for.

As for knowing when enough's enough, the smaller the child the better the lesson. Toddlers are so in tune with the moment of satisfaction, they will turn away from the spoon and try to climb out of the chair (and/or spit out the last mouthful) when they've reached their favourite number on their Hunger Scale. Maybe not acceptable behaviour when you're a grown up in a classy restaurant, but a useful demonstration.

And the old demon "wasting food" : I spent decades convinced that everyone was watching me eat and judging me for it. Now I've actually started watching other people eat, I realise how little anyone does it. What I've noticed is how much they don't eat (i.e. what they leave on the plate) and the fact that hardly anyone ever says a word about it. They don't apologise to the waiter or the host and nobody seems to mind. If they didn't serve themselves and take the right sized portion for them, what's left over sometimes looks like the same amount they started with! And not a peep or a raised eyebrow from anyone! (I can hear my mum rotating in her grave, of course.)

I'd always suspected thin people lived in a different world from me. Now I feel I've been allowed into that world and it's not full of calorie-counting, exercising robots. These are people like me who've learned some useful life skills that I am learning too, at last. And the world they live in makes so much more sense than the lonely, frustrating planet I used to inhabit."