Do All Fat People Overeat?

I don’t know why, but some­thing man­hat­tan said trig­gered thoughts about what I eat vs. what most peo­ple assume fat peo­ple eat.

For instance, today I’ve had one bowl of oat­meal, a grilled ham & cheese sand­wich, a small spinach sal­ad (spinach, sliv­ered almonds, a tea­spoon of rasp­ber­ry vinai­grette), and about 48 oz of water (I car­ry around a 16-oz jug of water all the time, and I’m halfway through drink­ing the 4th full one, so I guess it’s more like 56 oz so far).

That’s more than I would nor­mal­ly have eat­en by now. It’s very unlike­ly that I’ll eat much din­ner (Sam is busy gam­ing, so he prob­a­bly won’t be cook­ing or push­ing me to eat). I ate a lit­tle more than usu­al yesterday—but not much. The fruit sal­ad in the fridge may call to me, but it may not.

I’ve cleaned the kitchen, done laun­dry, cleaned our bed­room & bath, done sev­er­al loads of laun­dry, and helped Sam & Katie clean up the liv­ing areas. Not enough activ­i­ty to count as “exer­cise” but not just sit­ting on my ass.

So why am I so fat? I screwed up my metab­o­lism as a teen, refus­ing to eat. I have PCOS and symp­toms of hypothy­roidism. I’m not able to be as active as I’d like to due to chron­ic pain and fatigue thanks to fibromyal­gia and arthritis.

I don’t like eat­ing in front of any­one because I’m so tired of hav­ing every bite scru­ti­nized by some­one. I espe­cial­ly don’t like eat­ing in restau­rants. One of the love­ly things about not cel­e­brat­ing hol­i­days with my fam­i­ly of ori­gin is that I don’t feel like every­one is weigh­ing my choic­es. I can eat in front of my fam­i­ly of choice and close friends—most of the time. When I’m real­ly down, that’s hard too.

I’ve had many peo­ple sug­gest “keep a food diary” to me. They obvi­ous­ly think that I’m eat­ing far more than I think I’m eat­ing. But I do know what and how much I eat—it’s some­thing I’ve been far more aware of since I tried Weight Watch­ers last year. I also know that I had to real­ly work to eat ENOUGH each day for the WW stan­dards. There isn’t some strange dis­con­nect between my mouth and my mind that is hid­ing overeating.

I’ve nev­er been a binge eater. I’ve nev­er liked food that much. Food is some­thing that I must deal with and that I’d pre­fer to avoid. There are many more unpleas­ant food-relat­ed mem­o­ries in my past than pleas­ant ones.

So lay off the fat peo­ple you know. Don’t assume that they are overeat­ing or just eat­ing the wrong kinds of food or what­ev­er. Back off. Please.