In the last few months, I’ve had the good fortune of not being exposed to as much office “fat talk,” now that I’m down to part-time status. Most of the days I work are pretty heavy days and most people don’t have a lot of time for chit-chat. When they do, dieting is fortunately not high on their list of things to chatter about…that is, until last week. Thanks to corporate breakdown, several of my colleagues have been laid off and those of us left have absorbed those job duties on top of our original workload. For me, this meant a change in my schedule, a slight change in job duties, and as a result, I now work at two desks - my usual spot in the newsroom, and now a spot on the border of the advertising department.
When I’m at my desk by the advertisers, I sit across from a row of women that I think work as sales reps (not 100% sure). As I quickly learned last week, they are very prone to talking about their bodies, mainly about how big they’ve gotten. They talk incessantly about their diets and how horrible they feel when they jump off the bandwagon for a couple slices of pizza.
I shit you not - that last sentence is for real. The company ordered pizza last Friday and enough was ordered so everyone could have a couple of slices for lunch. Apparently, these ladies abandoned their diets to partake in this horrendous act, and as punishment for this sin, the greasy cheese immediately went to their thighs. Oh, what trauma.
You’d think it really was traumatic by the way these women were talking. “Oh, I can’t believe I ate that second piece of pizza! I did not need to do that.” “I should have stuck to my salad. I just had to keep eating, didn’t I?” And my personal favorite: “I couldn’t help myself. It was free food and I had to cheat!”
So pizza is the D-Day of dietary dilemmas? Really? Well, shit! Why didn’t someone tell me sooner? I’ve been eating pizza (and sometimes more than two slices in one meal) my whole life!…
…wow, and you know what? I’m still here. And not only am I not the size of an elephant, I don’t feel like it, either. WHOA.
Members of the newsroom have their bouts of weight and diet talk, but nothing like this. It took all of my restraint not to shamelessly barge in on their conversation and give them an outburst of how dieting is fucking up their metabolisms. Without actually knowing the history of the ladies I was overhearing, I’d profile them with this description: They are on again-off again clients of Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, etc., and infrequently motivate themselves into an exercise regimen with boot camp intensity, only to drop out after a few days. They’re in their 30s and 40s, which means they’ve probably had a couple of kids and their bodies will never return to the shape they had in their early 20s, which I’m sure they idolize as “ideal.” And, if there is anything wrong with their food intake, it’s probably the strange fluctuation they’re putting their bodies through - a strict regimen of low-calorie foods, then a binge on something calorically rich, followed by normal eating, rinse and repeat.
Women in offices not unlike mine - where we spend our time in cubicles under fluorescent lighting and sit on our butts nearly all day long - are not atypical. The sedentary state of this environment fosters body hatred at the speed of rabbing-breeding and turns it into a socially accepted norm. It’s everywhere, and this is nothing new. But it’s harder than hell to deal with when you’re recovering from an eating disorder.
When you really do start recovering, you do something that is the polar opposite of the norm: you re-establish your relationship with food. Instead of counting calories and fat grams, you instead learn to make sure you are getting enough nutrients to keep your body healthy. You bravely try new foods and expand your palate. You blur the lines between “good” and “bad” food and come to the conclusion that there is no such thing. And you accept the fact that, on a rare occasion, cheesecake is exactly what you want for dinner, so you go for it. You give your body what it wants because you’re paying attention to its desires instead of pretending they don’t exist.
So to see people deliberately put themselves through “food hell,” as I call it, in manners I did by default and to extremity, is really disheartening. Even worse, I’m sure they would envy the version of me at my sickest. “How did she get so thin?” they’d say. I’m afraid of telling the ladies in the office that I have an eating disorder because of two reactions I know I’d get: 1) The “I wish I could catch a little anorexia” line, and/or 2) A request for diet tips. In either instance, I’d end up punching that person in the face and then I’d be fired. And as much as I hate my job sometimes, I really do need to stick with it until I move this summer. So punching people in the face is not an option. 
Too bad, because it might be fun. And besides, they’d really deserve it.
I know, I know. That was an asshole-ish thing to say about people that are ignorant to my point of view. But in the words of Denis Leary, “I’m an asshole and I’m proud of it.”
Now that I’m completely rambling, I think that means my rant is overwith. It’s out of my system and now I can move on. I’ll be posting some stuff about my local NEDAW festivities as soon as I’m done with the planning and drafting stages. Until then, enjoy this hilarious YouTube flick.
In the last few months, I’ve had the good fortune of not being exposed to as much office “fat talk,” now that I’m down to part-time status. Most of the days I work are pretty heavy days and most people don’t have a lot of time for chit-chat. When they do, dieting is fortunately not high on their list of things to chatter about…that is, until last week. Thanks to corporate breakdown, several of my colleagues have been laid off and those of us left have absorbed those job duties on top of our original workload. For me, this meant a change in my schedule, a slight change in job duties, and as a result, I now work at two desks - my usual spot in the newsroom, and now a spot on the border of the advertising department.
When I’m at my desk by the advertisers, I sit across from a row of women that I think work as sales reps (not 100% sure). As I quickly learned last week, they are very prone to talking about their bodies, mainly about how big they’ve gotten. They talk incessantly about their diets and how horrible they feel when they jump off the bandwagon for a couple slices of pizza.
I shit you not - that last sentence is for real. The company ordered pizza last Friday and enough was ordered so everyone could have a couple of slices for lunch. Apparently, these ladies abandoned their diets to partake in this horrendous act, and as punishment for this sin, the greasy cheese immediately went to their thighs. Oh, what trauma.
You’d think it really was traumatic by the way these women were talking. “Oh, I can’t believe I ate that second piece of pizza! I did not need to do that.” “I should have stuck to my salad. I just had to keep eating, didn’t I?” And my personal favorite: “I couldn’t help myself. It was free food and I had to cheat!”
So pizza is the D-Day of dietary dilemmas? Really? Well, shit! Why didn’t someone tell me sooner? I’ve been eating pizza (and sometimes more than two slices in one meal) my whole life!…
…wow, and you know what? I’m still here. And not only am I not the size of an elephant, I don’t feel like it, either. WHOA.
Members of the newsroom have their bouts of weight and diet talk, but nothing like this. It took all of my restraint not to shamelessly barge in on their conversation and give them an outburst of how dieting is fucking up their metabolisms. Without actually knowing the history of the ladies I was overhearing, I’d profile them with this description: They are on again-off again clients of Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, etc., and infrequently motivate themselves into an exercise regimen with boot camp intensity, only to drop out after a few days. They’re in their 30s and 40s, which means they’ve probably had a couple of kids and their bodies will never return to the shape they had in their early 20s, which I’m sure they idolize as “ideal.” And, if there is anything wrong with their food intake, it’s probably the strange fluctuation they’re putting their bodies through - a strict regimen of low-calorie foods, then a binge on something calorically rich, followed by normal eating, rinse and repeat.
Women in offices not unlike mine - where we spend our time in cubicles under fluorescent lighting and sit on our butts nearly all day long - are not atypical. The sedentary state of this environment fosters body hatred at the speed of rabbing-breeding and turns it into a socially accepted norm. It’s everywhere, and this is nothing new. But it’s harder than hell to deal with when you’re recovering from an eating disorder.
When you really do start recovering, you do something that is the polar opposite of the norm: you re-establish your relationship with food. Instead of counting calories and fat grams, you instead learn to make sure you are getting enough nutrients to keep your body healthy. You bravely try new foods and expand your palate. You blur the lines between “good” and “bad” food and come to the conclusion that there is no such thing. And you accept the fact that, on a rare occasion, cheesecake is exactly what you want for dinner, so you go for it. You give your body what it wants because you’re paying attention to its desires instead of pretending they don’t exist.
So to see people deliberately put themselves through “food hell,” as I call it, in manners I did by default and to extremity, is really disheartening. Even worse, I’m sure they would envy the version of me at my sickest. “How did she get so thin?” they’d say. I’m afraid of telling the ladies in the office that I have an eating disorder because of two reactions I know I’d get: 1) The “I wish I could catch a little anorexia” line, and/or 2) A request for diet tips. In either instance, I’d end up punching that person in the face and then I’d be fired. And as much as I hate my job sometimes, I really do need to stick with it until I move this summer. So punching people in the face is not an option.
Too bad, because it might be fun. And besides, they’d really deserve it.
I know, I know. That was an asshole-ish thing to say about people that are ignorant to my point of view. But in the words of Denis Leary, “I’m an asshole and I’m proud of it.”
Now that I’m completely rambling, I think that means my rant is overwith. It’s out of my system and now I can move on. I’ll be posting some stuff about my local NEDAW festivities as soon as I’m done with the planning and drafting stages. Until then, enjoy this hilarious YouTube flick.