You Don't Eat Anymore, Anyway

What a weekend.

Sigh.

I decided before the weekend that, while I was going to keep control of my eating and obviously not binge, I was going to partake fully in the weekend. Not only was I not willing to announce "I'm on a diet," but I also didn't really want to spoil the mood. Food is important to my family. If I sat there, abstemiously picking at a salad, my parents would be some combination of offended and annoyed. So, I decided that family peace was worth a few extra calories, and hey, I'd get to eat some delicious food in the bargain.

Thursday night, I only saw my parents briefly. As reported, my Dad complimented me on how good I was looking, and my mom said nothing. On Friday, I came home for lunch, and we ate Greek food that my parents had bought at this great place called Greek Deli that I had told them about. We were eating family style, and I had a little bit of a whole bunch of things, and then some. I ate, really, a good plate of food. More than I'd normally eat these days, but certainly still less than I would have in June. It was a lot. If I had to guess, it was maybe 800 or 900 calories, but if you told me it was 1200 I would've believed you. Friday night, we took out dinner from a Southern soul food place called Oohhs and Aahhs. We again ate family style, splitting two entrees and supplementing it with a bit of leftovers from our Greek food earlier. I had about a cup (okay, maybe 1 1/2 cups) of very rich macaroni and cheese, a small bit of meat from the short ribs, and 5 seasoned shrimp. Not exactly starving myself.

As we sat watching the Yankee game (yes, this is why we did takeout), my mom commented that I looked so grown up in the jeans I was wearing. They're just a schlubby pair of size 20 gap jeans, but that wasn't really what she was saying. Essentially, when I started gaining weight for real I stopped wearing real pants. I just started wearing yoga pants and sweat pants and anything XL with a drawstring that let me avoid the fact that I should be shopping in plus size stores. I was a college kid, however, so this worked pretty okay. I picked up a pair of grey size 22 REI hiking pants at one point that I'd ordered online, but really, those were the only pants in my rotation that had the whole zipper/button thing going on. Slightly before I graduated, I did some plus size department store shopping to get an interview suit, and when I got hired for my job I bought several suits since I needed to wear one every day, but before recently I hadn't worn jeans since probably my senior year in high school. So when she said "You look so grown up in those jeans, Hadley," it felt like she meant more than she said.

Saturday we went out to brunch. I got a sandwich that came with fries, and ate half the sandwich and maybe 1/3 of the fries. My parents picked another third. Throughout the day, my mom started making comments. "Well Hadley's the one who would be hungry, she didn't eat much." Things like that. At what my parents called a late lunch but what was, in my opinion, late enough that it was dinner, I had a salami sandwich on some fresh bread we'd just bought. After the movie, my parents wanted dinner, so we went to an afghan restaurant that's an old family favorite for dinner two. (I ate maybe 1/4 cup of rice, a few tablespoons of Dal, 1/3 of a piece of a naan-like afghan bread, and 3 pieces of chicken from a kebab that had maybe 7 pieces.) That night, as my mom and I were standing around after unpacking the bounty from the day and waiting for my dad to park the car, my mom said to me "Your pants are too big." It wasn't a complimentary tone. It felt harsh.

Essentially, here's where the weekend was at this point: I'd woken up and slaved an hour in the gym each morning so I could eat pretty darn close to normally. Granted, I wasn't eating quite as much as I used to, but there was no way I was much under 2000 calories a day. I burned over 3k, so I'm guessing I did all right-ish in terms of calorie deficits, but my god, I was trying.

Sunday morning, I again woke up and went to the gym (my parents were staying at a hotel and thus unaware that I'd been hitting the gym each morning). For brunch, we went to Brasserie Beck, which is a French/Belgian place and possibly my favorite restaurant in DC. The bread basket came out, and I had a piece because, well, the bread there is oh-so-delicious and I think it's okay to have a small piece of bread when the bread's that damn good. "Have another piece of bread, Hadley," my mom said. I did. She then started going on and on about how she wanted to order the petite croissants in addition to her meal but felt too embarrassed. I said some sort of "order them if you want them." She did order them, but she seriously kept talking about how she felt embarrassed to be eating them, and insisted my father and I each have one. (Four came on the platter.) When Brunch came, I ate about 1/3 of my croque monsieur and 1/3 of my fries. About another 1/3 of the sandwich went to my parents tastings, and 1/3 of the fries to my mother. I had enough food that I had to get it wrapped up--my Dad will never let you not wrap up extra food at restaurants, it's one of his things--but my parents had both cleaned their plates.

That afternoon, we did a grocery shopping trip. One of the traditions whenever my parents visit me, is that we go on a big grocery shopping trip and they pick up the bill at the end. We'd discussed the possibility of me making dinner for the family that night, since everyone wanted to stay in again to watch the Yankee game. Normally, I love getting to go grocery shopping with my parents, and stock up on all the $12 cheeses that I rarely buy on my own, as well as staples so I just don't have to buy them down the line. This, however, was different. If I bought too little, my mother would implore me to buy more, but I also didn't want to buy food I wouldn't eat, since that would just be wasteful.

Anyway, as we were wandering around the grocery store, I asked my mom if she wanted to pick out the desert for the night. She turned to me, with this tone, this horrible, horrible tone she uses sometimes and said "what's the point?"

"Well if I'm going to be making dinner at home--"

She cut my off: "You don't eat anymore, anyway, we don't need desert."

Ouch. Ouch. Just ouch ouch ouch. The way she said it, the look in her eyes. It was horrible. I wanted to cry. We split up so she could sit down in the grocery store's cafe while I shopped, and I just wanted to break down in one of the aisles and start crying my eyes out.

I don't get it. I don't get why she's doing this. I don't get why she's being so unsupportive, why it feels like she's trying to hurt me. I was honestly eating a perfectly reasonable amount of food for a non dieting person, and I probably hit close to (or possibly even broke) the 2000 calorie mark every single day. And I'm not even asking for support. I didn't bring it up once. I didn't make any comments. I didn't ask to go to healthy restaurants. I didn't even order particularly healthy dishes. All I'd like is for my mother to not be so incredibly hostile and seemingly angry at me for losing a bit of weight.

I feel defeated. I feel emotionally drained. Not visiting my parents while I was getting my feet on this diet was absolutely the right call. I'd been planning on going home for the whole week of Thanksgiving so I could be home for my birthday as well, but now I'm less certain. I love my parents. I genuinely do. But I just can't deal with my mom being randomly mean to me because I've made the choice to take more responsibility for my health and body.

In other news, Sue (aka Mommy2Joe, who runs the excellent and extremely funny blog Did I Just Eat That Out Loud?) gave me the following:


Thank you Sue! Since I think not *too* many people have it just yet, I do want to make up a list of recipients, but I need to finish up this post before that can happen. So, thanks Sue, and I'll try to hand this one out tomorrow.