h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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Yes, as if you aren't *worth* putting the heat on for? So, perhaps in the same way, feeding yourself (which should be a pleasant and nurturing activity) has also got emotionally tangled up with other stuff.

I know that many people with bad food relationships are also overweight, but I think focussing on that (the symptom) rather than the source of the problem often creates a vicious circle. Since the reason someone is overweight is because they have an unhealthy need for food, just taking away the food (by going on a diet) sounds like the worse thing one could do. But if the focus of the problem is shifted from 'I'm so fat' to 'I'm unhappy about how I eat' then making changes in eating habits might be easier. It would feel like doing something positive for oneself rather than deprivation.

az

Hello all,
Have been reading this thread with interest, and being male, thought my input may help....or not.
As my PS says I am 44, and live in London. I enjoy cooking, although I usually eat at work, in the canteen.
I am lucky in so far as both my parents were tall and slim, and I appear to have gained those traits (although neither of my sisters have been so lucky) Well until recently where lack of exercise and a fondness for has pushed me up to a 34" waist, from a 32".
The interesting thing is that as a kid I would eat and as if it was about to disappear for ever. Now I really couldn't care. The last I ate was a truffle on Christmas day, and I have 2 pieces of Christmas I have carried to and from work for the last week. I will eat it eventually.
The only occasion I lost weight was through stress, and dropped a stone a month going from 11 and a half stone to 8 stone in 4 months. It then took 18 months to regain the weight. I am now around 12 stone approx. I enjoy savoury food, and will occasionally have 2nds although at present I am finding food boring. On my days off, I don't eat until around 18:00. At work my first meal is 15:00, followed by a couple of Sandwiches around 18:00. One thing I don't do is eat 'processed' food, except Granary Bread. However I do get through a kilo of instant coffee a month.
As far as diets go, the only one that makes sense to me is the one Magnus Pyke recommended (he was in the ministry for food during WW2). His arguement was that when a person eats, the stomach takes 20 minutes to inform the brain it has had enough, which is the reason we get bloated at christmas. The solution is, if a person has three pieces of potato at a sitting, reduce it to 2. Eat a little of anything, rather than lots of little. Chew and swallow slowly, to allow the stomach to tell the brain.....Stop!
I guess ultimately, like smoking, it is willpower that wins. I still occasionally fancy chocolate, but usually say no, as I don't like the aftertaste.
I would have originally,ie:- 30 years ago, have said the reason why men tended to be slimmer was the 09:00-17:00 working day followed by DIY/Gardening at weekends, but that life style has gone, and more women are working equal, if not longer, hours.
Anyway I hope that clears up something, but I don't know what!!!!

Hello just thought i would add another male point of view.

I have definitely found that food and my emotions have a big connection.

in the last two years i have gone form happily married to unhappily single again and their has been an big impact in my diet.

I love cooking and when i am happy i will prepare nice meals and eat quite a lot (of reasonable good things) and lately when i have been down i eat junk (i suspect depression related apathy has made me uninterested in cooking). But the thing is that when i was doing a lot of cooking and eating supposedly good foods i found i was putting on weight, whereas now when i have been eating junk food i find that my weight has dropped to a reasonable level and seems to be staying their.

Mind you i would rather be happy and rapidly inflating about the waist, than staying trim and sobbing into my .

I love food, to the point of passion.

I tend not to use it as a "comfort" (that's the job of alcohol and ciggies), but I will treat myself to nice meals with no feeling of guilt, or that what I am doing is bad.

I have a fondness for unusual foods, especially raw (steak tartare, oysters, carpaccio).

And I have a frankly wierd fantasy involving ice-cream

azahar, it's not that I think I'm not worth it, it's just that it's down to waste and expense. Wasting food is a Bad Thing, and turning up the heat when you could put on a pullover is wastage.

I'm getting there (although I still insist on putting on extra clothes before the heating gets turned up - this time I'm not wasting the planet rather than money, but the principle is the same)

hi Sho,

Oh, I always wear three sweaters in the house in winter. If I could afford to I would only wear two . But I agree it's a waste to put on the heating full blast and walk around in a t-shirt. I was just unclear about how that related to food until you explained it.


hi Lucky Star,

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Ahem, yes, well, I quit smoking two weeks ago and now am only drinking wine at the weekends. Perhaps this is what got me thinking about food and emotions. With two of my other emotional crutches missing I find myself more aware of what I am eating and why.

I also love food and am usually quite fussy about what I eat. But, although I know my relationship with food is much healthier than it used to be, there are still some things I would like to understand better.



az

hi Northern Boy,

I seem to have the opposite thing happening to you. When I am happy then it doesn't seem to matter what I eat - I maintain my normal weight or sometimes even lose weight. When I am stressed or unhappy I tend to put on weight.

Which could mean that a happy mind and body metabolises food better or that I unconsciously just don't eat as much when I feel 'full' in other ways. Well, it could mean any number of other things as well, that's just two I can think of at the moment.

az

Thanks for starting this thread, Azahar. It's fascinating.

For the record, I'm 33 and male, and rather on the solid side of things. This might have something to do with an irrational belief that all problems can be solved with chocolate, but there's a genetic tendency to cope with as well. My mother's a bit of a Rubens lady, and my father was never a scrawny type. My feelings about food are definitely something I picked up from Mum. She's another WW2 baby, and she spent six of her first seven years in refugee camps. She's always been able to forgive absolutely anything except the wastage of food. More disturbingly, I used to see her in the kitchen making sandwiches or whatever, and if she wasn't concentrating she'd pick up the bread, bite it, then continue to make her sandwich. One day I pointed this out; she hadn't noticed. It was a DP-camp habit; once your teethmarks were in the food, you see, it was less likely to be grabbed by someone else. (Never mind my grandmother's war stories; watching Mum in the kitchen when she's in a distracted mood gives me the serious horrors. This is what war does - sixty years later, a perfectly sane woman is compelled to bite the food she hasn't finished making.)

All this has left me with a complex about wasting food. I've lived away from Mum for a good 12 years now, but it was only last week that I threw good (not decaying) food away for the first time. I felt so guilty. But maybe I'll get a *bit* thinner now.

As for the weight thing - I wish people would just stop using this Body Mass Index thing. It's a reasonable guide, true, but if everyone's supposed to fit the scale it's complete twaddle. After an illness that I picked up through third-world travel, my weight went down to 10 and a half stone. The family doctor ordered me to eat like a pig for a month or so, because bits of my pelvis were sticking out and inconveniencing passers-by, and my elbows were lethal weapons. I'd sooner look healthy, if somewhat stocky, than fit the BMI charts and look ill.

Ivan.

hi Ivan,

I was wondering if the thread had petered out. Nice to see you here.

That is quite an interesting story about your mother. It shows how deeply ingrained these sorts of reactions are, and how often the reactions are quite unconscious.

Probably my weirdest unpleasant emotion related to food is that 'I won't get enough!' and I have no idea where that comes from. Since I grew up being quite obese I obviously always got more than enough food (though it was mostly a diet of hotdogs, baloney sandwiches, tinned beans and Koolaid). So I suppose the 'not getting enough' feeling relates to something else, no doubt enough love, affection etc.

As a result, even now I have a tendency to make too much food for myself. Okay, I don't (always) eat it all, but there is still this need to make too much. I've tried in the past to make less food and my internal emotional reaction was like a SCREAM. A clear and distinct emotion of feeling threatened.

az

This is a very interesting thread, and I hope we can keep it going without it descending into a discussion about dieting and calory counting!

I am 25 and a female (I am a lady!) so now you know the background. I've got a few things to say about my realtionship with food, so this might turn out to be a long entry!

The first thing is that my family on my mother's side appears to be pre-disposed to obesity. I don't know weather this is genetic or behavioural, but certainly 2 of my aunts, my uncle and my cousin are clinically obese. My mother and my sister and I are definately in the curvy plump body type, if not approaching the gigantic proportions of our relatives. I have a horror of getting as fat as my relatives, as its such a limiting factor on their lives. My aunty B can't walk up stairs, sit on a normal chair, or go out to work. She needs a hip replacement but needs to loose 15 stone before she can have the operation. She's also got necrosis in her feet due to poor blood circulation and they might have to be amputated. I don't understand how someone can over eat to the point where their feet might have to be cut off!

So with these horrors in my family you'd think I'd be skinny as a rake?! Not so! I'm slightly overweight, not grotesquely but certainly carrying a few more pounds than I feel comfortable and attractive with.

I have emotional attachements with food, in that it has been used as a symbol of love in my family. For instance if someone is visiting I'll make a cake or some biscuits to welcome them. I also find it hard to waste food, as I was bought up to eat everything that's on my plate. I'm trying to break the habit by throwing away surplus food but its a wrench. I find it easier to put waste food on the compost heap as at least it being used for something there!

My main problem with food is that I eat when I am bored. For instance when I'm at work, going to the canteen for a cuppa and a cake is a legitimate break in the day. I can then bring my goodies back to my desk and have another break whilst I'm eating them! (usually on H2G2) I'm breaking this habit by bringing in fruit and diet snack bars and even popping out to the smokers patio for some (fresh) air.

I've been slowly loosing weight in the past year by slightly moderating my eating, but in the main it has been down to cycling into work followed up by gym membership. Somehow I can resist snacking when I've worked up a sweat, whereas on days that I don't exercise the chocolates sneak under my guard!

I think that everything in moderation is good for you. Chocolate and crisps aren't bad for you, if you just have them once a week!

I think I'll stop here, my finger tips are sore from typing! Sorry for the long post!

QB

I've found that my waist has been expanding slowly over the last few years, despite eating a healthy(ish) diet, and this troubles me slightly (not enough to do anything about it yet, though ). I stopped smoking 2 years ago, which may have an effect. I also took up ice-cream making as a hobby, which probably has a far greater effect .

I love food in nearly all its manifestations, will try anything once (if I'm feeling either brave, or possibly after several ). Here's a few:

Jellyfish: too chewy (surreptitiously removed from mouth and left on side of plate).
Crocodile: Bland, a bit chewy. Boring.
Chicken's feet: Expend more energy on removing bones than calorific value.

Things I wouldn't touch with a bargepole as too esoteric for my taste:

Sheep's eyes
Monkey brains
Big Macs

There's nothing wrong with long posts, QB. It's nice to have something to read.

I just dropped back in to ramble on about food critics and the problem I have with them; it's all part of the emotional issues I have with food, in a way. I was a teenager when I went overseas for the first (and so far only) time, and I ended up in a 'third-world' country. Food was suddenly something that wasn't automatically available, and a fair amount of the available food was quite unpleasant; the palatable bits were fairly basic. One of the palatable bits gave me a fascinating illness, so not even the 'nice' things could be trusted.

Once I got back home, a shattered wreck, I noticed a fair few things about life in a 'first-world' country that I'd never really registered before. The most annoying things were connected with food - the amount of wastage, over-consumption, over-processing... but the most galling things were the Restaurant Critics. I'm not sure what these people are for. I'm inclined to think that if a meal doesn't cause nausea, illness or death, then it must be a good meal - it's served its purpose. I don't mean to sound sanctimonious, but can't the critics just be grateful that food is available on demand, and that someone else has done all the hard work of preparing it? (I live alone - I am thrilled to the marrow when someone else cooks for me - it's one of the great pleasures of life, along with cooking for someone else.)

This rant is probably a wee bit off-topic, but I feel better for having vented some spleen.

Ivan.

Ivan, I wholeheartedy concur with the cooking for someone else! I love cooking, like to think I'm reasonably proficient at it, but as I live alone there's rarely anyone to appreciate it.

Mind if I drop in on you on my next trip to Oz? (Current target is October 2004.)

hi Queen,

I thought yours was quite a fascinating posting, not too long at all. I agree with you - how could someone eat to the point of needing to have their feet chopped off? And your aunt needs to LOSE 15 STONE before she can even have an operation? Hell, I don't even come close to weighing 15 stone so it's very bizarre to think of someone carrying around more than the extra weight of another human being. And then not doing anything about it!

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Question - is this bored feeling also accompanied by some sort of anxiety?

I have always had this compulsion to eat when I was feeling 'too much' whatever. Later it changed to just putting *something* into my mouth - be it some food, a cigarette, some wine . . .

Perhaps an adult version of sucking one's thumb for comfort? Or maybe just a distraction technique. As I think I mentioned earlier, if I am really full of food it is hard for me to feel anything else.

Exercise is good and yes, it does make one less hungry. I think because it releases endorphins into our system so this makes us feel, at least temporarily, sated.

You said at the beginning of your posting : <>

I agree with that. Okay, I know that talking about body weight and feelings about body weight will naturally come up in this sort of discussion, but really, my main interest is how we relate to food.

I mean, I would love to lose about two stone. Okay, realistically, one and a bit. But I just refuse to ever go on a diet again. I've been on almost every diet that exists and none of them are worth sh*t. Because it isn't *what* you eat, it's *why* you eat - at least, I think so. So I am presently on a quest to understand my peronsal relationship with food. My primary motive is not to lose weight. It is more to understand why food is such an emotional thing for me.



az

Hi Reddyfreddy,

If you're in the area, do drop in. There's plenty of and you needn't cook unless you really want to. I hope you can face coming to Canberra, though - it's a strange place.

Ivan,

I sometimes get a bit depressed when I go into the local supermarket and see . . . well, just about every single type of food you could ever want or imagine and in total excess of what will ever actually be bought.

So i cannot help but wonder - what the hell happens to all this stuff that doesn't get bought before the sell-by date? Meat, fish, dairy, not to mention all the fruit and veg that spoils. Does it all just get tossed out or does some of it go elsewhere? I know of one supermarket chain here that used to sell 'past the sell-by date' meat, chicken and fish to various local restaurants. But since there is soooooooooo much of it always on offer, I reckon the wastage must be quite amazing.

So for you to throw out a bit of personal food now and then can hardly be considered a waste by comparison.

I sometimes think it is a bit sickening how much food is constantly available to us. It just doesn't seem natural somehow.

As for restaurant critics, well, they seem to exist in the world that thinks the preparation of food is an art form. And while I can agree that there *is* a certain art to preparing food exceptionally well, it is hardly a daily necessity. Most of the food we like most is quite simple and what makes it good are the ingredients being fresh and tasty.

So, I wholeheartedly agree with Reddyfreddy that a Big Mac is *not* food!

az

Well, I'm visiting Melbourne, which is *almost* in the area. I'll also be travelling to other places, I hope (Perth and Margaret River are high on the list), so may be able to drop in...

Reddyfreddy - where do you live? And why on earth do you want to go to Australia??? It's full of scary poisonous animals and insects that will kill you even before you get to your first barbie (barby?)!

Ivan,

Well, of course I am just (sorta?) kidding. Okay, a question. What is the typical Australian diet? Here in Spain EVERYBODY goes on and on about how our Mediterranean diet is the healthiest one on the planet. Lots of fresh fish and vegetables and olive oil. Well, ha! It's urban myth. Most tapa bars - albeit quite wonderful - make the oiliest, saltiest, tastiest food ever! It is all totally delicious, but healthy??? Well, as with everything else, if taken in moderation.

az

az, I live in London, where it's currently making a feeble attempt to snow . My brother emigrated to Australia 6 years ago, and I've visited him twice so far - the last time was in 2001, so I'm well overdue a visit, but personal circumstances have conspired against me . Australia is a great place to visit, and the food I've had there has been to an unremitting high standard. The are all really just trying to be friendly and say hello, they're love bites really, OK some of them do play a bit rough, but it's all forgotten after a few in the pub.

I'm in the seriously unenviable position of being the family fatty. Surrounded by all these slim people making concerned remarks about will-power and how fruit is really nice really.

Urge to scream '**** off!' very strong.

I am a size fifteen (ie 16 clothes too loose, 14 too tight) at the moment, down from 20. . And it was never about willpower or fruit, I genuinely have insulin resistance.

On the other hand, amongst all my slim and elegant cousins and siblings, I am the ONLY one in a long term successful relationship with a lovely man whom my family adore, with nice job and nice friends and nice flat and relatively calm existance, and all the slender ones are doing divorce, dysfunction, unemployment, living at home or in nasty bedsits, angst sturm un drang all day everyday. And yet I am to be pitied because I'm 'fat' and therefore out-of-control and slightly stupid.

HA!