There's No Such Thing as a Free* Lunch

The plate had two slices of lamb, three tiny new potatoes, three chunks of roast potatoes, a Yorkshire pudding, one piece of cauliflower, two pieces of broccoli, and some carrot batons.

“Well, I won’t be eating for the rest of the day,” declared my friend D as she dug in.

It was just before 2 p.m. – lunch – and I was hungry, really hungry. So hungry that I’d had to have a banana an hour beforehand because I was cranky-hungry (something I haven’t been in a while) as we were walking around Hever Castle. We’d been waiting for our food for more than a half an hour, me panicking privately because I was so hungry. But after D’s comment I was panicking even more.

Can I eat the whole thing? I wondered. It doesn’t look like that much to me, and I’m not going to eat the roast potatoes anyway (in England, they’re typically roasted in goose fat). Is this really a lot of food?

I looked hopefully over at my friend L, hoping she would provide some clue. But she didn’t say anything.

D – who does not and has never had a weight problem -- cleaned her plate. L – who is grimly following South Beach phase 2 for medical reasons that have nothing to do with losing weight – left over the potatoes and the Yorkshire pudding after taking a tiny taste of them. I left over my roast potatoes and – after what I hoped was a covert examination of my friends’ plates – wondered if they had noticed, as I had, that I’d cut less fat off my lamb than they did. (My mother loved the fat, so I grew up never thinking anything other than that it was OK to eat.)

Sigh. It never ends, does it?

That afternoon, I was hungry not long after lunch – hunger I’m sure was in my head, and I’m sure was a function of my wondering if I should be allowed dinner after D’s comment.

I did eat dinner, but spent the rest of the evening with the uneasy feeling – fear? Anxiety? Frustration? I’m really not sure -- that has in the past been a prelude to a binge. I thought about how my friend J – six feet tall and rail thin -- had said casually on Saturday night when I mentioned I had kissed a 21-year-old in Riga: “You could easily pass for 25. People who have fat faces are lucky.” (Now really, I ask you, what is the Hallmark-approved response to that?)

I took a bath – careful not to choose the apple-scented bath bomb from my collection – and went to bed. This morning I got up and went to the gym and tried – unsuccessfully -- not to stare at my stomach or arms in the mirror.

I’m as sick of writing these kinds of things as you probably are of reading them. I was tempted to end on a cheery note – or really, the self-deprecating fat-girl note – and say that I need a hobby. But I don’t. I just need time.

Or so I hope.

*free, in this case, would be "free from obsessing"