y metabolism sucks. I’m not one of those people who eats Magnums for breakfast, lolling on the couch in my elastic waist track suit pants, hollering to anyone who will listen that I’m just big-boned. I legit have the digestion of a dead wombat. It’s fine, I’ve come to terms with it but some other people just don’t seem to get it.
I used to work in an office at a university and then as a teacher in special education schools. Office and staff room environments are probably the worst places to be if you’re trying to eat healthily; they are dens of calorific sin. Every time someone achieves something slightly above basic human functionality, it has to be celebrated with a dirty great mud cake from the bakery down the road. Sue’s son got a sticker on his project at school! Let’s have chocolate! Hey it’s the 5th of March! Let’s drink wine in the afternoon for no reason! I almost came to blows with a colleague years ago when I suggested that rather than having four cakes for the four birthdays one week in July, perhaps we could just have one? Nope. Everyone must have their own cake and their own celebration that takes up half the morning and I’d have to have the same tedious conversation four days in a row. ‘Carly! You never eat cake, just eat the damn cake!’ And I’d politely decline, sipping my green tea and wanting to smoosh the cake in her face muttering ‘YOU eat the damn cake!’
The concept of balanced eating is not new to me. I’ve maintained a 20(ish) kilo weight loss for 10 years. I know what I’m doing. I freaking love Tim Tams and if I had a body that knew how to effectively digest refined sugar and saturated fat, I’d have one every day. I’d have a PACKET every day, but that’s not the reality of my situation. It’s already hard enough to say no to a delicious and creamy rectangle of empty calories without the awkward pleading that always seems to follow my polite refusal. I’m annoyed by the assumption that I’m not living my life because I’m not having a fricking Tim Tam with my tea. If I ate a Tim Tam every time someone tried to force one on me, I’d have to be crane lifted out of my house when I died because they wouldn’t be able to fit my ample girth out a regular human sized door.
A major contribution to this problem is that I don’t look like the type of person who watches what they eat as obsessively as I do. I look like the type of person who goes to the gym a couple of times a week and who kind of watches what she eats but doesn’t sweat it if she slams a few Scotch Fingers with her milky tea. That’s the actual opposite of what I am. Sushi is a huge treat for me, so is low fat frozen yogurt. I have a mate who considers three trips to KFC in one week a ‘health win’. I haven’t eaten fast food since 1999. I’m not like normal people, I’m like a hybernating bear; my body is in a permanent state of bulking up for the winter. One of my interstate mates asked me recently if I’m really as disciplined as I say I am, because every time we hang out, I always drink wine and eat heartily. This is true but I see her twice a year and I save up a shite load of calories specifically for that occasion. I skip the office Tim Tams and chunks of unappetising cake every day, so once a month at a wedding or a fancy dinner I can eat a piece of chicken without panicking that it’s covered in a fattening sauce and have a glass of red wine with it. It’s a shitty little sacrifice that I have to make to stay healthy. I already hate it and food pushers just make me feel worse about it when they start lecturing me on balanced eating.
I’m lucky now that I don’t work in a proper office and the other creatives I share my freelance workspace with have learned pretty quickly that I’m never going to have a pork roll for lunch, so they’ve stopped asking. I do know that there are many people out there working in traditional chocolate mud cake laden offices who aren’t so lucky though.
This is a polite request on behalf of all the poor weight watchers out there. Food pushers: If you offer someone a treat and they say no, leave it. Even if they say no five days in a row. Leave it. Offering people treats is fine, it’s actually very lovely but when someone says no the correct response is not ‘Just eat the damn cake!’ . Some of us can’t eat the damn cake and we shouldn’t have to have an argument about it every time someone has a birthday.
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Have you ever experienced a sneaky food pusher? Do you struggle to get your office pals to back off on the sweet treats?
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