A New Dilemma

[Guest guest]

I have dealt with many intuitive eating challenges since I started about 2

months ago, such

as how to eat intuitively in social situations like parties and dining in

restaurants with

friends. But tomorrow I will face a situation that has not come up since I

started. I will

have a nurse coming to the house to do an assessment on my mother. This is not

someone I know, it is a professional type meeting, but I do want to offer her

some type of

refreshment.

My first thought was that since it will be just after the lunch hour, I would

make a nice

dessert, a gooey chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and offer her a nice

piece of cake

and a cup of coffee. I have been making peace with desserts for the past few

weeks and it

is going quite well. I only had one binge on a particularly difficult day, but

other than that,

I find I am now able to enjoy a single serving and feel very satisfied and, best

of all, I don't

feel guilty! (The first week I had major guilt and anxiety with every bite and

ate 2 to 3

servings.)

Well, as I thought about this cake idea, it suddenly hit me that I had forgotten

what was

going on out there in the REAL world! I thought, " What are the odds that this

woman, who

also happens to be a nurse, will not be on some low-carb, no sugar way of

eating? And

what will she think of a morbidly obese woman walking towards her with a big,

gooey

chocolate cake, smiling and seemingly guilt free? One, she will think I have

completely lost

my mind. Two, she will think, " Well, I guess I know why she is obese! "

I am tempted to make oatmeal cookies or something more " healthy " than chocolate

cake,

not because of my own beliefs, but because it occurs to me that 99.9% of this

country

does not think the way that intuitive eaters do.

I am not really worried about it and I don't care what this woman thinks of me.

It just

struck me as kind of an amusing dilemma to have. I spent most of my life

worrying about

what was going to be served to ME when I accepted an invitation, thinking it

might cause

me to blow my diet. And I don't want to be seen as a saboteur or like I am in

complete

denial about my being overweight. But I am pretty sure this nurse will be

calling the " men

in the white coats " to come and get me when I say, " Oh, don't worry, it's not

this chocolate

cake that will make you or me fat, it's dieting. " (Even though we know that

it's true!)

:-)