Finished my first DietBet in a while yesterday, getting down to 258 pounds from 271. I set it up so that there was another DietBet going on when this finished, so my predicted loosening of my diet wasn't as bad as it normally would be (I went to a Chinese buffet but as if by some miracle I didn't screw up terribly. I didn't eat any visible wheat--I probably ate some hidden wheat but not enough to give me a reaction--and the worst thing I ate was a little ice cream. I'll have to revisit, of course, if I suddenly wind up going on an ice cream bender... but it didn't happen so far.
My roommates have been sabotaging me less. They never intentionally sabotaged me, but with food addiction issues a lot of well-meaning stuff can really screw me over, so if somebody asks if I want to go out to eat or something like that I have a very hard time saying no. I've compiled a nice list of restaurants I can eat that fit into my diet (Red Robin, Subway, Chipotle, Texas Roadhouse, Buffalo Wild Wings, El Azteca, Perkins, good sushi places, and a few other places are quite easy for me to eat at) and in a nutshell they're very aware that there are some places I just can't eat, either because of my diet challenges or because of my allergies.
Friends asking me out to dinner has always been a big trigger for me because it's not just wrapped in food reward, it's wrapped in a certain amount of diet shaming. A lot of my friends are really into fat pride/fat acceptance movements, so bringing up "I can't eat here because I'm trying to lose weight" is a very difficult thing because it could easily be responded to with a barrage of attempts to make me feel good about my body that really only make me feel bad that I don't feel good about my body.
I'm not into body shame. I don't agree with some of the rhetoric of the fat acceptance movement, but I do agree with the central tenets that nobody deserves shame or owes anybody else a particular body appearance or health, but just being on a diet and making that open to people is enough for some people to feel preached to. I don't get this so much now as a quietly-paleo-dieting individual but I certainly felt it when I was a vegan, and that recognition really carried over.
It's a viscious cycle, really. It's hard to stick to a diet when other people aren't aware you're on it, because they will constantly push food at you and feel offended when you don't take it. But if you tell them you're on a diet, they believe it's commentary on their own eating habits or preachiness. So you might keep quiet to avoid being viewed as that guy, only to be stuck in the first part again. What makes it worse is that conventional nutritional lore (which by and large does not work for food addicts) is so ingrained that if somebody doesn't feel preached to they may very well preach to you themselves, especially if they've lost a lot of weight on it. One of my co-workers years ago triggered a binge eating episode in me because he lectured at me for having not eaten a handful of M&Ms. "If you don't indulge sometimes you'll just binge later!" he said, the phrase echoing in my head until it built up so much shame I relapsed. This would not have happened if he'd just accepted my "no" and shut his mouth, but there are few folks so dangerous to my progress as opinionated people who have lost a great deal of weight.
Anyway, it's my lunch period now and I've resolved to take a nice walk during it.
Happy trails,
-- Jackson