Hi 366to266,
I completely agree with your reasoning and I will go as far to say that firstly, your friends should more accommodating. They should know that the path you're choosing to follow ( I refuse to call it a diet anymore) is a path to getting you healthier and fitter so that you can be happy both outside and in.
As for advertisements, admittedly I've been reading a lot of conspiracy theories concerning how food is advertised to society, and how we are essentially bred to become addicted to these foods so there is more money to be made. Take for example a well known bread advert, I was watching it the other day and just realised how bread was being continuously advertised to children in a particular in the family setting and it seemed bread or the consumption of it is being equated with happy childhood memories, and there in lies why half of us ARE emotional eaters. I could rant forever but I'll spare you guys for tonight lol but can you see where I'm coming from?
It's absurd...
MissLaylay thanks for your response. I have a few points to make in reply. Yes, very close friends support our weight loss efforts, but in the wider circle of acquaintance made up mainly of people who seem to eat and drink to their heart's content and never gain weight (or, if they DO put on a few pounds over Xmas, lose it just by cutting back for a couple of weeks) morbidly obese people on strict diets are a big wet blanket on their fun. We bore them. We seem like killjoys, and maybe, also, we prick their own consciences about the junk they are putting into their own bodies. They don't want dieters around to spoil the fun, so they simply exclude them from their parties and invitations. I've seen this dozens of times.
I've been invited to speak at a three-day history conference next year and before accepting I took a look at THIS year's programme and guess what? There is a HUGE emphasis on overeating and drinking alcohol, which are being presented in the programme as the fun part of the event. The way the itinerary is laid out, the eating/drinking part of it has equal emphasis with the lectures. In fact, the time allotted to slap up hotel breakfasts, all-you-can-eat buffet lunches and banquet dinners is twice as long as that allotted to any speaker! Much is made of the fun of booze ups and pub crawls. Two banquet meals at Indian restaurants, with plenty of alcohol, comes as part of the price of the conference fee, and this of course encourages people to over-indulge and over-order (because there isn't going to be a bill afterwards; also, they have paid up front and want to get their money's worth). Two of the speakers even have the after-dinner spot, so there isn't any avoiding it if you want to hear those speakers. Reading posts on a forum online about last year's conference, the attendees make constant jolly references to the boozing and the stuffing. It almost starts to seem as though the entire conference and the speakers are just a "cover" or excuse for a blow out weekend. When inviting me and the other speakers, the organiser put great emphasis on the free food and drink to try to induce us to accept. It felt as though he believed (or has found) that the offer of a weekend of free pig-out works when attempting to get speakers to work for free. And then when speakers DO attend, the fact that the free food and drink is their ONLY payment surely encourages them to over eat and over drink?
I don't know at what point I will be in my weight loss efforts when this event takes place, but I don't want to ruin my diet and get readdicted to overindulgence, or to eating for fun and entertainment. My main struggle at the moment is to convince myself to use food ONLY as fuel and not as entertainment! So I have declined to attend.
MissLaylay may I beg you please not to call your realization of what is really going on "conspiracy theory"? The problem with that terminology is that it tends to make people switch off, deride the realization and mock those who have "seen the light". What we need is for more people to start noticing what you have noticed, the bread advert (same for breakfast cereals, isn't it?) instead of sleepwalking through life, which allows these bloomin' advertising nerds to brainwash us.
Nowhere is good, plain, fresh, non-branded, non-copyrighted, healthy food advertised as fun, enjoyable, desirable or delicious. Junk is always associated with energy, fun, a great life, happy families, sexiness, liveliness, laughter, and vitality (think of Coke adverts, Ronald McDonald and Mars Bars, etc ~ "helps you work, rest and play".)
Helena
