Are your friends making you fat?

In my age group (mid70s-80s+) we are at an age where people just can't eat much (or drink much) so no, my friends make me feel like I overeat when I eat a sandwich and they nibble on half.

@ninerbuff I've had friends who wanted to eat by proxy. Invite you out, and watch you eat all of the things. They eat all kinds of imaginary foods, live vicariously through the cooking shows, and actually pretend they're eating. They talk about food incessantly, cook up a storm, but never eat their own baked goods or cooking. Disordered eating and drinking can take all kinds of forms, and sneak right in there. You're correct, you can lose friends over food and drinks. It's uncomfortable having someone watch every bite you take. You know what they're thinking, too. Sometimes, you just have to walk away from that kind of obsessive behavior.

Did they want to make me fat? Ayup. I know so. No one gets to live in my body or eat through me, so bite me.

Personal experience: friends were irrelevant. I was the only obese person among my friends, way way heavier than any of them.
Ironically, I'm sure some of them now wonder how I can be thin eating as much as I do.

My parents are obese though (each for different reasons). I think the mindset of my mom had way more influence on me before I 'saw the light' than any eating habits from my friends.

People in general are quite norm-driven, it seems to me. That is, we tend to want to behave in ways we believe are "normal". The people who surround us implicitly define what "normal" is . . . whether they pressure us or not.

I honestly didn't experience much of people pressuring me to eat more when I was losing weight. (I tried not to let my eating habits or the fact that I was trying to lose weight become a topic of conversation at all, ever.) The only case I can think of was a friend who made a mildly critical-seeming remark about how I didn't eat bread anymore (not true) when she saw me order veggie burgers a few times without the bun (buns not worth the calories, to me, so why order them?).

I was already hanging out with a bunch of recreational athletes and had for a long time while overweight/obese, though I had/have friends of other types, too - maybe that makes a difference. I don't have any friend groups where the whole/main basis of the relationship was eating/drinking.

In general, if my friends try to bully me into doing something I don't want to do, or bully me out of something I do want to do . . . I think I need better friends, honestly. That's not how actual friends act, in my view.

Beware the rain, beware the snow. Beware the friends you think you know. Those friends of mine would always want to go out for food. I would order off the menu and they wouldn't. They wanted to watch me eat. I realized it was cuckoo bird behavior, but I didn't let them bully me into eating more than a normal person would.

Women know that women can be highly competitive. Weight, looks, clothes, boyfriends. Cuckoo birds. We grow UP and we look back. We can clearly see that we were all flawed in some way. We learn, let go and love them, anyway.

ninerbuff wrote: »

Interestingly enough, when I personally stopped drinking and the friends I had before knew it, they stopped asking me to hang out with them when they wanted to get smashed. Mind you, I would have said no to drinking if with them, but they didn't invite me anymore because I was no more "fun" because I was sober with them.

Same experience as a non-drinker. I've actually been told that I wasn't invited to certain events because "well, you don't drink..." like "what's the point in inviting you?" Note that I am not judgey or preachy about drinking but there are some women in the circle who are very hard drinkers and I think they fear being judged. Or, at the very least, having someone present who is stone cold sober and has a clear memory of their drunken antics.

Not sure the same would apply to food with this group as almost all of the women are perpetually dieting so there would be more empathy for restricting calories.