Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue

When will people, particularly women, realize that?

Yes, there are children starving in China.  And you know what?  They will STILL be starving even if you eat those last 20 bites on your plate that you're not really hungry for.  They'll still be hungry if you finish off those french fries even if they're cold and soggy and they're making you feel bloated.  YOU ARE NOT CHANGING THE WORLD BY FINISHING WHAT'S ON YOUR PLATE.

And you know what?  You're not not wasting food by cleaning your plate.  You're not putting food to good use by cleaning off your children or hubby's or boyfriend's plates either when they say 'eh, I'm done' and there's still perfectly good food left that you know they'll never re-heat.
And you know why?  Because if you're like the vast majority of the population, you neither need nor want the extra calories.  You don't want the calories that come from finishing off the toddler's hamburger, the child's mashed potatoes, the s/o's dessert.

Know what you will do because you cleaned the plates with your mouth?  Hate yourself.  Feel bloated.  Stuffed.  Teach your body that it'll be fed more than it should and that it should learn to like it.  Possibly have a spurt of furious, excessive effort in a- what?- desperate attempt to get rid of the food you ate.  You know, the food you ate so that it wouldn't be wasted. 

Know what else?  When we stop to think about it, we know that eating this extra food isn't doing us any good.  And yet we still do it.  WHY?

What unhealthy, self-destructive impulse convinces us that we need to do bad things to our bodies just so we can say that we aren't wasting something?  To eat what we don't want or need or have room for because someone else has refused to eat something that they don't want or need or have room for?  Why are we doing the eating? 

Why do we do it at all?  Why don't we give a brief lecture on the sizes of eyes versus stomachs and have them properly dispose of the food (using a compost if applicable)?  Why do we think that people who don't eat more than they should are somehow being frivolous, wasteful, feckless, indifferent to the world/environment/poor starving children/whatever when they recognize their limits and refuse to conform to the massive, super-sized portions served them?  Why is it not okay to say "oops, I took too much, sorry I can't finish it but I'm FULL"?

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY?

Current Location: dorm
Current Mood: fat
Current Music: "A Voice That Carries" Bonnie McKee