'My best friend eats abnormally'

Kuk said the results were a reminder that our weight was not entirely in our control.

Kuk said the results were a reminder that our weight was not entirely in our control.

Published Jun 30, 2015

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QUESTION: I’m 15 and one of my friends has very abnormal eating habits.

I told our teacher, and the teacher told her parents. But her eating habits seem to have affected my other best friend and now all they can talk about is diets and healthy eating. I’ve been told by my teacher not to discuss food or appearance with them, which is tricky, and just to eat “normally”. But I’m starting to worry whether I eat healthily or not. What is normal? I don’t want to be anorexic or overweight. I hate having to behave like this. Can you help?

Yours sincerely,

Thea

 

 

ANSWER: How can you possibly behave “normally” when you've been told by a teacher not to discuss food or appearance with your friends? I hate to go against your teacher's advice, but surely she knows that the moment you're told not to mention something, it's the only thing that springs to mind? It's like the episode of Fawlty Towers in which Basil says, “Don't mention the war,” when there are German guests. As a result, every five minutes he's discussing concentration camps.

And if you want proof of this, try not thinking of the word “kangaroo” for the next five minutes. Just try. You won't be able to stop it popping into your head. It'll drive you mad.

So, talk to your friends just as you would to anyone else. Join in their conversations about diets. Chat about clothes. They're interesting topics! Be normal - and being normal may actually mean discussing anorexia and binge eating with them, if they pop up in conversation.

If you're worried about whether you're getting too slim or too fat, why don't you simply eat exactly what you like every day, and then weigh yourself at the end of each week, in the morning before breakfast? Unless you see an obvious increase or decrease over the months, you might find that you'll stay at much the same weight, give or take a few kilos here or there.

I'm not suggesting that you weigh yourself to keep at some prescribed weight, just to show you that eating what you like, in most cases, doesn't make a huge difference to your weight. Some people can stuff themselves and still stay slim. Some can diet and still stay fat.

Give your body a chance to have a say in all this - because your body, over which you have no control, plays a far greater part in deciding your weight than we imagine.

As for eating healthily, my own view is not to stick too rigidly to guidelines. The “five-a-day” fruit and vegetables rule isn't written in stone by any means. It's a good idea but I rarely have more than one, if that. The recommended number of safe alcohol units to be consumed was a random number just plucked out of the air, apparently. Henry VIII, it always comforts me to learn, never ate vegetables in his life. Other people, as we know, never eat meat. On the whole, in the West, most of us eat reasonable enough diets to tick along, whatever we eat.

Finally, don't take responsibility for your friends' eating habits. You've done what you can about the first friend - now it's up to her and her family. Same with the other friend. You can't influence how they behave by how you behave. And anyway, their obsession with food and looks may well just be a phase. Let them be and just enjoy their company when you can.

The Independent

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