A helping hand or not?

Sometimes, what looks like a helping hand is really a reaching out for help. Let's say that you see someone in need. They're in need of emotional support, love, a feeling that they're worth something, the strong need to not be alone, and so forth. So you reach toward them in order to help ease their pain. But it doesn't stop after a few times. A symbiotic relationship is set up, almost a parasitical living system. The helper feels terrific for doing a good deed, and the one who needs help, now has someone who cares enough about her that the helper will give up time and emotion, even food and money, to rescue the desperate one.

In the case of eating disorders, there's almost always going to be falling off the wagon by a dieter. She'll cry out for help. The readers will tell her she's a good person, don't hate yourself, everyone needs to break a diet now and again, get back on the wagon and start over. All very natural--the first two or three times. But with someone who's not invested in losing weight, the situation of need, rather than the weight loss, is what's wanted. So she reaches out continually. One by one supporters drop off, realizing that this is some sort of game the dieter is playing. Eventually, all who are left are those who play the game themselves. They are a living organism of pretty much eating whatever they want to, being "forgiven," and talking about how in the future--they'll name a date several days or weeks in the future--when they'll start the diet again. And the cycle repeats itself.

This thinking was triggered by one blogger in particular, but I've been reading a lot on the obesity ring and see that the game has other players. About a third of the bloggers on dieting aren't dieting to lose weight at all. They want to, but they won't do the real work it demands. Pleasure trumps health. Even when someone has had brushes with death, there's no change in behavior. It's baffling and irritating and sad, all at the same time.

The helpers are helping the dieter to kill herself out of their own need to be heroes. They also need to feel superior. Sound ugly? It is ugly. But it's the truth. It's like watching Maury Povich--you get to feel as though as bad as things are in your life, at least it's not the train wreck that's happening in others'. It's snobbery.

We have to learn when to pull back. You don't have to kick anyone in the ass, but you do have to stop saying it's all right to keep eating chips and chocolate for an afternoon snack. You have to stop saying that it was okay that she ate because her kid got sick, or her car broke down and cost a lot to fix, or her shoelaces came untied--any damn thing will do. Because eating won't fix it. You know the old saying: "If hunger isn't the problem, eating won't fix it." The only thing you've done when you eat a quart of ice cream because you're depressed is depress yourself further and make yourself feel like shit. You're basically saying that you're not worth losing weight, gaining health, gaining sexiness and beauty. Oh, yes you are! Sure, you might be awfully pretty, even though obese. But think how much more stunning you'll be at normal weight, most of all to yourself.

So the enablers have to stop doing that, and those who are playing a game of dieting have to stop allowing the enablers to keep them obese. If you truly can't lose--which means you really don't want to--join a fat acceptance group, stay fat, die young or live with blindness as your diabetes progresses.

I know this has been a rant, and rants usually aren't helpful. But I hope this one has added something to the dialogue. I know that it's changing my way of looking at this. I don't think I've ever enabled anyone, because I don't have the temperment, and don't interact with any of the gamers, just read their blogs. But it's a good warning sign to be aware of that all the time.