231 – eating with others

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Elizabeth: So, have you ever left a dinner party or a girls’ night thinking, what the hell just happened? You had a plan. You’re gonna be quote unquote, good, right? One drink, no chips, maybe a salad, but an hour in, and you’re halfway through a margarita elbow, deep in guacamole and already negotiating when you’ll start over.

Now, here’s the truth. It’s not that you’re broken or anything’s wrong with you, and this is not a willpower problem, and no, you’re not the only one who does this. In today’s episode, we are unpacking why eating around other people feels so incredibly difficult and what’s actually going on beneath the surface when you abandon your intentions in the middle of a meal.

It’s not about food, it’s about belonging. Performance pressure and the invisible rules that we’ve [00:01:00] all learned about what women should and shouldn’t eat in public. If you’ve ever felt like the odd one out at the table or like you needed something just to feel normal, this episode is gonna hit home.

Don’t skip it. You’ll finally understand what’s really going on and why it’s not your fault.

Welcome to the Total Health and Midlife Podcast, the podcast for women over 40 who want peace with food, ease in their habits, and a body that they don’t have to fight with. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Total Health and Midlife podcast. I am Elizabeth Sherman, your host, and I wanna thank you for tuning in today. Now, before I start, let me give you a quick heads up. This episode pairs really well with one that I released two weeks ago called food is friendship. That one dives into what happens when your relationships are built around shared food habits [00:02:00] and how changing your eating can shake up your relationships. If you haven’t listened yet, I would love for you to check it out after this one. You don’t need to listen to it before, but you’ll probably see some of your own story in both.

Okay, so tell me if this sounds familiar. You’ve got a plan. You’re feeling focused. You even gave yourself a little pep talk in the car ride on the way to dinner. Just one drink, no chips. I can do this. Maybe a grilled chicken salad or something. Light something that I’m supposed to eat. You’re not gonna be that woman who loses her mind over happy hour appetizers, but.

Fast forward an hour, and you’re already two margaritas deep, knuckle deep in guacamole, and thinking, what the heck just happened? And you didn’t even want the chips or the second drink and the plate you [00:03:00] cleaned. It wasn’t even that good. And yet, here you are bloated, frustrated, and quietly promising yourself that you will start over tomorrow.

Now, why is that? Why does eating around other people feel like walking into a tidal wave of invisible pressure? You know how to eat when you’re home. You know what feels good in your body, but something happens when other people are around something that makes you abandon your plan and sometimes even yourself.

So let’s talk about that. Here’s the thing, no one tells you when you eat around other people. You are not just feeding yourself, you’re actually kind of performing. Now, not intentionally. You’re not putting on a show with jazz hands and a tiara, but you’re still trying to read the room to [00:04:00] fit in, to match the vibe, right?

And most of us learned very early that women are supposed to eat in ways that make other people feel comfortable. The backyard barbecue, totally be chill. Don’t be the high maintenance one asking what’s in the potato salad. Just grab a paper plate, smile. Eat the burger even if you didn’t really want it.

Now at the fancy restaurant, you’re supposed to be poised and sophisticated. Order the fish nibble at your food. Heaven forbid you be the woman who orders ribs, right? And with new friends, especially if they look like they have their act together, you better believe that you are trying to keep it quote unquote clean, right?

You don’t wanna be judged for what you’re eating. So maybe you under order. You skip the dessert, you say you’re not really hungry, even if you are starving. [00:05:00] It’s like we’ve all got this mental catalog of what’s quote unquote appropriate to eat based on who we’re with and where we are. And every situation comes with a different set of rules.

But the problem is. None of those rules or scripts are actually based on your needs. They’re based on managing how you are perceived. Food becomes this costume change. You are not eating for nourishment or even enjoyment. You’re trying to send the right message. I’m cool. I’m healthy, I’m not too much. And after enough meals like that, no wonder you get home and eat the thing that you really wanted because you never gave yourself permission to just be a person at that table.

Performing is [00:06:00] exhausting, especially when no one else notices the act because they are too busy managing their own. And here’s the thing, when everyone is performing, no one is really present. No one’s truly connecting, and you miss out on the actual joy of eating with people that you care about. That’s the real cost.

So let me tell you about my client. Her name is Sarah. Now, Sarah had a plan. She was heading to a Halloween party, hosted by some of her newer friends, and in our coaching session earlier that week, she had told me, I’m good. I totally got this. She wasn’t planning to drink. She thought she might eat something beforehand just to make it easier.

She’d been doing great with her habits and she wanted to keep that momentum. Yeah, but the party wasn’t what [00:07:00] she expected. There was queso, there were margaritas and there were a lot of women standing around laughing. Glass in hand, chip in hand, totally relaxed. And before she even knew what was happening, Sarah was holding a margarita too.

And then came the chips and then the queso and more queso and. She didn’t even really think about it. It just sort of happened like her body took over and then afterwards, not only was she devastated, but she was completely beating herself up about it. She didn’t understand how something that felt so solid earlier in the week had unraveled so quickly.

She said, I don’t even drink that much anymore, and I wasn’t even hungry. Why did I do that? Here’s why. Because in that moment, eating and drinking weren’t about the food. [00:08:00] They were about avoiding the awkwardness about not doing what everyone else was doing. It was about belonging. And when everyone around you is doing something that signals, we are all in this together, choosing not to can feel like stepping out of the circle.

It’s awkward, it’s lonely, and it feels like rejection even when no one’s judging you. Sarah didn’t cave because she was weak. She caved because she’s a human, because our brains are wired to seek connection and avoid social risk because the discomfort of not fitting in is sometimes stronger than the discomfort of overeating.

And if that sounds familiar, if you’ve ever been the woman standing there with the red solo cup in one hand and a voice in your head whispering, this isn’t what [00:09:00] we said we were gonna do, there is nothing wrong with you. You’re not undisciplined, you’re just trying to stay part of the group.

There’s nothing wrong with you for wanting that. A few years ago I went out to dinner with two of my friends. They were actually former clients of mine. Nothing fancy, just a casual restaurant. And I was ready. I was really looking forward to this dinner.

I looked at the menu ahead of time. I knew exactly what I wanted. I was hungry. I’d had a long day and. Yeah, I just wanted to eat and so I ordered a full entree. That sounded delicious and satisfying. I was the first one to order. I was confident, I was certain, and then friend number one ordered a side salad and friend number two ordered soup.

And all of a sudden I felt it. [00:10:00] There was that little rush of panic in my chest and that moment of, oh my God, did I just overdo it? Did I not understand what the assignment was? It wasn’t that they said anything. No one raised an eyebrow or commented on what I picked, but inside my brain it was so loud and I called them on it.

I was like, what the heck, guys? I started second guessing everything. Was I being extra? Did I just break some unspoken code of how women are supposed to eat in groups? Was I going to look like I had no self-control? Here’s the thing, I was still hungry. I still wanted what I ordered, but suddenly it felt wrong, like I’d missed the memo, and that’s the power of social conditioning.

Even with all the work that I’ve done on my relationship with food. Even as a coach, it still [00:11:00] hits sometimes that reflex to shrink, to match the group and to not stand out. And it wasn’t about the food, it was about not wanting to be different because different can feel threatening even when no one says a word.

It’s wild how quickly we can go from, I’m listening to my body to I’m doing it wrong just because of what someone else is doing or eating, and then we wonder why eating with others is so freaking difficult. We’ve been told that if we just follow the rules that we’ll be successful. Eat this. Not that.

Measure track. Avoid control. And if you can’t stick with it, well that’s on you. You must not want it badly enough. You must not have any willpower. You must be lazy. Undisciplined and addicted to food. It’s such a seductive lie [00:12:00] because it makes everything look simple. Just follow the plan, like health is a checklist and not a whole ecosystem of feelings, relationships, stress, hormones, and let’s be honest life.

But here’s the problem. Diets don’t prepare you for people. They don’t teach you how to handle the awkwardness of ordering differently at dinner. They don’t show you what to do when your friends all wanna split dessert and you don’t. But you also don’t wanna be the buzzkill. They definitely don’t teach you how to sit with the feelings of being left out or the discomfort of breaking tradition.

The second, your environment changes. When you are not at home with your prepped meals and perfect lighting, all of those rules, they completely fall apart because real [00:13:00] life doesn’t care about your macros. This isn’t a willpower issue. This is a skillset issue. The skills of being present in your body, the skills of holding boundaries with kindness and love.

The skills of letting people feel however they’re going to feel without making it your responsibility. No one teaches you that. So when you struggle, you assume the worst about yourself, but the truth is you are doing the best you can with the tools that you were never given. That’s not failure, that’s just being unprepared.

So we wanna normalize those feelings.

So where does that leave us? If you’re eating around other people, is this emotionally charged? And let’s be real. Sometimes it absolutely is. What can you actually do about [00:14:00] it? let me offer you this. You might not always have control over what’s being served, but you always have control over how much you eat.

And this is something that I teach all of my clients. It’s actually habit number seven in the eight basic habits that healthy people do eat just enough, not too much. You can still show up. Participate and eat with everyone else without feeling stuffed or out of control. You don’t have to skip the tacos or the birthday cake, but you can stop when you’ve had enough.

And the more you practice that, the more confident you’ll feel walking into any food situation. Now, here’s the second piece. Start paying attention to how you feel when you don’t follow the group, not what you think you’re supposed to feel, but what you actually feel.[00:15:00]

Do you feel anxious, excluded, guilty, awkward? Do you worry they’ll think you’re judging them or that you’ll look like you think you’re better than them? Do you feel proud, curious, quietly rebellious? These are powerful clues because when you understand why it feels so uncomfortable, you stop thinking something is wrong with you, and you start realizing, oh, this is that old belief again, the one that says, fitting in is more important than feeling good in my body, but you’re allowed to eat the way that you want to eat even if no one else is doing it.

No one else can feel your hunger or your fullness. No one else knows how your body reacts to food or what kind of day you’ve had or what your goals are. You are the only one who [00:16:00] knows what enough feels like, and that awareness is your superpower.

If you’ve ever left a party or dinner thinking, why did I do that? Be aware that you are totally not alone. This is so incredibly normal, and more importantly, you’re not broken. Most of us were taught how to follow the food rule. But we were never taught to understand our reasons. We weren’t taught to ask what was I feeling when I reached for that third slice, or was I trying to belong more than I was trying to nourish myself?

And that’s exactly why I created my free guide. The 82 Reasons You Overeat that have nothing to do with food. It’s a list of real human reasons. Things like boredom, habit, people pleasing, even tradition that drives us to [00:17:00] eat when we’re not hungry. Things like queso at a Halloween party or a second drink that you didn’t plan or matching the table.

When you really wanted something else, this guide will help you see yourself with so much more compassion because once you understand why you’re eating, you can start making different choices without white knuckling your way through social events. So go grab the guide. It’s free. You can find it at elizabethsherman.com/82-reasons that will actually be in the show notes as well.

And it’s the first step towards building a relationship with food that actually includes your real life. You don’t need more rules, you just need better tools. And if today’s episode resonated, don’t forget that there’s a companion episode that goes hand in hand with this one. I released it two weeks ago, and you can [00:18:00] find it two spots up or down depending on how you sort your podcasts in your podcast feed.

And together they will give you a fuller picture of why food feels so emotional and what to do with it when it gets complicated around other people. That’s all I have for you today. Have an amazing week, and I will talk to you next time. Bye-bye.

Now before you go, if today’s episode hit a little too close for home, or if you’ve ever wondered why did I eat that, I have something for you. It’s called The 82 Reasons You Overeat that have nothing to do with food Now, it’s not a guilt trip, and it’s definitely not another diet plan. It’s a free guide that will help you to finally understand why you keep eating, even though you swore you wouldn’t.

Here’s a secret. It’s not about willpower, it’s about everything else. You can grab your copy right now at [00:19:00] elizabethsherman.com/82-reasons. Seriously, go download it. You’ll feel seen, and it might just be the start of something different.