eating with other people - Eating Disorder Recovery Message Board

youneeak · 12-05-2002, 09:39 AM

Hi all,

I just have to vent for a second. Right now I"m upstate visiting my boyfriend (who, unfortunatly lives 100 miles away from me...we go to different schools...) anyway---I'm up here visiting, and I LOVE it up here. (most of the time...)

I know his roommates and most of his friends and they don't bother me. I have fun with them.

But I have a problem. I get very very VERY uncomfortable whenever I have to eat around any of them...and I get even more uncomfortable when I have to eat in from of his friends that are girls...in fact, last night we went to this movie and dinner thing with a couple of his friends (most of who were girls) and I wasn't even eating...they were eating...and I still felt so incredibly uncomfortable. I don't know how to deal with this. I don't want to be this way, I want to be normal, I feel like it's tearing my boyfriend and me apart...just because he wants to badly for me to be friends with his friends. It's so much easier to eat/or being around his GUY friends...I don't want to tell him this, because I don't want him to think that I'm jealous of his girl friends...because in all honestly that's just not true...but when we go out with them, it always involves eating (at some point) hehe, we're in college, when does going out not involve eating or drinking...hehe, or both.

I don't know what the point of this post was...just to sort my thoughts maybe. Does anybody else have this problem...where they literally just don't feel comfortable in their own skin when they're around other people...I just feel so fat...blah...

NEVER GIVE UP
~sarah~

nicjb · 12-05-2002, 12:52 PM

I have the same kind of problem, but being uncomfortable eating in front of other people is a new thing for me. I'm not 100% convinced that I have a full-blown ED at this point, but I know I have serious issues that need to be addressed. Others are noticing my eating habits and whatnot, and I think that's what makes me more uncomfortable. I want to eat in front of my friends because I know they're watching me - waiting to see if I eat my fries or pass them over, or decide to order a salad when they're all getting meals, or whatever. I feel uncomfortable in my own skin too. I feel like I'm constantly looking down at my stomach to see how fat I am (even when I know that's not true). I also find that I compare myself to the people I'm eating with a lot of the time. I ask myself things like, "How can they eat that?" or "Is she skinnier than I am?" or "Do I look like a pig?" The worst part is that I'm hungry most of the time!!! I want to eat, and when I do I don't want to be hassled about what I'm putting in my body.