It’s hard enough to walk the healthy walk with our own
“stuff”. Our sleep, work stress, family life, hormones and cravings are
obstacles on any given day. But so are other people and sometimes it’s not even
the people closest to you. We spend a lot of time at work and coworkers can
affect your behavior. In the Little Book
of Thin I talked about the candy bowl person. There’s usually one candy bowl person per
workplace but there’s another type of office offender.
A few weeks ago, I opened the door from my office to our
waiting room. A client* sat on the white couch with an It’s Sugar shopping bag
next to her. She noticed that I noticed and said, “It’s not for me” and stood
to come into my office. I had to ask, “So
who is it for?” “It’s for someone at work, she loves Reese’s” my client said
and proceeded to pull out a package of peanut butter cups the size of a shoebox
(a shoebox lid). We joked a little, she told me to take a photo for Instagram
(I passed not knowing it would help this post) and switched gears.
This past Wednesday, I saw this same client again. I could
tell she was aggravated from the instant I saw her. Before the two of us could
sit down she started spewing details from her week. After a two-second intro
she said, “and there’s this evil bitch in my office who bakes” I nodded. “And
she doesn’t even eat what she bakes, she actually bakes things she dislikes.”
This is actually fairly common but my client wasn’t finished and I could tell
there needed to be gushing before guidance. “I come to Foodtrainers, another
guy has his nutritionist, my boss is attempting paleo and the person next to me
is gluten-fucking-free for real, like celiac. None of us want to eat this.” For the record, gluten fucking free is a
direct quote.
The candy bowl person mentioned generally doesn’t eat the
candy but Candy Bowl and Cookie Push are a little bit different. The candy bowl
person generally enjoys people congregating near them, they exchange Werthers
or Starbursts for office Intel. I realize you may feel I’m being cynical,
couldn’t it be Cookie Push has pure intentions and my trying to walk the
healthy walk client is misinterpreting things?
If I’m betting…no. I do not know Cookie Push personally.
However, it’s very common in eating disorders to constantly bake (for some
reason it’s baking more than cooking) for others. Cookie Push likely enjoys the
feeling of control in resisting the cookies while others indulge. This is very
different form someone sending a popcorn tin for the holidays or putting a
sweet in the break room once in a while.
What to do? You can unionize, rather than making things
personal, ban together with the other office mates and thank Cookie Push for
the goodies but say something to the effect of “it’s January and we’re trying
to be healthy and we don’t have the resolve you have” wink, wink. Or, suggest
“if you want to bring something in maybe something that’s not edible like
office flowers or if it is food possibly something healthy.” Cookie Push will
get the message. Or, you can do what my client did and fight flour with flour,
the ginormo Reeses were for Cookie Push.
Do you agree with my
assessment of Cooking Push? What would you do? Do you have a Candy Bowl or
Cookie Push at work?
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