Unsafe at Any Size

Last week, I wrote about how I had to ask for help.  It isn’t easy for me to ask for help, even though I know people genuinely want to help.  And sometimes, people offer help that is actually counterproductive, like the mother who locks the cabinet from her night-eating son.

Even when people seem like they’re asking for help, it pays to listen and be careful.  What may be a request for help may really be a desire to vent.  They aren’t looking for advice, but a listening ear. Especially online, where we don’t really know each other, it’s easy to see what are meant as supportive comments as condescending.

Close friends might not really be asking for help, either.  A friend who orders dessert and says, “oh, I really shouldn’t be eating this” doesn’t really want you to respond, “No, you really shouldn’t.”

It’s tough we need to tippy toe around one another, but issues of weight and body image are intimately wrapped up in our sense of pride and self-worth.  Asking for or getting help implies we are insufficient on our own. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that even those whom we know are walking in shoes very similar to ours feel the blisters the same way.

Photo Credit :  D3 San Francisco/Flickr/Some rights reserved

This morning, I asked my husband for help.  Not for the first time, and not for lifting a heavy object or opening a particularly obstinate jar.

No, I asked him for diet help.  Specifically, to stop bringing home all those 100 calorie snacks.  He sighed, because I had already asked him to stop bringing home the Weight Watchers 1 point bars.  But being a good guy, he’ll either take them to work or put them in his office where I don’t have to see them.

Asking for help isn’t easy.  When we ask for help, we’re admitting there’s something we can’t do, that we’re not perfect.

The funny thing is, when the tables are turned, we generally love to help someone out.  We’re important, we can DO something for someone we care about.

It’s tricky, though.  You can’t just volunteer help.  Nobody likes to be told, “oh, you don’t want that because you’re on a diiiiiiieeeeeeeeet” (not how I think of it).  I sure wasn’t helping my husband two years ago when I told him his portion sizes were too big.

A friend of mine has an ex who is “helping” their son deal with his weight by putting a lock on a cabinet.  Seems he noshes in the middle of the night, and this is how she is “helping” him.

So there in the kitchen is a reminder night and day that he can’t be trusted to control himself.  And everyone else sees it, too.

Everybody else sees the weight he’s gained by his behavior, too, and it’s making him miserable.

No, he doesn’t have Prader-Willi syndrome or anything like that.  But he does have a problem.

So how do you help?  Asking how you could help is  a starter.  Or, instead of locking up a cabinet, how about not bringing home the forbidden food to begin with?

No, it’s not fair to everyone else in the family, but there’s a lot of things that aren’t fair.  It’s not fair to the kid that he has to struggle with this problem.

Have you asked for help?  Have you offered help?