Establishing Boundaries

Tough Talk And No Nonsense

Every child with a sibling who has sat in the back seat of a car on a long trip knows what boundaries are. They are those invisible lines we define as “this is my side; no trespassing.” My sister and I used to sit in the back seat of the car, for all those endless west Texas miles, moving our arms up and down in a variation of the tomahawk chop to define our space. We would announce a tuck line in the upholstery as our boundary, and we would enforce it with a vengeance. To establish a boundary is a fundamental aspect of human behavior, and one we share with most of the higher mammals. Our territory is our territory. Period. End of story.

When I think about it, I can think of no more intimate decision than the decision of what I will or will not eat. It is mine and mine alone. Even my sexual decisions are not that intimate; they, naturally, involve another human being. But my decisions about what I eat and drink are uniquely mine.

And yet, this is an area in which many overweight people have very poor boundaries.

Do we believe that other people care what we eat? And if we do, do we believe that what they think matters? Even my parents recognized my sister’s and my rights to establish a fair boundary in the back-seat. They might have quibbled with our techniques, but no one questioned our rights to boundaries. The same should be true of our eating. It is a uniquely personal decision, effecting no one else directly and only a limited number of people in our lives even indirectly. Why not allow ourselves the dignity of establishing a few no trespassing signs?

Sometimes we are so hypersensitive that we imagine trespass where it doesn’t exist. I recently heard the quote, “Don’t worry what other people think of you. They seldom do.”

When we go to a restaurant, and we’re paying for our own food, it is simply nobody else’s business what we eat or why. It is not even the waiter’s business why we ask for the changes to the stated menu, why we want the broccoli instead of the potato, why we want to know if the buffalo wings are breaded. If it helps the waiter to meet our needs for us to offer some explanation, then we do so for our own benefit, not for theirs. The only judgments most waiters form about diners are based on the size of the tip.

Do we think it matters to our fellow diners what we order? Most of the time they could not care less. Test yourself on this. Think about the last time you went out to eat. Do you remember what you ordered? Probably. Do you remember what your companion ordered? Probably not.

The chances are it didn’t matter to you what they ordered, and the chances are it didn’t matter to them what you ordered. They most probably didn’t even trespass your boundaries on this one. Or even if they did notice, it was forgotten two hours later.

Why would we let that effect our personal food choices?

And even if they do intrude, even if people are rude enough to express opinions about our deeply personal choices of what we put in our mouths, how do we often react?

I can assure you that if an intruder crosses my physical property line, I ask them what they need. I ask what they are doing on my property. Certainly I do it politely, at least at first. But if they have no plausible reason and I do not want them there, I ask them to leave. If they don’t leave, I bring out the big guns. In the city I would call 911. In the country, this being Texas, I would, literally, bring out the big guns and ask them one more time to leave.

If someone asks me about my food choices, they are trespassing. They may have a valid reason, they may not. So the most proper response is often “Why do you ask?” In other words, “What are you doing on my land?”

At this point we all need to establish where our personal boundaries are. For myself, if their reason seems to be a true desire to learn something, then I tell them as much as I choose about the reasons behind my dietary choices. If their reason seems to be to attempt to control my behavior, or justify their own, then I politely ignore them, brushing them off with a comment something like, “You don’t want to get me started on diet and nutrition; we’d be here all day.”

(At this point I am reminded of a story Tony Campolo tells about himself. When he is on an airplane and wants to sleep or read or simply sit in peace, then invariably his seatmate wants to talk. So he always answers their first question, “What do you do?” with, “I am a Baptist evangelist.” End of conversation.

At this point we also have to respect their boundaries. Don’t go onto their turf and try to argue with them. They have the right to their own idiocy, I mean, beliefs. If we want our own boundaries respected, we have to respect others’.

Did we wake up this morning hoping that we could get into an argument about proper nutrition? If not, then don’t. Why do we imagine that they woke up this morning hoping that we would argue them into changing the way they eat? If you don’t want to get into a fight with your neighbor, don’t shoot your guns off in his direction.

What about when we are in our own homes, with our own families?

The conventional wisdom is that we should get all the carbs out of the house, that if our families want to eat that stuff then they should do that away from home. I wonder, though, if that is not another way of saying that we ourselves do not respect boundaries. If there are potato chips in my house, they are for my son to eat. If I eat them I am trespassing on his property, am I not?

In this instance the problem is that I do not have solid boundaries. It is not that my family is pushing against my limits, but rather that I do not honor my own limits. No one is making me eat these foods. We build fences on our property not only to keep strangers out, but also to keep our own dogs in, don’t we?

Follow me on this. The cookies were purchased to put in their school lunches. Or maybe our beloveds went to the store and bought the ice cream themselves. To whom do the cookies and ice cream belong to? Clearly, not us. So, if we eat them, aren’t we taking someone else’s property? Around here we call that stealing, and clearly it’s a big boundary infraction. Do we not even recognize what is and isn’t ours?

For me this was the point at which I began to recognize that I was dealing with an addiction. If I would steal to support my habit, how does that make me different, except by degree, from the junkie who will rob a convenience store to support his? The fault is not the convenience store owner’s is it? Even if they left the money laying out on the counter, would it have been mine to take? No. Then why do I blame my family members for having Cheetos in the house? I am the one who violates boundaries if I eat them.

Now sometimes our nearest and dearest do push our limits. The supposedly supportive spouse gives us chocolates for our birthday, or complains that they’d rather we were fat if it meant we could order pizza again.

In the latter case, why can’t they have pizza? They can. Again, why are we making them eat the way we need to eat if they don’t need to or aren’t ready to make those kind of changes, even if we think they need to? Do we not respect their right to decide what to put in their own mouths?

Now those chocolates. you might want to talk with your beloved about that. But, and this is the big issue, there is still no reason for us to eat them.

Let’s say your mother cries because you won’t eat her traditional Easter coconut cake. Tell her you love her, tell her the cake is gorgeous, but again, know where your boundaries are. You may choose to deal with the way your family feels about your diet, or you may not. You may want to ignore them, or you may want to confront them, but you don’t have to eat anything you don’t want to.

By the same token, don’t blame them if you do eat that coconut cake. You made the choice to let your boundary down. Nothing my neighbor may do will change the location of our common property line unless I let them.

We can experience a true addiction to these foods. It can be difficult to resist them when they are in the house. In that case, an honest discussion of why we have a problem with resistance, why we have trouble when the carbs are in the house may get more receptive cooperation than any attempt to convince someone else that they are the problem because they want cookies.

Certainly when we are a guest in someone else’s home, what we eat is their business in that they are paying for it, cooking it, and serving it. What is called for in that case is some common courtesy on our part if we want to continue to control what we do and do not eat. It is actually courteous to ask our host what they are serving, explaining that we have a number of food allergies, (or however else we care to explain our choices). Depending on what is served, we may want to join the party after supper, or volunteer to bring a low carb dish to their buffet. Most people truly want to please their guests and will try to accommodate advance requests.

If someone is going to be hosting us often, or for a length of time, then giving some detailed explanation of our food choices is appropriate. But other than that, remember that most people simply don’t care what we do or do not eat, or why. Unless the party is a sit-down formal dinner, or unless I’m going to be there all weekend, I usually don’t even bother discussing my food needs with my host ahead of time. Like, Scarlett, I eat before I go, choose carefully from the hor d’ouerves or buffet line, and if I’m still hungry later, I eat again when I get home.

Personally, I think it’s just as inappropriate to try and push my way of eating onto anyone else as it would be for them to push theirs on me. In fact, some people who might harass me about my food choices may be doing so because they feel threatened by them. If I honor their boundaries, it gives them room to honor mine.

Sometimes we build walls when a simple boundary marker would do. How able are we to say out loud how much we weigh? Or at least to admit how much we need to lose? No one is suggesting that we should walk into the PTA meeting and announce that we have now topped 250. But what about our spouses? Can we even admit to these people who see us naked that we are a hundred pounds overweight? It’s not as though they don’t already know; they aren’t blind. But if we are not able to talk with those closest to us about our struggles, then who will support us?

What about an online support list? These are people who are by definition going to be supportive. They are all there because they are undergoing the same struggle. Can we not even admit to these people, whom we may never see in person, who don’t even necessarily know our full or real names, what we weigh?

If not, we may have built boundaries where they should not be. If we build such a wall we are keeping help out, and perhaps trapping ourselves inside with our obesity.

There is another boundary which seems to be at issue for many of us. We seem to have weak boundaries between ourselves and the actual foods. We say, “I can’t eat that,” as though the food is harming us. Or that we had no choice. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to acknowledge that when we put those inanimate objects in our mouths that we have made a choice to do so, that we are harming ourselves?

Remember, the food has no choice about who eats it. It has no will or volition of its own. It cannot, and does not establish boundaries to keep us out or to seduce us in.

It’s time to get a survey crew out. Look over your boundaries, and see where your fences are down. Have we built walls where we should have gates? Have we left large areas of our own property unfenced?

They sell ‘No Trespassing’ signs at any hardware store. Maybe it’s time we put up a few.

And maybe it’s time we honored the ones on our neighbor’s property, too.

There is no more intimate or personal decision than what we eat. I think that’s worth remembering.