[LittleSouthernBelle]

I’m wondering if this will strike a chord with other people. I hope some of y’all can relate.

I live in the south, and central to southern culture is food. It is hard to escape when everything is so focused around food. I have only visited other southern states, but I have had people from the north and outside of the U.S. mention that they too notice the South is all about food. It’s much easier to have access to “bad” foods, things that are not as healthy such as fried foods. Yes, there is an overflow of healthy options as well, but they are usually almost always accompanied by those “hearty” ones; I mean people visit here all the time just to eat! Here, food is a comfort, a solution, a celebration, and just downright politeness. If you refuse food that you are offered when you visit someone, you are considered impolite. You have a birthday? Cool, let’s invite some people and have a big supper. A family member passed away? Everyone in town will bring you food for the rest of the month. Family reunions? Make sure you bring that famous dish your momma made. You got a promotion? Awesome, I heard there’s this new restaurant opening; let’s check it out. Fourth of July? We’re gunna have a cook out, duh. Church let out a little too late this Sunday? Don’t worry, after a big lunch you can have a nap and sleep it off. Don’t even get me started on tailgating and college football games or days where everyone else focuses on food too (*Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner I’m looking at y’all.*) Even when we were little, it was used as a punishment: “You better clean that plate or you ain’t gettin’ nothing tomorrow.” “You better quite actin’ ugly or I’m fixin’ to send your butt to bed without supper.” “The kitchen is closed when the sun goes to sleep, so you better get your fillin’ a’fore the gettin’ gets done.”

It is so incredibly hard to avoid food that you know are your weaknesses, especially when you’ve been conditioned to turn to food as a response to any event or heavy emotion. And oh my stars, the portions. If you go hungry over at someone’s house it’s your own fault because the portions are ridiculous. I didn’t even think twice about the sheer amount of food that is usually piled on our plates until I had some friends from university point it out to me. It had never occurred to me before that the reason I could never finish my plate when I was younger wasn’t because I was being rude or because I didn’t like the food, but rather that it was simply just too much food!

I think all of this played a large part into my swinging between different eating disorders. I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum and battled against anorexia and binge eating. I still have this body dysmorphia or something to where I always think I look hideous. I can say I have made strides in loving myself, but I still a lot of times disconnect from my body because I have just not been able to accept it: no matter how much weight I lose or how much weight I gain etc. (Some of this is also due to my emotional, verbal, and physical abuse within both my family and romantic interests, which is a whole different topic.) It also doesn’t help that the mainstream media not only has incredibly unrealistic expectations for the average person (both men and women) to have the “perfect” body, but also stereotypes about the South are still so prevalent. I’ve wanted to travel outside of my southern comfort zone, but my experiences with non-southerners at university and my friends/family/etc. who have gone outside of the South say that people just treat you differently when they realize where you’re from.

It’s not just the southern culture, but also my family dynamic. My parents both have disordered eating habits also. They were both raised with parents that lived during the Great Depression. My mawmaw was one of twelve and my pawpaw was one of thirteen. The way they showed love was through food, and those warped relationships passed down to me.

I’m not saying that I am not at all responsible for my relationship with food, because I know that ultimately, I am the only one that can help myself to have a better relationship to food and better health overall. I know it is something that I will always struggle with because it is a direct manifestation of my insecurities. However, I think it is very crucial to analyze our environments and try to look at those influences to see how much they play in our disordered eating habits. Until I went to therapy and looked at my family history, I did not realize just how important my own family history had in developing my food addiction (not just genetic predispositions) and just the environment I was raised in as well.

Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like or if I would have “normal” food habits if I had been raised differently or born to parents that weren’t a generation older than my piers. Those what-if’s don’t help with my problems at all, but looking outside of myself for a change really did help me to not be so hard on myself all the time and think I’m such a failure at everything. I know food can have the power of bringing people together, and I’m not saying that there is anything innately wrong with that. I’m just still trying to learn how to cope with life events and my emotions without first turning to food. Conditioning is exhausting to break through and even to recognize at first. That really was my first step in acknowledging my problems with food and getting help. Acknowledging that does not mean that I lesson my role or that I’m making excuses. Acknowledging “blame” does not shift it’s reality. Everything in my life has led me to this point, and things are much more complex than I originally thought.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for listening.

[Skeezyks]

Thanks for sharing this. You mentioned you've never travelled outside of your southern comfort zone. I've never been down south! I've been all across the northern U.S. & in Canada. But I think southern Pennsylvania is about as far south as I ever got. And nowadays I seldom even leave home. My travellin' days are long since over-&-done-with now.

I myself am an old man now (well sort-of... it's complicated) I've never really struggled with an eating disorder. And you would think that how much I eat / weigh would be of little or no consequence to me at this point. That is, however, not the case. I'm quite "slender" I guess you'd say. And it's very important to me to keep myself that way. So I only eat as much as I know I can eat & maintain my current weight. I'm almost always hungry. But I've just taught myself to ignore it. It does help that I have no extended family & no friends. So I never go to parties, picnics, or what-have-you where there would be large amounts of food.

I can't say if southerners are more focused around food than northerners are. But it does seem to me, from what I have observed, that there's a whole lot of food being consumed way up here in the frozen north too.

[Blueberrybook]

Sigh...I live in Texas (Houston area), and it's definitely the southern food habits here. In fact, Houston may have been named the most unfit or fattest or unhealthiest city in the U.S. one year, if I'm remembering correctly.

IDK about your parents' generation if it would matter. My parents were baby boomers. (They also had me really young; I was born 3 days before my mom turned 19.) My mom has always had a distorted view of food. Now, my dad can eat a ton and stay skinny; he has a fast metabolism, not to mention, he is go, go, go, I think undiagnosed Apsergers, which makes him want to work, work, work, and his job often requires manual labor.

I'm sure my ED came from childhood sexual abuse, not help by the propensity for mental illness on my mom's side of the family, but the food culture definitely doesn't help here, that's for sure!

[eskielover]

Italy, at least Rome where I visited was all about food too & Living in Calif mist if my life around different nationalities....I can tekl you the Mexican meals were all about food & so were the Jewish families. In my later years if life I moved to Ky (between south & north) but food is definitely key here too. I moved here at 54 & was just struggling to recover from Anorexia & PTSD ( they were mostly related) but living in this food loving environment, weight has to be watched