I wish I could say that, Alex. I am a closet eater/binger. I am always afraid that if I am eating something in public I will overhear someone saying, "Look at that fat chick, no wonder she is huge."

This stems from my sister always saying things like, "All you do is sit around and eat and grow bigger." It also comes from my dad, who trying to be helpful is always raggin' on me about my weight. The crowning blow was when he offered to pay for me to have the gastric bypass surgery. I finally spoke up when he made a comment about Nickolas' pudge. I made sure that if he ever tried to lay the wieght trip on my son like he did with me, he would never see his grandson again.

You may have something there....

What is this cool everyone is talking about?

Didn't we already answer that?

I meant, I am so not it...:D

My screenplay wraps around that very concept, MG-- I think that it is a HUGE epidemic among plus-sized women (I don't know about men, but I'm mostly writing about women anyway.) I've been fighting the "eat in private" thing for a couple of years... since it came out in my writing and smacked me in the face.

I almost never eat in restaurants or other public settings. Whenever my school has some reception with munchies, I get a bottled water. If Ryan doesn't want to cook I make him get take-out so I won't have to eat in public. If someone brings cookies to work, I smile and say, "no, thanks."

I was always indifferent enough to what other people thought that being fat and eating in public never bothered me.

But it did impact me to a certain extent on the other side. I was very reticent to exercise in public. But eventually I was able to get over that and learned that most people aren't thinking "ha ha, look at that pig wobble" but rather "at least they're out there."

I’ve never worried what people are thinking if I’m eating in public. Except if I go to the sandwich shop next to where I work for lunch. I almost always get it to go and bring it back to the office. Often one of my friends here will ask me to pick her up something too, but I insist she has to order at least a sandwich and a drink. I worry that if I order 2 sandwiches, but only one drink, they will think I’m eating both of them! (I was the same way with fast food places, back when I still ate fast food.)

See, I'm kinda the opposite. I've become a little self-righteous about my weight, and my right to be whatever I am without need to apologize or show humility for it. I feel the societal pressure to demonstrate shame at eating and I'm pretty much rebelling against it. This culture of shaming fat people just feeds into the self-perpetuating cycle of weight gain, because if we grow used to eating one way in public and another way for ourselves, I think we're more likely to go overboard in private. We should, instead, eat as we're going to eat -consistently- because we can't justify eating like crazy in private if we're not "making up for it" starving ourselves in public. Net effect of eating more normally overall and not screwing with our appetite and portion expectations. So I openly, and almost enthusiastically, order whatever the hell I want. And when offered a choice between the "diet" whatever (let's say soda) or regular soda, I smile and ask them if I look like a girl that drinks diet. Screw 'em.

When I was heavier I generally didn't care what people thought of what I ate. As I started losing weight I became more self conscious of it. But I still generally don't care.

And when I end up ordering 95% of the happy hour menu (hey, the portions are small and the food is cheap) I blame the guys I'm with. :D