The parents are gone on a two week holiday... my partner and I have the house to ourselves... and somehow, I feel a lot calmer inside, less desperate to go and eat everything in sight... Maybe there's a deeper, more animalistic machanic going on inside?
It's sometimes interesting to try to contextalise our behaviour back to primate instincts, natural survival type of explanations.
Now, I know - that I'm a 'fat storer'. For times of famine, my body, genetically is programmed to 'lay the fat stores down' so that I may survive when the 'tough gets going' and food runs out in the winter months. Now, in modern society, of course this can't happen. So I constantly have to fight this urge to eat high calorie snacks, etcetera. Fine. I know that.
But something else came up. I lived with people (for a short time) who were outside of my "clan" as it were. My "clan" consists of my partner and my cat - we've lived together for a good 3 and a half years now. I have no trouble sharing anything with him - I can easily give him my leftovers, he can have the bigger portion with no problem for me. He's my accepted equal.
But not with his parents. I love them to pieces - consciously I have accepted them long ago... but something inside doesn't LET then be "mine" - something inside is desperate to 'protect my interests', to 'protect
my survival' - to store, to horde, to eat all the food before they get to it. It's like something inside was driving me to have the bigger portion to :
1)
Assert my dominance - the more food I have and claim at mealtimes - the stronger and more powerful I am over others. (think of animal behaviour)
2)
Ensure my survival - by having more - I have more energy, more natural resource to rely on if there's a lack of food sometime.
3)
Horde all the food - for myself and my partner - to keep our 'clan's' interests at heart. I mean I'd literally stash stuff away in my room, in my drawers, my bag, away from them. Odd behaviour to be fair.
It's strange no? Suddenly, now that the parents are gone, somehow... I'm a bit calmer... I'm no longer rushed at meal times. I don't have to finish my food according to someone else's schedule. I don't have to have it at a set times that THEY dictate. I can do it when I want. I don't have to worry about feeding them - cooking for them (in other words sharing MY CLAN'S provisions with OUTSIDERS) - which is also a stressful experience.
And to be fair this behaviour can be attributed to social gatherings with nibbles around... Some people are more likely to 'hover' by the food table to 'protect' the food, to have it before anyone else does, to have more of it because they want to ensure their survival. After all - animals do hide and bury their captured 'prey', to have later away from prying eyes and prying mouths of others!
Oki, now to break these habits I've accumulated... which hopefully should be easier now that this weird ... animal desperation is no longer pressing down on me. ... Because I've put on a good 2 stone in the last month and a half, I'm very uncomfortable and my clothes are too tight.
Erm. We'll see how I go. All the snacks in the house are gone, so there's no desperate need to go 'hoover' them up - because I'm not 'searching' anymore. And if I do get emotionally 'peckish' .... well there's nothing around to have!