AIBU - Weird subconscious behaviour when women are out for dinner together - AIBU?

[Mazes]

I was out for dinner yesterday evening with four female friends (were all early 40s). No problem whatsoever with ordering the cocktails, but when it came to ordering from the food menu, one friend chimed in first with the, “I’m just going to go for a salad” and, as always happens, everyone else followed suit with the salads. Does anyone else find this or is it just me? One friend did ask for some fries “for the table” but then everybody just looked at them until they got taken away. I’m not on a diet and nor is anyone else as far as I can tell so why does this happen? Then when it came to dessert orders, there was an uncomfortable silence before everyone declined, of course. Then we had a pot of mint tea. Nobody ate the bread either. It was my turn to pay and I felt like the actual “food” part of the menu was there for decoration only.
AIBU to think this kind of behaviour goes on a lot without women even realising they’re doing it? It’s as if it’s fine to knock back 3 cocktails, but nobody eats a chip!

although I do suspect, by this stage, most of us have had minor Botox or similar, but very subtle.

Have I just been sleeping under a work/motherhood rock for the past five years and now this is a normal think when you are past 40?

Have I just been sleeping under a work/motherhood rock for the past five years and now this is a normal think when you are past 40?

Nah, you're just a different demographic. I'd think those mums have a fair amount of disposable income, and looks are important to them.

I have a colleague like this. Eats no breakfast (own admission), perhaps an apple or one of those snack tubes of nuts and seeds at lunchtime and then a light dinner- soup or grilled fish and salad type thing (again own admission). She is obsessed with things being unhealthy and sat there scowling into her mineral water at the Christmas do while the rest of us scoffed buffet and posh drinks. Yes she is very slim, but at what price?

"I was brought up that it was good manners to eagerly accept cake/biscuits if offered, and rather a snub to the host if their home-made (or even shop-bought) efforts were refused (apart from genuine reasons such as allergies)."

Yes, most of us were and to finish our plates even if we were full. All pretty damaging for a population that has so much access to food now.

OP, this is definitely a thing!

My colleagues,and I often have lunch, I am now known as 2-lunch-babygrey for eating a soup AND a sandwich, or a salad AND a wrap.... They would have a salad with no dressing followed by cake or cookie , why is my choice the bad one?

Also, the first person to say "just a salad" sets the bar, and then others get mocked (me) for ordering something more substantial.

It's like some form of social control/social obedience thing

"ven when I’ve hosted school coffee mornings, I’ll make some muffins and get croissants in"

Why do this at a time when too many people are overweight and even obese. I can't stand people who bring fatty food to work all the time.

This has literally never happened to me but all of my friends are gluttons just like me

Nah. This is the kind of behaviour that triggers eating disorders. I'd assume they are either mentally ill and heading for anorexia/other ED, or their children will be at the very least. I've spent most of my adult life anorexic because of shallow Muppets like this.

Seems like a good thread to share my cream tea story with.

Big birthday treat, top hotel. Four people including me. Other three: 1 - always underweight, severely restricted their diet so never ate bread, puddings etc. Number 2 - had just done the Paul McKenna hypno diet so was barely eating. Number 3 - great cook and normally ate but never seemed comfortable eating in front of people. Me - can tuck it away Olympic style.

First few minutes were torture as they hovered over the sandwiches and cakes, deliberating one or two ? I held back a bit then thought fuck it, and ate until I needed a stretcher to leave ! Made sure I went back again a few years later with somebody who had a matching appetite. Twas lovely !

even when I’ve hosted school coffee mornings, I’ll make some muffins and get croissants in - I would say 95% of the mums will never eat any of it. I’m basically left with whatever I put out.

Maybe they've not long had breakfast, so they're not actually hungry?

I have a group of friends like this. In their case it’s because they excercise obsessively and restrict their diets in order to stay slim. They wouldn’t dream of having pudding and do things like share teeny tiny slides of cake if they even dare to have something sweet. I’ve noticed a lot of people like this often talk about food in terms of “being good” and “naughty”.

Even though I eat normally with everybody else, with that group of friends I find I go with the salad/soup/ no pudding so I don’t look greedy!

Gwen Just don't eat it then. I love when people bring cakes into work.

My friends absolutely don’t do this and we’re all slim & early 20s.

"Gwen Just don't eat it then. "

Not that simple is it and someone above mentioned how it's considered impolite to refuse. Civil service staff have been told not to do it. That was derided as being 'too PC', but when I worked in the civil service 60% of staff there were overweight so obviously many were not able to 'just say no'.

Hastingsmua1, come and tell me once you're all 40s

Things change

I do feel that if you host a coffee morning, you have to provide something to nibble on?

The other week I had some lovely, but tricky friends coming over. One is the friend I mentioned who struggles in Pret-a-Manger and takes the filling out if the sandwiches; one never really visibly eats and the third is a nutritionist. So I made fat-free, very low-sugar, high fibre muffins with just bananas, fat-free Greek yogurt, baking powder, wholmeal flour and that’s it. You can put in some brown sugar if you want, but I didn’t on this occasion. Though I say it myself, these muffins are delicious. Anyway, the nutritionist friend who I’ve known for 20 years said that what she’s doing now, is having black coffee at 8am with two tablespoons of coconut milk in it. Nothing else . Then she has a boiled egg and spinach leaves no earlier than 2pm. She said this is the ideal nutritional balance because 2 tbs of coconut milk are all you need in the mornings for focus and optimal energy.

This same friend gave me a bag of hemp protein for my birthday in a hamper of herbal teas and a few other things I’m not sure how to use.

You also put vanilla extract in the muffins btw, (just in case you have similar guests).

That is a bit weird Mazes. When you say “nutritionist” is that a proper registered, NHS nutritionist, or a new agey, used to to do crystal healing type of nutritionist?

I really do think it's just your friends then OP.

I honestly don't know anyone like that and I've managed to get to the ripe old age of nearly 50, without meeting these types of people.

Gwen I am fat, it is up to me whether I say yes or no, it is nobody elses business.
And it is not impolite not to eat a cake brought in to work.

Of course it's not 'impolite', that's ridiculous.

Sorry she’s a nutritional therapist and I believe it took her 3 years to qualify.

You need better friends

The only people I've met who are anything like as eating-disordered as you describe your friends as being in your latest update, were a bunch of ballet dancers in I knew in the 1990s, who were performatively bitchy about one another's eating: 'Are you going to have all that digestive?'

However, in view of your update, knowing this particular set of friends, I don't see why you expected them to then eat normally in a restaurant?

You say they drank freely enough, but barely ate -- I can think of one person I used to know locally, who was quite up front about her long daily runs and the fact that she only had a green vegetable smoothie for two meals a day being in order to 'save calories' for her drinking.

Super weird. This is definitely not the norm in my group of friends, if this happened every time I went out I'd scrap the meet ups!