Do you stick to a well-organized list, or do you meander through the aisles and let the spirit move you? Do you pull your cart over in the produce section to Google recipes before deciding whether to add an exotic ingredient to your cart, or do you trust you’ll figure out something to do with the jicama when you get home? And do you mercilessly judge your fellow shoppers’ choices and hope like hell they aren’t judging yours?
Hello, my name is Judgy McJudgerson, and I have issues.
I take advantage of the fact that nobody agrees what constitutes a healthy diet anymore. I can justify anything! Bag of sugar? Hey, it’s low-fat. A pound of lard? That lard is carb-free. The granola is a whole grain. The refined white rice is also fine, because Asians have made it a cornerstone of their diets for thousands of years. Seriously, name a food, and I can offer you a justification for it. Even if it’s objectively complete crap, it’s OK, because cheat days are a thing.
Of course, there’s such a thing as having an unhealthy obsession with healthy food. Sometimes I pretend there’s a judgy dietitian looking into my cart, and I make sure she would nod approvingly at all the whole foods I’ve selected.
Crazy Obsessions
Others go about their shopping without all these crazy obsessions. One example is the lady who was in the next checkout line: cute as hell with her perky little pony tail, maybe 35 and with the kind of figure I have to consciously work at not envying. I sneaked a judgy peek at her cart, where every category of junk was well-represented. She had the sweet stuff, the salty stuff, the frozen stuff. Not so much as a single apple or carrot was to be seen in between the piles of cookies, chips and frozen pizzas.
I sighed. There is no justice in this world. My own cart, in case any judgy people (other than me, I mean) wanted to check it out, was 100 percent dietitian-approved that day. I had the green stuff covered with broccoli, asparagus and spinach. My sweet stuff included apples, blueberries and bananas. My rice was brown, my yogurt was plain and my almonds were unsalted. Yet, if anybody had been guessing whose cart was whose, they’d have put money on my cart belonging to Ms. Ponytail, and mine being hers.
Conventional Wisdom vs. Reality
You see, conventional wisdom assures us that if we’re above what is deemed our ideal weight, it is certainly because we spend our days munching away on multiple bags of chips, probably while watching TV. Being overweight, we are reminded, is a personal failing. But every single one of us knows somebody like Ms. Ponytail, who is naturally thin while indulging in a daily diet of starchy, fatty goodness. And every single one of us knows someone who eats salad for lunch most days and goes to the gym most nights, and struggles with her weight.
Maybe that someone is you. And that’s OK! It’s normal for some people to be thin and it’s normal for some people not to be. We really don’t have a full understanding of all the variables. Our diet and activity levels are not the only factors. It also seems to have something to do with metabolism and microbiome and stress levels and sleep schedules and genes and hormones and, I don’t know, maybe our Myers-Briggs type. Nobody really knows. You can find studies that suggest all kinds of things.
Quite often, people who happen to be blessed with the kind of metabolism that allows them to eat what they want without gaining weight prefer to view this as a sign of their inherent superiority over anyone whose weight is a higher number. We all enjoy identifying supposed proof of our own greatness, right?
Of course, for all I know, Ms. Ponytail was picking up groceries for a friend with a broken leg, and she herself subsists on lettuce and lemon water. All I saw of her was one moment in time, and all my assumptions are nothing more than that. I don’t like the idea of someone who doesn’t know anything about me making judgments, so it’s not cool that I was doing that exact same thing. Although, to be fair, I was only doing it in my own mind (and for the infinite number of people on the internet, of course).
And speaking of judging, it’s possible that the sudden explosion in the popularity of meal delivery services has as much to do with being able to purchase food in private as with convenience. Maybe. What’s in that box on your front porch, missy? It could contain a new, um, sex toy, or it could be full of cookies. It could even contain both. Have a great weekend! Or, it could be a week’s worth of organic cauliflower. Either way, you can open it away from the prying eyes of people like me (grin).
I guess what I’m saying is that if everyone switches to food delivery services, that’s going to really cut down on my opportunities to judge other people. I might have to switch to judging people by their clothing choices instead. And that’s going to suck, because I’m not great at fashion. In fact, I’m pretty awful at it. So hey, I need to sign up for both food and fashion deliveries. Don’t judge me for it, OK?
Just love your body, people. It’s awesome. Hope you’re chuckling as much as I am right now.
P.S. Are you guilty of looking into other people’s carts? Do you ever worry about the optics of tossing a treat into your cart? Tell us about it in the comments below.
Sophia Sinclair is Curvicality’s sex and relationships writer and the author of the Small-Town Secrets romance series, available on Amazon. Reach Sophia at sophia@curvicality.com.
