Social Acceptance if Dieting

As a teacher, I am exposed to daily scrutiny of my appearance by both my colleagues and parent community. Daily, teachers evaluate the calorie count of their lunches and obsess over the carb count in foods. They slice sweets into tiny fractions hoping to minimize their guilty choices, all the while berating themselves for their "splurging." There is no ejoyment in eating - rather these women seem to

be going through some necessary, albeit unpleasant, ritual. Sometimes I feel like the only person in the room able to see the everyday, acceptable eating disordered behavior of the adults around me.

Parents coming to talk about their children's progress invariably first body scan me before shaking my hand. Sweets are given as gifts (after all, I must love candy to be so obese). Once a parent came in my classroom at lunch and caught me eating a salad at my computer. After her visit, she looked at me and commented "Good for you!" I remember feeling confused - was she commenting on the fact that, once again, I was working through my lunch to ensure that I could be better prepared to differentiate instruction for my students? Was she assuming that i was working on my next weekly newsletter to parents, keeping them abreast of our curriculum progress and giving them strategies on how to enhance learning at home? Looking more closely I could see that she was actually smiling ... at my SALAD, I soon clued into the reason for her approval. 

I wish I could say that this was the only time I felt that my behavior was under scrutiny by other adults, but unfortunately "Good for you" is something I've heard throughout my life. Most recently when; I'm in sweats ready to go work out straight from school and a parent sees me going to my car, when it's obvious to some colleague that I'm abstaining from sweets at a staff meeting, or when I've lost weight and someone notices. The last is particularly disturbing to me as there is a part of me that wants acknowledgment for the healthy changes I have made in my lifestyle, things that make me feel stronger and more capable. Unfortunately, a lifetime of acknowledgement laced with person bias has made such attention bittersweet.