Buffet lunches, large waistlines and other jiggly thoughts...

This is a small dessert spoon. It's sitting on top of my coffee cup. The small dent in it is all I ate of that artificial tasting cube of jello, one of the desserts at a Sunday buffet. There wasn't really much choice, brownies, ice cream, strawberry mousse, muffins, apples and oranges.

There were all sorts of people at the buffet: families with macaroni and cheese eating kids, moms with lettuce laden plates, dads with two bowls of chili each...and then there were the really really large people next to our booth.

We were starved and exhausted from working out when we got there, so each of us got salad with plenty of cheese, soups with the most meat and some corn bread. We splurged on a piece of bread each, and I had two slices of orange for desert, while my partner had some ice cream. I did want to try the jello and you can tell how great it was from the picture of the leftover of my first and only serving of it. As I was trying to take that photo, I noticed that the girl from large couple sitting next to us was enjoying another serving of dessert, after ice cream. She was having 10 of these same jello things that I had just tried. They were the most nutritionally empty choice she could have made, given there were apples, ice cream and cottage cheese...so I wondered is it that people have no choice. I will admit that I love watching heavier people eat and shop because it gives me an insight into their choices and the power they have to choose what's good for them and what's not. This girl had already chosen a pink sugar drink, baked potato with chili and sour cream and cheese and now was digging into a second desert. Given the metabolic and mental complications most bigger people have to deal with, I can imagine those choices didn't help.

We can argue until tomorrow on the health and genetic origins of being heavier and having a hard time losing weight, but when you watch a couple engaging in the same behavior you can't ignore the strong relationship. Could we be the larger couple? Sure. We would just have to choose to not exercise and eat at much as we want at the buffets we go to. Oh, and I might need to learn to like jello.