41 Buffet

My husband and I were graciously invited to join our friends the other night as they celebrated Thanksgiving, Chinese style. We were treated to a wonderful dinner at a Chinese buffet restaurant. After we got home, we began reminiscing about a restaurant in the terrible little town we used to live in. The restaurant was named "41 Buffet."
We first went to 41 Buffet at the recommendation of our colleagues. It was wonderful, excellent food, great selection, huge facility, etc. We recalled being seated promptly, finding that indeed, there was terrific food there, and the place was packed with people. However, as we sat there eating our lunch, I remember being suddenly struck by the fact that my husband and I were the only average-sized individuals in the entire restaurant. Everyone there, man, woman, and child, were obese. I don't mean pleasantly plump, I mean that the adults were at least 80 lbs. overweight. We had been told that Indiana (where we were living at the time) had the heaviest people in the U.S. there, but I didn't believe it until that moment. I looked at my husband, who was studying my face.
"What's wrong?" he asked. I wasn't sure how to be politically correct or even delicate about it. "Everyone here is very heavy. I don't think we should be eating in here," I added, glancing at our second plate-fulls. "We might get heavy, too. Look at these people pack away the food!"
And so we agreed not to eat there again. Not because we objected to being with heavy people, or because we felt superior or wished to be separatist in any way. We just watched ourselves going back to the buffet as though it was a giant trough in a barn, and imagined ourselves swelling up to twice our size.
Sam and I had a chuckle after we got home from our Chinese Thanksgiving celebration meal. We loved being with our friends. We had a great dinner with them. We remembered our shock at being in a restaurant inhabited only by very heavy people thundering past our table to the buffet line.
What is it that makes people eat so much at these places? It is as though we've never seen food before or believe we will be shot at sunrise: we have to have one last very large meal?
My life and my eating philosophy has been like that far too long. I am what one would call pleasingly plump, and I am not pleased about it. I did not have this shape or size when I got married almost three years ago. So perhaps eating at the buffet reawakened my resolve to take care and be watchful about what goes into my mouth. To honor that, I have a calendar with little stickers to place on it for every day I eat abstemiously. Today I earned my first sticker...