Beware the office feeder: They tempt with sweets and treats, but never tuck in themselves - what are they up to?
By PETA BEE
Last updated at 3:10 AM on 2nd August 2010
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Claire Hill has been dieting for seven months.
She attends a weekly weigh-in at her local gym and has seen the scales drop by almost 16 lb to 10 st since she started.
Fastidious about counting calories, Claire, 42, walks to work every day and jogs on the treadmill twice a week.
Yet she feels her progress has been hindered considerably by what she refers to as her 'biggest dieting liability':
the office feeder.
Every morning when Claire arrives at the offices of the marketing company where she works in Manchester, a female colleague has placed freshly-baked croissants on a desk in the open-plan area where they sit.
'She watches to see who is having one and harangues you until you pick one up,' Claire says. 'I wrap it up and put it in my bag to throw away later, but she comes over and asks if I have eaten it.
'At 11am, she brings out the biscuits or butter shortbread. yet she never touches a crumb herself.'
If Claire's predicament sounds all too familiar, it is because the behaviour of the office feeder has become virulent, their insidious calorie-pushing cropping up in workplaces around the UK.
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Part of a once-rare proclivity, they derive intense pleasure from over-feeding or intentionally trying to fatten up colleagues and friends. for those targeted, the temptations proffered by feeders can be difficult to resist.
On a Weight Watcher's website discussion dedicated to the issue of office feeders, 26-year-old Sarah-Jo, from Suffolk, says there is a constant supply of cakes and biscuits from a particular colleague.
'I've told her I am on a Weight Watchers programme and trying to lose weight, but that just makes the person worse,' she says.
'In front of everyone else she says: 'Go, on - just one won't hurt,' and I am put on the spot. I really feel she is just being so mean.'
HOW TO BEAT THE OFFICE FEEDER
Keep healthy food in view Professor Wansink says you eat what you can see, so if the office feeder comes in with cakes and biscuits, make sure your celery sticks and carrots are within view on your desk.
Don't throw away wrappers Studies have shown that keeping empty chocolate wrappers or crisp bags on your desk can act as a deterrent to eating more - it gives a tangible reminder of what you have previously consumed.
Put it away
If The office feeder hands out biscuits and insists you take one, get into the habit of removing it from reach immediately. Put it, unopened, in your bag, or lock it away in a drawer.
Another correspondent, Lorna, from Glasgow, says: 'My office feeder is very clever and knows all my weaknesses - she loves nothing more than feeding people, and my willpower can't take it.'
Research has shown that the workplace presents ample opportunity for weakening of resolve when it comes to weight loss.
Professor Brian Wansink, an eating behaviourist who is director of nutritional science at Cornell University, and the author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More than We think, found that female secretaries ate 5.6 times more chocolates if they were placed on a nearby desk than if they had to stand up and walk two metres to get it.
In another experiment, he showed that office workers sitting near glass dishes filled with sweets ate 71 per cent more - or 77 calories a day - than those sitting near white, opaque dishes of the same confectionary.
Over the course of a year, the clear dish would have added more than 5 lb of extra weight.
Wansink says that, typically, we eat 30 per cent more calories in company than we do alone, and that women are more likely to be influenced by the diet patterns of co-workers than men.
'When we put two women together, regardless of whether they are friends or not, they end up mimicking the eating habits of the other person,' Wansink says. 'And if the person next to them is eating fast, they will match her pace.'
But what drives office feeders to fatten up others?
Susan Ringwood, chief executive of the eating disorders charity Beat, says they are likely to be harbouring an unhealthy relationship with food themselves.
'It is often assumed that people with eating disorders such as anorexia are not interested in food and don't feel hungry. But, in fact, the opposite is true,' Ringwood says.
'They like to see others eating, because it reinforces their own sense of mastery and self-will, and they feel good about avoiding calories when someone else is consuming them in front of their eyes."
For some feeders, however, there is more at play than a straightforward transference of guilt about eating.
An internet search on the subject of feeders or 'feederism' brings up dozens of sites devoted to what some enthusiasts consider to be a sexual appeal of the practice.
Fuelled by calls for greater fat acceptance within society, people obsessed with gaining weight themselves, known as gainers, or in taking control of the eating habits of others, so that they become physically incapacitated by fatness (feeders or feedies), are coming out of the closet in droves.
GROWING TREND
'Obesity has trebled since 1980. Then, 8 per cent of UK women were obese, now it's 24 per cent'
Ringwood says that the phenomenon is not an eating disorder in itself as, unlike anorexics and bulimics, 'gainers' claim they are happy with their bodies.
'There's no clear cut explanation for why someone would want to gain weight themselves or to assist someone else gain weight,' she says.
It is clearly abnormal behaviour in the extreme.
With the risks of obesity so widely known, why would someone encourage thei r partner or friend to eat themselves to ill health?
Professor Peter Rogers, head of experimental psychology at the University of Bristol, says there are many possibl e underlying reasons, but one could be that it allows the 'feeding' partner to gain control within a relationship.
'There's some evidence that men, in particular, encourage female partners to over-eat in order to make them less physically attractive to potential rivals,' Rogers says.
'In a bizarre way, they are attempting to protect themselves from the pain associated with a split.'
Sexual complexities can play a part in the office feeder's motivation, too.
Although no statistics are available for this emerging phenomenon, it is thought that, like most disordered relationships with food, office feeders are mostly women.
Driven by a desire to appear more attractive than her female colleagues to men in the office, a feeder sometimes uses food as a weapon to help her achieve the goal.
'There can often be some sexual jealousies, or other factors that might prompt someone to behave in this way,' says psychologist Dearbhla McCullough of Roehampton University.
'Food is often used as a competitive tool and slimness seen as the ultimate sign of self-control and perfection.'
Certainly, this was true in the case of Samantha F from London, who reports in a revealing blog on a dieting and weight-loss website with a thread of comments on dieting jealousy that 'someone at work, who had made no secret of the fact that she fancied my boyfriend before we started going out together, tried to befriend me by bringing in Reese's Peanut Buttercups every day.
'I once said I liked them and she told me it was because she had cravings for them, too, yet she never let one pass her lips. She was the ultimat e competitive feeder.'
For Claire Hill, there is no obvious trigger for her office feeder's behaviour.
'There are times when I think she really is out to get me fat,' says Claire.
'But then I wonder if she's just someone that likes to care for people, loves food and always has a full fridge at home.
'It does cross my mind that maybe she just likes me.'
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