Quality versus quantity

It seems like my whole life there has been a bit of a battle raging in me regarding quality versus quantity - even when I didn't recognize it as such.  When I was a teenager I had a fantastic group of friends - serious quality going on, but somehow I would look with longing at the bigger groups of people that were friends and seemed through their quantity to be the "popular" crowd.  And wondered why I didn't have that level of popularity.  Now I realize that if I had a larger quantity of friends then I may not have had the quality of friendships that I did and that I have never been able to replicate in my adult life with new friends of that nature.

Then there is the inevitable food related battle.  And how I learned over time that denying myself the quality stuff that I love - especially when it comes to the indulgence types of foods would often lead to a quantity attack.  So instead of enjoying a really amazing piece of good quality chocolate I would scarf down 10 of some crud chocolate that I didn't even like.  No wonder I would keep stuffing them in, they were intensely unsatisfying. I admit that learning that lesson has made me a bit pushy on the topic especially when I see all this discussion on the WW boards about various things. For example, most low or no fat dairy is unpleasant in the extreme when compared with their full or at least partial fat counterparts (not to mention that physiologically without the fat your body's satiety sensors are not alerted as well). So I could get some kind of disgusting no fat yogurt and feel completely unsatisfied each time I eat it - thus forcing me to get a sweetened version or eat 2 of them etc.  The whole point being that this mindset on certain things in the WW world seems to me to push people to abandon quality and in my mind the inevitable result is a lash back with quantity.  Probably the most frustrating thing about the program is that factor.

Then, and here is the bit of confession part, there is this adult me on the WW site.  I think that I have connected in an important way with quite a number of people on that site. It has been valuable to me to be part of their journey as I have learned much from them and hopefully have provided something back to them. But that teenage girl is still lurking in there somewhere. I sometimes (especially during pms) look at my wall and compare it with the number of posts on the walls of my other friends on there. Or I look at my blog and compare the number of followers to others, or look at my message board posts and compare the number of responses.  All that effort and concern directed at quantity - again - and at this age I would think I would know better. Why do I long for the many many wall comments and the blog post that has tonnes of comments?

I don't think this comes out of the same place as the teenage girl wanting to be popular did. I think now I sit back into a bit more of a self analysis mode and wonder about why it is the way that it is.  I was teaching last night about self monitoring as a personality characteristic.  How high self monitors can adjust to the situation and surroundings and adjust their behaviour to fit. While low self monitors tend to be consistently who they are all the time.  I suspect although I didn't actually do the little test to see that I am not a very high monitoring type - I don't think I am super low either as I do think I have the ability to adjust to situations etc but just can't see myself letting go of some of my strongest beliefs to do so.  Thus we come around to a relative of that second quality quantity thing - as regards food. It is something I tend to stand firm on and be relatively blunt about. And there are other things that also fall into that category. Things that I think have to be said sometimes even when they might not be the most popular and I try to say them in a way to keep them positively focused but it still is likely a contributor to why others might have more activity their way than I do.  So the question I ask myself is would I really ever want to reduce my stance on those things to gain some more posts my way. And the answer I come up with is if the friends are quality friends who really value me and who I deeply value in return understand this is part of me.  Of course I am also open to the possibility that it might have nothing whatsoever to do with that LOL.