Does eating really make friends?

By Coreena Payne

May 23, 2005 | Chad Giles was one of the shiest kids in school. Every once in a while he would slip in a sentence or two. For the longest time, his mom thought he was mute.

Things changed when Giles began the eighth grade. He caught a flu that kept him in bed for several days. He couldn't do anything fun, so he spent all his time eating. One morning his mom made him pancakes and he ate 13 of them. Soon Giles became the topic of conversation.

"I thought it was so cool, people would talk about me and I wouldn't even have to talk," Giles said.

The large portions of food became Giles' new diet and everyone at school began to talk about him. Giles would eat everything in sight. He went around to everyone at lunch asking if he could finish off his or her lunches. Giles ate anything and everything.

One of his favorite things to eat was the tubs of frosting you can buy to put on a cake. He would steal them out of his fridge, hide them from his mom and then lick the entire thing clean. Every hour it was something new. He never considered his diet to be a problem, even though his brother would pinch his stomach and tell him, he was fat.

Giles didn't think anything about his belly, until a girl at school pointed it out in front of everybody. He remembers the black T-shirt he was wearing, his sophomore year when this girl, whom he wants to remain anonymous, pointed to his stomach and laughed in front of a huge crowd of people.

"Look, everybody, you can see Chad's belly button through his shirt," she said. Giles said, his face turned bright red and he immediately threw his arms over his stomach and put his head down.

The girl came over to him and tried to pull his shirt up to show everyone, but Giles pushed her away. He said he went home humiliated and didn't want to go back to school. From that moment on, Giles knew he needed to change his diet.

Giles said he became extremely self-conscious. When he would play basketball with his friends, he never wanted to be on the skins' team, so he would fight to be on the other team. If he didn't get his way and had to take his shirt off, he would run around the court with his arms folded over his stomach. Giles would do anything to take the focus off his belly.

When Giles would watch television, he would go in his room and do sit-ups throughout the entire commercial breaks. His mom would yell at him to stop grunting. If any infomercials would come on for any kind of Abs machine, he would call and order it. Giles had a closet full of exercise machines specifically for his abs, such as the Abs flux and the Abs roller. He would wrap a garbage bag around his belly before he went running, because he thought it would make him sweat more and lose more. Every night Giles would grab his shoelace and wrap it around his stomach, make a mark and compare it to the mark from the night before to see if he had lost any inches. All his extra time was devoted to exercising. Giles would run everywhere, do sit-ups like crazy and play sports to remain active. His friends started to call him anorexic. He was 5-foot-7 and weighed 170 pounds as a sophomore and by the time he graduated he grew to 6-foot-1 and still weighed the same.

Giles also changed his diet. He cut out all soda pop and sweets, and hasn't touched them since. Instead he craves fruit and vegetables. Giles has an apple peeler, a juice man and a fruit dehydrator.

He usually eats different granola cereals, Raisin bran or Go Lean Crunch with skim milk for breakfast. For lunch he will have a chicken or turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread with a little bit of light mayonnaise, because it can't be dry. He won't eat white bread because his grandpa used to tell him, "the whiter the bread the sooner you're dead," so he never ate white bread. For dinner, he eats pasta with wheat noodles and meat. Then he always cooks some frozen vegetables to go with the pasta. For a snack, Giles will often pull out his family size bag of carrots and eat half of them or he will pull out his bag of soybeans and munch on them. He also never forgets to drink his daily gallon of water and eat his daily apple.

Even though he is allergic to fruit and vegetables, he still eats them. He can't resist them. His throat starts to itch and swell, but he just rinses it out with water and it takes his mind off the pain.

Giles doesn't understand why his friends have to take treat runs every once in a while. He doesn't get those cravings anymore. For Easter his basket was filled with sunflower seeds and trail mix.

One of Giles' greatest examples is his grandpa. He is 88 and still rides a mountain bike. He will only eat healthy foods that he has researched. His milk is powdered, his water must be distilled and he buys a special brand of butter. His grandpa even buys a specific kind of toothpaste that is supposed to be the healthiest for your teeth and a certain type of soap.

Giles could never figure out how his grandpa and grandma fit together because she was the exact opposite. She would eat whatever was in sight. He remembers her asking everyone to give her the bones from their meat, so she could clean them off. She was heavy, had troubles with her heart, many surgeries and passed away during the last heart surgery.

Since Giles likes a girl who will eat her whole meal, he can understand why his grandpa loved his grandma. At least she didn't feel guilty in front of him. Giles said he hates it when people feel guilty eating around him. He doesn't watch what other people eat and judge them for it. He wants everyone to feel comfortable eating around him.

His roommate, Zach King, used to watch Giles eat and it inspired him to eat better. King said Giles is such a good example to him. He said, Giles is particular about what he puts into his body and always knows the new workouts and improved ways to eat right.

"I thought about eating right when I first noticed Giles' eating habits, but it died after a few days," King said.

The one thing that has made his roommates think twice about their diets is their health. This year they have all been sick with bronchitis and pneumonia. All three of them have been sick at least twice and Giles has never once been sick, the whole year. He claims it's because he won't eat fast food with them, and because he sprays Lysol all over everything.

Since Giles has started working at Advance Title Insurance, he thinks he is becoming a "germophobe." He works with old dusty books and can't help to think about how many people have touched them and what kind of germs are on them. Giles claims they smell like band-aids and to be safe, he keeps a bottle of hand sanitizer on his desk.

Giles knows his habits are a little extreme. He knows he needs to tame them down and quit being so worried about what other people think, but he does believe everything needs balance.

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