Anyone ever misunderstood "eat as much as you want!&quo

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Note: I don't mean restaurant staff saying it, but your friends/acquaintances/people you're going out with saying it.

I didn't know this until someone explained it to me, but, for example, if someone invites you to their house for a meal, and they say "eat as much as you want!", it doesn't actually literally mean that in most cases. What they actually meant was "you can eat a lot, but don't be too greedy!".

Also, if someone if giving you a treat, and says you can have anything, they don't actually mean that , and it isn't good to ask for the most expensive thing on the menu. Once, I tried to avoid this by asking for the cheapest thing on the menu. Needless to say, that didn't please my family too much, cos they were sitting next to me.

Only later did I realise by thinking it through, that you can't choose something expensive or eat too much, or they think you are taking advantage of them, and you can't choose something cheap or eat too little, or they might think you are rejecting their hospitality.

Such is etiquette.

Situations like that make me feel very anxious bc i do not know what the "right" thing to do is. Often i just ask instead of trying to assume that i have figured out what they really mean - if they are people that know me like my family or my boyfried they understand that i am not being rude by asking but i just want to know what i am supposed to do, and they'll be honest with me.

Take what you think is a responsible amount - just because they say 'eat as much as you want' doesn't mean you can eat everything. Its simply responsibility

Pizza Hut have an all you can eat ice cream promotion, you are given a bowl and can fill it as many times as you want. I was rather confused when my mother told me that i had had enough, it WAS all you can eat after all, and i had not met my limit yet.

It's a little routine, isn't it?

"Have as much as you like!"
"Ooh no, I couldn't possibly!"
"Go on, help yourself."
"Oh go on then... just a little bit."
"No, I insist!"

In particularly well-bred households hot food is stone cold by the time this moral sparring is concluded and honour satisfied.

I just hope the same rules of etiquette don't apply to sex.

I do not understand etiquette at all. As in why one should put the fork in a particular place.
But even worse, is the way that the English are generally so polite and hide things.

An experiment (I did not GET this result):
1) A woman dressed up (trying on in a shop) in a really unflattering, disgusting dress that DID NOT suit her.
2) She asked random people in the shop about how she looked.
3) They ALL said thing slike "you look really good" and "you look fine!"

WHAT???? I do not understand that. WHY don't they just say something like "it doesn't suit your shape", or "that colour does not suit your hair, why don't you try this?"
IDIOTS!

And also flattery... It is SICKLY.

I just tend to take their offer at face value. Not my problem that they can't be bothered to phrase things correctly.

If someone tells me to eat as much as I want, I usually check how much food is left on the table compared to the number of people present. If there's plenty of food and few people, I eat until I'm full. If there's plenty of food and a lot of people, I eat a small amount, as to leave enough for everybody else. If there's little food, I take just enough to get a taste, regardless of the number of people present.

In buffet restaurants, it's a completely different story. I keep eating until I'm filled beyond capacity.

I used to missunderstand that concept. Especially when I was first put on my Psych Pills, and they made me hungry. I didn't care about the consequenses. I've carried on, until I've stepped on the scale, in early 2003, and I've weighed 228 lbs. I've done something about it, and I'm down to 186 lbs. After I'm through with collecting Routemasters, within a year, I'll be going back to Weight Watchers, because I'll have the extra $56 a month to pay for the weigh-ins.

We almost never visit those sorts of places, because the food is usually as cheap as anything and not always that nice in most cases. When we do visit I make sure I eat as much as I can. Which can vary from a lot to "you've had enough now".

I have a residual fear of restaurants from my past anorexia. I don't think that I will ever enter an "eat as much as you like" restaurant in my life though. I think the concept is disgusting.