Let’s leave diet chat out of the festive season

The festive season is just around the corner, and whilst for many of us it’s something to look forward to, it can simultaneously be a source of anxiety and apprehension for various reasons.

I hate to say it, but being around family can be a big one. 

It’s not uncommon to have completely different perspectives from the people you’re related to. This can be a source of tension at family gatherings, which, in theory, are supposed to be about joy and hospitality. 

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s important to empathise and understand other points of view as it can help us identify our own blind spots and challenge our beliefs.

But that doesn’t take away the fact that it can be painful to sit through a spiel from a family member that is downright bigoted or offensive, without bursting a forehead vein trying to stay calm. 

A common anxiety I hear about is the commentary others can feel entitled to make regarding someone else’s body or eating habits. 

In some families, bluntly pointing out someone else’s weight gain (or weight loss) is considered as normal as pointing out whether somebody has food on their chin. 

In others, the more subtle method of people bringing up their newfound diet and exercise regimen, completely unprompted, comes across as an effort to evangelise to someone in the room they think might need ‘help’ in that area. 

Then, there’s observing and commenting on food choices and portion sizes. 

‘That’s a big helping!’ or ‘going up for seconds are we?’ are the sort of remarks loaded with judgement about a person’s body size and the presumed ‘reason’ for them being so. 

Whether intentional or not, chat about our bodies and food choices has somehow become a conversation that we’re expected to just get used to.

But out of all places and scenarios, it still perplexes me that a family gathering on Christmas Day could be considered a perfect opportunity to plant self-consciousness in other people by bringing these topics to the forefront of a group conversation (especially when nobody asked).

Some might defend these kinds of comments as ‘coming from a place of care’. But that logic falls through when comments are made in front of other people, garnering attention and inevitably, humiliation.

Even if the words spoken are to a less defined audience, such as an unprompted testimony about someone’s recent weight-loss wins, or their discovery (thanks to an article/podcast/social media post) that a certain food is ‘terrible for you’, it is still a conversation that is centring diets and upholding a certain beauty standard that reinforces society’s obsession with thinness.

Some will say that I’m being overly sensitive, that it should be fine for someone to feel proud of taking action steps to improve their health which may involve losing weight, or that conversations about nutrition can also be enlightening and interesting rather than shame-inducing. 

I’m not disagreeing. Many people do lose weight when they start implementing health-focused habits, and they have a right to feel proud of themselves and announce their success to others if they choose to. 

It’s more so the fatigue of not being able to sit through a gathering of family members, many of whom we may not see more than once or twice a year, without some kind of reminder that the pursuit of thinness remains a top priority, that our own bodies are likely being examined, compared to how they looked in previous years, our food choices analysed, even during festive occasions that typically centre around eating.

Diet chat reinforces the importance of thinness, and this kind of repeated messaging can result in disordered eating habits and negative body image in whoever may be listening. Openly talking about being ‘low carb’ or practising intermittent fasting might seem harmless, but it’s also admitting ‘I used to think that my body wasn’t good enough, so I’m trying to change it, even though I’m missing out on foods that I enjoy’. Someone listening might interpret that as, ‘If my body looks like theirs used to or bigger, that must mean that my body isn’t good enough either.’ And if you’re related to somebody who speaks like that, there’s a chance that your body will look somewhat like theirs.

When you are around people who frequently talk about their diets, their bodies, or the bodies of other people (such as discussing who’s gained or lost weight recently), you become hyperaware of your own body. This can lead to huge stress if your body ever changes, particularly if you gain weight and you belong to a family who seem to strongly value thinness. The desperation to avoid having our bodies scanned and dissected by family members can lead to an intense preoccupation with our eating habits that can easily spiral into disordered eating. 

If we need a reminder about what disordered eating is and why it is problematic, disordered eating is having eating patterns that share elements of eating disorders, without necessarily being a clinical eating disorder. This includes any eating behaviour that may take a toll on somebody’s physical or mental health if maintained long term, such as chronically restricting food intake, avoiding certain foods or food groups out of fear or concern that they’ll lead to weight gain, frequent fasting, skipping meals or exercising to ‘undo’ calorie intake. 

In many instances, disordered eating patterns mark the early stages of clinical eating disorders - which are debilitating and even life threatening illnesses. 

It’s highly concerning that our drive for achieving thinness comes with such a high risk of disordered eating or inflicting disordered eating onto the people around us, and yet it seems like that has prompted people to act or speak in ways that are considerate to this fact. 

Maybe it’s the fact that people don’t understand what disordered eating actually is because it’s so normalised in society, or they don’t recognise the harms of what they’re doing. 

But if we’re chronically underfuelling ourselves, bragging about our ‘success’ via such underfuelling strategies, and even encouraging others to do the same - let’s have an honest chat about what we’re robbing ourselves of here. 

We’re losing our creativity. 

Our empathy.

Our passion.

The things that light us up.

Our critical thinking skills. 

The more we restrict, the more we become shells of who we are as people. 

It’s not only our bodies that are less nourished,

But our relationships, our hobbies, and wherever we’re investing our time and joy. 

If that’s the sort of thing that you’re willing to sacrifice, that’s your prerogative.

But when you realise how much of that you’re passing on to the people around you simply through the language that you use in daily life, particularly those who are just growing up and finding themselves as people - we must ask ourselves - do we really want to rob them of the same things?

I’d like to think that we’d act slightly differently if that were the case.

It really is that deep. 

Have a lovely holiday season! And let’s try and keep the diet chat to a minimum this year. 

-

Lx