How to Handle Diet Talk From Family, Friends, and Coworkers
DISCLAIMER: Links included in this blog might be affiliate links. Health with Hannah, LLC is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program along with other affiliate programs. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide I may receive a small commission with no additional charge to you. Thank you for your support!
One of the most common questions I get in my DMs is how to navigate conversations with the people in your life that are still entrenched in diet culture. It can be really tough when you are on a food freedom journey and no one around you seems to understand and they continue to talk about their diets.
If you’re new here, hello and welcome! My name is Hannah and I am a non-diet dietitian here to help you improve your relationship with your food and finally find food freedom.
Diet culture is pervasive and you likely have many people in your life who are dieting. They may not even know that there is an alternative! And when first presented with Intuitive Eating and HAES messaging, they may not feel open to it right away. I know that I wasn’t!
As with many areas of life, not everyone is going to be on the same page as you. Everyone gets to choose what they do with their own body. But they do not have the right to tell you what you should be doing with yours. Only you can make that decision.
So, what do you do when the people in your life are dieting while you are on a recovery journey? How do you respond to diet and body talk?
Diet talk is very normalized
Diet talk and disordered eating are everywhere. This can make it difficult to recover from disordered eating or an eating disorder when conversations about dieting are all around.
You’ve likely heard a friend or peer say something like “my legs look so fat today” or “I can’t even look at chocolate without gaining 10 pounds”. You may have even engaged in conversations like these yourself.
While these types of conversations are unfortunately very prevalent, part of the recovery journey involves learning how to handle situations like these.
How to handle the dieters in your life
Plant seeds
Right now, your friends, family, and coworkers may be closed-off to alternative views about nutrition and dieting. Their thoughts and behaviors are out of your control and it likely won’t be very effective to try and change them. It is not your job to change anybody's perspective and this may be counterproductive if they are deep in a diet-y mindset. They will only change their mind when they learn for themselves.
I can vouch for this personally. When I was a brand new dietitian, I was still practicing under a weight-centric model and prescribing unhelpful weight loss advice to my clients. I thought that this was the best way and that HAES and Intuitive Eating were a load of hooey. It look over a year of continuous exposure to non-diet messaging and hearing my clients’ stories to better understand how the weight-centric approach was harming people. And I am still learning every single day.
So if we can’t change the minds of those in our lives, what can we do? Plant seeds! You can place little nuggets of information into the brains and they can decide if they would like to learn more.
Planting non-diet seeds may look like making subtle comments about your own experience and saying things like “Wow, I have really been feeling better since I started adding carbs to my breakfast!”. Or perhaps you could share posts on social media that they will see. I’ll share some of my favorite social media accounts later in this post.
Now, all this said, please remember that it is not your job to educate others. You may feel passionate about the concepts that you are learning as you recover from disordered eating, and that is wonderful. But you are allowed to take care of yourself without explaining your choices to anyone else. You do not owe friends and family an explanation for why, when, or what you are choosing to eat.
Shut down body talk
Body talk is a big part of diet talk. This may include friends and family members talking about their own bodies or discussing the bodies of other people. In either scenario, body talk can be harmful and trigger negative thoughts and behaviors for those who are struggling with disordered eating or an eating disorder.
There is never a reason to make unsolicited comments about someone's body. This includes comments that may be intended as a compliment. Many people make comments such as "you look so great since you've lost weight!", thinking that this is complimentary. They may not know the harm comments like these can cause. These comments support the idea that thinner = healthier, which is not necessarily the case.
What can you do in this situation? Be the person that stops the body gossip. If peers are discussing the body of someone who isn’t in the room, you might say something like:
"I am not friends with them because of how their body presents itself. I am friends with them because they are kind, funny, and loyal."
"How do we know what their body does or doesn't need? We don’t know what is healthy for them."
"Would you like it if your friends talked about your body?"
If they bring up their own disapproval of their body (“Ugh, I feel so fat!”), you may interject with something like:
"It sounds like you are feeling down about your body. Would you like to talk about it?"
"You are so much more than your body."
"Your body is capable of so much, regardless of its size."
"Fat is not a feeling."
"There is nothing wrong with being fat."
"Fat is not a bad word."
Try to give your friends and family some grace. It is difficult to get out of the diet mindset and fear of weight gain that is all around us.
Change the subject or leave the situation
If you are in a situation where diet and body talk are making you uncomfortable, you can change the subject by bringing up a neutral topic such as a show you’ve been enjoying or a funny video you saw. If all else fails, you can choose to remove yourself from the situation completely by walking away.
Provide resources
Remember, it is not your job to educate, but it may be helpful to share resources if they are interested in learning more about where you are coming from. Here are some of my favorite social media accounts, podcasts, and books about intuitive eating, body image, and disordered eating recovery.
Social media accounts
@dietitianhannah (yours truly!)
@dietitianemk
@hannahtalksbodies
@no.food.rules
@soheefit
@streetsmart.rd
@fierce.fatty
@dietitiananna
@find.food.freedom
@themotherroaddietitian
@thehungrycelemtine
@yourlatinanutritionist
Podcasts
The Up-Beet Dietitians (co-hosted by me)
Maintenance Phase
What the Actual Fork
Food Psych
Find Food Freedom
Rethinking Wellness
Diet Culture Rebel
Body Kindness
The Mindful Dietitian
Food Heaven
The SociEATy
Intuitive Bites
Books
Find my favorite anti-diet books on my Amazon storefront.
Seek out a community where you feel supported
Finding support from like-minded people can help you to cope when friends, family, and coworkers say things that are unsupportive of your anti-diet journey. This is exactly why I created The Nutrition Reboot Membership. The diet-ditching membership is a safe space for those looking to learn more about the anti-diet movement with the support of others on a similar journey. You can learn more about the membership and join us by clicking here.
If you work with an eating disorder treatment team such as a therapist and registered dietitian, it may help to work with them to come up with potential responses for diet talk. Perhaps you can also role play certain scenarios so that you feel more confident with your responses in the moment.
Bottom line - how do I handle diet talk on my recovery journey?
While you may not be able to change the minds of your friends, family, and peers, you can plant seeds and provide resources for them to learn from when they are ready.
It is important that you set boundaries for yourself by speaking your truth to those in your life or even removing yourself from the situation when possible. Remember, your food choices do not affect them and you do not need to provide friends, family, or peers an explanation for the choices you make for your body.
Learn more
Featured podcast episode
Want more help on your diet ditching journey?
Join my signature membership to become part of a community of ex-dieters working towards food freedom and making peace with food so they no longer need to cut out their favorite foods.
