Please don’t give me diet advice
content warning: diets, weight loss
Right now I am calorie counting again, for the first time in a decade. And it is terrifying how rapidly those habits come flooding back in. How my knowledge about what are “good” and “bad” foods has not at all gone away, despite my conscious and concerted efforts to erase that way of thinking.
I am calorie counting for a good reason, I think. There is a thing I really want to do that has a weight limit. Let’s say sky diving — though anyone who knows me, knows I would not dream of leaping out of a plane. But let’s say sky diving. Or bungee jumping. Or maybe it’s installing a sex swing… The point is, I want to do the thing, and it has a weight limit, and I am currently over that limit.
I have not been advised to lose weight by my doctor. There are no health concerns. And this is largely not the result of a fatphobic system — though of course one could argue that anything that requires weightloss for access is fatphobic.
What’s interesting and scary about this process is how rapidly anyone who finds out, immediately offers me unsolicited diet advice. It started in the doctor’s surgery. I went in for a smear test and while I was there I thought I’d take the chance to get a really accurate BMI reading — yes readers, I actually asked to be weighed. The nurse was cheery and agreed, I suspect she was looking at me and thinking “overweight but nothing to worry about”. But as she typed the numbers into her BMI calculator her face fell, and she tilted her head as if sharing a fatal diagnosis, to tell me the shameful result. It was pretty much as I expected, and I was ready to go on my merry way, but no. She had some advice. “What are your portion sizes like — have you considered trying a smaller plate?”, “You know, for cereal you only need a handful” (helpfully showing me what a handful means), “Some people find drinking a big glass of water before a meal really helps!”
I can’t even begin to express to you how furious this made me, and because I think lots of well-meaning people do this to fat friends the whole time, I thought I would share why.
First, this advice assumes that I, a fat person, have not heard it before. This is absurdly ignorant. By the time I was in my mid-twenties, I had not just heard, but sought out and indeed tried literally every diet trick in the book. In fact, I have had considerable success — on different diet plans I have lost 1 stone, 2 stone, 3 stone and 4 stone — my personal best was 4.5 stone. I am not a diet amateur — rather, you are. How absurd to think that the poxy little strategies you use to shed a few pounds after an indulgent holiday would work for a 20kg weight loss goal. How dare you presume to tell me how to lose weight. Babe, I’ve lost more weight than you could possibly dream of. I’m a fucking pro.
Second, this advice presumes that the reason I am fat is because I have never tried to lose weight or am ignorant of how to do so. Again, how VERY dare you. What planet are you on, that you think it is possible to cruise through life without encountering a simply colossal pressure to be thin (or just, not-fat) and all the diet culture that goes with it? My fatness is a choice — and one I have had to work hard to cultivate. Years and years of self-loathing driven dieting was extremely challenging to put behind me.
The end result, is that I simply do not want to be thin enough to make the effort to get, or stay that way. Or rather, thin-ness is not a high enough priority for me that I am willing to expend precious mental, physical and temporal resources upon it (at least, until now, because of the very exciting sky dive / bungee jump / sex swing opportunity). Instead, I spend my resources on my family, on my career - of which I am inordinately proud, on trying to be the best collaborator and friend I can be, and on SuperTroop — the charity I founded and help to run. I work hard at these things, and in a very real and direct sense, I support myself to do that hard work by feeding my body what it wants, when it wants it. You may thrive on a more frugal existence, and bully for you. I have a big appetite, and a relationship with food that means I seek solace and reward in comforting meals.
Another reason, of course, that I am fat is because for all those times I have lost weight, I have also gained it again. I have this experience in common with the vast majority of people who have lost weight through dieting — and like many of them I normally end up a bit heavier than I started. I think you’ll agree, that’s an excellent reason to step off the diet merry-go-round. Another goodie is to set my incredible daughters an example of a woman who accepts her body and isn’t focused on unobtainable beauty standards. Sure, I could also do this as a thin person, but a real wake-up call for me was when my children were small and I realised that if I carried on dieting, they were going to be raised in a household where ideas about “good” and “bad” foods, and the desirability of thin-ness, would be inescapable.
The third problematic part of this advice is the way it exposes other people as invested in my body being or behaving a certain way. I suppose the nurse had a degree of legitimacy in this regard, but neighbours, colleagues and relations do not. I also experienced this recently when a friend responded admiringly when I said I was going home by bike, but swiftly switched to a shake of the head and a disappointed “Oh, Sue…” when she found out it was an e-bike. If you have the temerity to be fat, at the very least you should be trying not to be. People falling over themselves to offer diet advice I didn’t ask for, expose clearly how eager they are that I should be thin.
The same will happen of course, if I do lose weight and visibly-so, when people start asking — in admiring tones, sure the question is nothing but flattering — “Have you lost weight?” All this tells me is that for the time you have known me, you have been keeping an eye on my weight. That for all my efforts to be judged for my work and my personality, I am being judged on my looks. And most horrible of all, that if and when I gain that weight, you will be quietly noticing that too.
So what could you say, when a fat friend tells you they are dieting? How about “OK, let me know if I can do anything helpful.” Or maybe “Bummer, I hope it isn’t too unpleasant”. Or perhaps, if you know this is really unusual for them “Oh dear, I’m sorry to hear that, is everything ok?”
*if you are a fat person who has never dieted, I applaud and honour you and wish you to remain outside of this toxic industry for your whole life long
