How to handle unwanted diet-talk (Part 1)
If we pay attention, we might notice that diet talk is all around us. After all, if our friends and family have talked non-stop about their keto diets and intermittent fasting and have been encouraging us to lose some weight, it’s probably for the best, right?
Pressure to change our bodies becomes especially strong at certain times of year, certain times of our lives as well. Diet talk become even more prevalent around notions of “new year, new me”, “summer bikini body”, “I need to lose weight before the wedding”, “we gotta bounce back postpartum”, “Just want to be in shape when I see my old friends from school” and many more occasions.
While messaging such as these, especially from our close ones, may seem innocent at first, it can be incredibly triggering or have a negative impact on ourselves and others. If diet talk is unsettling for you, there are ways to navigate these conversations so that you can support yourself and the people around you.
First, what is diet talk?
In a nutshell, diet talk involves the comments and language someone uses around food, particularly highlighting restriction of food or food groups, opinions around food/food portions, stigmatizing expressions around weight and body image and promotion of unhealthy strategies to lose weight. Examples of how this shows up in conversations include:
Making unsolicited comments about weight and bodies- “You look great! Did you lose some weight?”
Frequent requests to body-check- “Do you think this dress makes me look fat?”
Food policing - “I wouldn’t eat that if I were you. Too many calories”
Placing morality on eating and foods- “Today was definitely a cheat day”
Self-blaming behaviors around food and eating- “I have no control around desserts/sweets”
Unsolicited and fear-mongering nutrition information- “Carbs just make you gain weight”
Food earning- “Tomorrow, I will have to do an extra cardio gym session to burn of all the food I ate today”
Talking about dieting- “I’m on keto right now so I can’t have that much rice”
Making judgments about other people’s eating behaviors- “I can’t believe you ate all that food” or “You’re a dietitian, you must eat super healthy!” (we hear it all the time too)
What’s the downside of diet talk?
Diet talk may appear well-intentioned and even be genuine means to build connections, to fit in, and to find common ground with others. However, it often does more harm than good.
In the end, diet talk can cause the receiving individual to internalize the notions of food policing and weight stigma leading to shame. At a deeper level, engaging in diet talk may be the first ‘step’ that triggers a cascade of undesirable health behaviours including but not limited to decrease in mental health, negative self perception, stigma around weight (whether towards the self or others), and contribute to or worsen an eating disorder by affirming disordered thoughts and habits. Diet talk perpetuates diet culture.
Diet talk tends to equate weight with health with lower weight assumed to be healthier while health and weight research has never been able to prove this relationship. Higher weights may be correlated with certain health risks, it has never been established to be the direct cause nor the sole cause of chronic health conditions. This is because there are other significant contributing factors such as socioeconomic status, education, household income or job security, food security, access to medical health services and working conditions which also affect our health outcomes along with changing our weight.
This is why diet talk is not helpful. Focusing on weight or size alone is masking drivers that are actually negatively impacting health. It’s also ignoring the fact that not every individual has the same resources or tools to attain diet culture’s ideal of body and health. Our society’s stigma around weight can even be a contributor to undesirable weight changes and chronic health conditions (1,2). This is why it is important to shift the narrative around conversations involving weight and dieting.
Dieting does not work to shift body sizes or reduce weight in the long-term. Studies show about 95% of people who go on diets end up gaining more weight than what they started with (3,4,5). It’s not the individual’s fault but rather the fact that diets create physical and mental deprivation of food that is ultimately unsustainable. It triggers the body to instincts to survive through becoming more efficient at storing and conserving energy, but triggering the instinct to gasp for food. All of which leads to disordered eating patterns that actually perpetuates unintentional weight gain in the long run. So what can we do about it?!
Head over to Part-2 for more practical tools on how to navigate unwanted diet-talk.
Disclaimer: the information provided is not intended as medical advice or to diagnose or treat a medical disease. It is strictly for informational purposes. Consult with your medical provider such as a dietitian before implementing any dietary changes, the information provided does not replace medical advice provided by your healthcare provider.
Written by Sharon Sun, RD
Reviewed & edited by Abby Hsiao, RD
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Work Cited
Hunger, J. M., Major, B., Blodorn, A., & Miller, C. T. (2015). Weighed down by stigma: How weight‐based social identity threat contributes to weight gain and poor health. Social and personality psychology compass, 9(6), 255-268.
Tomiyama, A. J., Carr, D., Granberg, E. M., Major, B., Robinson, E., Sutin, A. R., & Brewis, A. (2018). How and why weight stigma drives the obesity ‘epidemic’and harms health. BMC medicine, 16, 1-6.
Stunkard, A., & McLaren-Hume, M. (1959). The results of treatment for obesity: a review of the literature and report of a series. AMA archives of internal medicine, 103(1), 79-85.
Pélissier, L., Bagot, S., Miles-Chan, J. L., Pereira, B., Boirie, Y., Duclos, M., ... & Thivel, D. (2023). Is dieting a risk for higher weight gain in normal-weight individual? A systematic review and meta-analysis. British Journal of Nutrition, 130(7), 1190-1212.
Mann, T., Tomiyama, A. J., Westling, E., Lew, A. M., Samuels, B., & Chatman, J. (2007). Medicare's search for effective obesity treatments: diets are not the answer. American Psychologist, 62(3), 220.
