The Boundary Around Diet Talk: Examining 7 Common Responses and Why They Hurt

If you were to use a stopwatch to see how long you could go without hearing any diet talk on an average day, how long do you think it would take? Days? Hours? Minutes? I encourage you to notice this. I encourage you to approach your next few days ready to observe how often you hear this stuff, or even how often you say it. See how long it takes for a tiny example to come up. See how long it takes to spot a bigger one. It usually doesn’t take very long at all. For those of us who are trying to opt out of diet culture, this is frustrating. It is a tired and boring topic. For those of us who are in the fat acceptance community, it is an upsetting microagression rooted in fatphobia.  For those of us who struggle or have struggled with eating disorders or disordered eating, it is triggering, and reminds us of the times people asked, “what’s your secret?” when the secret was a debilitating mental illness. 

Diet talk falls under an umbrella concept that’s been labeled “fat talk.” Fat talk has been defined by researchers as conversation occurring primarily in between friends or family that focuses negatively on the body, eating and exercise behaviors, weight and shape, and comparisons between behaviors and bodies. Fat talk has been shown to be highly associated with increased body dissatisfaction, and in one study it was even demonstrated that there is a sharp increase in body dissatisfaction immediately following exposure to fat talk (Macdonald, Dimitropoulos, Royal, Planco, & Dionne 2015). Beyond that, fat talk can reinforce problematic and dysfunctional eating and exercising behaviors to the point that it can increase pressure to engage in disordered eating behaviors. 

Many of us who fall into one or more of the categories listed above have tried to set boundaries around diet talk and other forms of fat talk, only to be met with a lack of respect and understanding. This is a boundary I try to set firmly, and in my own experiences it is dismissed very easily. People ignore it in small ways that become exasperating to call out repeatedly. Labeling certain foods as “clean,” certain foods as “junk,” and using moralizing language to discuss foods and eating habits. Because this issue is so heavily rooted in discrimination, intense biases, and mental illness, these boundaries can be truly exhausting to uphold.

Little things get by because I am simply too tired. I am tired of being ignored. I am tired of being direct and it making no difference to anyone. I am tired of being gaslit and told that this isn’t actually a problem. I am tired of defending something I believe so strongly in, have dedicated so much of myself to, and have spent so much time and effort learning about. But even though I’m tired, I need to find a way to treat that boundary as the sacred thing it is. In the moment, this is so hard, sometimes impossible, to do spontaneously. But I will continue to demand that this boundary be respected. I’ve asked and asked for people to stop, and there is always some reason or another for them not to. Sometimes it feels inconsiderate. Many times it feels more like gaslighting. So I’ve taken some of these reasons, ones I’ve experienced and people I care about have experienced, and broken them down to explain why, no, it is actually not okay. 

1. “Well it’s okay for you to be fat, but not for me to be.”

This one also shows up wearing some disguises: “I’m only talking about my food,” “I’m only talking about my habits,” and “I’m only talking about my body.” This one is definitely a crowd favorite for fat folx. When you think this is sound logic, I want you to think about this. Have you ever met a rich person who insists they care about the homeless population, but starts a petition to make sure a shelter cannot open in their neighborhood? This is the same “not in my backyard” mentality. Have you ever met someone who swears up and down that they aren’t homophobic, but are devastated at the idea that their child could be gay? I challenge you who use this excuse to get real with yourself about why it wouldn’t be okay for you. Before you tell me it’s for your health, let’s get to the next one.

2. “I just want to be healthy.”

This one is simple. Diets are unhealthy. You have a statistically higher chance of getting an eating disorder (around 25%, and much higher for developing disordered eating in general) than dieting successfully (studies show this as somewhere between 5-33%). This is, quite literally, the worst odds out of pretty much anything that is designated as “health promoting.” The mortality rate of eating disorders is astronomical compared to many other mental illnesses. For those who survive it, it’s misery until recovery, and recovery is no cake-walk, particularly when everyone around you is constantly talking about their dieting behaviors. So now, before you tell me it’s actually a lifestyle change, let’s keep going.

3. “It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change.”

This one is everywhere. Whether it’s noom, intermittent fasting, even keto, people absolutely insist that their diets are not diets. Every new diet, and every individually invented diet, is claimed to be anything but a diet. But, for the record, these lifestyle changes are actually included in the above mentioned statistics (25% developing eating disorders, 67-95% failure rate). Additionally, one of the definitions of diet is “a special course of food to which one restricts oneself.” A special course of eating is just another way of saying food rules, including things like food group restriction, calorie restriction, and rules about when a person is allowed to eat. Diet has become a dirty word that people don’t like to use. But, to quote Shakespeare, “A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet,” and a diet by any other name is still a diet.

4. “I should be able to talk about what I want.” AKA the “free speech defense.”

Free speech exists, and for that I am thankful. But freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. For the individual doing the talking, these consequences can look like damage to a relationship, or even the loss of one. The consequences for the listeners are the same, and potentially go so much further. Spiraling into disordered eating behaviors, feeling unsafe with that person or group, feeling invalidated and devalued, and so much more. 

5. “Why can’t you be supportive?” 

(CONTENT WARNING-MENTION OF SPECIFIC ED BEHAVIORS, SKIP TO #6 AS NEEDED) Nobody except those of us who have gone through it can truly know the experience of being told you’re doing a great job when you are in the midst of an eating disorder. But from the other side of it, we could never subject someone else to that. But even other people who haven’t had this struggle, but who have come to understand the outcomes of dieting by some other path, still see this problem. It is a risk to support someone’s decision to diet, because of the likelihood of it spiraling into an eating disorder, and the likelihood of it already being one. Furthermore, there is so much overlap between eating disorder behaviors and dieting. To name a few: waiting to eat until a certain time of day, eliminating or significantly restricting food groups, drinking water when hungry to further put off eating, and meal replacement drinks. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but as I said to my best friend (who thankfully truly heard it), I cannot support you in doing something that was a symptom of my mental illness. I cannot approve of someone who is mirroring an eating disorder choice. You don’t need my approval, so please don’t ask for it. 

6. “You are being so selfish”/“You make everything about you.”

For those of you who feel this way, please think about these questions: Does it harm you to ask for consent before engaging in diet talk and other forms of fat talk? Does it potentially harm the people around you if you talk about it without knowing how they feel about it? If I say that I don’t want to talk about it, is there nobody else in your life who will be more able to sit through this? To be called selfish for asking to have my boundaries respected, particularly when it is something so many people would be okay with talking about regardless of the harm, is indescribably hurtful. What this really says is that you are more okay with doing harm to me or others than with choosing your audience more carefully, all while accusing me of being selfish. All of these responses frustrate and upset me, but this one in particular feels like daggers to me. 

7. “I’m really struggling though.”

If this is you, I hear you. You absolutely deserve to talk about your own struggles with body image. That is a long and hard battle that far too many of us have to fight. But struggling with your body image is not an excuse to cause harm. Even having an eating disorder is not an excuse to cause harm. Pay attention to your language and your audience. Check in with people to see if they have the bandwidth for it. Talk about your struggles in ways that do not reinforce and support fatphobia. It’s better for those around you, but the language you choose effects you, too. So do it for us, but also do it for you. 

**I want to thank my friends and fellow members of the anti-diet and fat acceptance communities for discussing this difficult topic with me. Although specific stories were not included, there are countless painful stories attached to this topic for all of us. This post is fueled by stories of pain, loneliness, and disappointment. Enough is enough.