Killing Kittens Is Bad. Eating, On The Other Hand....

Ugh writes:

Everyone around me is obsessed with their weight and dieting. I have to change the topic a lot of times if I want to participate. If I came to a function boasting about a new diet I wanted to try, or maybe I lost 3 pounds, I'd get a better response from the group than if I were to tell them of a raise or promotion at work. What the hell, why are people so obsessed to the point that being on a diet is revered? It's sickening.

Ugh, indeed. Unfortunately, your problem is not unique. There's an entire week devoted to giving up fat talk (the second week in October).  And there are people all over the world who blog about this issue, among others related to size acceptance and feminism. Fat talk is pervasive. It is ubiquitous. It is also limiting, boring, stifling, competitive, and destructive. It reduces everyone who participates in it to no more than a body, and a public body at that, subject to scrutiny and evaluation by the general populace - all of whom have been told that fat is wrong, fat is bad, fat is a moral issue, and to be even vaguely fat is the worst thing anyone could ever dare to be. Fat talkers depend on the culture to keep them going; they depend on the fact that "everyone knows" how awful it is to be fat, and that weight is a choice, and that the pursuit of ceasing to exist - becoming a size zero - is an occupation shared by everyone.

So don't back them up. They get positive reinforcement for this behavior from the other fat-talkers, and they won't be expecting you to burst their bubble - or to point out the ridiculousness of making their own bodies their enemies. You needn't be rude, but if you really want this to stop (and not merely to walk away from it), you need to point out that there are so many more interesting things in the world to discuss. You can throw some facts about diets at them (namely, that they don't work, full stop, end of story). You can point out that humans generally respond poorly to restrictions of any kind, and that they would do better to investigate intuitive eating and Health At Every Size concepts if they want to improve their well-being. You can talk about how the BMI definitions were arbitrarily changed in the 1990s, and that studies have shown that being in the "overweight" category actually results in living the longest, statistically. You can point out that being skinny is not the same as being healthy. You can simply tell them that you don't diet, and you don't want to discuss dieting because it's boring.

Most of these will stop a conversation dead in its tracks. They might stare at you and go right back to it amongst themselves, or they might ask for more input from you. If you get the chance to elaborate, you might consider discussing how making women focus on beauty and weight is a losing game and the product of a society that definitely doesn't want women to ever achieve full equality. And then segue into a discussion of politics, or science, or a funny blog post you just read about anything but weight.

Or, you can continue to ignore it, just far more flagrantly. Bring a book, and start reading every time someone starts with "I was so bad last night, I ate...." It's rude, sure, but honestly, so is being a repetitive bore who can't carry on a conversation that doesn't involve calories.

Unfortunately, you may end up just having to find new friends. People are obsessed with dieting and weight because it's considered a moral issue; because women, especially, are brought into the fold of body-haters and chronic dieters early in life; and because as I said above, people hate the fatties. Not dieting is considered not normal, and you may just have to find a group of freaks like you.