How To Respond To The "Food Police"
Have you ever been criticized or judged by your food choices? You go to a social gathering and the topic of food is bound to come up! Maybe it was your aunt who brags about her kept diet or your cousin who makes judgements about what you are eating.
Commenting, judging, or ridiculing someone for choosing to eat a certain way is problematic. Not only are there socioeconomic factors that could drive someone to their food choices, it is never okay for another person to tell someone how they should live their life. The way someone chooses to eat does not make them a good or a bad person.
Sometimes, the food police is actually yourself! It may be irrational thoughts in your heads rooted from years of diet culture messages that make you feel guilty. These food rules are so engrained that it makes you doubt yourself when making food decisions. It is near impossible to expect to be a completely intuitive eater when we don’t first learn to deal with the food police.
This is very common on social media, but even more common in day to day life whether you recognize it or not. A prime example of this would be telling someone that they need to go on a diet. Or making someone feel bad for eating carbs or not being vegan.
Below are some tips to help navigate away from the food police.
Educate Them
For starters, I think it’s important to recognize that not everyone understands the way their words and actions come across to other people. Sometimes it may just be lack of understanding about how you are receiving that comment. Educate them! Talk to them about why their comments and judgements about what you are eating affect you. It might have them thinking twice before they feel the need to tell you how to eat.
Walk Away
In some scenarios, it might be best to just walk away and remove yourself from the situation. If there is someone who is not benefiting your mental health, it might be best to stay away from that person and choose to not expose yourself to their judgements. Sometimes, it is just really not worth your energy to argue.
Change the Subject
If you are in a situation where you can’t walk away or have tried talking to them in the past about it, change the topic of the conversation. It could be as simple as asking how their day is going, something funny you saw the other day, “OMG GUESS WHAT!”… they will forget what they were talking about in no time!
Call them Out!
If someone is flat out being rude about it, call them out and stick up for yourself. It does not have to lead to an argument, but to challenge their own mindset. It is absolutely no one else’s concern what YOU eat besides your own. Your plate, your business!
What if I am the food police?!?
When it comes to dealing with your own internal food police, remember that it may have taken months, even years for the accumulation of diet culture messages to distort your relationship with food. You were not born with these food rules!
Common food rules I see with my clients are:
Not listening to hunger cues because you “already ate enough”
Having set times in which you are allowed to eat
Not snacking throughout the day
“Burning off” food after you eat with obsessive exercise
Viewing food as “good” or “bad”
You have already eaten sugar today, you aren’t allowed anymore!
______ food will make you gain weight- avoid it at all costs.
Unfortunately, a lot of these food rules are socially acceptable and aren’t taken as a big deal. However, this creates an unhealthy relationship with food and yourself the longer it goes on. Even if you don’t think you are dieting, these tactics take you away from your inner intuitive eater and create a less enjoyable experience with food. Give yourself some compassion! It’s not always easy living in the midst of diet culture. It may be worth starting with more positive self-talk because let’s face it, it was never about the food in the first place.
Are you interested in becoming an Intuitive Eater?
I work with clients virtually throughout the US, helping those who are frustrated with dieting to change their relationship with food and say goodbye to diets once and for all.
Click here to apply for my 1:1 nutrition coaching program to see how you can find balance and develop a long-term healthy relationship with food again.
