to be sick of the way some women talk about diets..?

[IvantaOuiOui]

as part of my job (CM) I take children to playgroups, have been doing this for years. Every woman I meet seems to be on a diet and they all talk about "being good" and "being naughty", how many syns/sins are in everything and what they've eaten in the last 24 hours. Is this normal? I am no stranger to trying to lose weight but I don't want to talk about it all the time when I'm on a diet.

How the word, "diet", is interpreted is interesting. I have always thought of it in terms of what one eats. Everyone has a diet; a food intake.

When I was teaching seven and eight year old children twelve years ago I assumed that the word was as I had defined but no, they mostly thought that a person's "diet" was to do with restricting foods with the aim of weight-loss, because their mothers had said they were "on a diet" ie a calorie-controlled one.

They wouldn't have got this idea from their fathers from what I saw of them

Has anyone mentioned Lighter Life yet? Because from what I have noticed, it is the dementor of diets, it literally seems to suck the life and the joy out of its victims.

I'm no great fan of any diet, as I've always believed in doing exercise and eating everything in moderation, but I realise that I am also lucky in that I am very slim, and always have been. I don 't eat whatever I like though, i just seem to naturally have a monitor in me that tells me when i'm eating too much, and i'll then redress the balance by eating less for a few days.

There,s no great magic formula to what i do, it's all down to common sense. It just seems that there are a lot of people out there who don't have that natural 'alarm' system built in.

I do wonder what it is though, as the mother of two dds I hope mine will grow up to love healthy food, the ritual of eating, and to want to excersise regularly. Again there is no mention of diets in our house, but dd1 I've noticed has already started to pick things up from school (she's 8).

Why that is, not what it is

OK, for years and years I had to listen to my mother moan about her weight. She was constantly on diets, weighing and measuring herself (expecting me to take notes - boring!), then asking me when she was a few hours on a diet if she was trimming up!!! I would be advising her to go running, but she didn't believe in it as it was bad for your bones, and lifting weights could "make your womb drop" .

Sadly, she was diagnosed with cancer and her weight dropped to nothing, how she wished she could have had some of that fat back! But she didn't appreciate it then, and she sadly died at 58.

NOW - I have 3 children. None of them knows what a weighing scales is. I only have healthy food and snacks in the house, and the odd treat. We are all active, I go running twice weekly and walk the dog the other days. I couldn't tell you what I eat, but I generally eat healthily and I keep a steady weight - I never weigh myself but my clothes would get too tight for me if I was gaining any which I'm not!

OP, YANBU - hearing other people's diet stories is so boring and in my case just did my head in over the years. I would never put anybody else through it!

I see it both ways.

I was previously overweight and have maintained target for about a year now through healthy eating, only eating when hungry and restricting grains and white carbs. Sadly if I don't focus on it I have a tendency to eat when full / comfort eat.

I often refuse cakes / biscuits at work, because I am not hungry. And even if I was hungry because I don't want to fill up on empty calories on a random work day.

But yes it makes me boring. And I feel that I am always going to be on a diet. I don't do syns / or points etc but if I do gain a few pounds I do log what i eat for a few days to be back on track.

I don't think it does make you 'boring' to refuse food if you're not hungry, or just don't fancy it right now, or feel it wouldn't be good for you. I know people have that attitude, and it's part of the problem really - you get the same with drinking to some extent, if someone doesn't drink (alcohol) or prefers to stop at one small glass of wine for example, that's seen as boring or sanctimonious, and some people will try to persuade or pressure you into having more than you want.

Personally I think it's the people who make a big issue out of eating/not eating something who are the 'boring' ones, but maybe that's just me!

It is difficult maintaining a healthy normal attitude to food (i.e. that it's just food) when other people are weird about it but you can only try!

Also guess it depends what you mean by 'on a diet' - for me not eating when I'm not hungry, and trying to have a reasonably healthy balanced intake is not 'being on a diet' it's just normal. It's stuffing food into myself when I don't need or really want it (which I have done at stressful times in the past) that I'd consider abnormal personally.

I hate hate hate it as well.

I remember vividly asking my team at work about 10 years ago if we could possibly talk about something other than diets and losing weight as I was losing the will to live just listening to it. They were all doing the cabbage soup diet at the time, and even I as a non-dieting slim teen (at the time of course!) knew that it was a bad idea and losing 7lb in 7 days was probably not sustainable.

I try not to talk about it work now if I can possibly avoid it just because I fail so often it is embarrassing

Its not boring to refuse food and I wouldnt ever think someone who did was being a pain.

It is boring to have to listen to people remark endlessly about what I am eating if I have a cake at work.
If I want a cake I will go and buy one and I will eat it.

But I have to listen to women tell me how lucky I am to be able to eat it, how skinny I am (thanks, that isnt actually a compliment in my world), how they wouldnt dream of eating one, the last time they did eat one, what they are going to eat instead etc etc etc etc.

This talk will go on for far longer than the time it takes me to eat the sodding cake.

peace being a weight that you are comfortable with is not lucky, its a state of mind. You can be a size 16 and be comfortable or a size 8 and feel like you need to lose weight.

There is a certain amount of luck regarding what size someone is. Some people are lucky enough not to be pushed into over eating by stress but remember they may well do something equally or more destructive instead.
I think its utterly horrible that a perfectly lovely woman who might be 14 st is plunged into despair because she thinks she ought to be 11 st.

If something is 'soul destroying' its not working. How can you possibly maintain a diet that is soul destroying? Its doomed to failure which can only make you feel more crap.

I am never going to be beautiful. I cant spend the rest of my life feeling inadequate because of it.

When I left school at 16, my 1st job was working in a shop.

The women I worked with talked non-stop about diets, calories, fat content, etc

It really had an effect on me. To this day (I'm now 32) I can still remember that an apple has more calories than a banana.

Does it - I thought an apple had 40 calories and an average banana 80!! Seems my once encyclopaedic knowledge of calories must be diminishing! :)

I think you're right, I've tried to deliberately unlearn everything I picked up from them!

I'm 27 and have NEVER been on a diet. I haven't the willpower! Talk of diets makes me crave crappy food!

I can cope with diet talk, what I can't cope with is when they work out the syns or point of my lunch

Frozen your post was fascinating. You said "If someone is positive about their body, this can be mirrored too." What good ways of doing this are there without coming across as boastful or superior?

I agree. I have one friend who talks about nothing but dieting and lists her food and it's so boring.

This thread is depressing me no end! I thought I'd left all this rubbish behind when I moved countries (from Argentina to the UK) and I must be lucky as I do not know anyone here in Blighty who drones about calories/diets/ being "good" (argh!) or "naughty" (double argh!). It is probably because I run a mile whenever I meet anyone like that..I had more than my fair share of trauma growing up in an image-obsessed society surrounded by stick-thin women starving themselves to be "liked" and "accepted" (with me always being the odd one out) to last me a lifetime and I have zero tolerance for that sort of stupidity and self-hating rhetoric.
I used to be forced to diet by my mother who, to this day, is still going on and on about every morsel of food that passes her lips in a bid to justify to the world why he is "eating the right things". She even sucks on lemons (literally!) as it is "good for you"...That, among other things, propelled me to put an ocean between us and people like that (in my experience, a majority where I come from) as soon as I could. The moment I stopped dieting, I began to lose weight and to accept myself but it took years of misery.
I don't eat biscuits or sweets during the day because I am not used to it and I like enjoying a sweet after dinner, in the comfort or my own home rather than in an office but it has nothing to do with counting calories or anything of the sort. Good food is, to me, one of the most enjoyable pleasures in life and to deny and punish yourself over it is, in my opinion, masochistic and stupid. Women need to learn to free themselves from the ridiculous constraints imposed by the media, advertising and the shallow standards pushed by fashion and beauty magazines in order to sell their products and realise that being "thin" is not a worthwhile goal in life; being healthy is but part of that is to eat well and to enjoy your food without guilt.

Mct76, your post is uncanny. Like you I have lived in BsAs, and it was mad! All that dieting, plastic surgery, hair and nails mania! It was there that I went out with 7 other women, for dinner, and we shared 2 plates os sushi between us .

Like you, I really enjoy food, especially proper meals that have been cooked with care. I would not say no to a beautiful homecooked meal, but I am not bothered about biscuits and stuff.

I am into being well, not thin, but saying that, when my boss called me a Big Girl it stung a bit. With a bmi of 23 and being quite athletic, it just shows how thin the "thin norm" is now, maybe.

Did anyone see that interesting programme called The truth about fat?

On the bbc

Don't get me started on BMI!! It doesn't actually make sense, yes its a good guide but doesn't work for everyone but unfortunately so many people think their obese because their BMI says so.

My boxing instructor had a much higher BMI than me (over the recommended 25) but not an ounce of fat on her - all muscle and she frequently wore tiny boxing shorts and crop tops to show us all how we could have looked, ha,ha ;o)