to hate when someone becomes the food police

[mommy2ash]

a girl who is in my social circle has recently started pretty severe diet. she is very underweight and has health issues and was recommended by her doctor and I do genuinely wish her all the best with it.

since she has started it though she comments on every single thing someone else fast, puts people down, says they will get fat and ill. it's really starting to wear thin. others tend to avoid eating in front of her to show support but if I'm hungry im going to eat and I would expect an adult to accept that.

on a recent night out i wasn't drinking as I rarely do. the rest were knocking them back all night and at the end of the night I got the biggest lecture while she tried to shame Me out of ordering some chips.

in the end I did tell her to feck off and concentrate on herself and leave me out of it.

aibu to think you diet only extends to yourself not everyone around you.

Potassium? Something like that.

Oh God save me from the food police.

I had a flatmate who went on a vegan diet and lectured all of us at any given opportunity. She was regularly shouted down but would just shrug smugly and say things like 'Well, I have learned all about this now so it's my responsibility to tell you what you're putting in your body.' She was lucky not to be killed, but she did lose a lot of weight. And several friends.

I might have neglected to tell her there was gelatine in her soya yogurts and poured a bit of gold top into her carton of soya milk though.

But I do think this woman is evangelising about her new eating habits, and good for her if it's working for her and she's feeling better and losing weight etc. But I think more important if trying to lose weight, is the support of friends, and frankly she's blowing her chances there. So YANBU.

ps I have nothing against vegans or anyone on any kind of diet, as long as they don't hector me about my evil ways

I don't care what anyone else chooses to put/not put in their bodies, I just can't abide it when their choices are projected into what I choose to do.

I refuse to be made to feel guilty despite some people's best efforts. For veganism in particular, the efforts are seemingly immense. It's like a religious cult for some.

I have RArthritis and the number of people who tell me I should stop eating starchy/acidic/sweet/artificial foods, avoid gluten/red meat/alcohol/ fatty foods/ caffeine/ fruit etcetera and I would be cured is simply astounding. People who hardly know me lecture me on the subject - now days they get told to fuck off rather sharply. If it was that bloody easy to cure me I'd have done it years ago - there is no cure, my diet & my body are my business not anybody else's.

did she comment on the alcohol being drunk? aren't those calories worse than 'potato calories'?

". You'd think God was going to come and collect them in person."
Shaky1500

I tend to try to be indulgent to 'food police' who are overweight and starting to lose weight. In my experience, such people haven't really known how to eat healthily and it is all new and exciting about how easy it is when you just make better food choices (particularly if they have a lot to lose, as then you start getting impressive sounding results with very little changes). On the grounds that lots of people assume something that is a new revolation to them would also be unknown to others, they are excited to share their new found information, because if they didn't realise it before, then they assume others don't either.

I have a friend who's recently 'discovered the secret' - basically starving yourself and denying all 'treats'. She keeps giving me food advice and if I post up photos of fairy cakes the DC made on a rainy holiday day, she posted how many calories she thought they contained and how we should never have such evil foods. This might bother me if I wasn't a size 6 and back in pre-baby clothes by the time DC2 was 6 months.

I just don't think she realises that other people know that a cake or chips based diet will be fattening, but also she doesn't realise that other people are able to eat some less healthy foods once then eat a little less the rest of the day/week so it balances out. That some people can bake a tray of fairy cakes, have one with a coffee then leave the rest for the children. She is "all or other" and hasn't occured to her others are different.

OP - with your friend, I think you might be worth asking to go for a coffee (black coffee, only 4 calories!) when both sober and tell her that while you are happy for her that she's finding how to eat properly now, she needs to accept that her friends who aren't extreamely overweight already know how to eat for them and a healthy diet for most people who aren't trying to lose weight can include some higher calorie foods as long as over the course of the week, it evens out. That if she continues to "tell people off" for the food choices they make, people will start avoiding her, or not inviting her to anything where food or high calorie drinks might be consumed. Then ask her how it's going, is she finding it hard to see other people having things she 'can't' on her current diet, listen a bit and say if she wants to talk about it, you'll be there for her. It must be really consuming a lot of her 'head space' if she can't stop commenting, which suggests she's finding it very hard.

YANBU, this is highly irritating. I've come across a lot of 'food counters' before. People who don't actually lecture you on what food to eat, but comment on your meal/portion size/that you're reaching for another roll from the bread basket etc. Usually it's combined with a cats bum face and comments like 'oh is that your second bread roll, wish I could get away with eating like that'. I have no patience for this nonsense and have been known to be pretty sharp with persistent offenders.
However on a couple of occasions I've strongly suspected that this behaviour has been linked to eating disorders and had this confirmed afterwards. So I feel very sorry for your friend. Its obviously hard for her to kick this food 'addiction' and she isn't handling it well, but have a little patience. She'll either succeed and hopefully go back to talking about normal things, or she'll fall off the wagon and need the support of her friends.
If it gets really unbearable I would sit her down and call her attention to the fact that she's talking about food a lot. It may be that she's unaware how annoying she is being? Just point it out sensitively, tell her you understand cos it's a huge thing for her to undertake and ask if there's any way you can help get her to STFU support her in her diet?
If she's a nice girl she'll prob be mortified, but will want to change her behaviour if it's bugging friends. It may be that she just needs someone to talk to about it all and get it off her chest so she doesn't have to bore everyone at social occasions.

Everyone is obsessed with food these days and YANBU.

My mum cannot hear the word avocado without wincing and saying "ooohhh they are loaded with calories"

And every time she sees me, my Brother's MIL looks me up and down slowly and says without fail "Ohh you have lost weight" whether I have or haven't.

Oh my sister's like this. Just because she's a doctor and has a perfect BMI, she goes on and on at me. OK, I'm a bit overweight (well, fat) and like crumpets dripping with butter. But I've reached a grand old age and can decide for myself what I eat. She also goes into detail about the additives, cholesterol, salt, sugar etc of each food item, and the diseases I'm at risk of contracting, until you could scream. When I last stayed with her in the summer, she really seemed to have got even more obsessed with food policing. She's a fabulous cook, and very kind. I know she's only concerned about my health. But really... I feel like hitting her over the head with a large, greasy salami sausage.

I have worked with the food police. It's not a diet, it's a cult. If it were a properly considered diet, embarked on after proper research they would be able to apply logic to their statements and realise that a wee poke of chips actually has some basic nutritional value to add to your body, whereas an entire night's drinking has absolutely none.

Used to crack me up "can I have a triple vodka...and a diet coke, mustn't be naughty".

Misery loves company OP, and they are trying to spread it to you. It's a kind of group self-abasement and by not joining in you aren't playing fair, so you have to be nagged.

Yanbu, such people are enormously tiresome. And I say that as someone who is currently both on a VLCD and also a longterm vegetarian. I have not spoken about the diet to anyone other than DH, and discuss vegetarianism only in response to specific questions /stupid remarks about carrots crying when you pick them. I can't muster any interest in other people's eating habits.

But what you are talking about is only the more extreme end of a spectrum that sees it as normal for adult women to trill about being 'naughty' if someone offers them a coffee time Hobnob, and who assume that every other woman is on a permanent diet. My own mother, despite always having been well within a healthy BMI, is incapable of eating a dessert without saying 'oh, we'll have to work this off tomorrow', and is incapable of seeing someone else refuse a cake without saying 'Oh, you're so STRONG!'

I like to bake, and often am the one who supplies cake to the toddler group in exchange for a lift there - and it has been an eye-opener to see the complex negotiations engaged in by a group of adult women over a slice of coffee and walnut sandwich.

I had my second fasting blood test yesterday. If that comes back high, or even if it comes back under the clinical level, but the three-month-average blood sugar that they did at the same time comes back high, then I am going to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. And it is my own fault, because I am very obese, and have failed, over many years, to do anything about it - I eat the nice things I want to eat, even though I knew I needed to cut down.

Whether I am or am not actually diagnosed, I am going to have to make changes in my diet - I have started making them already - but I am NOT going to turn into a food bore. To be honest, I think it is going to be hard enough work for me to look after my own diet, without trying to take the (unasked, by them and unwelcome, to them) responsibility for what other people eat.

I do sometimes talk to my dses about the calories or sugar content of food - ds1 and ds2 have some weight to lose, and I blame myself for this, because my relationship with food is so bad, and clearly I have passed some of this on to them - and I know that, whilst they are young and active (19 and 21, one plays hockey regularly and the other does BMX-style stunt riding), they will find it much easier to lose the weight, and I hate the thought of them getting to the state I am in. Ds3 is in very good physical condition - perfect weight, works out at the gym - but drinks full-sugar soda and fruit juice by the litre, and so I have pointed out to him the sum total sugar content of the empty bottles/cartons I have removed from his pit of a room, in an effort to show him how much sugar he has consumed.

But even with the boys, I don't bang on about it all the time - it is an occasional passing conversation, and I don't lecture or browbeat - and I hope I am not a food bore to them.

Why don't you just tell her in clear and concise language that it feels like she is lecturing you when she is discussing her diet. You support her in her diet, but don't want to feel pressured into changing your eating habits simply because of the change in her lifestyle...