I work closely with someone who in very overweight. She's a lovely colleague to have, works well and is friendly but is very unhappy at being so overweight. She's constantly trying out new diets to help her loose weight and has my full support. However, she has some ingrained misconceptions about food and drink which are inhibiting her ability to eat and drink more healthily.
For example, she raves about drinks like Oasis saying how drinking them is just like drinking water despite me showing her the ingredients and bringing her attention to how much sugar there is. I've explained that excess sugar will not help her to loose weight but she says it's nonsense.
She'll snack throughout the day on nuts saying that constant eating is helping to keep her metabolism up thinking that if she's not eating, her body's not metabolising food.
For lunch, she'll eat a salad laden with mayo and cheese saying that it's healthy as it's just eggs and dairy, ie.natural food.
We went out for a Chinese lunch last week as a team and she ate huge amounts as well as other people's leftovers. Other colleagues are getting fed up with her saying how she doesn't understand why she's so overweight and she doesn't listen to anyone's advice.
It's been left me (decided by team), as I get on best with her, to ask her to either stop talking about her weight or to eat more healthily. I'm not sure what to say to her without offending her. Help!