Not Eating Around Busybodies and Food Pushers

Restaurants are easy.  Your hostess’s five-course meal, the pizza party at work, the drinks at the bar, or the cupcakes one of the other moms made for a class party – these are hard.  Because each of them comes with food pushers, sabotagers, invested givers, and busybodies.  These people are a problem, no doubt about it.

Somehow, these people have decided that it is their business what you put in your mouth.  They’ve come to the conclusion that you’re rejecting them if you reject their food.  They think you’re the enemy of fun if you don’t drink with them.

Well, honestly, they may be right.  You might indeed be the enemy  of fun. 

You are making changes.  You are rejecting an entire lifestyle that revolves around conspicuous consumption.  You are choosing to no longer be a person who helplessly displays, through the rolls of fat on their body, the power food and drink have over them.  By making this choice, you are forcing them to confront their own choices.

And some of these people are just hateful or jealous.  Don’t be surprised if your thin friends start bringing you takeout or an entire pie.  It upsets the natural order of things when their fat friend starts looking better.  If this continues, it could get out of control.  Their fat friend could start looking better than they do.

What are these people going to do?  They’re going to push food on you.  “Just try a bite, I made it just for you.”  “One small piece won’t hurt.”  “You have to eat normal food again someday, right?”  “Come on, just have a drink!  It’s no fun if you don’t.”  “Aren’t you hungry?  Aren’t you going to eat anything?”

First of all, it is your body.  You wouldn’t let someone push you into having sex you don’t want to have, so don’t let them push you into eating food you don’t want.  You need to police the boundaries of your body.  “No” is a complete answer.

However, it’s not always a polite answer.  You can certainly play around with snappy comebacks if you want, but I tend to prefer a mannered deflection.  Tell people you just ate and are still full, or you don’t feel well and don’t want to become ill, or you have gum in your mouth and the mint won’t go with ____, etc.

You can avoid having to say anything at all by strategic use of props.  If you’re at a cocktail party, get sparkling water with lime in a pretty glass.  It will look like a cocktail and no one will wonder about it.  Plus, you’ll have something in your hands, and that will help keep you away from those Costco mini quiches on the food table.  At a restaurant, order some tea to “settle your stomach.”  If you know they will not be okay with you refusing birthday cake for a coworker, accept a piece and say you’re taking it back to your office for later.  Bury it in a trash can.  Distract, deflect, avoid, and you can skip most of the nonsense.

I do not want to suggest you get a new eating disorder, but you can learn from your friends with eating disorders.  They are very comfortable with the words “I’m not hungry.”  Or, they cut their food up into small bites and shove it around on the plate without eating it.  In an episode of Skins, the anorexic girl makes it through an entire meal without anyone knowing she never ate a bite, by loading up a fork and waving it around as she talked.  People saw her about to eat and didn’t notice it never made it to her mouth.  If all there are at the event are fatty carby sauce-laden disasters of food, it’s much healthier to eat before and after.  Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.  Confronting the busybodies just takes so much effort.

If all else fails, get back in their face.  “Why does it matter to you what I eat?”  See if they can come back from that and keep pressuring you.

Is it reasonable you have to go through all this to keep people off your back about what you eat?  No.  But your life-change is stressful enough.  If opting out of these conversations makes it even a tiny bit easier, it’s worth it.

What are your favorite techniques?  Got any good comebacks?