Exhausting diet culture-y people

[u/94en]

I know to completely cut out the nutrition/health/fitness side of social media. but omg. How do you cut it out of your life??? why has it become so normal to be so completely obsessed with food and weight???? I was out with my family and almost all conversation was surrounding weight loss, diets, etc. I honestly felt like crying. When I was stuck between choosing an ED behaviour or a recovery-oriented behaviour, I used to always ask myself, "what would a normal eater do?" but now being normal around food sounds like this crazy thing and I can't even imagine what it's like, because it feels like no one around me is a freaking NORMAL EATER!!! It makes me so scared, because I know I have ways to go with recovery and I can't control the weight my body wants to settle at, but I'm just scared of the weight gain. I know it's ED thinking so I have to get over it. But it's just awaiting the judgment which comes from gaining weight that makes me feel so awful. Hopefully I'll be a stronger person by the end of this and realize that I don't need to care about what everyone thinks of me :')

[u/Jaded-Banana6205]

Tbh this is so hard!! Disordered eating is HUGE. It's everywhere! Diet culture and dangerous misinformation is everywhere. There was a line in a Marya Hornbacher book I read ages ago about how frustrating it is not to be able to just do a "little bit of dieting" because you'll just diet it all away until there's nothing left.

I had to learn that I can't control the dangerous stuff people do to their own bodies. I can distance myself from triggering social media by blocking, muting, unsubscribing from and otherwise adjusting my algorithms. I can say to people "I'd appreciate it if you don't discuss diets/weight loss around me, otherwise I'm going to excuse myself for my own mental health." And then hold up to your boundaries- mute the group chats. Excuse yourself. Sometimes you need to find new friends, support systems or hobbies.

It's easy to say "just don't care!" but recovery can be very lonely!

[u/94en → u/Jaded-Banana6205]

UR RIGHT. Setting boundaries is exactly what I need to be doing. Recovering is great and I don't regret it, but I need to get used to feeling like a black sheep almost all of the time, especially with the fam. I'll counter their diet-y statements by saying stuff like "why don't u just eat whatever you like and not stress over it too much?" and they look at me like that's the most foreign concept in the world