The holidays bring a special kind of anxiety for me as a fat* person. In other years people have policed what I was eating, commented about how they hated their own weight (usually smaller than mine), talked diets, and just generally have been weird about food and weight. I know other fat folk who have received diet books, workout machines, and intentionally too-small clothing (to motivate you, of course!) as holiday gifts. Work parties with buffets or potlucks are a nightmare. What if someone decides the food on my plate is a good reason to lecture me?
But did you know… we can just not?
One of the most liberating things for me is experiencing holidays where people just don’t. We don’t have to talk about diets or calories or cleanses. We don’t have to talk about our own or anyone else’s bodies. We don’t have to provide low-fat versions of desserts and assume that’s what fat people should have. We can just … not.
How? Set boundaries with people and enforce them. (I know, I know. Easier said than done.) When someone starts talking about their diet or other things in that arena you can say –
- I don’t want to talk about diets.
- I don’t want to talk about my/your/other’s weight.
- I’m not going to discuss my/your/other’s food choices.
- Can we change the subject?
You don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t have to be mean. Just lay out the boundary, and if someone violates that boundary you walk away. You don’t need an excuse although you can find one if that’s easier. You can even take a break from the gathering or leave if necessary.
It is different if you’re at a holiday work event. You won’t just leave a party because your boss won’t stop talking about their diet. What you can do is acknowledge their emotions. A lot of people have anxious feelings about weight and dieting. It feels like the holidays bring this up, maybe because others have negative memories like I do of being policed, lectured, and shamed. Focus on emotions instead of the diet itself. “How are you feeling” is a more productive question than asking about specifics of the diet. While I don’t start spouting statistics about how diets don’t work, I also don’t hide my own experiences about failed attempts to lose weight if asked about them.
I know in my head setting boundaries is the right thing to do for my mental health, but the femme socialization to be ‘nice’ runs deep in me. I try to remember that I’m being kind to myself even if someone else may think I’m being not nice, but really I’m more like Céline Tshika in the TikTok video embedded at the top of this post. “No worries if not.” I worry about the social ramifications of walking away from a conversation after establishing a boundary in my personal life and professional ramifications of not seeming pastor-ly in my work life. I also have all these workaround tips in my head that work for both professional and personal situations – bringing another person into the conversation is a great segue to change topics, distract someone by asking them about their last vacation, pretend you need to use the restroom. Writing this out I’ve been thinking – “Is this really what my mental energy is going to during the holidays? No wonder I’m exhausted.”
How amazing would it be to just say to someone “Can we change the subject?” when they approach a topic you don’t actually want to talk about? Honestly, I mostly end up changing topics without making it clear that I don’t want to talk about weight or diets which means it may come up again. But we can just not, friends. We can just opt out of those conversations for the sake of our own mental health. This holiday season, I’m going to try.
*Fat is being used here as a nonjudgemental descriptor term
Blessed are the Fat 
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