This is always something I struggle with. Sometimes, when I am not dieting, I feel like people are purposefully talking alot about diet and exercise around me in hopes that they will get me interested or educate me. I REAALLLLLY hate the assumption that because i'm fat i must not know about nutrition and weight loss. I've been struggling with my weight since I was 8 for goodness sakes! I knew how many calories were in a pound by the time I was 10! I know that a lot of the time they are just talking about it because that is what is on their mind but I have had people give unsolicited analyses of the food i am eating or my exercise regimen fairly regularly. maybe it is because i am in healthcare? dunno. So it is a sensitive issue for me. For me, the emotion i experience is not shame but defensiveness. Like a little kid I revert to a dont tell me what to do and how to do it mentality.
However, when I AM living a healthy lifestyle, these diet/exercise conversations ARE very supportive and enjoyable. Part of the change is that now we have something more in common, i suppose.
im just rambling. time for bed
Yeah these conversations can be very enjoyable or insanely offensive depending on the tone. One of my jobs is working at a gym, so I talk about my weight loss and exercise with co-workers a lot. Usually I enjoy these conversations, but one co-worker told me "don't worry about exercise, you just need to lay off the sweets" *wink*. Granted my adrenaline was already up because this was in the middle of my workout, but I've never wanted to punch someone so badly in my life. It was the most condescending advice I've ever gotten: "cut out the sweets" really? So that's what I'm doing wrong! Thank you for saving me from the misguided notion that the snickers bars would help me lose weight. Secondly, we work at a gym, you don't tell people they don't need to exercise! And the knowing wink just really threw it over the top. The wink in my now enraged mind was saying "come on, we all know you were gonna go to krispy kreme after this, weren't you?" This coming from a man who's never seen me eat. He has no knowledge of my eating habits beyond the presumptions one might make on the basis that I am fat.
Sorry, that turned into a rant there, but normally I really enjoy talking to my co-workers about my weight-loss. Most of them are insightful and supportive.
** I love how many different directions this thread has gone. It's all been quite fun and interesting!
I think sometimes we've been trained to be too appropriate. Even in the face of inappropriateness, people struggle to find the appropriate resonse.
If someone had made the comment about sweets to me, I probably would have said something like "you're an idiot, aren't you?"
I would have said it with a smile, not so much out of being nice - but because people don't know how to respond to an inappropriate comment when it's given cheerfully (which is why this guy can say such stuff without getting punched).
This is always something I struggle with. Sometimes, when I am not dieting, I feel like people are purposefully talking alot about diet and exercise around me in hopes that they will get me interested or educate me. I REAALLLLLY hate the assumption that because i'm fat i must not know about nutrition and weight loss. I've been struggling with my weight since I was 8 for goodness sakes! I knew how many calories were in a pound by the time I was 10! I know that a lot of the time they are just talking about it because that is what is on their mind but I have had people give unsolicited analyses of the food i am eating or my exercise regimen fairly regularly. maybe it is because i am in healthcare? dunno. So it is a sensitive issue for me. For me, the emotion i experience is not shame but defensiveness. Like a little kid I revert to a dont tell me what to do and how to do it mentality.
However, when I AM living a healthy lifestyle, these diet/exercise conversations ARE very supportive and enjoyable. Part of the change is that now we have something more in common, i suppose.
im just rambling. time for bed
Yeah... I hear you girl.
I got into one of these awkward conversations at work the other day-- I was working with someone I don't know well and I was talking calories with another one of my coworkers....
I think A LOT of the reason I talk a lot about calories at work is that work is a place I really tended to overeat and a lot of my colleagues are on the heavy side-- so there is a lot of encouragement to overeat, eat crap, stick my hand into bags of candy, etc. So talking about my diet reminds people not to offer that stuff to me.
So anyway, this other woman, she's on the heavy side-- about my height, but maybe twenty-five pounds heavier...-- and she mentions tracking calories with an app on her phone....
I get excited and think "oh, here's a heavier lady who's counting calories, maybe we have something in common...."
Only it turns out that she's had a gastric bypass about 5 years ago, and she started kind of stammering and looking embarrassed and defensive, meanwhile, the last thing on MY mind is that she should be embarrassed-- heck, if anyone understands the struggle, it's me!
But, I don't think anything I said set her at ease. I think she felt judged because everybody was complimenting me for losing all the weight by counting calories while she had had WLS and hadn't been able to keep her weight off.
But it wasn't me doing the judging... it's just such a sensitive situation that it's just hard to get it right.
I think sometimes we've been trained to be too appropriate. Even in the face of inappropriateness, people struggle to find the appropriate resonse.
If someone had made the comment about sweets to me, I probably would have said something like "you're an idiot, aren't you?"
I would have said it with a smile, not so much out of being nice - but because people don't know how to respond to an inappropriate comment when it's given cheerfully (which is why this guy can say such stuff without getting punched).
The sad thing is, he IS an idoit! He wasn't really trying to be condescending, it just felt that way because a 28 year old man should have more sense. But he really, truely felt he was giving me very helpful advice.
The sad thing is, he IS an idoit! He wasn't really trying to be condescending, it just felt that way because a 28 year old man should have more sense. But he really, truely felt he was giving me very helpful advice.
That fact is what usually helps me keep a smile on my face (and usually, even in my heart). It's no skin off my nose, if other people act like idiots. Or even if through no fault of their own, they don't have a clue or are completey uninformed - it doesn 't really matter the topic. I'm confident in my own knowledge, so other's lack of knowledge is rarely very upsetting.
If someone tells me I can cure warts by rubbing frog pee on them - I'm not going to get offended, I'm going to laugh my *** off (if not in front of their face, then maybe later - or at least in my head). Depending on the situation, when someone says something I find completely ridiculous or that I know is just plain wrong, I don't necessarily argue or correct them (though sometimes I do) or I might say "how interesting," or "maybe you have a point" - and inside my head I may be thinking "what a moron". Now I might think they're a benign or harmless moron or I might think they're a rude and nasty moron - but generally I think most of the time it's just a case of being garden-variety morons with neither ill or good intent, when they spout off about something they don't understand (I'm sure other people are often thinking - legitimately - the same thing about me).
My dad is a perfect example of cluelessness. He was thin all of his working life, and all of my life he constantly told my mother and I how easy it should be for us to lose weight. "Just eat less," "Just skip meals," "If you're hungry, that's good - be happy, it means you're losing weight."
Then he retired from an active job, and began to look pregnant. He looked like he was in his second trimester before he started to work on his own weight. And oh, boy did it feel like the table had turned, because now it was him griping about how hard it was to get the weight off, how slow it was coming off, how he was hungry all of the time, how it just wasn't fair to only get one cookie instead of a dozen or 1/2 cup of icecream instead of a pint every night.
Mom and I would say (relatively nicely I think) "See, it's not so easy, is it," when at least on my part, I wanted to say some of the stuff he'd said to us. I just couldn't be that mean (or on days when I felt mean enough, I didn't think I could say any of it with a straight face).
I have to say that he's done fairly well getting the weight off. Getting his blood pressure and cholesterol levels down haven't been as successful. He's willing to eat less, but he's not really willing to eat better. His eating habits aren't super terrible (he does eat the healthy meals Mom or my sister makes, but a day isn't complete for him unless it contains a fair amount of sugar and salt).
