Why Are You Telling Me This?

(Content warnings: food, diet, weight loss, body image)

A female friend once remarked that she was envious of men for their ability to strike up a conversation with other men – at almost any social event and at any level of acquaintance – about football. It got me thinking: do women have an equivalent?

Now, I’ll ask you, dear reader, to take what I say here with a pinch – alright, a dollop – of heteronormativity, because obviously there are women who love football, there are men who don’t, and there’s a wonderful world of people who don’t fit into either of these rigid gender categories. I’m talking purely about male presenting people and their ability to make chit-chat about the beautiful game with other male presenting people whom they’ve never met before.

After considering it for a while, I could only think of one topic – in my personal experience – that has consistently been brought up by women as a universal icebreaker in the same way that soccer is trotted out by men as reliably as Pimm’s at a garden party or Michael Bublé at Christmas. This applies in scenarios from awkward attempts at office conversation to testing the waters at a barbecue.

Diets.

I’m not a thin woman. I never have been and I’ve never wanted to be. Apart from a few bad years as a teenager, I’ve never been one to calorie count. My mother never commented on my weight or body, and it’s done me wonders. So please don’t take the following as sour grapes.

I don’t find anything more boring than someone talking to me about their diet. I switch off as soon as anyone starts calling themselves “naughty” for having a biscuit or a packet of crisps. It almost brings me to tears when somebody starts rattling off every “bad” thing they ate over the weekend, as if they’ve mistaken my work cubicle for the confessional.

All sorts of people have all sorts of issues with body image, and that’s obviously not their fault. We live in a world that’s obsessed with image and it takes a very strong mind not to let it get to you. But for the love of cheddar, girls, give it a rest.

When we’re tapping our feet waiting for the office kettle to boil, tell me about the things that made you laugh at the weekend. When we accidentally make eye contact in the queue for the potato salad, strike up a conversation about careers. Tell me about the antics of your babies, human or fur. Bring me your joy, your wins, your opinions, your struggles. I want to hear about all the things that make you you. I couldn’t give a shit about how much you weigh or how many calories you have left for the day on your tracker app.

I believe that many people who talk about what they’re eating in this manner do so as a defence mechanism. I think that most – if not all – of us have been conditioned to view our bodies negatively, and therefore assume that whomever we’re speaking to is mentally sizing us up and judging us for our alimentary choices. In some cases, this is right on the money. But if someone is making these judgements of you, I can guarantee you that they’re being much harder on themselves. Anyone who’s truly happy with themselves and their life doesn’t care if you’re running 10 kilometres to earn yourself a KitKat or eating a Greggs at midday because you finished your home-made lunch at 9.30.

We are so much more than what we weigh, and it’s time to stop doing ourselves the disservice of wasting this precious life worrying about the numbers on the scale or the back of a packet. Celebrate yourself for who you are and what you've done, not what you've put in your mouth. Or at least don't talk to me about it, because it's boring me to death.