Family sabateurs of weight loss

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Reader: feel free to print this page out for your family and friends. It may help everyone understand each other better.

“You never like what we have for dinner anymore!”
“It’s no fun to cook for you anymore!”
“If you don’t want ice cream just don’t eat any!” (explaining 2 gallons of RFP’s favorite ice cream in freezer)
“I liked you better before you started all this dieting.”
“I don’t see how you can stand that skim milk!”
“Hey, there’s donuts in the break room!

You’re an RFP (Recovering Fat Person) and your family and friends seem to want you to stay unhealthy. What the hell is going on? Don’t they care about you? Can’t they see how hard you’re trying to get healthy?

Well, they probably do care about you, but they aren’t making the connection between their caring and your struggle. I have discovered that almost every RFP encounters this type of resistance. Here’s what is probably going on:

You are changing your identity and that makes them uncomfortable, and
You are breaking a social connection with them that is deeply embedded in the sharing of food.
You are challenging the legitimacy of their behavior by changing your own.

Changing your identity:
Your identity as others perceive it is a sum total of your behavior and appearance. You are changing your behavior and your appearance. Who are you?

Socrates said you can’t put your foot into the same river twice. But once most of us reach adulthood, we put a tremendous amount of effort into staying the same. Our family and friends are only too happy to stay the same with us. Destructive habits persist not only with the inertia of the self but the aid of those around us. Change represents the loss of the known self, and the loss of the other. We fear change in ourselves and others.

Breaking social connection:
The sharing of food is a powerful social connection dating back to our pre-human ancestry. One of the most-quoted verses in the Bible makes mention of the social connection of food sharing: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” God Himself promises to share food with us! The notion is deeply ingrained in our psyche.

When you become an RFP, you break this connection. Even if the rest of your clan continues with destructive eating habits, you do not. You sit at a table eating one serving from a small plate while everyone else fills a platter-sized plate twice,. You stop sharing a midnight snack. You pass up the donuts in the breakroom. You are unintentionally sending the message “I don’t want to connect with you.”

Small wonder your family and friends try to bring you back into the fold: they are losing you. They are not trying to sabotage your efforts to become healthy. (Well, not usually. If someone admits to consciously trying to keep you fat, you have a whole different kind of problem!)

Challenging the legitimacy of their behavior:
People guage the legitimacy of their own behavior by several yardsticks, and one is if everyone else behaves the same way. People who behave differently open the question of “what is the legitimate way to behave?” This is an uncomfortable question. Yet the behaviors of obesity are very common, as evidenced by 5.2 million obese adults in Illinois alone.

They know obesity is unhealthy - everyone knows it even if they try to rationalize it or push it out of their minds. It’s just as dangerous as smoking, maybe more so. The constant effort you exert as an RFP reminds them of something they would rather not remember. Just by behaving differently, you are (unintentionally) saying to them: “You are wrong.”

Who wants to be constantly told they are wrong? No one wants to hear that message even if it is unintentional, or even if it is true.

(If you’re intentionally trying to reform your family and friends, that’s a different matter. No one wants change forced on them from the outside. Most of us have our hands full trying to reform ourselves, and you must consciously weigh the relationship cost of trying to reform someone else.)

What to do:
You studied the use of plain English in school - now is the time to use it. Either in writing or verbally, tell your family and friends...

“Thanks for the offer but I am trying to change into a different person. Very similar to the person I am now, only more active and healthier with less chance of being disabled in my old age. I’m only trying to change myself, not you. I will do it all alone if I have to, but I would really appreciate your help by not offering me things that make that change more difficult.”

Most people are not used to plain English. We’re used to tact, diplomacy, or (let’s face it) outright lies. It may not be well received. Just be calm, stick to your message, and stick to your efforts to become healthy.