How to Respond Back to Other's Comments on Your Food and Body When Healing Disordered Eating

I'm just gonna dive right in today. Other's comments on your body, what you're eating, how you're eating, when you're eating, how you're moving is a reflection of their beliefs, their perceptions, and their internalized diet culture messages and has nothing to do with you.

We're not often taught how to sit with discomfort from a young age. This can mean that as we grow older, if something triggers us or activates us, if we don't know what we're feeling or how to sit with that activation, then we will react by trying to change our external environment. Inappropriate comments about your food and body are often coming from a person that is in a fight, flight, or freeze response. They're trying to make the external perceived threat go away, which is you. But, you don't deserve to be treated that way regardless of how triggered someone is. And those comments also dysregulate you where you may feel overwhelmed by what's coming up inside of you that you don't know how to respond.

So today, I wanted to offer 3 steps and 3 responses you can explore when you're faced with someone who's made a comment about your food and body.

1. Pause and check in with yourself.

The moment you receive this comment, your body is going to move into fight, flight, or freeze. Your body may perceive that it's in danger and you move from the part of your brain that can assess things logically to the part of your brain that is reactive and all about your survival. In this pause, you can describe to yourself how you feel. This can include changes in your temperature (you might notice getting warmer or colder depending upon your nervous system state), your breath (which can become shallow), your sensations (you might notice tightness, tension, clenching), and your emotions (you might name you feel disrespected, angry, ashamed). Naming what is ensures that your experience is validated by yourself and supports you in regulating by owning how you feel.

2. Next, decide how you would like to respond.

This can change depending upon the person you're conversing with. Some individuals you'll want to try to deepen your relationship with them and others you may choose a different response that protects you when you're with a person that you're not close to and is perhaps not open to a conversation. All responses need to include I statements so that you're owning how you feel, which cannot be argued with, although some individuals may try.

Your responses can include:

Share how you feel

Sometimes, others are not aware of how their comments impact another person. They might say something because in their world they think that's helping in some way. Using I statements, you can share how their comment was processed inside of you. For example: "When comments are made on my eating habits, I feel frustrated because I'm really trying to listen to my own body and what it needs. I would appreciate moving forward if comments were not made on what or how I'm eating." You can see in this example there was no finger pointing. It was all centered on the comment so the other person can hear what you have to say without their defenses going up.

This kind of response you can use with anyone you feel comfortable sharing your feelings with. This can be someone close to you or someone you don't know and you're feeling safe to share your feelings in the moment and are practicing setting boundaries and speaking up for yourself.

Ask a question

When someone makes a comment on your food and body, something is coming up for them. Your presence as you are is shining a mirror on the places they haven't wanted to look at and so instead of sitting with that discomfort inside of themselves, they make an inappropriate comment to you. You can ask them, what's coming up for you right now? What is it about my food or body behaviors that is triggering something in you? What beliefs are coming up for you right now in what you perceive as the "right" relationship to have with food or body?

This kind of response is often with someone you're close to that is open to having that mirror be shined back on them or someone you just want to shut the conversation down as they may just walk away not yet ready to look at themselves and what you're asking them to explore.

Change the subject

You get to choose when you want to get into it and when you don't. Sometimes the person making these comments is someone you don't know and have no interest in deepening your relationship with the kind of person who would make such an inappropriate comment on someone's food or body that they don't even know. In this circumstance, someone would say something like, "You should really go workout after that kind of meal" and you would respond back, "Have you seen the new Marvel movie?" or "It really is a gorgeous day today isn't it?" Will this throw them off? Potentially. They may bring the topic up again or say something again and you can just keep blatantly changing the subject to show them, I'm not going to even give that comment the time of day.

This is the kind of response you can use when you feel tired, drained, and you also have no interest in deepening conversation or teaching someone why their comment was so disrespectful. It is not your job to support others in their growth. If it would not leave you feeling regulated, connected, and safe to share how you feel or to challenge someone's behavior you don't have to do that.

3. Last, whatever response you chose to make, check in with yourself again.

A part of healing patterns of disordered eating can be learning to set boundaries and speaking up for yourself so that food and body behaviors are no longer shoving down how you feel. When first starting to do this, your body might perceive your actions as dangerous and threatening. So afterward, you'll want to orient yourself to the room. Look around you and describe your environment. You can go through your senses and observe what you see, smell, taste, touch, and hear. You can look for things in your environment you like to look at. Your body needs to be shown that you're safe and you just did something perhaps uncomfortable but not life threatening.

With time, we might teach more and more individuals to pause and look internally when they want to make a comment about someone else's eating behaviors or appearance. Until that day, I hope this was supportive so that you feel empowered that you can navigate these situations staying connected to yourself and the respect you deserve to be treated with.

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