It's hard to socialize over salad

"Omg I was soooo bad this weekend!" Relax Sharon you just ate some foods that weren't in your normal rotation. You didn't commit armed robbery. (I'm sorry if your name is Sharon. This isn't personal.)

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Before I start this newsletter, I must announce that I have officially published a book! May I present to you Live Nourished: Make Peace with Food, Banish Body Shame, and Reclaim Joy. It will be available on the shelves on August 13th, but it is available for preorder now! If interested, you can check it out here!

Okay, on to today’s newsletter…

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I attended a dietitian meetup and networking event this past Tuesday. I’m sure for many people, this sounds like fun, but the funny thing is I had to convince myself to even attend the event in the first place. And no, not because I wasn’t interested in meeting colleagues and putting faces to the social media handles I constantly see online, but because I’m an introvert. Networking puts my body in flight or fight mode because it’s overwhelming. I do love meeting new people, but sometimes, the socializing process puts an unexplainable amount of pressure on my body. I was actually thinking about backing out of the event entirely and spending the night doing my usual routine of nothingness, but one of my dietitian friends sent a five-word text that got me going. There will be free food. The magic words I needed to hear. Boom, I was there.

Overall, it was a lovely event, and connecting with everyone was such a great experience. And yes, there was free food, which, of course, was the icing on the cake. It was a Tuesday evening, and the event was held at a bar in Midtown Manhattan. Networking during happy hour means happy hour food. Mozzarella sticks, onion rings, chicken wings, fries, and a bunch more easy-to-grab and eat food. Of course, you can always order a “full meal,” but mingling with a full plate makes networking a bit harder, I imagine (and yes, I understand that for some it is easy to network with a salad plate.) Hand-held, delicious, mostly fried foods. I didn’t say no except to the guacamole and chips because of my avocado allergy, and breaking the ice with someone over how good the onion rings are is a great strategy, in my introverted opinion. Here’s the thing: the food was good; I mean, who doesn’t love mozzarella sticks, but it wasn’t food that’s in my normal rotation. I will never call food junk or garbage or refer to a day as a “cheat day,” but this doesn’t mean I eat any type of food, any time I want, regularly. For me, this is part of socializing and what I refer to as fun social foods.

This sort of scenario isn’t uncommon. Social events and food go hand in hand, which has been true and demonstrated throughout history. “Food is what Marcel Mauss (1967) called a “total social fact.” It is a part of culture that is central, connected to many kinds of behavior, and infinitely meaningful. Food is a prism that absorbs a host of assorted cultural phenomena and unites them into one coherent domain while simultaneously speaking through that domain about everything that is important.” This is a part of a chapter written in The Cambridge World History of Food regarding the cultural and social uses of food. When you think of gatherings and holidays, food plays a central role. There are numerous cultural traditions that happen at these events that also involve food.

Socializing and eating isn’t uncommon yet we treat it as some sort of unworldly phenomenon because we are made to believe by society that we are obsessed with food. Think about how often you have plans to meet friends for dinner or brunch or even a sporting event where pregaming with food is done. We relegate these gatherings to cheat days and feel that, well, we have already done “damage,” so we might as well keep going. This stems from not only putting food on a hierarchy but also having an all-or-nothing or black-and-white approach. Trust me when I say this is easier said than done because years ago, I would have felt defeated for giving in to mozzarella sticks. I would have been miserable thinking that I should’ve had more willpower and tried to socialize with just a zero-calorie glass of seltzer in my hand. 

I write about building a healthy relationship with food regularly, mostly because it took me years to work on this myself. I was once, like many others, when I had the calorie counting app, LoseIt, downloaded on my phone, which I used to meticulously track every morsel of food I ate. I also used to avoid these types of social gatherings entirely in order to avoid scenarios such as the one on Tuesday because I did not want to be around any “unhealthy” food. And if I did “lose my willpower” and eat such foods, I would be so guilt-stricken that I would have felt awful for days mentally and use that excuse as a reason to punish myself for my actions. Trying to make up for what I ate by undereating or over-exercising was a way of offering penance. Does any of this sound familiar? I am sure that for many folks, it does because we tend to associate food with our moral value.

One piece of advice I can offer is that we do not have to offer penance. One day of eating foods that we normally don’t consume is not going to undermine our nutrition as a whole. I know that it’s scary to think this way. I mean, we are bombarded with slogans such as “you are what you eat” and “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” But it is one day. I will say this: my stomach did not feel the greatest after that event on Tuesday, but I also knew enough to know that I did not have to consume kale salads the next day to “make up” for what I ate. I went back to my normal routine the next day, and that was it. I knew I wasn’t a “bad” person for eating those fun social foods because I no longer associate my moral worth with what I eat. I no longer put food on a hierarchy of good and bad and I also know that food represents many different aspects.

Nutrition is complex because our bodies are complex. I will always be an advocate for thinking about how you can ADD nutrition to your day rather than constantly feeling like you need to subtract, aka restrict. So maybe the next day after eating fun social foods, a kale salad will feel good because you need some extra roughage to help you go to the bathroom and make your stomach feel better. This could be a possibility and this is not what I mean when I talk of penance.

Penance {noun} - an act of self-abasement, mortification, or devotion performed to show sorrow or repentance for sin.

I already discussed my views on being a non-diet dietitian, so one thing that will always be necessary in these conversations is nuance. I believe that we know our bodies well and know which foods work best and which ones do not. However, I believe that we often go against these feelings because of external factors whether it be diet culture or maybe growing up and a parent telling us to finish everything on our plates. I chose to write this particular newsletter because many folks often go through bouts of feeling guilty when eating, and I notice that this happens particularly when we socialize. I like to remind people that different eating scenarios will always happen and are normal. So no, you are not a “bad” person because you ate the food that made you excited and that you normally don’t consume regularly.

I will leave you with this beautiful snippet from Robin Fox:

“Food is almost always shared; people eat together; mealtimes are events when the whole family or settlement or village comes together. Food is also an occasion for sharing, for distributing and giving, for the expression of altruism, whether from parents to children, children to in-laws, or anyone to visitors and strangers. Food is the most important thing a mother gives a child; it is the substance of her own body, and in most parts of the world mother’s milk is still the only safe food for infants. Thus food becomes not just a symbol of, but the reality of, love and security.” - Robin Fox

Eating is social. Photo by Spencer Davis on Unsplash

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Psstt… Another reminder that I wrote a book titled Live Nourished: Make Peace with Food, Banish Body Shame, and Reclaim Joy that is available for preorder now. I go into more depth on topics such as this one. Check it out!