I was out to dinner last night with a friend and after we had ordered our meals the waiter comes over and says “you guys don’t want the bread, do you… I mean you ordered such healthy meals”. Luckily my friend replied that of course we wanted bread before I had a chance to launch into a critique of waiters spreading diet culture and ruining a meal.
The bread basket is a source of stress for many people. Some people feel out of control when there’s a basket of bread in front of them while they’re hungry for a meal. A popular diet tip is to ask the waiter to not bring out the bread or tortilla chips or pita so there’s no temptation to eat them. And if that’s where you’re at, no shame there. But the problem was that the waiter made judgments about us based on our food choices and labeled us “good” and labeled the bread “bad”, so now we were being “bad” for eating the bread.
So, to counter what that waiter and many other people say or think, you are not bad for eating from the bread basket and you are not a better person for saying “no”. It’s just bread.
Struggling with your relationship to food and your body? Recovering from an eating disorder or chronic dieting and in search of an experienced eating disorder registered dietitian in the Huntington, New York area or virtually in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut? Send Christina an email to learn more about 1:1 nutrition therapy sessions!