It seems so common that girlfriends complain about their weight to each other but how you respond to them can really make the scales spin.
“I feel so fat.” “Do I look fat?” “I’m starting a diet on Monday.” “God I’m fat.”
How many of you have girlfriends who constantly go on about their weight?
Aaarrrgghhhh! Enough already.
But let’s take a test… What do you say when your friend says she’s fat?
A) “OK set some goals and get to the gym!”
B) “You look great just the way your are!”
C) “You can’t weigh awesome and no other scale counts!”
You might like A) because it’s straight forward and proactive and I love C) because let’s face it, if you make comments like that it means you’re a legend and we should totally hang out.
But apparently that is all WRONG.
B) is the only correct answer according to a new study out from the International Association for Relationship Research.
Whenever anyone talks about body image, something strange happens.
Now the study was small, with just over 100 female university students in Canada surveyed, but the results were still interesting.
It found when responding to your friend, you shouldn’t encourage weight loss or completely ignore the issue but you should be positive and encourage body acceptance.
Top Comments
As Shelley hints, the problem with the study is that it doesn't say whether the complainers were actually overweight. In my experience people who are within their healthy weight range (or more usually at the low end) are the ones "complaining" about how fat they're feeling. I think they are consciously or unconsciously fishing for compliments. Of course they will put on weight when their friends say "Yeah, lose weight!".
I think it is possible for slightly overweight people to try the same tactic, but they are in denial. Overweight and obese people generally don't complain about feeling fat even if they complain about the difficulty of losing weight. The study doesn't say what to say or do when overweight people and morbidly obese people complain about the difficulties of being overweight (eg chafing, sleep problems, lethargy, sore joints, worries about furniture not being up to their weight) or trying to lose weight. It might be that it is useful to offer concrete support as suggested by L. Or it might be that the best response is still to focus on developing a positive self image.