CW: Brief mentions of weight loss, food shaming, exercise shaming
My apologies for being gone so long from Workplace Hellness. Like most humans, I’m terrible at estimating how much time and energy I have, and once teaching started back up, I had very little of either to spend on outside-of-work activities.
BUT! The Holidays are Coming, and after being silent for far too long, I have returned with tidings of great joy, for unto you is born this day a survival guide for all of the terrible, fat-shaming, food-shaming, exercise-shaming, holiday-themed (and other hyphenated adjectives) workplace wellness programming!
How to Survive the Holidays at Work: A Beginner’s Guide
1. Know that workplace wellness is coming
Prepare yourself for the avalanche of weight-loss and exercise-focused programming that will descend upon you. Like Ned Stark, when you know that winter is coming, you keep on the lookout. Are there new posters going up at work? Emails from HR? A sign-up sheet for Buff Brad’s Booty-Blasting Body Bash? Don’t let yourself be surprised by the nonsense your workplace will try to foist on you.
2. Ignore everything you can
No law requires you to read every email in your inbox, look at every poster or table tent, or attend every wellness presentation in your workplace. (If your workplace does require these things, please move to step 3.) Practice selective attention to block out messages that will make your day harder, and give yourself permission to ignore all food-, body-, and exercise-related content if that will help you.
If you’re in an open-plan office, find ways to block out posters or displays with decorations or by orienting your computer and chair away from displays. Use noise-cancelling headphones and music to block out your coworker who Will. Not. Stop. Talking about how keto changed their life and got them swole.
If possible, move to a cave in the mountains and eat raw fish that you catch with your hands, or, if that’s too extra, a cave with electricity so that you can make popcorn and watch The Great British Bake Off (the Mary Berry seasons, of course).
3. Decide if and how to push back on the things you can’t ignore
First: you’re not obligated to stand up and say “This, my dear friends, is utter bullshit” when Pat from HR is telling you all that your office will donate a pound of food to the local food pantry for every pound lost by people in the office. (This example is not far from what Omada has done in the past. And yes, that is going to be a defacement post.) Push back if you feel safe and if you want to, but you don’t have to Spartacus yourself for the cause.
Resistance comes in many forms, and I have some more passive, internal options and more active, external ones.
Passive Resistance
Don’t participate: As much as possible, don’t engage with the workplace wellness programming you find troubling and unhelpful. If someone asks why you’re not doing the Healthy Holidays Challenge, you can respond, “Oh, that’s just not my thing” and refuse to engage further. Act bored by all of the wellness talk and change the subject.
Defensive daydreaming: If you have to sit through a presentation about how carbohydrates are poison (they’re not!) and that the only food you can eat without immediately dying is fresh kale, take a brain vacation. Plan your dream trip to Iceland (you Millennial cliche, you), plot out a steamy romance novel involving Elizabeth Bennet and two Mr. Darcys, or rank all of the dogs you have ever met in order of cuteness (this last one is especially difficult because THEY ARE ALL WONDERFUL AND MAGICAL). Basically, engage your brain in something so fun, goofy, or absorbing that you don’t have any attention to spare for the nonsense happening in front of you.
Bingo: Make a bingo card of all the awful things people can say about health, weight, food, or exercise, and use it to turn holiday workplace wellness into a game. This passive resistance can become active if you stand up and shout, “BINGO!!!!!!!” in the middle of Yoga for Wealthy White People, but you can also keep the game to yourself and award yourself prizes for each bingo.
Take notes: If you’re at a presentation or at your desk, you can take notes about things that happen or are said that set off your “this isn’t right” alarms. It might be as simple as making a tick mark every time you get an email about weight loss, or writing the word “nope” whenever you get an invite to the CrossFit class. Having external, visual reminders that these messages aren’t helpful or even true can give you solace and strength.
Lie: I feel weird suggesting lying because I know that Chidi Anagonye would NOT approve. However, if it’s the difference between your health and being ostracized in your workplace for being that weirdo who refuses to completely cut sugar out of your diet, then I wholeheartedly endorse lying.
Your office is doing a mandatory weight loss competition? Lie. Wear lead underpants the first day and regular underpants on the last. People will be amazed! Self-report numbers without ever stepping on a scale, if lead undergarments aren’t in your budget. Push the limits of what people will believe. Make them question the fabric of reality.
Active Resistance
Find your allies: You are probably not the only person in your workplace who finds workplace wellness programming cringe-worthy. Find those allies and eat lunch with them, attend any mandatory programming with them, and debrief with them. If you don’t have allies in your workplace, find them in your everyday life or online.
Talk with the people in charge to explain what’s wrong with their approach: Only do this if you feel safe! In the past, I have emailed folks sending out wellness emails, explaining that the messages they’re sending out harm people with eating disorders or who have a disordered relationship with food and exercise.
(For a private person who does not like the spotlight, I’m weirdly comfortable using my story of recovering from an eating disorder to point out how workplace wellness hurts people. Your mileage and comfort levels may vary.)
While these emails have never resulted in a workplace publicly saying “We screwed up, and we’ll never talk with anyone about their weight ever again,” it felt good to make folks stop and think about the human beings in their audience.
If you’re participating in a workplace-sponsored exercise class, you can talk privately with the instructor about how you need a space that is free of weight stigma and ableism. Good instructors will listen and take your concerns seriously: they want their classes to be accessible for everyone! If they don’t listen, you can quit going and do an activity with your allies.
Practice ethical defacement: Again, think about your workplace and what you can get away with.
If your workplace hands out stickers, table tents, or other swag, add or cross out words or images to change the message.
If there are posters up and you think you can get away with it, add sticky notes to them to counteract or change the message. (I only recommend doing this after you’ve made a good-faith effort to talk to the people in charge about why the posters are a problem and if you think this won’t be met with Serious Disapproval. Also, use sticky notes! Don’t destroy company property.)
Will some people find this insufferable? Yes, but being known as the Office Wellness Grump Who Brooks No Nonsense has its upsides, like ensuring Julian will never again try to share his all-prune cookie recipe with you.
Post your own positive messages: Lots of weight-loss stuff up at the office? Put up a sign that says your office or cubicle is a weight-stigma-free space! Put out a bowl with little paper affirmations that people can take with them.
- If you’re positive, cheerful, and nonjudgmental about weight, food, bodies, and exercise, people will be confused, and your forcefield of wonderfulness will repel much wellness nastiness. Like with #3, people might find this insufferable, but the magic of this approach is that their reactions will make them look like the Grinch in this situation.
Derail conversations about weight, food, and exercise: When someone brings up how it’s going to be so hard to avoid carbs at Thanksgiving, you can say, “I don’t like to judge what I eat any time, but especially during the holidays. I think it’s most important to focus on what is positive about the time.” Say it kindly and like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
- If a coworker brings up needing to go to the gym to “work off all that pie” or something similar, say with great good cheer, “Exercise is how I celebrate what my body can do, not a punishment for what I eat!” The more you can say these with a smile on your face and like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, the harder it will be for people to push back.
4. Be kind to yourself
The end of the year is stressful: many people are juggling even more work and family stuff than usual, so don’t feel obligated to do or say anything that would add to that stress. American diet culture and its obsession with exercise won’t fall in a single day, so not clapping back at Marsha for her lunchtime diatribe about the evils of saturated fat is not a failure on your part.
If you don’t have the time or budget to treat yourself to a full Batman costume, make sure to at least check out some delightful library books to read or to cue up some A+ GIFs to remind yourself that you’re a human being who deserves care and respect.
5. Find media that don’t push harmful messages about weight, food, and exercise
Everyone is different, but here are some resources I find helpful and affirming:
Ragen Chastain’s Dances with Fat
The Curvy Heroines episode of Fated Mates
Captain Awkward has helpful, kind, and unflinching advice about dealing with people who are obsessed with “health”. This letter is a great place to start, but almost anything in the “Boundaries” category has advice you can put into practice today.
Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon
The Health at Every Size community
