Nutritional Harrassment: Is Your Boss Making You Fat?

Most of us can pick healthy items from a menu. Eating well gets a little harder if you are not the one doing the “picking” and things enter especially dicey territory when the “orderer” is your boss. Wednesday I was interviewed for an upcoming story in Weight Watchers Magazine  about lunch and the issues one faces when trying to be healthy in the workplace. Oftentimes, it can feel as though there are two choices healthy or keeping things harmonious but I don’t feel it has to be one of the other. So, what do you do if your boss suggests a steak lunch or pizza for “the team”?

1. Supplement versus Squabbling there are times “I don’t eat pizza” isn’t going to be well received. Suggest a healthy addition. For example “can we order a green salad with the pizza?” Chances are others will partake once it’s there and may have just been nervous to say anything. Once food arrives you can have salad and a little pizza or just salad if you so choose.
2.  People look at what you order not what you eat (for the most part) when your boss invites you for a glass of wine or steak lunch, sometimes you can “go along” and if you’re not interested in what’s in front of you, you can control calories by sipping or nibbling rather than finishing.
3. Emily Post Could Order What She Wanted and flattery may get you somewhere. “That looks amazing but I’m going to try the fish” or “Thank you so much for the invitation but I need to get some work done”.
4. Doctors Orders whether it’s reflux or cholesterol if someone can try to steamroll you into eating junk you can push back with “I’m not allowed to eat short ribs with my cholesterol level”. At times little white lies are better than lots of white food.
5. Befriend a Broccoli Buddy or an Unsweetened Union- you don't want to be the onlyseemingly squeaky wheel or rotten apple. Instead, seek out like minded coworkers and rely on each other for positive reinforcement or as a buffer between the boss.

If these strategies sound a little manipulative, think about what’s involved with using your power to coerce someone into eating or drinking the way you do.  With some forethought “promotion pudge” is avoidable. And kudos to the bosses out there encouraging employees to exercise and eat well. In my opinion, that’s power put to good use.

 Have you ever been in a work situation where your "superiors" pressured you to eat or drink things you didn't want to? What did you do? Ever experienced nutritional harrassment?

If there's no wagon, you can't fall off

 

My friend Rebecca (of Beccarama) wrote on her blog about eating a steak. What made this event post-worthy and interesting was that Rebecca is a vegetarian and the post was entitled "falling off the vegetarian wagon”.  Rebecca tells the story of how she initially decided to became vegetarian.  She refers to an article she read about the environmental cost of eating meat. She mentions that meat eating didn’t seem to align itself with other behaviors she engaged in such as sipping from a Sigg bottle and recycling. “This coupled with the disgusting stories coming out about factory farming, hormones, antibiotics and all the rest made it not too difficult to cut down on meat.” While Rebecca says, “cut down” she didn’t eat less meat she ate no beef, poultry or pork for years. Fish remained and therefore she went by the term pescetarian.

I agree with many of Rebecca’s reasons for eating less meat. I don’t eat meat frequently nor do I eat a large portion when I do. I wonder whether eating some grass-fed steak every so often should lead to feelings of guilt or imply you’re less concerned about the environment.  I worry about the various eating camps people place themselves in. I have a friend who is a self-described “fish eating vegan” and another who’s “mostly raw.”  I have a wheat allergy but I never describe myself as “wheat free” or “gluten free” unless asked. I guess I could describe my eating as “Wheat free, pescetarian with occasional grass-fed meat” but that’s just ridiculous.

There are some exceptions that require an absolute and also a label. For those with food allergies it needs to be clear that no wiggle room is tolerated. Although with more people self-diagnosing their allergies even  “allergic” is taken less seriously. Religion also dictates many food rules. However, there are those who “keep a kosher house” but are less strict outside the house. Some Christians don’t observe the food guidelines over Lent. Unless medically dictated there seems to be some leniency.

Aside from the lack of flexibility, I feel there’s something competitive in these food labels. It’s as though vegetarian gets the bronze medal, vegan the silver and raw vegan ooh the gold for sure. Isn’t this odd? Does removing foods from your diet make you a better or  “cleaner” eater or maybe a better person? In my office I see clients who are vegan, others gluten-free or dairy-free. I rarely try to convert someone but rather try to achieve the healthiest food plan regardless of the constraints. Yet others are more exclusive. I’ve had bloggers tell me “I only read vegan blogs.” That’s fine but I feel they’re missing out on some great vegan or vegetable recipes found on other sites.

Excluding something from your diet doesn’t make your remaining food healthy. French fries are vegan and many gluten-free products are nutritionally void. A healthy diet, if that’s what we’re after, can take many forms. If we see eating as a Venn diagram there are many areas in which Rebecca and I or vegans and carnivores overlap. Most of us believe a healthy diet should be vegetable-heavy, that we should cook more or at least know where our food comes from, we should eat less packaged food and sugar and drink alcohol (oh wait, ok I’ll revoke that last one, wishful thinking). As for the wagon, it saddens me to think that someone like Rebecca who enjoys food and makes conscious choices for herself and her family is walking around feeling as though she is “off” or “fell”, wagon or otherwise. Speaking of that wagon, how do you picture it? When choosing a photo I realized I conjure up an image ala Little House in the Prairie or the horse-drawn carriage we once took a ride on in Colorado. I guess it doesn’t matter since I’m advocating going wagon-less.

Do you label your eating? Why do you think these labels are used? Are they necessary?