Why we need to stop the toxic discourse about weight gain at Christmas, for good

Women everywhere dread one thing during festive season – not the hangovers, not the NYE queues or the January blues – but the discourse around weight gain at Christmas. First it was the ‘little black dress diet’ so you looked your ‘best’ for Christmas parties, and now you’ve got to deal with friends chatting about how much weight they’ve gained over the festive period. It’s a given that we’ve all become well accustomed to, and as soon as Christmas draws to a close, we expect conversations surrounding weight loss and ‘getting fit’. But as a plus size woman – I’m dreading the after-Christmas weight loss push more than anything.

I was probably 11 when I first became acutely aware of the discourse around weight gain at Christmas. The festive season had just drawn to a close and I was content – I’d just enjoyed a fortnight of sweets, treats and indulgence – but then it started, and I couldn’t drown it out. The television wasn’t loud, but the diet adverts were louder than I’d ever noticed them before. Weight loss teas, fitness DVDs, memberships to exclusive diet clubs, and voiceovers telling me that I needed to lose the pounds I’d put on over Christmas. 

The chatter surrounding dieting and weight loss wasn’t limited to strangers shouting at me through my TV – it was apparent in real life, too. Adverts on buses that encouraged dropping two dress sizes in the new year, magazine front covers that glamourised restricting food intake over the festive period, and conversations I overheard between parents at the school gate who were moaning about how much they’d indulged over Christmas and how the new year was ‘a fresh slate’ and a time to ‘lose the weight for good’. 

At such a young and impressionable age, I couldn’t understand everything that was going on around me; the complete and utter yearning for being thinner after such a joyous occasion was confusing, but as an already chubby child, I couldn’t help but get swept up with it all. 

I was about 13 when I overheard my aunt say to my mum: “Here’s some weight loss tea,” as she gave her a belated Christmas gift. Inside the gift bag was a box of tea she had bought from a health store – guaranteed to ‘help you ditch a dress size’. At the time, I knew that I was bigger than my peers – a bit chunky for my age – so I asked my aunt if I could have some too. She didn’t say no, in fact, she encouraged it – which was a damaging and damning thing to do to such a young person.

Hannah Cartwright a registered associate nutritionist, says that having a negative body image “can lead to depression, anxiety and low mood. It can also increase the risk of engaging in unhealthy lifestyle behaviours such as eating disorders and disordered eating, restrictive eating and yo-yo dieting, overexercising or weight control behaviours and body dysmorphia.”