You have listened to your friend since the New Year talk about how they are exercising more, going to lose weight and become the weight they were at such and such time. You have been supportive and talked about exercising, because of course you want to be healthy and fabulous too. But then the talk keeps returning to calories and nothing else. While you are eating the talk is about how many calories are on your plate. When you have a beer the label is looked at for how many calories are in it. Your friend refuses food and drink because they don’t have time to run another 5 miles to burn it off that night.
3 Choices for Friends who Counts Calories
It boils down to about three choices, if you want to remain friends. And of course you do! The first is to state right up front that you want to hang out with her and enjoy a fine summer evening, but you don’t want to talk about dieting, exercising or counting calories. If she wants to be your friend in return, then she will accept those limits and keep calories from becoming the center of conversation. There are plenty of other things to talk about such as the kids, significant others, TV, vacations, upcoming plans, work, the weather, sports and so on.
The second choice could be to ignore the comments being made about the calories and just go about your business. If there is dancing or other friends around, head out to the dance floor and don’t engage in the conversation surrounding the calories. Chances are if you feel that strongly where you are sick of hearing about how many calories are in every shot, every beer or every glass of wine, then the rest of your friends will be too. Everyone can choose to dance (which burns off calories, by the way), and ignore the train of conversation and just do what you want until a new subject of discussion can come up.
Thirdly, you can opt to not ask the friend out. This isn’t a wise choice because it means you are avoiding them instead of being honest and upfront and dealing with the problem you have. Maybe your friend doesn’t realize how much they talk about the calories they are consuming and just need a friendly reminder to pick another topic to talk about. If you have discussed the issue of counts calories, yet they still want to obsess over them, then it is OK to skip asking this friend out with you until they change their tune.
Realize that this goal is important to her and your friendship can be fixed with a little open communication about counting calories and its limits.
