My boss appears to be the type of woman who's always on a diet. She was on a diet when I worked for her six years ago, she's on a diet now, she's made comments about diets in the interim. And it drives me nuts. All fat acceptance, HAES issues aside, she's not fat! She's just not a size zero. Or maybe a two or even an eight, but she is not fat.

The type of diet she's on now drives me nuts, too, because she keeps talking about how "healthy" it is. It's a very low calorie diet, using a low-carb approach to regulate hunger by limiting insulin. And then, of course, there are the protein drinks she has to buy from the center, and the sack full of pills she carries around to take all the time.

Basically, she drinks two or three of these protein shakes (which have no fat or carbs) a day and eats dry meat, vegetables, and fruits. But of course, only certain kinds. She's not supposed to have salad dressing, cheese, milk, caffeine, etc. etc. Her diet coach told her balsamic vinegar has sugar in it so she's not supposed to even put that on anything.

I'm restraining myself from saying anything to her, because I know she doesn't want to hear it. She's already gathered that I don't agree--when she said yesterday she couldn't have cheese, I shook my head and she said "I know, you don't approve." I didn't want to get in to it. I just said "It's not that, I just couldn't do it. It's too restrictive." To which she responded "but it's SOOOO healthy!"

Diet plans like that specifically drive me crazy. I think that a lower carb diet can be very healthy--lots of fruits and vegetables, lots of nutrients there, adequate protein and other nutrients from meat, adequate amounts of fat from meats, healthy oils, etc. But this type of plan is essentially trying to court both sides: the "carbs are bad" side and the "fat is bad" side. By doing so, it's unnecessarily restrictive and cuts out a lot of nutrients--hence the sack full of pills.

So basically, on a daily basis, I'm watching someone I like, and would like to be friends with, eat a ridiculously restrictive diet and swallow a lot of expensive pills because she's been told that this is the only cure to the weight problem she doesn't have. It's very frustrating, but I'm going to keep my mouth shut. It's not worth it.