Don't let the turkeys get you down

Do you feel like flipping the bird at diet culture this Thanksgiving?

photo by Karolina Grabowska

If you’re trying to protect your kids’ relationship with food—and perhaps healing your own at the same time—holiday feasts can be a minefield. It makes sense if you’re feeling anxious and angry about having to dread the inevitable: unwelcome comments about food or bodies.

Calories, diets, weight, and compensatory workouts have become default topics at holiday gatherings. Fat jokes and food fears are as much a part of American Thanksgiving as the turkey and cranberry sauce.

When kids are in earshot, off-hand diet remarks can feel not just annoying but dangerous. And if family members are directly criticizing—or praising—your kid’s body or food choices, you might experience a mixture of rage and terror.

It’s pretty complicated when these hurtful comments are coming from someone you love, someone with whom you want or need to maintain a relationship.

Stewing passive-aggressively, popping off with an angry response, or launching into a lecture on weight stigma can all be tempting options. But they’re also exhausting and unlikely to be effective.

To preserve your energy and keep the peace, you might experiment with an approach that gives you some distance from these hurtful comments. What comes to my mind is a one of the few pieces of direct advice my mom has ever given me: “Don’t let the turkeys get you down.”

If you aren’t familiar with this saying, it encourages you to ignore criticism from arrogant jerks. Is there anything more arrogant and jerky than diet culture and anti-fat bias?

The humor book Don’t Let the Turkeys Get You Down by Sandra Boynton has some terrific jacket copy (found online) describing what it’s like to encounter these metaphoric turkeys. It applies so well to protecting yourself from diet culture:

“Forewarned is forearmed: turkeys possess absolutely unwarranted and absolutely unshakable self-confidence. They insist on high visibility, and can show up at a party, in an argument, on the jogging path. The reader's best defense is through study of this important manual, keying in on the single most important turkey fact: a turkey never knows that it is a turkey.”

I wasn’t able to get my hands on a copy (it’s possible there’s some anti-fat garbage in this book that I don’t remember), but I like her general approach: brace yourself for some nonsense from people who assume they are right. I like that it even leaves room for some compassion; they don’t know they’re being hurtful or obnoxious.

I don’t have a “manual” for facing the wellness bros or dieting aunties sitting next to you on Thursday, but I do have a few ideas that might help you enjoy the holiday meal more fully—and save your activism bandwidth for another time and place.

Before the feast: A different kind of meal prepping

Planning ahead for handling diet culture comments helps you go into a gathering with more confidence and less dread. This process often means making an explicit request of someone particularly vulnerable to—and vocal about—diet and wellness culture beliefs. This pre-holiday conversation might start with something like this:

“Uncle Bob, I’m really looking forward to seeing you for Thanksgiving. I had a favor to ask you. With the rise in eating disorders among young people, we’re working really hard to protect our kids from thinking about diets and calories and things like that. I would really love your help.”

You might also play around with ways to take care of yourself during those inevitable turkey moments. It’s a concept called “coping ahead” in DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy).

Maybe it looks like practicing a compassionate thought for your loved one who’s so stuck in diet culture. Maybe it’s deciding you’ll take a deep breath when you hear one of these comments. Maybe it’s planning to give a literal middle finger to diet culture—under the table!—to discreetly discharge some of that anger.

At the table: When someone dishes out diet talk

If you know you’ll need some specific verbal strategies, one of these approaches might resonate with you:

1. Ignore—then compliment the chef or ask someone to pass the rolls.

   The meal itself provides these handy socially-acceptable interruptions. If you made the food or aren’t serving dishes family style, perhaps this is your moment to get up and refill everyone’s water glass.

2. Ignore—then completely change the subject.

   Introducing a pop culture reference tends to get people talking. “Oh, did you hear the latest about….” and then pick a topic that invites lively but low-stakes conversation, such as Taylor & Travis, a bestselling book, a new movie or TV show, sports, and—when in doubt—the weather!

3. Gently redirect the focus to the holiday spirit.

   Appeal to your tablemates’ better natures. In your most generous, least preachy tone, try something like this: “It’s been such a tough time in the world—let’s be grateful for being together and having this bountiful feast.” And then maybe go back to #1.

4. Lovingly reassert a boundary.

   If, for your own or your child’s safety, you cannot let a comment stand, speak up kindly but firmly. “Gran, I’m going to have to interrupt. Remember we agreed not to talk about dieting?” Or perhaps something like “We’re trusting our kids to listen to their bodies.” And then pivot to #2.

After the meal: debrief and (if necessary) do damage control

You can do all the coping ahead in the world and still freeze up in the moment or simply decide it’s easier to go with the flow. It’s okay. Really.

Even if the comments around the big meal went beyond awkward and felt harmful to your kids, all is not lost. In fact, talking about uncomfortable things with your kids afterwards can be incredibly powerful and protective.

So on the drive home or the next day, these conversations might start out sounding something like this:

• “I noticed Cousin Trudy kept talking about needing to burn calories. What do you think about that?”

• “Wow, there was a lot of diet talk at that meal. It makes sense if that really bothered you.”

• “What a bummer that intermittent fasting kept coming up while we were trying to enjoy our pie. I didn’t feel comfortable saying anything in the moment, but it’s still on my mind. How about you?”

• “Grandpa’s friends kept making fun of their bellies all day. How was that for you?”

• “It’s amazing how other households can approach food so differently from ours. What did you notice?”

The key is to open the door and leave lots of room for your kids to share their questions, thoughts, and feelings. These conversations build essential trust and critical thinking skills to help them navigate diet culture. Because they will encounter plenty of turkeys out in the wild.

If you have other go-to strategies, please share.

Some final thoughts for Thanksgiving

Holidays are a great time to remember that food can be so much more than fuel or a nutrient delivery system.

Food is culture, tradition, family, celebration, connection, and belonging.

Food is love.

May your actual turkey—or Tofurky, or whatever you enjoy—be delicious and served without a side of diet culture.

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In Case You Missed It:

If dark humor is your thing, maybe you’ll enjoy my Thanksgiving Diet Culture Bingo.

Who’s ready to play?

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Want more support navigating holiday gatherings, especially if you have a selective eater? Be sure to check out

Virginia Sole-Smith

’s latest guide:

The Burnt Toast Guide to Eating With Other People

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I was recently a guest on Abbie Attwood’s Full Plate Podcast.

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For anyone who could use more personalized support, I’m excited to announce I’ve opened up more spots in my private parent coaching practice, which has three main focus areas:

If you’re interested in working together or have any questions, use this contact form to get started.