In 2011, I wrote a blog entitled "Eyes on Your Own Plate” about issues that often crop up when people dine together—how they scrutinize what and how much others eat or don’t eat, and how to handle often uncalled for comments about food decisions.

And here I am watching fuel get added to the fire now that GLP-1s have jumped into the food and weight arena and taken over dinner table conversation. Nowadays we not only (still) take sneak peeks at what others eat and worry what they’ll think of our choices and consumption, we’re also comparing experiences with how weight-loss drugs impact our eating and weight. 

It used to be that our conversations (well, for some of us) were about the latest diet or our recent failures to give up binge-eating. Or about what our therapist said about the roots of our emotional eating. It was bad enough that we weren’t actually focused on the food in front of us but got caught up in our singular fixation of “foodandweight.” I know because I was one of those people who couldn’t get enough food and was obsessed with talking about how to rid myself of my food obsession. It didn’t occur to me until early recovery that I could choose not to talk about eating and weight during dinner with friends and just listen to my appetite, cozy up to my food, and enjoy it—or not. 

Group Dining on Ozempic? It’s Complicated describes how diners these days fret about eating so little that the waitstaff or chef might be upset thinking they didn’t like what they were served. I hope you find this fear as odd as I do. In my 78 years it’s one (of the few) I’ve never had, eating disorder or not. Now diners not only worry about what their fellow diners might think of how much they’re eating but they’re also concerned about upsetting the kitchen staff? 

As if that weren’t beyond the beyond enough, the article takes this conversation one step further and describes diners wondering how much they should pay when others are eating more or less than they are due to their weight-loss drugs. If there isn’t an app for that, I’m sure there will be soon.

Seriously folks, how can you—as a GLP-1-er or not—practice intuitive eating when you’re focused on someone else’s weight-loss drug experience, offending kitchen staff by not eating more than what your body is telling you to eat, and scheming about how to split the check without hurting feelings? I can easily picture this scenario in a Woody Allen comedy in which friends or family are sitting around a dinner table and absolutely no one is really thinking about enjoying the food. It would be comical if it weren’t so sad. 

Best,

Karen