My Friend Is On A Crazy Strict Diet

Do I tell her that I’m worried?

I’ve known my friend Leah for three years.

We aren’t best friends. I guess I think it’s important to include that detail.

We have a lot in common with each other, but spend more time together in our group of friends rather than just her and I together.

I didn’t see her face to face for about five months during the lockdown restrictions, so when I did see her again finally, it was a bit of a shock.

Leah, to me, has always been slim. She’s tall and long-limbed and elegant. I envied her slimness, if I’m honest.

She always complained about not liking her hips, which are naturally wide, and would sometimes make disparaging comments along the lines of being a “bigger lady” and about “eating my bodyweight in cheese”, which surprised me as I thought of her as kind of perfect.

I knew that she had started a really strict diet whilst in lockdown.

She didn’t describe it as strict, or as a diet — those are my words — but rather as a chance for her to eat healthy and try and resolve some of the skin problems that she was suffering from, some of which she had read were linked to excess amounts of bacteria in the gut.

So she had cut out a lot of foods that potentially irritate the gut.

When I say a lot, I mean A LOT.

She was no longer eating any type of gluten, any dairy, even some fruits and vegetables were off the menu — for example, any fruits high in carbs like grapes and bananas. Green apples were her go-to fruit.

When the lockdowns lifted, I had a ladies’ night at my house and the difference in her appearance was stark.

She’d gone, in my opinion, from being slim to being really skinny.

Her skin was pulled tight across her chin and arms. Her collar bone stood out. She was wearing a tight pair of jeans that showed a lack of hips. Her legs were so thin. It was a drastic change.

I had prepared some snacks — all homemade — hummus, egg mayonnaise, guacamole, garlic bread as well as a range of veggie nibbles like carrot sticks and cucumber sticks and loads of cheese. Some of the girls brought crisps and other dips.

Out of all of those options, Leah could only eat the cucumber sticks.

Later in the evening, when she admitted to being starving, I dug out some nuts and seeds from one of my cupboards which were on her “good list”.

She told us about the diet, told us she’d been making her own recipe book with ideas she’d found. It had turned into her lockdown project. She loves cooking and said that it had been an exciting challenge trying to prepare new things that fit her list.

One of our friends commented, “You haven’t got an ounce of fat on your body,” and it sort of hit the nail on the head.

I think the rest of us were a mixture of impressed, jealous and worried. The evening continued, we talked about other things.

Time has move on, but Leah is sticking to the diet.

She’s started to turn down invitations that involve going to restaurants as there’s so little that she can actually eat.

She brought her own special food in Tupperware to our ladies’ weekend away instead of joining in on the communal meals that we made and it looks as though the weight is still dropping off her, not that there is much to lose.

So, here’s the question.

Do we/I say something? Do I tell her that I’m worried about her? Not only because she’s lost so much weight, but because the diet is starting to affect her social life? It’s changing her interactions with the world, shrinking it further when covid has already made it small.

The answer?

I don’t know.

I haven’t said anything so far and I don’t think I will, or anyone from our group.

Why? Because I think it’s a very personal issue.

If it were the other way around, and a friend was gaining a lot of weight, I wouldn’t say anything.

I know from my own experiences that weight loss/gain can be very closely linked to emotional and psychological issues and that people commenting on it, even in the best intentioned way, can make things worse.

Perhaps this is what my friend needs to do right now to feel like she has control in her life.

I’m not a doctor or nutritionist so I don’t know if she is more or less healthy now, so I can’t really intervene on the basis of her health.

What I can do is be there for her, be ready to listen if she needs someone to talk to and try to adjust to her needs.

The next ladies’ night can be at my place rather than a restaurant and I can prepare things that she can eat.

I think that that’s my duty as a friend, to accept, to support, not to judge.