Spectator by Seema Goswami: Live and lettuce live
Come January and everyone’s on a diet. Go on, enjoy your salads. Just keep the smug looks and keto sermons to yourself
It is a truth universally acknowledged that January is the month when everyone begins to regret their excesses over the Christmas-New Year period. And as surely as night follows day, those periods of extreme feasting are followed by rigorous fasting. Which is just a fancy way of saying that January finds almost everyone following some sort of diet regime to get back into shape (or, at the very least, into the trousers they were happily wearing until November of the previous year!).
So, like everyone else on this planet, these days I find myself surrounded by people who are not only on a diet, but are prone to aggressively announcing their new eating plans, with the unspoken assumption that I am the only Greedy Gretel, who is still stuffing her face at the beginning of the New Year. Honestly, there is nothing more annoying than the self-satisfaction of these dieters as they munch on lettuce while looking superior when I order a burger and fries.
Sadly, there are as many types of dieters as there are diets these days; and each one of them is annoying in their own peculiar way. Allow me the luxury of listing just some of them:
First up isthe no-gluten, no-dairy brigade. Members of this group turn up at a restaurant – or, God forbid, your home – with a list of items that they are simply not allowed to eat. Then, follows an entirely joyless meal in which they pick at their food listlessly, while everyone else feels vaguely guilty about enjoying their own deep-fried delights. More often than not, their resolution breaks by the time dessert comes around. Then, having virtuously turned down every fattening offer, they order the most calorific thing on the menu, which has every ingredient they just proudly announced that they have renounced. Er, sorry, what happened to that no-gluten, no-lactose rule? And no, a sheepish look is not a good answer.
{{/usCountry}}First up isthe no-gluten, no-dairy brigade. Members of this group turn up at a restaurant – or, God forbid, your home – with a list of items that they are simply not allowed to eat. Then, follows an entirely joyless meal in which they pick at their food listlessly, while everyone else feels vaguely guilty about enjoying their own deep-fried delights. More often than not, their resolution breaks by the time dessert comes around. Then, having virtuously turned down every fattening offer, they order the most calorific thing on the menu, which has every ingredient they just proudly announced that they have renounced. Er, sorry, what happened to that no-gluten, no-lactose rule? And no, a sheepish look is not a good answer.
{{/usCountry}}Far worse are those dieters who seem to think that calories don’t count if they eat them off someone else’s plate. These are probably the most irritating people to share a restaurant meal with. They will order salad (dressing on the side, obviously) and then steal the French fries you ordered, while sneaking bits of someone else’s pizza or pakoras for good measure. They will put on a saintly expression as they refuse dessert. And then – yes, you guessed it – it will be open season on everyone else’s pudding. Honestly, darling, who do you think you’re kidding?
And then, there are the Diet Bores. You know the ones I am talking about. Yes, those people whose only conversation is about the calorific value of every dish, the benefits of every diet they have ever been on – all the way from Atkins to the Zone diet, taking in General Motors along the way – and how much weight they have lost on each of them. Tellingly, they never tell you how much weight they put back on; or they wouldn’t need to be on another diet in the first place, right? And that, quite frankly, tells me all I need to know about diets – and dieters.
From HT Brunch, January 17, 2026
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