Are Office Lunches Making Your Eating Disorder Worse?

Most people think of eating disorders as a teenager’s disease. While most people are first diagnosed in their late teens or early twenties, adults continue to struggle with these disorders well into their adult life, including at work. Still many employees don’t consider the effect their office environment, including office lunches and company parties may be having on their eating disorder. 

Eating Disorders, Anxiety, and Stress

Eating disorders are serious, sometimes life threatening mental health disorders that often pair anxiety or intrusive thoughts with compulsive dieting, eating, or purging. Diagnoses like anorexia or bulimia are often centered around deeply held feelings of shame, often related to body image or eating behaviors. While these are separate diagnoses, eating disorders often overlap with anxiety-related mental health issues. 

For many adults, one of the biggest sources of anxiety and stress comes from their work. They may have concerns about interpersonal issues with coworkers, stress about meeting manager expectations or company deadlines, or simply experience intense emotions due to the nature of the work itself. To some extent, this kind of work-related stress is natural. But if you have an eating disorder, the combination of your own intrusive thoughts and feelings and the stress of your working environment can result in increased symptoms, making your eating disorder worse and more difficult to handle.

How Office Lunches Make Eating Disorders Worse

The combination of anxiety and disordered eating can be especially obvious within the context of office lunches. Many employers use working lunches as a “perk” of employment, as a way to facilitate team building, or in an effort to increase employee productivity, keeping workers on the clock and working when they would otherwise be on break. But if you are feeling stressed or anxious about the work being done, the introduction of food to that internal dynamic could result in compulsive eating, binging, or other disordered eating behaviors that only make your eating disorder worse. 

The same is true for other food-related work activities. Birthday celebrations including cake, cookies, or other treats may tempt you to binge eat. Healthy eating initiatives or group diet plans can feed into anorexia’s unhealthy body image and restrictive eating behaviors. Happy hours and group outings can make overcoming substance addiction a challenge. No matter when, or how, food and the workplace intersect, it can create challenges for workers who struggle with disordered eating. 

Strategies for Making a Food-Healthy Working Environment

Because eating disorders are not as common as other mental health problems like anxiety or depression, your boss or HR professional may not realize that what they see as an employee benefit may be negatively affecting your mental health. You likely will need to be your own advocate to guide your employer into creating a food-healthy working environment that accommodates and supports your recovery and mental health. 

Explaining Food Limitations to Your Employer

Because eating disorders center around shame, it can be hard to talk about them, even with people you trust. But if your employer does not know about your eating disorder, they cannot help you by minimizing temptations and triggers at work. That is why it is a good idea to communicate with your employer, HR director, team facilitator, and anyone else who may be planning workplace activities to explain your food limitations. If your employer unreceptive, you can also ask your psychotherapist to support you in making a claim for reasonable accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). 

You don’t have to start by disclosing your specific diagnosis, though. Even telling your employer that you struggle with food issues or have food limitations can be enough to open a dialog about what a food-healthy working environment might look like for you. Once you have identified colleagues and supervisors you can trust, you can work with them to make a plan to avoid making your eating disorder worse. 

Establishing Food-Related Boundaries at Work

One of the best things you can do to avoid making your eating disorder worse at work is to establish food-related boundaries. This might mean that you will not participate in office lunches or happy hours. It could also mean that you always bring your own food or opt out of diet campaigns. You can also make it clear to your coworkers that you do not want to talk about their diets or food experiences. 

Recent increased awareness about food allergies and restricted diets can help you establish and maintain food-related boundaries. If you are struggling to communicate your eating disorder, you can simply state that you have food restrictions without going into details, and use that as an explanation for why you cannot participate in food-related work activities. 

Taking Proactive Steps to Create a Food-Healthy Work Environment

Another strategy you can take is to volunteer to help coordinate team building events, workshops, and staff retreats. By being involved when the choices are being made, you can help guide your coworkers to food-healthy alternatives. This may mean offering up team-building suggestions that are not related to food, or suggesting a menu for office lunches that won’t make your eating disorder worse. By taking proactive steps to remove temptations and triggers, you can ease your path to recovery and invite your coworkers to provide you support along the way to better mental health. 

David Stanislaw is a psychotherapist with over 30 years of experience. He helps adults, teens, and children with eating disorders, compulsive dieting and other psychological issues. Contact David Stanislaw to get help today.