Solid, simple tactics with real food and movement of your body – and your mind – to put you in the health & weight winner’s circle come January.  Part 5 of 10: “How to Handle Food Pushers”

Food pushers.  You know what I mean.

You go to a party, you go to an event.  They have a little bit of this, a little bit of that.  Or a LOT of this and that.

And isn’t it always true that it’s the people that we love that really are…Well, let’s put it this way.  You want to please them, and you want to keep them “happy”.  Yet there can be a serious compromise here if you start eating all these foods in front of you. Unless it’s your selected feast day (See Part 1:  “Be choosy“), it’s got the potential to destroy all that you’ve got going on with your health and fitness goals.

Here are 3 tactics for handling persistent food pushers:

There’s more than one way to say ‘no’.  You can get creative.

• the booked solid trick:  To escape the forced food, I’ll pat my belly and say “I’m so full up, I’m so booked, I couldn’t eat another bite!”

• the eat it later trick: “Oh, that looks SO good.  Could I take some and have it later?”

• push-it around trick:  You take some anyway, and just push it around on your plate.  However, this tactic comes with a warning:  It can be problematic because, well, there it is right in front of you and it’s easier to indulge.

Bottom line:  You should eat for no one but yourself

Honestly, people don’t really care what you are eating.   Most people are conditioned to encourage you to eat holiday flufferfood and act like something’s wrong with you if you don’t.  It’s really nothing personal at all.  Just social conditioning. I’ll give you the ‘but I did it for my aunt!’ once every 3 years or so.  (See 4 last-minute tips for a healthy, happy, in-harmony Thanksgiving, well worth repeating:)

They may pester us to eat more, to try another bite, to put that casserole on our plate but the truth is we aren’t swimming upstream from their food pushing. We’re swimming upstream from our own inner struggle. Who cares if they want us to eat more food? Who cares if they want us to try a slice of the home made pie Gramma made when she got up at three in the morning to begin cooking? Who cares how much gravy is covering the turkey, the mashed potatoes, the stuffing, the green beans and the delicious sweet potatoes with the tiny melted a? We worry about them pushing the food, when in fact we should be focused on our (in) ability to say no. We can’t point fingers at those people standing around offering us mounds of food, blaming them for another day of over eating to the point of making ourselves uncomfortable and for some of us totally out of control and opening the door to binge eating.

“No thank you“,  “I’ve had enough“,  “I’m going to pass“. (from ‘a life-changing journey“)

You’ll get skilled at it.  Remember, you are the only person that puts food in your mouth.

Have a food-pusher strategy of your own to share?  Please tell about it in ‘comments’ below.

Just joining us? To catch up with the holiday food & fitness survival guide:

Part 1:  “Be choosy”
Part 2:  “How eating keeps you thin, aka stay well fed
Part 3:  “Eat BEFORE you arrive“
Part 4:  ‘What you have is what you’ll eat”

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