Losing weight by dieting can be a hard task. It is just so easy to break your diet and put back on the pound when junk food is everywhere and so cheap to buy. It only becomes more difficult when the people around you are not dieting and have no interest in eating healthy. You may have eaten well all day, but when it comes time to cook together with your family or go out to eat with your friends, temptation will abound as your loved ones eat without a care and you are left to be miserable stuck on your diet. That’s not to mention the times when your loved ones actively pressure you to eat like them. It can be a lot to handle as you’re fighting your own temptations. It all begs the question, “How can we lose weight when everyone around us eats junk?”
First, realize the reasons behind this tension. The fact is that dieting isn’t just a change in eating habits, it’s a change in your lifestyle. Eating is so central to how we operate socially that dieting often means changing the way you live. It’s important to recognize the times when your family and friends frequently have junk food in their lives, and try to mitigate this. Does everyone like to pig out in front of the TV during dinner? Why not suggest a healthy meal together at the table as a change? In some ways, the newness of the whole experience may be enough to change some habits.
Second, realize that this is your decision, not anyone else’s. It would not be fair to your family if you started to resent them for continuing to eat junk food while you are on a diet. The fact is that you decided to lose weight, not anyone else, and it is the right of your friends and family to make their own choices about how their eating habits.
In the same way, don’t expect that your family will support you by changing their lives to fit your newfound needs. It’s ok to expect emotional support during your challenging time, but to expect a change in everyone else’s diet would not be fair.
Now that you have covered some basics and the root causes of tensions that may exist while you are on your diet, you are ready to take the most important step of all: communicating with your loved ones. Make it clear to them why you want to lose weight and why it is an important goal to you. Ask them to be aware of the fact that you may be tempted to go off your diet and that they try to encourage you to stay on it and not provide you with any extra temptations. A little bit of understanding in this sense will go a long way to reducing your temptations caused by loved ones and keeping you on your diet.
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