Eating healthy and better is a challenge when you have a family that expects you to provide snacks on the shelf, a full refrigerator and three meals a day.
No matter what your family circumstances, eating healthy is tough. Unless you’re ultra committed to super healthy eating for all members of your household (and more power to you!), it’s a struggle to please every eater that sits at your table while honoring your own diet commitment.
You know you should eat healthy and keep fattening foods out of the kitchen, but tell that to teenage boys coming home hungry from school looking for pizza pops or bags of chips (they definitely do not want your diet celery sticks).
And presumably your spouse will not be thrilled with a plain chicken breast and broccoli every night.
So – yes – everyone in the family should probably be eating fantastic like you, but good luck with that one.
So how does a super committed healthy eater satisfy all the family palettes without destroying his or her own eating plan?
It’s not easy but whether you live alone or have multiple mouths to feed – it can be done.
How To Eat Better When The Family Doesn’t Want To
Get your family to respect your new eating plan. Sometimes it’s hard to get family members to believe you when you say “This time it’s different; I’m really going to do it.” The only way to get others to buy into your diet is to demonstrate that you really are doing it – one day at a time.
Buy the teenagers their snacks and buy your spouse any favorite foods. Then stock your kitchen with your own healthy foods. You’ve got to have food in the kitchen that you can eat. It’s inconceivable to cook a non-diet meal for your family and then have nothing for yourself.
You’re not a martyr, you’re a dieter! Eat, but eat right. Do not allow yourself to feel cheated; that’s a slippery slope that leads to diet failure.
You’ve got to get smart about dieting and exercise. Learn. Recognize that playing ball with the kids in the backyard does NOT burn enough calories to justify sharing an ice cream treat with them.
Know that tasting food as you cook it is defeating your diet. Acknowledge that skipping one meal does not mean that you can eat extra at the next meal. This list could go on forever. Not only learn how to diet properly, but learn how not to kid yourself.
Learn to control the mind tricks which suggest you deserve a reward for being a good mother/father, surviving a stressful day, accomplishing something difficult. Everyone has challenges in life and sometimes they win and sometimes they lose. You do not deserve to be rewarded for living your life.
Congratulations for a job well done and sympathy for setbacks, but move on without food being your prize or consolation.
Back to the core message and this is the toughest part of eating healthy: Whether you have many mouths to feed or you live alone, to succeed in dieting, you must have the strength to develop your will power.
You can do it, whether you are cooking for a family of six – or just yourself. You just need to want it enough – and then, be prepared.
