What To Do When People Try To Sabotage Your Nutrition

I can’t tell you how many emails & comments I get from women weekly about how hard it is to commit to eating the way they want to sometimes when they go visit other family, eat in social situations and people comment on what they’re eating, or family members try to block their renewed food choices. Do they sabotage your nutrition?

And, I do understand entirely, but I  just have to get really real about this really critical mindset topic for a minute with women.

This is the biggest cr@p “human body illusion” of a mentality, ladies. Seriously.

Now, hold tight here, and hear me out, ladies….

Both Damian and I spent years before we met living with families who didn’t choose to eat exactly like we did, but we still decided to eat the way we felt was committed to our bodies with where we were in our journey and progression of nutrition learning over the years.

Choosing a life of authentic wellness in this world requires excellence in unbreakable boundaries, boundless courage, unapologetic living, and effective communication skills.

I find food psychology to be one of the most insane & fascinating psychologies there is, all at once. Psychology is my education background, and it’s always fascinated me, particularly around topics involving cognition, motivation, and nutrition, and it’s ironic that it’s the degree that’s often laughed off as far as what will you use that for, and yet I’ve used it everyday of my life.

Why do people feel a need to attach their personal emotion to what other people are consuming physically, when it doesn’t have any immediate or long-term effect on them, whatsoever? Humans create & attach so much needless emotion that doesn’t even exist to inanimate objects, like food.

And, then why do most people feel a need to allow someone else’s emotions to drive our food choices or behaviors for our lives, as a reaction to them?

In 41 years, I have never felt a need for anyone else to understand, support or permit my choices for my body, at any point in my life, and THAT is a non-negotiable prerequisite to wellness success.

Do you think there is no one in my life or Damian’s life ever that didn’t make a stink about our nutrition?

Do you think in 48 combined years of deep commitment to our nutrition, we’ve both never been criticized, ogled, judged, commented on for what we’re eating, had sweets and chemical nutrition-less foods shoved in our face by people who want to sabotage our efforts, or endless questions and opinions about why, what and how we eat? Because that is pretty funny, if you do.

Our psychology skills around our family, friends, business people we interact with, saboteurs when it comes to our wellness and nutrition choices, how we allow them to effect us or not, whether we decide to allow others energies and emotions to attach to us or not, and how we handle it when we encounter this mental silliness is our differentiating factor.

The correct mindset expectation reframed, is not to expect people to stop sabotaging you, it’s to EXPECT them to try to sabotage you, but, instead learn to develop new mindset skills in how you handle them.

This is all I need to know: At the end of the day, I’m adding exponentially to my years when I put the quality, bountiful macro and micronutrients in my body for my gut and brain each day, and I’m the primary person that deals with the consequences of losing or adding life & years into this body through my choices and actions.

Where does it state anywhere that I need someone else’s approval for or permission of that?

So everyone else’s thoughts on or opinion about what I choose to put in my body to create my wellness has as much meaning and power over me as a mouse’s f@rt in a gale force wind. Crass? Maybe. Direct. Definitely.

I do “me”, end of story. And, when I leave this spinning blue ball, I’ll have no regrets about my choices or allowing anyone else to determine them, and you should too. Someone shoving sugary cake in my face when there is no cell in my body that wants it, is them trying to steal my own empowerment, and the only one who can allow them to do that, is me. We teach others about their own power they possess only when we start to fully own our own.

Stop allowing emotions and other people to step into your psychology path in a way that seriously blocks you from experiencing better results, authentic wellness and your best self. If you step into your power, then you give them permission to do the same, and using other people and things as excuses for our own choices we all get to make.

Man up, put on your non-emotional big boy pants, and step into your mental power, or you will never be truly successful at what it takes to create true wellness. Our outcomes begin and end in our minds, and how we choose to see things.

This is not a world, nor will it EVER be, that hands anyone an easy walk to authentic wellness.

A little “tough love”, but necessary. So here are a few important mindset tips to summarize…

5 Expert Mindset Tips To Handle Nutrition Saboteurs:

1. Reframe your expectation: Stop expecting these people to disappear, instead expect them & refocus on improving your skills in mindset handling them
2. Accept that other’s needs to have an emotion about your actions and choices has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with them, and you also have a choice to have an emotional reaction to them or to allow it not to effect you
3. Understand that if you plan to be successful at wellness, it will require courage, asserting strong boundaries with everyone around you over and over, and communicating your needs
4. Accept the universal truth that you do not need anyone’s else’s permission or support of your choices in order to commit to your choices and make them
5. Have a conversation with them explaining that you don’t need them to understand your nutrition choices, however, you need them to be unconditionally supportive, without judgement and negativity, and if they can’t offer you that, then you’ll have to set a boundary around their actions and how you allow them in and around you

Finally, a word on if you are the cook in your house.

Frankly, I’m not the cook in my house, but I was raised to have gratitude for the blessing of having food to eat on our table, period, and whatever got cooked was what we were eating WITH PLEASURE. There were no complaints, no rude comments, no alternate requests. We gratefully ate what was cooked and put on the table.

If you’re the cook in your house and you’re making nutrition changes blended into your family’s food, that is what people are eating.

Somewhere along the line we got this ridiculous idea that as a family we had to cater to everyone’s tastes, and cook separate meals for each person or child.

I never developed a taste for lima beans, but as a child if those were on my plate, guess what that’s what I was eating, or I was going to bed without eating a vegetable that day. Too bad, so sad, and I turned out fine. And, if we had children, they’d be handled just the same.

If someone has a problem with healthier nutrition choices, than the onus falls on them to take action of their own to fulfill their personal choices. We are all personally capable and can be personally responsible.

That is why no matter where Damian and I go, to a business event, a conference, a family members, we don’t ever expect someone else to care for our needs as adults. Why would we?

We bring our own food, period, because we are responsible for our own bodies and wellness, no on else is.

If you have guests over, don’t they eat the food that’s served? So why would your family members get special treatment.

This is on us to step into our power when we’re making changes and stand up for our choices, if we have family members who are not ready for or not making the same choices.

Share your experiences below in the comment boxes with us. This is something we hear constantly! Do you have anyone close to you, or in your life, that tries to bring negativity, fear and judgement around your empowering nutrition choices?

How do you handle them, or react to them?

Author: Heather Dubé, HHC, AADP, ACSM CWC, NASM CPT, NC Cand. & BA Psychology, is a Functional Nutrition Practitioner, US National-Level Natural NPC Figure Bodybuilding Competitor & Contributing Expert Magazine Writer with 24 years experience, and Co-Founder of the e3 Energy Evolved™ System.

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Heather Dubé

Functional Nutrition, Energy Medicine & Energy Psychology Practitioner at e3 Energy Evolved

Heather Dubé, BA, ECMT, INHC, AADP, CWC, CPT is a Functional Nutrition, Energy Medicine & Energy/Positive Psychology Practitioner, Certified Personal Trainer, National NPC Natural Figure Athlete & Expert Magazine Writer with 30 years experience, & the e3 Energy Evolved® System Founder.

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