How to Stay on Top of Your Nutrition When Visiting the Folks

Don’t You Wish You Were Home Alone?

How to Stay on Top of Your nutrition When Visiting the Folks

Let’s face it—most of us come from families who are nutritionally challenged. It doesn’t matter how many hours our loved ones have spent watching the latest diet gurus talk about their nutritional programs on the daytime talk shows. Try to explain to them why you are determined to keep off your weight by making “healthy food choices for life” and suddenly you will be faced with puzzled looks.

Without exception, one of the things most of us fear most are our trips back to see Mom and Dad after we’ve finally managed to slim down. In our imagination, it’s analogous to an alcoholic walking into a bar—temptation all around. Chocolate brownies, fried chicken, lasagna, pecan pie, pork chops and black-eyed peas in gravy—the list of mortal dreads goes on and on.

Without exception, we are convinced that within five minutes of walking through the door to our parents’ house, we will have gained back all our weight. Just thinking about it can give us nightmares.

The truth is, once you’ve made good nutritional habits a practice—and conquered many of your former food foibles such as the need to eat chocolate every day or the desire to imbibe fried chicken on a regular basis, you are stronger and wiser than you think. Here are some strategies to calm your fears and put meals at mom and dad’s house into a realistic perspective.

Remember, you only have to deal with it one meal at a time.

The Blasted Cookie Cupboard

Let’s be truthful, any time we visit our families we know we will be faced with some of the delicious temptations we remember from our youth. Perhaps when you were a child, your mom and grandma always had a cookie cupboard. And when you were very good, you always got to go into the cookie cupboard and have as many chocolate chip cookies as you wanted. So, you are dreading going home because you know that the blasted cookie cupboard will still be there waiting for you. And that it will be a test of willpower to see if you can control how many cookies you eat.

Dessert: The Ultimate Female Bonding Ritual

Or perhaps in the past you, your mother, and your sister always planned your trips home around the desserts you were going to share together. Maybe in your family, eating sweets is a major social event entwined with pleasure, comfort, good conversations, laughter, and fun.

So, when you go home, your womenfolk still expect you to make the rounds of the tearooms, bakeries, and cheesecake factories with them. Or maybe this time it’s going to be your birthday, which means that they’re going to make your “special” cake—homemade angel food with 14 egg whites and mounds of high-calorie icing made with lemon juice, butter, and confectioner’s sugar. Perhaps you are wondering, “How am I going to survive all this?”

Food and Love

It is easy to see a pattern here: FoodÂ…love. Food = love?

Yes, food and love are certainly intertwined in many families. It’s not just sugar that we dread when we go to visit the folks, but Mom’s Saturday night meatloaf and gravy, Grandma’s deep-fried fish, or Aunt Rosie’s 900-calorie, triple-cheese lasagna, which used to be our favorite food when we were kids.

When we leave our home turf and go visit the family, there is an unspoken pressure to eat the way we did when we were children. We may have broken out of our old food patterns, but our parents and family members are still “nutritionally challenged,” following the food programs they were raised with because that’s all they know.

The first thing you need to understand is that it is best not to be too judgmental. Try to understand that your loved ones are doing the best they can. They are feeding you because they love you.

You’ve Got Three Choices