Social Eating: How Do We Fight It?

When you follow this kind of lifestyle you quickly learn where your pitfalls are. I don't struggle bringing home ice-cream, and when I go shopping I only buy things that fit my diet. But my pitfall is social eating. I have friends, and we all love food, and we all love eating together. So we go out, we order pizza, we make cookies...etc.. And there seems to be no way to avoid it. Especially now that we're at the end of the semester it's easy to justify binging on sugar and sweets to "combat stress". Even though I know full well that the sugar and white flour makes me more stressed.

So how can we fight it? Here are a couple things that I've come up with:

• Eat your food with them! 
• Have an cooking party! I was with a friend of mine and we were talking about our latest binge (baking cookies for a bake sale...with plenty left over and pizza to balance it all out). She looked over a me and said "I love cooking together, but lets do something a little healthier next time." So we're starting to cook actual meals together. Let them know that your food is yummy! Let them into your world.  

• Share your goals.
• Let people know what you're aiming for. They tend to be more supportive if you ask for help and support. Make it a team effort, and let them share your victories with you (just try not to celebrate with ice cream). I've learned that I need to be careful about how I talk about my diet, because I don't want to be preachy. But I'm learning that this change is hard if you're too antisocial. Look for help and support, and be willing to accept it. 
• Leave if you have to.
• Now nobody wants to be this person...but sometimes it's necessary. If you can't say no, and you've said hi to who you need to say hi to, get out of dodge! It's not always the funnest of options, but then again, being sick isn't a fun option either. So if it's worth it to you, then excuse yourself and go somewhere where you won't be tempted. 

Just a reminder: if you slip up, don't worry about it. This is something that takes adjusting to, and takes a lot of trial and error. Dr. Fuhrman has a 90-10 rule, where 90% of what you eat is healthy, and 10% can be whatever. So a little slip up every now and again isn't going to destroy anything, and having a planned day where you can eat your favorite binge foods if alright, just keep it to that assigned day or time. Because it's when we start losing control of what we eat that we get in trouble. 

These are things that I've done, but what have you found to be helpful? I'd love to hear your ideas!

-Shayla

SLENDER