How to Stick to Your Diet and Feed Your Family

Photo by Pablo Merchán Montes on Unsplash

Here is a common question and legitimate concern I hear from my clients of busy parents and professionals when trying to improve their eating habits and lose weight.

I totally understand, as my wife has different fitness and body composition goals than I do, follows a lower carb diet than I do, plus we have a 12-year-old girl and a picky eater 7-year-old boy.

So how do you stick to your diet and feed your family?

You have two choices:

Choice 1: Try to get everyone in your house on board.

(Not likely, but your choices can influence them over time)

Choice 2: Do you, and let them have what they want.

Seriously.

Yeah, it may suck to have to make your own meals at times. But who said getting fit, losing weight, and balancing a family and everything else was easy?

I didn’t. Because I KNOW. I am in the trenches too and have worked with literally thousands of clients over the last 25 years doing the same.

But, it’s worth it. And you should only focus on what YOU can control. YOU.

It might not be fun to eat a healthy, nutritious meal at times when your family is eating fast food.

But your goals are not their goals.

Your body is not their body.

You need to stop using that excuse, accept that and move on.

We easily make this work in our home for dinner, by cooking one protein choice, one or two carb choices from veggies, starch or fruit and a sprinkle or side of whatever floats their boat.

Now, I hope your family is still supportive of you, if they mock you or eat their junk food in front of you while making fun of your healthy meal, then you need to call a family meeting and tell them how you feel. This is your health and happiness we are talking about!

But stick to your guns and you WILL have the last laugh. And assuming no one is being a total jerk-face, then it’s time to take personal responsibility for what you put in your mouth.