Hello, my vibrant friend. Hope you're having a good week. Thanks for being here today. Something funny happened on Friday. I got a call from my college kid. They use they/them pronouns, and they said, "My senior comprehensive math project presentation is on Tuesday at four o'clock." And I'm looking at them on FaceTime.
And I said, "Are parents invited to that?" And they smiled, "Yes, parents are invited. Can you come?" So with four days' notice for their capstone project presentation, they invited my husband and me. So of course, like many of you who are parents, I canceled everything and I will get to go. My husband is also able to make it, but it's funny, we call, you know, 18 adults, but really, our kids are kids a lot longer than that. Aren't they? So I thought you could probably relate to that if you have kids in their twenties. So today we're talking on the podcast about something that many clients say to me when they first start working with me. They say, "I don't want to be that person." So they're super happy to work with me and get a customized protocol that works for each kind of workdays they have, or their days off or weekends. But they get worried when it's time to go to a family gathering or something similar. "I don't want to be that person." So, who is it? That you don't want to be. We'll talk about who you want to be, who you don't want to be. And at the end, we're going to go a little deeper, and I'm going to help you understand why it is that you feel like "I don't want to be that person." And how looking at your goals that are deeper than "I don't want to be that person" will help you not be that person. This is something I coach a lot of my clients about, so, okay. Who do we not want to be? We do not want to be Justifying Jane. So I have a client that told me about the sister-in-law she has, who I will call Justifying Jane. She's always on some new diet or eating plan vegan, gluten-free, keto, no greens, lots of greens. And when she comes over, there's a long story about it. She's feeling bloated. She's really sorry she can't have that one thing. She just can't do this. She just can't do that. She's going to just have this one dish. And she brought something to make it better, and she's going to scrape the cheese off. You always get a lot of the story. So my client dreaded her sister-in-law Justifying Jane coming to dinner. She said she would sometimes call her brother up and say, "Okay, the whole family is getting together on Sunday afternoon," and she would always cringe and say, "Is Jane eating something special right now?" And her brother would always say, "Yes, she's no dairy this week. Gluten's okay." or whatever it was. So I understand you don't want to be Justifying Jane. And actually Jane doesn't really want to be this way either. But she is. Okay, let's talk about who you really enjoy at your family gathering and you want her there and you want to be her. We're going to call her Magnificent Maya. I want you to picture this woman. She comes to your family gatherings. Her body type is either curvy or wiry. Her outfits are really put together. She's got, you know, a little silver hair or she's got her hair is colored. You can tell it's professionally done. It's so nice. She's got a wonderful smile. But she's real. She'll be sad with you if you need it. You're always glad to see her at the family gathering. Now if you're at the table of food with Maya, she eats a reasonable amount. It looks like there are some healthy choices on her plate, but there's a little bit of dessert maybe. If someone offers her the fried poppers or an extra brownie. She says, "No, thanks." and complements the quinoa salad. You don't know her eating plan. And if you ask, she'd probably give you a short, vague answer. Everyone's happy to have Magnificent Maya. You're delighted when she agrees to come to your house. So what's the difference between Jane and Maya? Neither of them eats everything you put on the table. Let's actually pretend that Jane and Maya, in the end, I have the exact same thing on their plate. So what's the difference. Jane is worried about what you think and what she thinks about the food. She is actually people-pleasing, which doesn't actually please anyone. She justifies. She says, "I need this. I have to do it this way." Maya, on the other hand, is direct and doesn't explain. She may be trying out every eating plan that Jane is doing, but she's not going to tell you about it. She chooses what she wants to eat from what's on the table and she eats what she wants. She says, "Yes, please," and "No, thank you." She complements the spread, and she only eats what she wants. Everyone is so happy when Maya can come to the gathering and they are really relieved when Jane can't make it that time. When you compare these two, Jane thinks she only gets what she needs. And that's why she has to give you all these explanations. She has to justify it to you. Why she'll eat one dish and not another. Maya thinks about what she wants and she eats that. And that's story. So when you think you don't want to be that person, let's look at it on a couple of levels. So number one, when people say this to me, I say, "Tell me a little bit more about what that means you don't want to be that person." And they say, "I don't want to be a bother." I get that. You don't want to be a bother. You're worried about talking about your eating protocol, explaining it, defending it. Will someone ask if you're on a diet? Will someone say, "Of course you should do something different?" So the problem with this is that the opposite of being Jane is always eating what others choose for you. You have to eat everything that's there to be part of the family. Is this actually true? I'm going to give you some counterexamples because I don't think it's true. It might feel that way. Let's talk about one. There's the nephew at your party who has a peanut allergy. Will you kick him out of the family if he doesn't eat peanuts out of the peanut bowl? Probably not, right? Is that because he needs to, and he can justify it, his mother can justify it, his father can justify that he can't eat the peanuts because it's an allergy. So you're being like justifying Jane again when you're saying, "Well, that boy with the allergy can justify not eating everything." So he gets to be in the family. Hold that thought, we'll come back to it. Okay. Number two, you have Maya's example. She doesn't eat what other people say, and she doesn't need everything. And she's still in the family. Remember we said that she has the exact same stuff on her plate as Jane. But somehow she manages it. She pulls it off. Could you try a social experiment and not eat everything? I talk about subjects other than food and explain nothing about your food protocol. Ooh, this may sound extreme. But could you try it? Could it be a social experiment? I had a client who did try this experiment. She went to visit her mom and stayed overnight. And in the morning, not knowing what was going to happen, my client went downstairs to the kitchen and her mom offered her a cinnamon roll on a plate. She said, "No, thanks mom. I don't want something sweet for breakfast." And her mom said, "Okay, I have hard-boiled eggs in the fridge. Would you like that instead?" So this turned out to be easy, right? And sometimes we worry about things that actually can be easy. She was surprised. She didn't know what her mom was going to say. And she was very relieved that it was basically a non-issue. I'm going to give you a little bit different example. I've shared before that Thanksgiving of 2020, I really overate and felt so terrible from stuffing myself that I gave up overeating for good. I decided I have overeaten enough in my life. I am never going to overeat again. So I went to Christmas with a family who are food pushers. I filled my plate once. I ate one serving. I had one piece of dessert. And no one actually noticed. There were enough people there that talking to everyone, it didn't actually matter. It was a complete non-issue how much I ate. So your primitive brain may be jumping around and saying, "But at my family, this happens and my grandma watches what I eat and this happens, and I can feel the panic in you." This can feel very scary and very much like we're going to get kicked out of the family if we don't eat what other people tell us. So this is a normal thing that our brain does and goes back to the days when we were living in caves and we needed the tribe or we would die. So now we care about our tribe. But it is possible that we are not going to be kicked out and die if we don't eat all the things that they want us to eat. However, take a couple of breaths. The first step is actually believing that you can go to the table and eat what you want. Eat no more of it and no less. Now, you know that you have a Justifying Jane and a Magnificent Maya in your family. So, you know that you could choose either of those and that Maya is there and she seems just fine. Alright, let's take this one step deeper. You started out with "I don't want to be that person" and "I don't want to be a bother." But when my clients tell me this, I look at them and I notice these are very loving, caring people. And there's actually an aspirational goal that is deeper than "I just, I don't want to be a bother." What they want to be is a good guest. They want to be a loving, caring, polite guest because they are loving, caring, polite people. So how can you be a good guest and also eat only what you want? Well, you know, you're going to tell no stories. You're going to give no justifications. You're not going to give a long explanation of your protocol and why you have to eat this way or that way. But I want you to stop and just take a deep breath again and think, what can I do? How can I go there? How can I picture myself at this gathering and I'm still being a good guest and I'm eating what I want. I'll give you a couple ideas if you're drawing a blank because some of you, your brain is still kind of in freeze mode. This is not possible. So here are a couple of ideas that you can borrow. Give compliments. The food smells good. The new curtains look great. It's so nice that you got us all together. It's been a while. There are many nice things that you can say about the food, not about the food. When it's time for you to say something, say "please" and "thank you" and "no thank you." Now, you were already going to say "please" and "thank you" because you are a loving, caring, polite person. It's good to remember that "no" is a complete sentence. So when someone says, "I think you should have another brownie on top of the one you've already taken," you could just say "no." But most of my clients are probably going to say "no, thank you," and then talk about something else. So when you say "no, thank you," and then talk about something else, you are extra polite because no in itself is enough. So remember Maya, she pulls it off. You can pull this off, too. You can be a loving, polite guest and eat only what you want, no more, no less. So when you think "I don't want to be that person," no, you're going to be yourself. Loving, polite, caring. And it doesn't mean that you have to turn into a Justifying Jane. And it doesn't mean that you're going to get kicked out of your family if you don't eat what everybody says you should eat. You can be Maya, too. She's an aspirational figure in your family. You can pull this off because you are loving, caring, and polite. And if you just choose to eat what you want and still be loving, caring, and polite, then you won't be that person. You'll be a very good guest. Thanks for spending time with me today. Thank you to those of you who stayed till the end here. I'd ask you to share this podcast with a friend. You can text it to them. You can take a screenshot and send it to them or post it on social media and tag me so I can talk to you as well. You know someone who needs to hear this, so please share it. If you aren't coming up with someone that wants to share it, please take a moment to stop and rate the podcast. I love your comments. I love your ideas. And I use them to come up with more podcast episodes. So I invite you to let me know what else you'd like to hear about. I also invite you to go to the website and get the free mini-course: How professional women over age 50 lose weight for the last time. Go to vibrant-md.com or HeatherIoMD.com, and you will find it there. Thanks for being with me today.
