Dealing with family visits - and LOTS of eating out!

ArtemisMoon

I live two hours away from my entire family. I have found that benefits me in regard to my weight loss, because when I do visit my family, I am bombarded by eating out, food this, food that constantly. I have more than one relative over 350 pounds, as well as diabetic relatives, but that just doesn't seem to matter to them. And it doesn't help that the extended family is about as bad weight wise, and all of their socializing seems to take place around food on a weekly basis. When I came back after my Saturday visit, I calculated that I likely consumed over 2,000 more calories than my calorie goal for the day! I was even trying to be careful but it was hard not having calorie information available.

Any good suggestions on how to deal with family visits with people who don't seem to care how much and how badly they eat? It makes me not want to go home for visits due to the fallout. Being around them seems to lull me into this false sense that it is ok to eat like that, so that is how I think I managed to screw up so badly even trying to be careful. I don't want to come back feeling guilty and trying to do damage control. I feel like they still have far too much influence over me when it comes to food.

jenbo100

I think there are a few ways of dealing with this, I have the same problem having to eat out with work a lot and not wanting to seem fussy but not wanting to put on weight. The suggestions I have are:

1. Do as much research as you can about where you are going to be eating, phone ahead and see what they can tell you about the menu. Pick as sensibly as you can within reason (i.e. burger without the bun, boiled potatoes instead of fries, hold the dressing etc). Knowing what you are going to be having means it shouldn't draw too much attention to what you are ordering from your family, order with confidence.

2. Talk to your family before, by email if you feel more confident, tell them what you are trying to achieve and how they can support you, offer to cook with them rather than going out for dinner or suggest places to go that do healthier options.

3. Exercise more, eat better days either side: this is the "easiest" option, but I wouldn't recommend it. Compensate for your bad day by working off as much as you can in advance and reducing your calories on days either side. It's not ideal for your body as you should be a consistent as possible with your eating and it's difficult to maintain over a length of time, however if it doesn't occur very often it should be ok.

Hope it helps.