For the 3 other types of people, read part 1
4) Those who disagree with you and try to dissuade you.
There are two types of people under this category.
1) One kind is convinced that the prevalent knowledge is right. They read and educate themselves on what supports their point of view. They will constantly engage with you on a debate or discussion.
You may choose whether or not you want to engage with them.
2) The other kind is ignorant. They have no knowledge about what they believe in. They have no knowledge about what you believe in either. They just do whatever everybody else is doing, and are convinced that they’re doing the right thing and that you’re doing the wrong thing. This kind of uninformed bias is a difficult to handle. Just don’t engage with them when they want to dissuade you. Talking to them is of no use, because they will never make the effort to look at it from the point of view of knowledge. They say stuff like ‘What you’re doing is wrong, you don’t need to do this’. They’re so blind that they can’t see that what they have done has not helped them – they still have fatty liver, diabetes, visceral fat, blood pressure, heart disease, TOFI (thin outside, fat inside), yet they will try to persuade you to do what they are doing.
They also say things like “Just a little won’t hurt, it’s just for this one day”. The thing is, they can’t see that ‘It’s NOT just this one day’. There are so many other people like them who all want just that one day… it adds up to many such days.
A man whom we knew invited us to his home. We had several meals together with him in the past few months, and he knew very well what we ate. The day before we went, he asked us what we would like to eat at his home the next day. We told him that we would have just a little meat and vegetables. I additionally re-enforced to him that I don’t eat sugar. The next day, when I stepped into their home and I was handed a welcome drink – a glass of lime juice with about 3 teaspoons of sugar. I was too shocked to react and quietly drank it out of a sense of propriety. Luckily, the meal was restaurant-bought, and we ordered meat, a little of which we ate. They are also meat-eaters, we all ate the meat together and some vegetables that they had prepared. Then again, dessert was ice-cream. By now, I gathered the courage to say no, at least to the second serving. I’m unable to decipher such behaviour. I’m sure you’ll come across people like this.
There could be only 2 probable reasons why they do this:
- They are of limited intelligence. So, when I say that I don’t eat sugar, they understand it as ‘I don’t eat sugar out of a bowl with a spoon, but I drink it in juice or coffee’.
- They don’t respect our food choices. They don’t care.
Most of the time, people are of ‘above average’ intelligence, and it’s usually the second reason.
I don’t understand this social phenomenon. Why can’t people just accept that you have different food choices? Why can’t they just leave to what you want? The closer they are to you, the more chances they have of manipulating you. Such people hope to make you feel guilty. They want you to think, “In order to make them happy, let me do what I dislike, let me do something that affects my health and wellbeing, it’s important to keep them happy.”
They’re like these bad teenage kids that your mother warned you about – “Have a sniff of cocaine for my sake, machan. Have a couple of rounds of alcohol. I won’t be your friend anymore if you don’t join me!”
So forever people are saying to you,
- Amma wants you to eat cake, why don’t you indulge her?
- It’s our colleague’s birthday, come out and eat fried rice
- It’s your birthday, we have to celebrate with some cake.
My question to them is this –
- If amma loves me so much, why can’t she respect what I want to eat?
- If my colleague has some basic affection or respect for me, why can’t he understand that I do not wish to eat rice?
- If it’s my birthday, shouldn’t you all do something that I like? Instead, you’re asking me do something that I don’t like to do. I mean, it’s my birthday, right? Even on MY birthday, it’s about what YOU want?!
With the 4th kind, you just have to learn to be emotionally strong. You cannot reason out, you cannot explain. They just want to have their way with you. You just have to keep a straight face and say, NO. Just learn how to firmly shake your head from side to side. Such people might think I’m a bitch every time, I say “No thanks , I’m not having that”. That’s okay. I’d rather be a healthy, skinny bitch than an overweight, unhealthy people-pleaser.
The thing is – you previously believed in the same paradigm as them; now, you’ve had a paradigm shift and moved on. They can neither see the new paradigm, nor can they accept that you have moved. Tough luck, their problem, not yours!
So, as we continue to meet people every day and are constantly accosted by food everywhere, I hope you can make healthy, informed choices for yourself and your loved ones, and have the emotional strength to continue to do the right thing.
Wishing you the best on your LCHF journey!
