Chapter 6
Family Traps
Eating with your family—whether it’s the one you grew up with, your extended family, or your partner or kids—can be fraught with difficulty. Interacting with family members around food can lead to a variety of traps for dieters who are valiantly trying to stick to their plan.
If you have an “everyone-gets-along” family, eating occasions can be pleasant and fun, and you may not have too much difficulty sticking to your eating plan. Unless . . .
Unless there are loads of enticing treats that you crave.
Unless you’re tempted to eat like family members who aren’t actively trying to watch their weight.
Unless you’re tempted to keep drinking or eating to keep a good time going.
Another problem may arise at home, even if your partner or family is relatively supportive. You may have trouble convincing yourself that you are entitled to make necessary changes, either temporary or long-term ones, especially if the changes affect the rest of the family. For example, many dieters change when they eat, what they eat, and the food they keep in the house. Or they may change who is responsible for shopping, preparing, or cleaning up after meals. But to make these changes, they have to feel entitled to do so.
When family members are difficult, the problems become even more challenging. Maybe certain people in your family don’t want you to make changes, even when they recognize that those changes could help you. Spouses or partners can grow attached to “the way things are.” Or maybe they fear you’ll lose weight and then lose interest in them. Children are not known for happily relinquishing junk food or unlimited access to certain foods. Your parents and grandparents may toss around a bit of guilt if you try to make changes in family eating rituals. Siblings and cousins may not want to face the uncomfortable realization that they should really change their eating, too. You may encounter all kinds of resistance or be subject to unkind, demoralizing remarks: “Why even bother? You know you’re never going to lose weight. You always gain it back.”
To overcome complex, recurring family traps, you need to have a plan that will help you respond to your sabotaging thoughts while you also become more assertive with your loved ones. You can fine-tune strategies by learning about the most common family traps.
#1: The Criticizer Trap
You have unsupportive family members who make negative comments.
Growing up in a small town in Connecticut, Mia always dreamed of the day she would be able to move out of her parents’ house. As a teenager, she had had a stormy relationship with both her mother and father, and she couldn’t wait to go away to college. Once she did, she never lived at home again, but she still visited occasionally—and every visit was a fresh reminder of why Mia had been so desperate to leave.
As a lawyer living in Manhattan, Mia loved the energy and vibrancy of her chosen city but found it difficult to balance healthy eating and exercise with a demanding job. She loved to eat, and her weight had always been an issue growing up. Some of her oldest, clearest memories were of being told by her mother on a daily basis that she was too heavy. Her mother constantly directed Mia’s eating: when she should eat, what she should eat, and how much she should eat. She let Mia’s sister, who didn’t have a weight problem, have dessert, but not Mia—which made Mia angry. At our first session (held via Skype), Mia told me she was more than eighty pounds overweight.
When we first started working with dieters, we were struck by how thoughtless, critical, or downright mean family members can be about body weight and appearance. We recognized that we could talk endlessly about how our clients’ upbringing contributed to their current weight problems—but such a focus would do little to help them lose weight now. Instead we found that the most effective approach was to focus on how to respond to the cutting remarks that dieters still hear, to learn how to let those remarks roll off their backs, and to stick to their plans anyway.
Mia had clearly been hurt by her mother’s comments over the years, but she began to understand that she couldn’t change the past, only the present. She agreed to work on learning how to handle her mother now.
After four months of working together, Mia had lost nearly fifteen pounds. Now she was worried about how to handle a visit home to celebrate her father’s birthday. “I’m sure Mom will say things like, ‘Your clothes are looking too tight’ or ‘You’re not really going to have a second helping, are you?’ The last time I was home, she came down to the kitchen around ten at night and saw me taking a brownie, and she said, ‘I think you’re just fooling yourself if you think you’ll ever lose weight eating like that.’”
“Being at home sounds like it must be really difficult,” I sympathized. “Can we start with how to handle your mom’s comments?” When Mia agreed, I asked her what she’d like to be able to say.
“Well, I’d like to say that she needs to mind her own business!”
I nodded. “I’m not surprised you would! How do you think she’d react if you said that?”
“Not well,” she sighed. “She’d probably get defensive and go around in a huff the whole rest of the time I’m there.” After thinking for a few moments, Mia said, “I guess it would be better to say, ‘Please don’t make any comments about my weight. When you say something about my eating, it’s just counterproductive.’”
Mia decided she would try to forestall her mother’s negative comments by saying that exact sentence to her over the phone before she left New York. “And if she starts in with me, I’ll tell her to stop.” She smiled. “As a lawyer, I’ve learned how to be firm.” To help her prepare for the visit, Mia made the following list:
Weekend Visit Home
1. Call Mom before the weekend. Tell her I know she’s concerned about my weight—but it’s just counterproductive when she says anything about my eating.
2. If she protests, nicely but firmly say, “Please stop. I don’t want to discuss it.”
3. Then change the subject—ask her about the weekend plans or how other family members are doing.
Then we discussed what Mia could do if she was still bothered by her mother’s comments even after they had changed the subject. Mia realized that she would need to get her mind off what her mother had said. I told her that some people find it helpful to imagine that comments like these are just insignificant little raindrops sliding down a windshield or off a raincoat into oblivion. Mia liked this metaphor and created a visual image of raindrops sliding down her shiny new white raincoat and falling right off. She added this item to her list.
4. If Mom makes comments, take control of the situation. Refuse to talk about it and then let her comments roll off my back, like raindrops off my new raincoat.
A few days after our session, Mia told me that she had unexpectedly gotten a chance to practice her new strategy. Her mother had called, announced that she was coming to town, and told Mia she wanted to have dinner with her. Mia was pleased with how she handled herself at the restaurant. She was able to limit her mother’s negative remarks by being assertive and changing the subject. And then she was able to put on her “raincoat” and let her mother’s comments roll off her back. She really took control of the situation.
Escape the Criticizer Trap
The criticizer can vary from well meaning but misguided to downright cruel, with many shades in between. Start with these suggestions. Whether or not you can stop offensive comments, you can certainly change your reaction to them.
Directly ask your family members not to make comments. For example, if they’re skeptical about whether you’ll succeed this time, you could say, “Time will tell, but in the meantime, please don’t make any more comments about this.”
Create a visual image so you can “put on your raincoat” or “turn on the windshield wipers” and have critical comments harmlessly slide away.
When family members say things that undermine your confidence in being able to lose weight, remind yourself, “This time is different—I’m learning skills I never had before.”
If the family members making unhelpful comments are not mean spirited, remind yourself that they may actually believe they are being helpful. They may not be intentionally trying to anger or demoralize you. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you should accept their unhelpful remarks without saying anything.
Remember, you are in charge of your reaction. You can choose to let what others say throw you off track and interfere with your goal of losing weight—or you can decide not to let the comments get in the way and continue following your plan.
#2: The Rebel Trap
You revert to old behaviors when interacting with your family.
Many adults naturally revert to childlike behavior when they are with their family. If you spent your childhood and teen years being told what to eat and what not to eat or feeling criticized about your appearance, you may find yourself rebelling many years later when you’re around your family. This trap occurs when the rebellious choices you make sabotage your efforts. Ironically, if you have a knee-jerk reaction to your family and engage in unhealthy eating that drives you farther from your goals, you’re not making free, independent choices. You’re still being controlled.
The potential for rebellion was another problematic aspect of Mia’s trip. “Historically, even when my eating has been more or less okay in my everyday life, I tend to lose control when I go home,” she said. “I just regress back to old bad habits.” When she was a teen, Mia hid food in her room or secretly slipped downstairs after everyone had gone to bed to eat chocolate chips or other junk food from the pantry. Every day she’d spend her lunch money on french fries and a milk shake. Even now, fifteen years later, those habits often came back when she returned home. On the drive to her parents’ house, she would stop to buy treats to hide in her room, and sometimes she would sneak downstairs at night to eat leftovers from the fridge and food from the pantry. She felt a strong urge to rebel whenever she saw her mother watching what she ate.
Mia needed to keep in mind that though she was not able to make all her own eating decisions when she was a kid, she was absolutely in control now. Her mother no longer had the power to dictate what she did and didn’t eat. She created the following reminder card:
I am an adult and I make all my own food decisions. Mom no longer has the power to make them for me, so there’s nothing to rebel against anymore. If I have a knee-jerk reaction to her and rebel by overeating, it only hurts me. It’s my goal to lose weight.
Mia told me that even though she knew she shouldn’t, she was still tempted to bring junk food with her. Her sabotaging thought was “If I have a rotten time at home, at least I’ll have some treats to eat at night and feel better.” But Mia recognized that she would only feel better for the few minutes the food was in her mouth. She knew she’d feel guilty and bad afterward. On the other hand, if she stayed in control at night, she’d feel better about herself, which would give her extra strength to deal with her parents. To help her remember this positively reinforcing cycle, Mia made the following reminder card:
Eating junk food at night while I’m at home only makes me feel worse, not better. Staying in control of my eating will make me feel great and strong and make it easier for me to deal with everything else. Going home is hard enough. Don’t make it even harder by getting off track with my eating.
Part of Mia’s night eating was also a classic “fooling yourself” sabotaging thought: “It’s okay to eat [this junk food] because no one is watching.” Rationally, Mia knew that didn’t make sense, but she found that particular sabotaging thought hard to shake. What helped Mia with this thought was reminding herself that calories are calories. It didn’t matter whether her mom knew about the secret eating or not. If she ate too much, she’d gain weight. Period. She captured this important idea on another reminder card:
If I eat extra, unplanned calories in secret at night, I will gain weight, whether or not Mom knows about it. My body processes all calories the same whether 100 people are watching me eat or no one is watching me eat.
Once we had the major hurdles worked out, Mia and I discussed a few additional strategies for her list. She wouldn’t be able to leave work until after seven o’clock on Friday. She knew she’d be hungry on the road and would be tempted to stop for junk food. To avoid this temptation, Mia decided she would bring a healthy and satisfying snack from home to eat right before she got on the road.
Mia had also been walking every day before work. She knew it would feel good to get in some exercise during the weekend. We decided that it would be important for her to get out of the house and take at least one walk on Saturday and again on Sunday, for three reasons: as a stress reliever and a chance to regroup; to maintain her exercise habit, regardless of the circumstances; and to prove to herself that she could change old patterns from her childhood and institute new and healthy ones that she herself chose. Finally, Mia and I discussed what she could do if she had nighttime cravings. She added these items to her list.
Weekend Visit Home
1. Bring a healthy snack from home to eat before I get on the road.
2. Don’t stop and buy junk food; eating it will just make me feel worse.
3. If I’m tempted to sneak downstairs at night and eat, look at my old high school yearbooks or diaries. Choose one of my favorite childhood books to reread.
4. Go for at least one 30-minute walk a day.
5. Read this list and my advantages list and reminder cards at least 3 times a day, starting on Friday.
6. Make sure to give myself extra credit for every skill I practice and every good eating decision I make this weekend.
When Mia and I had another Skype session a few days later, she told me she was really proud of herself. Her experience going home had been more rewarding than usual. Though she still had some difficult nonfood interactions with her mom, she stayed in control of her eating.
The hardest part, she confessed, was when she was lying in her old bed on Saturday night, tempted by the leftover triple-chocolate birthday cake downstairs in the kitchen. “But I read my reminder cards and reminded myself that eating it would make me feel worse, not better. I picked up Little Women and got engrossed in it, and the urge to eat the cake went away. I was so glad that I didn’t eat it!”
Mia said she felt much more comfortable and confident with her eating because she had a plan and knew she would be equipped to handle the difficult parts. She recorded how happy she felt in her memory journal and what she had done to make the weekend such a success. She carefully saved her list for her next trip home.
Escape the Rebel Trap
When it comes to rebellion, you can be your own worst enemy (you, and not anyone else, because you’re in control of every bite of food you put in your mouth). When you tend toward self-sabotage, the best overall strategy is to continually question your unhelpful thinking and remind yourself, “If I do this, whom will my overeating actually affect? Won’t I really just be hurting myself? What does my adult mind say about this?”
Remember that you’ve grown up and you are now responsible for making your own food decisions. It’s up to you whether you let difficult family interactions affect your eating.
Keep in mind that it doesn’t matter if you eat in secret or in front of other people. If you take in too many calories, you’ll gain weight. Your body registers every bite.
Read your reminder cards whenever you’re tempted to rebel by eating.
Give yourself credit for dealing with your rebellious self-sabotage.
Note your successes over self-sabotage in your memory journal.
#3: The Can’t Deprive the Family Trap
You keep tempting foods at home because you don’t want your family to “suffer.”
Maxine worked for a local nonprofit organization and was devoted to her three kids and their many activities. Preparing meals they really enjoyed and stocking the house with snacks they asked for were ways she communicated her love, just as her mother had done when Maxine was growing up. But it was also a way Maxine sabotaged the goal she had for herself to eat in a more healthy way and lose weight.
Potato chips were Maxine’s nemesis. Maxine continued to buy a large bag of chips for the family during her major shopping trip of the week even though they were a constant temptation and often got the better of her. “It’s ridiculous—I’m constantly finishing a bag, and then I have to buy another one so my family doesn’t realize they’re gone, and then I finish the new bag. And so I usually end up buying a third bag. It’s really a problem.”
I told Maxine that the buy-eat-buy cycle was not ridiculous when you considered that the potato chip industry expressly engineers chips to be as tempting as possible. I assured her that almost every successful dieter and maintainer has at least one extremely tempting food that they limit or keep out of the house entirely, either temporarily or permanently. “For me it used to be cashews,” I told her. “It wasn’t that I couldn’t learn to eat cashews in reasonable portions, and ultimately I did. But at one point it was a struggle, so I just didn’t buy them for a while. I figured, why make things harder than they need to be?”
Maxine recognized that keeping lots of potato chips around the house sabotaged her weight-loss efforts and she needed to stop, at least until her resistance muscle got stronger. But she struggled with the idea of telling her kids that she was planning a change. Lots of sabotaging thoughts got in the way:
“I don’t want to deprive the kids.”
“They won’t like not having potato chips around.”
“Why should they suffer because I can’t control myself?”
We talked about the fact that this wasn’t an all-or-nothing situation: it wasn’t as if there had to be a big bag of potato chips in the house or none at all. But Maxine didn’t think buying packs of single-serve bags of potato chips would work; she might be tempted to eat several bags at a time. We came up with a new idea. The kids could buy chips for lunch at school or just one single-serve bag at the convenience store to eat as a snack that day. When Maxine thought about it, she realized that they would probably even prefer to buy the kind of chips they wanted.
The more we talked, the more Maxine recognized that of course her kids wouldn’t suffer if she stopped buying large bags of chips. She also wasn’t depriving them of healthy food (quite the contrary, in fact). Maxine composed a reminder card so she wouldn’t falter when broaching the change with her kids:
I need to tell the family that we won’t be having big bags of potato chips in the house, at least for a while. The kids can buy chips themselves, and they’d probably prefer that anyway. They won’t suffer. Not having a big bag of chips won’t deprive them of any important nutrients.
Escape the Can’t Deprive the Family Trap
Even people with supreme self-discipline often have a weakness for certain foods. And no law dictates that you have to provide your family with any particular food. Your sabotaging thoughts can really interfere with making changes that are important if you are to reach your goal of long-lasting weight loss.
Assess how big a sacrifice it will really be for your family if you keep difficult-to-resist foods out of the house, at least temporarily. Compare that with the potential benefit for you.
If you decide to have these foods in your house, consider keeping only single-serving packages, if you can limit yourself to just one.
Store these foods in places you can’t see or easily access. Research has demonstrated that you are much more likely to achieve your goals if you avoid visual cues. And while out of sight is out of mind, out of the house is even better.
#4: The Me-First Mule Trap
Stubborn or controlling family members don’t want to make changes.
In some cases, loved ones react poorly when you ask for changes. Perhaps your spouse or partner feels threatened by your weight loss; if you get too thin, you might leave him. Or maybe she sees your efforts to get healthy as an unwelcome mirror for her own unhealthy habits—and she’d rather sabotage you than make changes herself. If those scenarios sound accurate, you probably have a genuine me-first mule in your house, and you may need stronger strategies.
Me-first mules are on a continuum of difficulty. The easier ones are family members who are flexible in other areas but insist on their way when it comes to decisions about food. The ones who present the most difficulty are those who are controlling about many issues, including food—the “my-way-or-the-highway” type.
Characterized by stubbornness and immobility, me-first mules insist that their approach to food must reign supreme. They resist your requests to make changes. If you are not already assertive in other areas, you will need to learn this essential interpersonal skill to negotiate changes with the me-first mule.
It turned out that Maxine’s biggest family trap was not her kids; it was her husband, Mike. Mike regularly arrived home from his second-shift job after their youngest child was in bed. As a result, Maxine ate dinner with her children at five-thirty and then ate more a few hours later with Mike. And because Claire, at age thirteen, had become even pickier about her eating, Maxine often ended up preparing two separate meals.
Maxine had been a little vague describing her food intake in the evenings, so I asked her to keep track of everything she ate from the time she got home from work until she went to bed. When she returned for the next session, she was aghast. “I considered dinner with the kids as my major meal. I thought I was just nibbling when I sat down with Mike at nine o’clock—but I guess I wasn’t paying enough attention to how much I was eating.” She found although she didn’t eat as much as Mike did, she was having almost a second meal.
We started by discussing some solutions. Maxine could eat a full meal with the kids and just have a snack with her husband. She could eat a snack with her kids and dinner with her husband. Or she could have half a meal at each.
“If you knew your family wouldn’t give you a hard time, which would you choose?” I asked.
Maxine thought about it. “Well, I’m really hungry when I get home from work and I’m ready for dinner, so I guess I wouldn’t choose to have a snack or half a meal with the kids. But . . .” Maxine hesitated. When I asked her what was going through her mind, she expressed a sabotaging thought: “If I don’t eat a whole meal with Mike, he won’t be happy.”
Maxine had evidence that this thought was true—Mike had expressed annoyance the few times she had told him she wasn’t hungry at nine and didn’t want to eat. “He doesn’t want me to just sit there. He doesn’t like to be the only one eating. When I brought it up with him, he said I shouldn’t eat with the kids; I should wait for him.”
“Does it have to be all or nothing?” I asked. “What would you think about having one food when you sit with him—maybe a salad or a piece of fruit?”
“Hmmm.” She pondered this option and sighed again. “He still won’t be happy about it. He’s always saying that the food is so good and I have to try some of this or that.”
“And how happy are you about the effects of eating with him so he’ll be happy? How happy are you that it’s difficult to carry laundry baskets up and down the basement stairs?”
She shook her head.
“How happy are you that the doctor has told you your blood pressure is too high? Or that you decided not to go to the pool last weekend because you don’t have a bathing suit that fits?”
“Not happy at all,” she admitted. “In fact, pretty unhappy, I guess.”
“How come it’s okay for you to feel unhappy—but not him?”
We sat in silence for a few moments while Maxine reflected on this question. “I see what you mean,” she said finally. “I guess I do see that being healthier should be more important than making Mike happy by eating dinner with him.”
Maxine created the following reminder card:
If Mike is disappointed that I’m not eating more, that’s okay. My goal of being healthier is more important.
Then Maxine said, “Okay, I’ll talk to him. But I’m not sure what I should say.” I suggested we role-play. I would be Maxine, and Maxine would be Mike.
I started. “Mike, when we sit down in a few minutes, I’m just going to have a salad. That’s going to be my plan because I can’t be healthy if I eat with the kids and then eat again with you.”
“But you know I like it when we eat together,” Maxine said, crossing her arms. “Why don’t you skip eating with the kids so you can eat with me?”
“Well, I’d be willing to try that once in a while,” I said. “But it really works out better for me to eat at five-thirty when I’m hungry. I don’t need all the extra food later on.”
Maxine scowled. “But you know it’s not much fun eating by myself.”
“I know. That’s why I’m going to save part of my meal to eat with you. I’m just not going to have another full meal.”
Maxine pursed her lips, looking exasperated. “Can’t you work it out another way?”
“It’s possible, but this seems like my best bet to lose weight.”
Her voice softened a bit. “Come on, you don’t really have to lose weight.”
“Yes, I do. It’s not healthy for me to be at this weight. And I keep gaining every year. I know you don’t like it when I don’t go to the beach or when I get so out of breath I can’t help you outside.”
“I can rake and shovel by myself. You don’t need to help.”
“Thank you, but I don’t want this to get any worse. I really want it to get better.”
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t like the idea.”
“I know. But I’d like to try it for two weeks and see how it goes. Okay, are you ready for dinner now?”
Role-playing helped Maxine feel more confident about standing up to Mike. She committed to her plan by making a list.
Eating Dinner with Mike
1. Tell Mike my plan will be to have a salad with him because
• It’s not healthy for me to continue to gain weight every year.
• My blood pressure is too high and I get out of breath too easily.
• It’s getting hard to carry the laundry up and down the steps.
2. Tell him I want to try this for 2 weeks.
3. Then change the subject.
I sensed that Maxine needed more fortification. I asked her if she could think of a time when she stood up to her husband on a nonfood matter. She thought about it. “Yes, a couple of weeks ago. Mike wanted to take our son Tim to a movie that I thought would be too scary. Mike was pretty stubborn, but he did listen to reason.”
“Great example,” I said. “So if you feel like backing down about the two-dinner issue, can you remind yourself of how successful you were in standing up to Mike to protect Tim?” Maxine summarized our discussion on a reminder card:
I stood up to Mike for Tim’s sake, and I can stand up to him on my own behalf. This shows me that when I think something is important, I can do it!
When Maxine returned the following week, I asked her how it had gone. “Actually, he seemed a little surprised that I stood up to him. He did give me kind of a hard time at first. But I stuck to my guns and limited myself to just a salad every night. And now I think he accepts it.”
“That’s terrific!” I replied. It was a real triumph for Maxine, the first of several. Mike gave her plenty of opportunities to practice being assertive. He was really a classic example of a me-first mule.
Escape the Me-First Mule Trap
If you have never lived with someone like Mike, you might think that Maxine is a pushover. But take a look at your interactions with family members; you may find some similarities. If you have a me-first mule in your life, you need to learn to be assertive. You may never be able to convince the mule to consider the needs of others in the stable. But if you are firm and persistent, you can nicely and assertively insist on making changes that are important for your well-being. Some of the following tips may apply in your situation:
If you think it will help, talk about the importance of your being healthy and how being unhealthy is negatively affecting you in specific ways (and if relevant, how it’s negatively affecting others, especially the me-first mule).
If necessary, start with a compromise—getting part of the change you need—and then over time introduce additional changes. For example, you might start by telling your meat-and-potatoes spouse that you want to eat a little lighter once a week. Then you could move up to two or three times a week. Small steps may be the way to go with me-first mules who are adamantly against changes they don’t initiate, especially wholesale changes.
Practice your skills with a friend by role-playing a potential confrontation with your me-first mule. Ask your friend to act stubborn so you can practice being persistent. (If you get stuck, reverse roles and ask her what she would say.) Write down important points.
Visualize yourself being assertive and rehearse assertive statements to gain the strength and stamina not to back down. Assertiveness is not an inborn trait; it’s a learned skill.
Consider telling the me-first mule that you will make the change for a short time (perhaps two weeks or a month) and then reevaluate.
#5: The Me-Last Martyr Trap
You feel unentitled to ask family members to make changes.
Some people tend to get stuck in a “you first / me last” pattern. Constantly putting others first can become such an ingrained habit that you don’t even recognize that you’ve been relegating your own needs to the bottom of the list.
When Maxine and I began to discuss her difficulties, it became apparent that she was still a me-last martyr. She knew intellectually that it was problematic for her, for example, to cook a different meal for her daughter, Claire, or to go out for ice cream with Mike and the kids on Saturday afternoons. But she still believed that she should make everyone happy.
“Could these problems be new examples of how you put everyone else’s desires ahead of your needs?” I asked. “Claire doesn’t need you to cook her a separate meal. Mike doesn’t need you to get ice cream with him and the kids. But you need to eat differently to keep healthy.” I let her think about this for a moment. “Protecting your health isn’t just a desire to eat differently,” I continued. “It’s a need. What do you think will happen if you don’t start putting your needs above some of their desires? Aren’t you entitled to ask your family to make changes?”
Maxine sighed. Standing up for herself was still difficult. But she could see that it would be necessary if she were to lose weight. “I guess it’s okay to do what I need to do—even if they don’t like it. The kids did get used to the potato chip rule. Mike doesn’t complain much anymore about my eating only a salad with him.”
“Exactly!” I said. “And it’s not just okay but important!” I reminded Maxine that she wasn’t asking her family to make changes to make them unhappy; she was asking them to make changes so she could reach extraordinarily important goals, so she could safeguard her health.
My needs are more important than my family’s wants. I’m entitled to institute changes so I can reach important goals. Not making changes hasn’t worked. Even if they don’t like the changes, they’ll eventually get used to them.
Over the next few weeks, Maxine gradually introduced additional changes—some temporary and others permanent. For example, she decided to cook just one meal for everyone. She got Claire to help her make dishes that they could freeze in single portions (lasagna, for example) for Claire to heat in the microwave for herself. And Claire always had the option of making herself a sandwich.
As time went on, Maxine slowly began to identify her needs and implement the necessary changes. Putting herself first became easier, especially when she realized that her family adapted to a new status quo fairly quickly.
Escape the Me-Last Martyr Trap
Do you fall into this trap? Sometimes putting yourself last is so habitual that you don’t even realize you’re doing it. To identify the changes you need to make, imagine an alternate reality. If you knew for sure that your family would happily go along with anything you wanted, what would you do differently?
Consider how the status quo has been interfering with your ability to lose weight.
Identify sabotaging thoughts. Do you believe, for example, that you have to make your family happy no matter what? If you’re hesitant to put yourself first, ask yourself, “Isn’t it okay for family members to be inconvenienced or slightly uncomfortable for an important cause?”
Assess whether you’re viewing changes in an all-or-nothing way. Are you assuming that any change you make has to be permanent or not at all? Or that if they’re not happy about a change now, they’ll never accept it?
Creating Escape Plans for Family Traps
Maxine’s and Mia’s stories are classic family dilemmas we see quite often in our practice. History, personalities, and family dynamics can make family interactions and gatherings into a minefield when you’re trying to lose weight. Still, the foundation strategies and the strategies in this chapter can help you solve family problems, whether they’re related to others’ comments and actions or to your own sabotaging thoughts and behavior.
Create your own escape plans:
Identify a future situation in which a family trap might arise.
Record your sabotaging thoughts.
Write a compelling response to each sabotaging thought.
Develop a list of strategies.
Review and revise your escape plan often.
Consider the following sample escape plan as you brainstorm and craft your own.
Escape Plan: Family Trap
Situation #1: Baking cookies with Mom. I will be tempted to eat too much. She will insist that I take lots of cookies home with me and may criticize me if I don’t.
| Sabotaging Thoughts | Reminders | Strategies |
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I love cookie dough. I hardly ever get the chance to have it. It won’t matter if I have it. And Mom is having some, too. I’ll hurt Mom’s feelings if I tell her I’m not taking any cookies home. Mom will be so disappointed if I don’t take cookies home. I shouldn’t disappoint her. Mom will criticize me if I tell her I’m not taking cookies home or if I tell her I’m trying to lose weight. |
Since my goal is to lose weight, IT DOES MATTER if I eat too much cookie dough. Every time I get off track with my eating, I make it so much more likely that I’ll get off track the next time, too. How much cookie dough Mom eats will have zero effect on the weight that I’ll gain if I eat more than I planned. I’m an adult. I need to make decisions that are in line with goals that are important to me. It’s okay if Mom is disappointed. Her disappointment will be minor and fleeting. If I eat too much, my disappointment will be huge. Mom may criticize me, but so what if she does. I can ask her to stop. Roy would have no problem saying that to her. |
Eat a good lunch before I go and read my advantages list and reminder cards. Plan to have 1 tablespoon of cookie dough and 3 cookies, but eat them sitting down. Call Mom now and tell her I’d love to bake with her but I won’t be taking any cookies home. Use Roy as my role model. If she criticizes me, be nice but firm, ask her to stop, then quickly change the subject. Set a new standard of not letting Mom push food on me. If I don’t want to take any cookies home, that means I’m definitely not taking them home. Give myself lots of credit for sticking up for myself. |
Reflect and Recommit: Why I Want to Escape This Trap
You can keep denying your own needs to keep your family happy—but be ready to keep yourself unhappy in the process. You deserve to do what you need to do to lose weight and become healthier. You can learn to make changes that protect your needs, even in moments of conflict or power struggle.
What has happened in the past in your interactions with difficult family members? Have you given in? What’s likely to happen in the future if you don’t change? Why do you act as if it’s more important to fulfill other people’s desires instead of taking care of yourself? Why do other people deserve your care, but not you?
Take a long, hard look at some of the family traps you’ve encountered, so you can have a head start on the next family conflict. Take a few minutes to write one final summary reminder card to help motivate you to make changes and keep making changes.