Recently, I went to Salt Lake City to see my hairdresser (because she can do the fashion colors I like).

While in the lounge at the Salt Lake City Airport, some total stranger saw me with my Belgian Malinois, Hazel, and chimed in with this:

“Your dog is just staring at you. Is something wrong?”

“No. She’s trained to stare at me,” I replied. (If you follow me on social media, you’ve probably seen a photo of her staring at me.)

“I think something is wrong,” he remarked.

“She’s perfectly fine,” I assured him.

“I think she’s hungry,” he insisted.

“She’s not,” I insisted back, starting to feel a little put out by his pushiness.

“I’ll get her some chicken,” he said, as if he wasn’t hearing me. “Can I get her some chicken?”

“No, she’s fine. Please don’t feed or touch her,” I said more firmly.

He FINALLY left us alone, but man. What a pusher!

He sees my dog staring at me and decides something’s wrong and she needs chicken??

Weird deal.

This guy actually reminded me a lot of the food pushers you’re probably gonna deal with during the holiday season.

Whether it’s your grandmother who shows love by stuffing you full of as much food as she can…

The passive-aggressive sibling or in-law who’s uncomfortable with their size and trying to sabotage you so they feel less awful about themselves…

Or it’s people who hear you say you “can’t eat that” and decide to push you to eat the thing you just said you can’t eat…

It can be a LOT to deal with.

The urge to betray yourself to please them and keep the peace can be pretty tough to shrug off.

I get it.

AND I know you can do it. I know you have it in you to stand up for yourself.

If you’re worried about being a jerk, understand that you don’t have to flip people the bird or tell them to “talk to the hand.”

You can even empathize with their position while also sticking with yours.

Abandoning your healthy eating because someone else doesn’t like it means betraying yourself over and over.

It damages your relationship with yourself each time you do it…which makes it harder and harder to trust yourself to stick with it.

(NOT impossible. Just harder.)

Sometimes doing what’s right for you means doing something other people won’t like because it’s not right for THEM.

Do it anyway, okay?

You literally cannot please everyone. Someone will be upset no matter what.

So you may as well do the healthy thing that helps YOU feel good about you.