7 Tips For Eating Plant-Healthy at Home When You’re The Only One

Stop The Resistance

Optimal health comes from a sustainable lifestyle vs. temporary diet or partial compliance.

We can’t have our cake and eat it too. Darn.

Most people who want to change their dietary habits towards being plant-based, or what we call ‘plant-predominant,’ often find their loved ones at home don’t want to adopt the same eating practices.

That can be hard and may cause resistance to make changes for yourself.

Resistance can make us get off track, and ultimately old habits set in.

This is why diet culture is a thing. It’s a vicious cycle. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Humans are wired to take the easy path. We do not want resistance. That’s uncomfortable. We want easy. That’s nicer.

Bad News: There’s No Easy Button

Remember the Staples advertising campaign with the red “Easy” button? That’s a brilliant ad campaign. We want easy, so we press the red Staples button and we get our office supplies easily.

We want an Easy Button for good health too.

Bad news: If the solution to optimal, lasting health was easy, or sold in a pill, everybody would be doing it. There is no Easy Button for good health. And diet culture, fast food, tempting indulgences make it hard.

I’m not saying eating plant-healthy is hard. I’m saying what’s around us, the systems and culture, that is what makes it hard.

Folks at home can increase temptations (by having the trigger foods ever present), encourage old bad habits (“c’mon, let’s eat ice cream”), entice you to join them in unhealthy behaviors (eating a whole bag of Doritos during movie time), poke fun (my family did that for 3 months) and say things like “Just this once you can cheat” or “You’re no fun” or “That’s rabbit food.” Just remember, you’re on a path to better wellness and it’s worth investing in yourself.

I once had a client who would walk through the grocery store candy aisle and physically put her hands up as blinders while saying something like this to herself (like we talked about in our coaching sessions), “My long-term health is worth more than that instant gratification candy bar.”

It may take some work to find a new rhythm in healthful eating, but you’re worth it, and it’s worth the work. Your future healthiest self will thank you.

There’s not an Easy Button, but there is an easier way to optimal health.

The lifestyle

A few years ago I was invited to speak at a Lifestyle Medicine retreat in Houston. Before my talk, the keynote speaker presented an intriguing hour-long presentation with complex graphs, statistics and medical explanations on why plant food is good for health and why animal proteins, high saturated fats and processed foods harm health. He’s a seasoned physician, he knows the data.

[By the way, you can watch my presentation here.]

The keynote speaker ended his wonderful presentation with 5 simple yet profound words that I’ll never forget: “It starts with the food,” he proclaimed.

More specifically, it’s the nutrition - how we nourish our bodies and feed health, or feed disease.

If we don’t change our food choices toward more (or all) plants, then long-lasting good health is hard to get and keep.

We can’t exercise our way to good health (and stay there) without better food. I know, I used to try..

I don’t know about you, but I want to stay happy and healthy well into my 80s, 90s and longer! And, God willing, I will get there. My aunt is currently 100½ years old and she still lives alone in a 3-story house. So I not only have good genes, I have the responsibility to keep my good health, quality of life and independence for a long time. I don’t want to be a burden to anyone.

So, if you have folks at home who contribute to the resistance of you making and succeeding in plant-forward dietary & lifestyle changes, consider just HOW critical food choice is for long-term health, and keep going on the path you know is the right one.

Good News: Nutrition Heals & Protects

Good news: There is an eating pattern that can help protect good health, help you maintain it, and often times, reverse medical conditions, including type 2 diabetes. You can feel better, have energy, reduce symptoms, increase quality of life and protect against disease.

It’s called a plant-based diet.

Switching to a plant-based lifestyle (not diet) may not seem easy at first for a number of reasons. But with practice, like-minded support and a try-and-try-again M.O., muscle memory sets in and things get easier.

Then you’ll wonder why you didn’t do this a long time ago.

My husband Jay and I on vacation - it took him 3 months before staring to see my positive results on a plant-based diet before he followed suit. Now, he’s 99% plant-based and we’re healthy together!

Tips

If you live with people who don’t want to eat plant-based, or plant-predominant, at home, I have some tips that will help.

Remember, there’s no Easy Button, but if you follow these tips, you’ll have harmony at home and stronger health as a result.

Tip 1: Make A Mindset Shift

“A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.”  ~Mahatma Gandhi

Diet vs. Lifestyle

A diet is not sustainable. It’s temporary.

A lifestyle is sustainable. It’s effective and lasting.

Sustainable good health creates good quality of life. And it starts in the mind.

Family Bonus

When you bring plant-based food options into the home, everyone benefits. Click here to read a position statement that plant food is healthy for everyone.

Stop Making Excuses

"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you're right."  ~Henry Ford

Have you ever heard the phrase, “We need to get out of our own way?”

We can make life way too hard on ourselves if we are the stumbling block.

We can conjure up all sorts of excuses why we shouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t and won’t.

Excuses get in the way of success.

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” said hockey great Wayne Gretzky.

Excuses are shots not taken.

Take the shot. And keep shooting.

Don’t let loved ones at home (who won’t eat the same way you want to) add to the excuses of why you’re not, or won’t, change food choices. There are many ways to eat at home and satisfy everyone. Keep reading for how to do this and keep the peace.

Tip 2: Prioritize yourself

Women, mostly, but many men too, put others first. Whether it’s family, career, volunteering or health, women prioritize others and take care of themselves later down the road.

When women get to their late 40s, 50s and early 60s, bodily changes happen, life ‘catches up’ to us and we can’t ‘get away’ with poor eating choices and sedentary lifestyle anymore.

When we put others first, that’s a servant mindset. That’s good.

When we put others first at the expense of our own good, that’s not good.

Just like the falling oxygen masks in an airplane emergency, put on your own mask first. Then assist others.

We can’t help others if we have nothing to source from.

We can’t pour from an empty cup. If we have poor health, it’s hard to pour into others.

I was a stay-home Mom and freelancer. I worked before my kids got up and after they went to bed and in between I raised them. I was there for virtually every game, practice, party, meal, bath and bedtime. I wouldn’t change that for the world.

I prioritized my family while my health withered unbeknownst to me. I had ‘weight creep,’ bloat, constipation galore and just felt lethargic and lousy. They were happy. I felt miserable.

I didn’t know it then, but my food choices were keeping me from being my best.

In 2015 I discovered the plant-based diet, did tons of reading and research, and made the switch. When I did, I lost weight, gained energy and finally (after 42 years) was NOT constipated.

Stop putting others first when it costs you your health and happiness.

We must prioritize health. We are the only ones living with our own body until we die. We suffer the consequences, we feel the pain… or, we enjoy the consequences and we feel the joyful satisfaction.

Freedom Through Prioritizing Food & Self Together

It’s a wonderful thing to prioritize health.

When my clients prioritize their health, eat plants, and do the rest of the tips on this page plus more strategies from the Second Youth Wellness Method digital course, they live in what I call freedom.

Freedom from: chronic illness, taking (so many) medications, feeling lousy, having no energy, experiencing brain fog, stiffness in mobility, aches & pains, loss of independence and others.

Instead, their quality of life is better than ever, even in midlife and beyond.

It’s never too late (or too early) to start making changes that matter.

You’ve worked too hard for too many years to spend your hard-earned money on medications and doctor visits. Instead, spend it on living the life of your dreams.

Just like in that airplane, prioritize yourself, then put on others’ oxygen masks.

Tip 3: Consistency is Key

If you want to use plant foods to improve your health, you must be consistent.

It’s hard to protect good health you already enjoy or get the health improvements you want if you’re not consistent on the plant-based (or plant-predominant) journey.

Meatless Monday is not enough to see real, lasting change. But it’s a good start.

Being inconsistent is like whacking your shin against a glass-top coffee table every time you walk by. If you keep hitting it, you’ll get a wound and it won’t heal.

If you go a different route around the coffee table, then you won’t whack your shin and you’ll be pain-free.

Non-nourishing food choices is like the coffee table. Stop hitting your shin with the coffee table. Stop hitting your health with food that hurts.

Every meal, every bite, is a walk by the glass-top coffee table.

If you keep whacking your health with each meal, snack, beverage or dessert, your wound won’t heal.

If you take away what whacks you, you can heal.

I tell my clients, “Every meal and every bite counts. Give yourself grace for not being perfect because there’s only One who is. But when that happens, just start anew again with the next meal.”

At home, you CAN be consistent with plant-forward food choices even if others aren’t by following these tips.

Tip 4: Go Slow

Learn from the tortoise

There’s a reason the tortoise wins.

Slow and steady does win the race.

The tortoise doesn’t go slow and do nothing. He goes slow while taking action. He takes steady steps forward.

Turn a giant goal (the finish line) into a bunch of smaller goals with baby step action items. Baby steps are forward motions to help you achieve your goal.

If you want to loose 50 pounds, it’s easier to take a baby step of aiming for losing 10 pounds by making small action step shifts in food choices, versus shooting for 50 and changing everything about your food at once.

Giant steps aren’t sustainable. You’ll tire quickly and be right back where you started.

Be Actionable

Make baby steps actionable.

A baby step action item might be to eat oatmeal with berries every morning, seven days a week (check out my guide to help with that - use code SAVE25% for a discount!).

Then the next baby step action item might be to reduce ‘empty calorie’ beverages like soda by 50% and replace it with healthier options like unsweetened tea or kombucha. Or a baby step might be to walk the dog 15 minutes 5 days a week.

Diet culture is about giant steps. They sell pills, packaged food and potions so that we [think we] can achieve giant step goals fast. If you ever do reach that giant step goal, chances are high that you won’t stay there. And then the frustration, feelings of failure, and roller coaster dieting process start all over again.

Taking small steps toward reasonable goals will help you feel that it’s attainable, and when you achieve it, you’ll feel successful and motivated to keep going.

Your loved ones at home may think you’re off your rocker if you change too much too fast. And that can cause resistance at home. If you make small steady changes and build from there, it’s a smoother, more sustainable ride.

Tip 5: Make Swaps

We’re lucky.

There are SO many commercially available plant-based alternatives on the market today. If you don’t have them in your local store, you can probably order them online somewhere, either from Amazon or directly from the manufacturer.

You can swap some foods for more high quality, nutrient-dense meals.

I like certain brands that don’t have fillers and that are certified organic. You can find some of my suggestions here on my Best Gadgets page — scroll to the Food section.

Meat-lovers who eat my Not Just For Halloween Taco Soup or Gonna Have Seconds Chili (both from my cookbook) don’t miss the animal flesh. They enjoy the meal and it is a step toward being healthier.

So, even if loved ones at home don’t want to go plant-based, they can enjoy a fully plant-based meal with strategic swaps while promoting their own better health.

Tip 6: Salad Bar Strategy

Eat like you’re at the cafeteria. But don’t have the orange jello or Boston cream pie (those were my favorites at Luby’s back in the day).

When there are lots of eaters at home with different preferences, a Salad Bar Strategy is just what the doctor ordered.

Here’s how to do it…

Set out a bunch of bowls of toppings, add-ins or fillings of different ingredients. Then everyone can choose what they want.

Make MOST of the bowls of ingredients plant-based. Then offer a FEW or ONE animal based ingredient like chicken or yogurt.

The best meals using the Salad Bar Strategy are tacos (use a plant-based taco filling recipe), burritos, loaded potatoes, chili (use a bean-based chili recipe like in my cookbook) or a hot oatmeal bar.

Choose plant-powered ingredients like fresh fruits & vegetables, whole grains, dried unsweetened fruits, raw nuts, vegan dairy products or meat alternatives.

When using the Second Youth Wellness Salad Bar Strategy, everyone is happy with creating their own delicious, nutritious meal.

Tip 7: Be Prepared Strategy

Just like the Boy Scouts, we need to be prepared with food that promotes good health, instead of food that promotes disease.

Batch Cook

Be prepared for the future by having plant-healthy foods at the ready. Batch cook recipes like plant-based cookies, pancakes, muffins, soups or chili and freeze some for later.

You could also batch prep for the week by cutting up fresh veggies and store them in special produce boxes or green bags.

When you batch cook, it’s easy to feel prepared for when hunger or busy days strike. And family members will have them at the ready too to grab for their meals or snacks.

Be prepared for obstacles

Take a survey of your environment, relationships, activities and habits. What could become an obstacle keeping you from succeeding in shifting towards, and staying with, a plant-predominant diet?

If your environment is filled with triggers, manage the triggers. Get rid of them if possible. Change the environment, or what’s in your environment, to support your new lifestyle.

If friends or activities keep you from making plant-forward choices, adjust the exposure to that friend or group, choose to participate in other activities or choose to eat different foods when you’re with them.

If your family is resistant and makes your plant-forward journey harder, have a heart-to-heart conversation with them to share how you feel, why you’re making these changes, and ask them for their compassionate support.

Plan ahead for the future

We can’t predict the future. But we CAN be prepared for when it gets messy or stressful.

Planning ahead NOW for when that happens is critical to staying on course.

If you’re not prepared, it’s so much easier when things get messy or hard to slip back into old ways, unhealthy habits and exacerbate the progress you’ve made.

Think about what might become an obstacle, and do what you can now while it’s calm to mitigate it as a prevention.

Being prepared for what might happen in the future is an often-missed step to the plant-based journey and why some people ‘try to go vegan’ and fail.

Final Thoughts

Making lifestyle changes is hard. We humans like convenient, comfortable and easy.

If we want sustainable good health that lasts well into our sunset years, we must make a mindset shift, prioritize our own health, and take consistent action with intentional slow baby steps.

Swap out animal food with plant food options, use the Salad Bar Strategy and make plans now during calm for any obstacles that may come your way.

I tell my clients to ALWAYS prioritize family over food. It’s not worth losing a relationship over tofu and broccoli. However, there are many ways to do that AND stay true to your own health journey using the dietary eating pattern that has shown to be most protective of long-term health.

You’re not alone in the struggle. Join me or find a group of plant-forward friends and keep going.

You’re worth it!