Eating healthy is often hard to do..

Today's post is inspired by a family dinner had last night to celebrate my Mother-in-law's 50th birthday. Everyone went to the House of Chou, an upper scale sit-down Chinese restaurant, and ate a nice family meal together. Father-in-law did all of the ordering for the food and kindly ordered my husband and I eat a plate of steamed vegetables (without sauce) and a bowl of brown rice. It was awesomely thoughtful!!

Sometimes this makes me guilty, even though it really shouldn't since it is a positive thing. A double edged sword, perhaps? The thought that others have to go out of their way sometimes to accommodate a healthy and positive lifestyle is probably just one reason more why some people 'fall off' of the diet, or don't even start to begin with. Especially when the diet is vegetarian or vegan, more and more sacrifices must be made on behalf of the lifestyle changer, as well as their friends and family.

It's often rough - You want to do what is best for your body, but you don't want to give anyone any remote reason to feel upset or conflicted by your choices. For example someone makes you something for supper, which is so kind, but you can't eat it because it isn't strictly conforming to your present dietary needs. Makes like difficult for those who are trying to do something nice for you.

Another hardship I've noticed with eating healthy is eating enough. Nutritious fruits, veggies and legumes are often so filling that you get full before you've eaten enough (calorie/fat wise). This is not to mention the fact that North Americans, generally speaking, tend to get rather lazy about food preparation. We live in a world where Velveeta pasteurized, processed, cheese-food product over Macaroni made with enriched white semolina flour counts as a certifiable home-made meal done in 10 minutes or less. Nothing about it is actually home-made! I don't know about you, but anything called "pasteurized, processed, cheese-food product" just doesn't get my tummy grumbling with anticipation of a tasty meal. ;-) But more to the point, in such a state where such items combined together counts as 'homemade' one can likely see the difficulty one faces when trying to prepare a quick meal that requires substantial thought and effort. Honestly, it's easier to just not eat sometimes!

So this leads me to my ultimate question: How does one accommodate healthy lifestyle choices (diet, exercise, sleep routines, etc) in a world that is in a pretty unhealthy state of affairs? Does one only surround themselves with like-minded health-nuts? Does one take the lofty 'eccentric' approach? Does one try their best to explain why they are doing, without trying to insult the choices someone else is making for themselves? How do you turn down well-intentioned gifts? How to you turn down the 'It's a holiday! It only happens once per year, dig in!"? Lastly, how does one make sure they're not ostracized or excluded due to their personal choices?

Below, for your viewing pleasure, is a photo of yesterday's lunch. Bok choy, asparagus, tofu, mushrooms, sprouts and the usual fare.

Eggs out for today!