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We all have force feeders in our life, and usually they have the best of intention. And what it is, is when we younger we start to associate meals and family get togethers with love. I mean just think of Christmas or Thanksgiving Day where we are surrounded with food and love and relatives and it is all about this. You are part of the family, and everybody joins in. And we overeat and overindulge in those days.
And you might as well have noticed this as well, when we have holiday times like that, where we overindulge, we also get ill - have you noticed this, we have an overindulgence for a day or two. And about a week later, we are usually down with a cold or flu or some something terrible. But usually, because we are not looking after the body while we are overindulging, it is that thing of pleasure in the moment, but then regretting later. So when we stuff ourselves silly with lots of sugary, sickly, or fatty things, and just keep overdoing it we have really known it's not good for us, but we're in that position then of being surrounded by likeminded people who all think this is what we're supposed to do.
We are supposed to eat more than we should do. We get it when we visit our home, when will bring out cakes and say, "Oh, I'd made this cake. I knew you were coming up; I made this cake and have a slice. And you can say, "ah, but at the moment, I'm watching my weight and I'm actually getting a lot trimmer. "Oh, I know you are, I noticed that BUT have a piece of cake." And you say, "Well, I'd rather not." "But I made it for you." And they give us a guilt trip.
It is very rare that somebody says, "Oh, I understand that totally I will put it away, I won't tempt you with it." It is "Oh, go on one bit won't harm you, I did make it for you. And it will go off and I will have wasted all that money that I spent today. I haven't got a lot of money you know." So we do get forced into situations where we do this and what we have got to do is learn to be assertive, in a gentle way.
When I talk to people about assertion, a lot of people get mixed up with aggression. And they are two entirely different things. Aggression is when I force you to do something you do not want to do and I get angry about it. Assertion is when somebody is trying to force me to do something I do not want to do. And I actually say, "No, I'm not doing it." I do not have to give a reason. As soon as you go into reason giving, you're backpedalling “Oh, well, I'd like to but…” and then I start, making excuses or even outright lying “oh I'm busy that day, I can't do that, or I can't, oh.” And then people say “Oh, well, you could have it this following day, or you could do this.” And you get stuck then and you end up giving in because you feel guilty.
So if you learn assertion, and I do not intend to make this part of this course, but I will make some videos about that. But go on YouTube, or Vimeo or someplace and just tap in the word “assertion”. And you will see lots of things there that can help you to become more assertive. And if you are assertive, you do not need to be aggressive. In fact, I am very assertive, but I am not very aggressive. I do not need to be. Once you are confident that nobody can force you to do something, it changes everything. I'll give you for instance, from my own life, I was a bit of a loner as a lad and used to hang around on my own. By the time girls came into the picture, I would go to dances and I would dance with the prettiest of two or three girls that were dancing together. And because of that, if I then walked her home, I would get beaten up as I left because somebody else would have seen that person and thought “I don't stand any chance.. oh, he's stolen her off me,” and I would get beaten up. And I had to learn how to talk myself out of those situations. Which, when it is one person against six or seven lads it is not easy. So by the time I was about 19 or 20, I learned karate. And then I went on to do other things with martial arts. And I then had that confidence that nobody could attack me or beat me up. Or if they did, they would come off worse themselves. I have never had anybody try and attack me since, I have had a few situations where I have been in where I know I was about to get attacked. And I've simply looked the person in the eye with that knowing look that says, "You won't get away with this, if you try it, you're going to come off worse," I don't have to say anything, I've never done anything. And I have at least four instances in my life where the other person just turned and gone.
I knew exactly what they were up to, and how they are up to. If we have that confidence, that inner confidence, and if we can love ourselves, like I mentioned earlier, and we do not care what other people think of us, because that's nothing to do with us. Whatever we do, however good we behave, or however bad we behave or that person thinks we behaved. That is their thoughts. It is not ours. We just do the things that we should do.
If we have this attitude towards ourselves, I am alright, I am doing my best. And somebody does not like that. And they want to force you to do what they think you should be doing, if you have learned assertion, you can just simply say, “Okay, I thank you for your input. However, I am not going to do that.” And you can feel confident in doing that. Because quite often the people that will tell you to do things, how to do it, and when you should do it, won't like being stood up to, but as soon as they are stood up to, they don't know what the hell to say anymore. It baffles them. They are used to the weakness of "Oh, I'm busy that day" or whatever. But they are not used to "No, I'm not doing that." No excuses. Nothing, just the straightforward assertion of Thank you, but I am going to turn it down on this occasion. "But I made it for you." That is okay. I know you did, and I love you for it, but I do not want a piece of it now. Thank you. Well, do you want to take it home? Yes, I can take it home. But I doubt I will eat it and it will probably end up in the bin. "Oh, well take it home anyway." “Okay, I will,” that is all you need to do. So learn to be assertive, and you will not then be taking on the calories that other people want you to have.
And here is a thing as well, and I have noticed this with lots of things I help people with. I have helped smokers become a non-smoker and when they go back to the usual crowd they are with and they say I have stopped smoking, people will say, “oh, do have a cigarette, oh come on, you don't mean it, have a cigarette,” they'll get offered more cigarettes when they tell people they have stopped smoking than they did before. And the reason is that if they make it look easy, that person is going to feel guilty that they have not given up. And so what they do is they bring you back into the fold. And if you say I have just reduced by four stones. Somebody will say you are looking good “Oh have a cream bun” because they are overweight, and they do not want to think it was easy for you to do this. And if they can make you put your weight back on, then they can say "well, look, it's not worth trying. They lost four stone and they put it all back on again."
Do watch out for this. Looking after everybody else but not you, looking after their feelings, you are not helping their feelings at all. You're just making yourself feel bad and feel guilty and as I've said before, not only is that a slice of cake, with all those calories, but then there's the calories that are led into your body from the guilt. It is like a double whammy.
Footnote: Manufacturers of processed foods should also be recognised as force feeders. As they deliberately make things that are not good for us knowing that we will overindulge with whilst being aware the food is no good for us. The difference is they do it from a greed for profits, not out of love.