Weird title, I know. But this is perhaps a weird post too.

Lately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this idea of what fuels some people to stick to their guns and some not to when it comes to how they eat, and a lot of it comes down to, well, spunk, gumption … or, said more plainly, confidence to be themselves even in the face of adversity.

I assure you that most people in your life will be happy that you are getting healthier and happier when you change your lifestyle to a healthier one, but there’s always someone in the crowd who won’t be. It is quite literally ALWAYS someone insecure who sees you succeeding at something she (or he) cannot, and since that person can’t bear to look within to examine the actions she should take to change her own plight, she instead attacks you so that perhaps she can bring you back “down to her level,” which I say without condescension or meaning that there’s some sort of moral superiority to eating well. I say often that “it’s just food,” and I mean that; my life is so vastly, incredibly, indescribably improved by eating well every day, and yet even though I’ve made my career of helping women like you transition to healthier living and eating, I totally get that food is just but one aspect of a happy life. And it took more than changing what I ate to get happy myself.

I’ve not yet been in a position yet where I’ve had to defend my way of eating to anyone openly attacking me, even several years after making the initial switch, though I certainly have some naysayers who are still stuck in the mires of food addiction and choose the negative route about what I eat (and anything anyone else does that doesn’t make them happy, incidentally). And my son is young enough that I have total control over what he eats, so he eats what must be considered extremely healthfully by normal American standards.

But even on the odd occasions when someone has been rather questioning, and even in situations where I’ve had to explain how my family eats, I’ve found it pretty painless to do so. Call it spunk, call it whatever you want. I guess I’m pretty comfortable with the fact that I’m not here to please others; I’m here to lead my own best life. I try to be gracious, generous, accommodating at all times as much as possible, but at the end of the day, I have to protect myself and my family’s health, and if that goes against the grain, so be it.

Certainly this is a confidence issue, and it’s one I’ve spoken to many a client about lately — these issues seem to crop up in 3s or 4s.

But we can each gain confidence. I wasn’t “naturally” confident. I didn’t have a perfect life prior to losing the weight and changing my health, and I had little self-esteem for a large portion of my life. And yet now I do think I’m rather spunky. (I started a blog called LeanGreenMama. I suppose that shows some level of spunkiness, right?) ;)

I got here by following my heart, learning when to trust my Inner Voice and how to ignore my Inner Critic (that I also refer to as the Voice of Doom) who told me to play it “safe” (even when “safe” wasn’t actually safe, like when it told me not to change my eating habits because of fear), and essentially doing things to build up my sense of trust in who I am unfiltered. Meaning that I don’t try to please others; I just try to be myself and peacefully go about my business as much as possible, and that lets me feel good most of the time.

How about you? How do you handle these situations where you don’t quite fit in with the other folks because you’re trying to eat healthfully in a world full of greasy chicken wings and fried cheese? Are you spunky? Does your self-esteem hold you back from being the true you?