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It’s Okay to Say No

Lisa Eirene

About Lisa Eirene Lisa lost 110 pounds through calorie counting and exercise. She swims, bikes, runs, hikes and is enjoying life in Portland, Oregon. Her weight loss story has been featured in First Magazine, Yahoo Health, Woman's Day and Glamour.com.

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20 Comments

  1. K @ Finding a skinnier me

    Ahh no is a hard one but I’ve been super proud of myself because every Thursday there’s donuts by the copier and I can smell them all day but I haven’t touched them yet!! Anyways most of the time I have a hard time explaining why I am saying no so I love your suggestions, I think I’ll try the off gluten one next time 😉

    1. Lisa Eirene

      Good for you!!! That’s so great you resisted. I know how hard that is!

  2. Deb

    I suck at saying no. Pretty much any and all resolve goes out the window the second I arrive at a party or BBQ. Its something I really need to work on!

    1. Lisa Eirene

      Parties are definitely hard! I struggle too. And vacations. I ate way too much on my recent vacation!

  3. Miz

    YES!!
    as long as it is said nicely—NO IS NOT A FOUR LETTER WORD.

  4. Biz

    I think you and I might be similar in that we are “people pleasers.” As long as everyone else around us is happy, you think you will be happy.

    But that only back fires because you put everyone else in front of you, there is nothing left for yourself. I am with you on the office food – there is literally something in my office every day, but I tell myself No, or if someone tries to push the food on me, I just tell them that it isn’t insulin worthy and worth an insulin shot. That usually shuts them up! 😀

    1. Lisa Eirene

      I got so much better at saying no. It’s easy to say no to food pushers, it’s harder to say no to MYSELF.

  5. Dot

    “No” is empowering, builds confidence and puts you in control. Just last week I said no to frozen custard while out with my husband. I told him to go ahead and get some for himself but that I didn’t want any. I felt so good about taking control of that situation.

    1. Lisa Eirene

      I love your take on it — “no” is empowering. YES!

  6. Nour

    Thanks for this blog post! I work in a cancer survivorship centre and we run cooking classes for cancer patients and their families. While the food our chef and dietitian prepare are healthy, its always around and its hard to resist!

    1. Lisa Eirene

      That is really cool you run cooking classes. What kind of things do they teach?

      I imagine it’s very difficult not to eat while cooking in a class. I tend to nibble at home when I just cook regular meals!

      1. Nour

        The class is designed to build capacity in patients and their family members to self-manage. Our chef teaches techniques and skills while the dietitian runs through the health benefits of the ingredients. Really, it is to encourage patients to adopt healthy lifestyles and meet their nutrition needs. Our recipes are designed to be easy, too, since cancer patients often experience fatigue and nausea, and whole lot of other not-so-fun stuff. It is really fun – the patients love it 🙂 We actually live stream the classes and archive recipe snippets. If you’d like to see, I’d be happy to email you the link (don’t want to post here because I don’t want everyone to know where I work, :p)

        1. Lisa Eirene

          That’s really cool. Now if only they had these classes in high school and college. (Bring back home ec!)

          Yes, if you don’t mind, I’d love the link!

          1. Nour

            I agree! I think it would be more effective to engage youth in a fun, hands-on interactive way about food and nutrition. We’ve done classes in the past for youth (with cancer) and they were so excited to “go home and show my mom what I made today”.

            Email incoming 🙂

          2. Lisa Eirene

            Part of the issue of my weight gain was that I didn’t know how to cook, I didn’t know what nutrition was, I didn’t understand the concept of calories and input v. output. It would have been nice to be taught that kind of stuff in school. Calories, exercise, how to cook, what IS a healthy meal, etc. Not just vague, abstract concepts like “eat healthy and exercise.”

          3. Nour

            Same boat! I think even what is made public is just not enough. I’m Canadian so I’m most familiar with the Canada Food Guide, but have also taken a look at the American “My Plate”. I think they leave too many questions unanswered and gets so confusing having to sift through all that information. I remember in grade 11, I really wanted to lose weight and so I started reading a whole lot of stuff online. It was so hard for me to know what is good versus what is bad, and all those sites trying to sell me something. I gave up so quickly.

          4. Lisa Eirene

            I agree! It needs to be easy to understand and easy to replicate. They need to revamp the whole way they teach kids how to eat, how to cook, what is healthy, etc. Make it easy. Like you said — the kids in your class come home excited to show their parents what they learned how to cook. So the parents need to continue that “training” at home!

          5. Nour

            You know – I’ve seen certain grocery stores in my area have Saturday afternoon cooking classes. Would be interesting to do something like that. Have a session for parents and their kids, with recipes that the kids can help with that are also nutritious!! There was a live twitter chat about kids in the kitchen yesterday night, or the night before!

          6. Lisa Eirene

            That’s fun! I should see if there is something like that here. I would totally go.

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