I think this is a great example that everybody had some significant and difficult barriers to staying on plan. For some maybe it is a spouse, or work "food-pushers"... For me it is the challenge of being on the road all the time and having to eat 3 meals out on expense account a day.

I think it's important to recognize A) That they are barriers and B) Acknowledge that you likely can't remove the barrier so we've got to figure out how to get around it.

Pure willpower is always an option in the aresenal (like when you went to Popeye's and had to ignore the smell temptation), but I always want to use that as my last resort. If I have to rely on willpower alone constantly throughout the day I think I am setting myself up for failure.

I always think this "food pushing" behavior goes way, way back in our species.

I think of a group of chimpanzees, after one has found a tree with ripe fruit & goes to tell the others, so they all converge on the tree busily picking fruit as a communal activity & gorge themselves together.

I used to think this at the office because there was a coworker, a hungry guy with an incredible metabolism, who used to wander by all the conference rooms & huddle rooms, looking for meetings that had just disbanded & checking out what had been left by the caterers on the side tables. He'd come back all excited, waving his arms, quite chimplike: "There's food! Conference Room A! Chocolate chips." Or "The senior leadership team left half its sandwiches." And people would start leaving their desks to go scavenge, or they'd carry off the plate full of cookies & place it in the breakroom for others.

I know this is a sign of generosity, of sharing information, even of bonding, when people stand around eating together. And if you don't eat with the other chimps, if you're not doing what the others do, you look standoffish, uninvolved. You have to overcompensate by saying brightly, so they know you're not a hostile b*tch: "My, that looks good ... Oh, I would, but I'm so full ..." & smiling all around like an actress in a bad sitcom.

Fight your chimp brain. It's your duty as an evolved & evolving human. And keep in mind that because this behavior goes back so long, it's never going to stop. Ever. You're always going to need an arsenal of strategies to cope.

(The only workplace I've ever been in where people weren't like this was when I interned at a famous NY magazine & all the women were dieting or had eating disorders & then they competed NOT to eat. But this was equally freaky in its own way & I would not wish to be back in that culture again.)

Yikes, that sounds terrifying! I remember something similar in high school. A small group of girls (I was one) competing not to eat. I felt I'd accomplished something if I could proudly announce I hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast the previous day. And, believe it or not, I was taken to task for chewing gum! I was actually asked if I was aware of how many calories are in a stick of gum. Unbelievable. (Did I lose weight? Not an ounce.)

It occurs to me that being diabetic gives me a built-in excuse for the non-family food pushers. All I have to say is "no thanks, I'm diabetic," and they don't offer twice. But family members do. My husband is also diabetic, and I guess he figures if he can eat it safely, I can too. But I'm insulin-dependent, and he isn't. Plus, being a woman, I simply don't need to eat as much as a man does. As for other family members, I have one who simply refuses to believe I am diabetic. She says it's just one of those fad diseases, it's being overdiagnosed, and someone's getting rich. (And she's a retired nurse!)

Ugh I hate work food pushers. My new "office" has more food than one can ever imagine. I turn down pizza, cookies, donuts and full catered lunches on a regular basis. My co workers are constantly telling me how everything tastes and how I have to try some. There is also a guy at work that sees all turning down of food as dieting and he swears dieting makes you sick...so you might as well eat....yeah ummm no thanks!

I find food pushing isn`t too bad at work. They all know I`ve worked hard to lose weight since I came here, so they aren`t forcing anything on me. However, that doesn`t mean I`m free from temptation. The special ed teacher made a birthday cake with one of my students for his 14th birthday. She brought it into the class and because she had to go see another student, I had to cut it up and hand it out to all my students. I purposely cut it in a way that made only enough pieces for each of the students. To accomplish that I had to make two pieces giant, so I gave those to the birthday boy and the student who finished his Math first. It smelled and looked so good, but I was strong.

Also, at my school teachers make cookies, muffins, and healthy snacks in the kitchen once a week with their students and sell them at the next day`s recess to earn money for the classroom. It`s been tough for me to make oatmeal cookies, apple bread, banana muffins, trail mix, etc., and not partake. Though the snacks are mostly healthy, I know that 2lbs of butter went into those oatmeal cookies, and I will not let myself have even a portion of that... even though I know it`s 2lbs of butter spread out over 80 cookies.