Are you allowed to eat that on your diet?

I have reached the stage in my weight loss where people know exactly what I'm doing and I don't have the luxury of just not telling anyone anymore. I liked it in those days, no-one noticed and I could go on my merry way and no-one would want any input. 

Now everyone seems to have advice, comments, criticism or just plain know better! Many times in the last few months I've heard 'are you allowed to eat that on your diet?' well lets just see, I'm 24 years old I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to eat whatever I want. Also yes I am on a diet, but I'm not restricted to any sort of specific foods. For instance I'm not doing Atkins or anything so drastic, so I don't have to cut out any major food groups, so again yes I am allowed to eat whatever I want. 

This question got me thinking. Why do people seem to be so interested? Or feel the need to tell you what you're doing wrong when you have never asked for advice? There's something about weight loss that makes everyone get involved. They all have some wonderful advice about their cousin's wife's uncle's daughter who lost lots of weight and all they did was drink these awesome shakes, drink water and eat nothing but baby food. Simple! These people, in my experience also tend to be the people who ask 'how are you doing it?' then look thoroughly disappointed when you say nothing but diet and exercise, everyone wants you to say 'oh I took two of these magic pill and woke up 60 pounds lighter.' Everyone looking for an easy answer and in all honesty from my experience, its not hard, its just a long drawn out process and can be ridiculously frustrating when things aren't going to plan. 

Photo from here.

I find the above picture sums it up nicely! 

Anyways back to my original point, people asking 'are you allowed to eat that on your diet?' who think they are doing you a favour by keeping you on track. Where were these people when I was 269 lbs? There was no-one saying to me 'should you really be eating that pizza? or that burger?'. They would never have said that as it would be considered rude. However that was the stage where an intervention would probably have been necessary. 

I have found the most polite way to respond to these comments are to just smile and accept the advice, regardless of whether you're going to use it or not, this way you're spared the lecture on how they know better and they get the lovely warm fuzzy feeling of thinking they helped. I think at the end of the day you always have to do what's best for you. As long as what you are doing is not dangerous to your health, then crack on, keep going and never give up!  

Photo found here.

SW: 269

CW: 208

CGW: 199

xx