Plant based food for the family!

I don’t talk a lot about my family, basically because it is my personal decision to share all this information and hope that it can contribute somewhere however to somebody living a better life. It’s not theirs and they make their own decisions, are on their journey and it is not up to me saying what they have to do and what not.

I do regularly receive the question that, ‘I want to change, now my partner not, what can I do’ and which is the reason why I will talk about it here a little bit, now mainly my personal view, it is not a family statement.

When me and my partner talk to each other, I (and I think we) never take anything for granted because the other said it. I will give it a big attention, big probability and most likely we will have more in depth discussions about it over time, exchanging on both of our experiences. So a first thing I would say that worked very well for me, is a good open, non judgmental communication. I’m talking about having an open non judgmental communication about food here, nevertheless, I think that it is important for all subjects in a relationship or family.

So for me, if there is one starting point to start on plant based food change (or any other change) in a relation or family, it’s to make sure that I can have open non judgmental communication and respect for each other in each bests authentic self. If I cannot have that, then that will be my core attention and make sure that, that is established before going any further for any kind of subjects.

When established, I’ve seen that there is a certain freedom for me in the family in which I can explore some things on my own. So concretely for food, some meals are pretty individual and I can eat pretty different from other family members. For breakfast I eat fruit, for lunch I eat a salad and so it’s only dinner where we eat together and that is potentially more difficult to change. Now I can already change ⅔ of my day on my own, if I do that, that would already be a big change and big step forward, so is it really related to the other members?

Dinner is thus the most difficult part. Assume I eat a normal dinner of potatoes, vegetables and meat. I can say, I increase the amount of vegetables, keep the potatoes the same and remove the meat just for me. In this way I eat completely plant based and nothing changes for my family. So I really believe that if I want something, I can do and find something to realize that.

What I felt is, that when going on a plant based diet, everything changed like I explain on my blog. Since everything changes in a positive way, partner or family members realize this positive effect as well. It makes them wonder, curios and maybe try something as well. Should I next time take some fruit for you at breakfast as well? Should I just for once make a salad for lunch for you as well? Should we just have one day a week where we all leave the meat out? ...

That is how things in reality started rolling for me as well. And then other members come back with other ideas, leave out the milk, get away of cheese (well the animal based one), let’s buy plant based cheese, let’s buy a veggie burger instead of meat to give it a try...and most importantly continue to have the open non judgmental communication while experimenting.

Share my feelings, share my thoughts, explain the effect it has, listen to each other…

I’m pretty sure by following this process, they will clearly understand how I feel, and that if I’m in the kitchen, I unfortunately cannot go against my natural feeling and don’t make any meat anymore. I truly believe we reached our natural self for food, and in the family, we’ve only very rarely a conflict about food. Sure, we all have our preferences and try to regularly address those for each member. Mine is, can we eat a green salad with vegetables like kale, spinach, broccoli, asparagus, celery, lettuce, fennel, endive, arugula, bell peppers...which I know is not the favorite of all of them.

For the relation with the kids, here can be found some previous information I've written on the subject as well. Now basically I try to listen as well as I can to their needs and preferences, and I try to discover together with them plant based alternatives. Via communication, it didn't take long before we had a dozen meals that they loved...

‘Communication to a relationship is like oxygen to life. Without it...it dies’ - Tony Gaskins

#peace #goodfood #nature #fruitsandvegetables #wholefood #family #ownjourneys #changefood #opennonjudgementalcommunication #opencommunication #respectforeachother #plantbaseddiet #nonjudgementalcommunication #greensalad #TonyGaskins