How to Say 'No' to Food Pushers

Just say "no, thank you"

A convention in polite society is to offer food more than once. Just say ”No, thank you” without any explanations. If you have to, say it over and over. The food pusher will get the message that you are not going to take the food, while you are still being polite.

Katherine Tallmadge, R.D., a Washington, D.C., nutrition consultant and author of Diet Simple (LifeLine Press, 2002), agrees.

“If you say ‘No, thanks, I’m watching it’ or ‘I’m on a diet,’ you are giving the pusher a double signal,” she says. “You are telling them ‘I’d like it, I just can’t have it; talk me into it.’ Odds are, they will.”