I've lost about 30 pounds since the beginning of June. That's enough weight that people notice, and many ask what it is I'm doing.
I know what people want to hear is that it's something that doesn't involve much sacrifice. Unfortunately that's not the way it works. For me, anyway. Everyone's bodies and goals are different, so I can only say what works for me and people can take from it what they will.
For various reasons my weight has been up and down and all over the map. I know at this point what my body responds to, how exercise and food affects it, and where most of my limits are. My 30s were all spent in and out of pregnancies and breast feeding, and dealing with the stress of small children, starting a business, and my husband's deployments. But now my last baby is about to turn eight, Ian returned from Iraq four years ago, and I've finally arrived at a place where I have no excuses for getting control over my own body and my health and my habits.
I've learned that exercise has almost no impact on my weight. I swim a mile almost every day. That was true 30 pounds ago and it's true now. Exercise is important, and I'm glad it's something I've added to my routine, but I think weight loss has to do with what you eat, not how you move. Exercise does affect the shape I'm in. I think if I'd lost 30 pounds rapidly and without exercise I would look very different. For instance, my arms are not flabby anymore, but only because my muscle tone is good and my skin has had time to adjust to the change. So I'm not saying exercise isn't helping, but it does not affect the numbers on the scale.
What has brought my weight down is eating less. I know, shocking. But I'm not someone who wants to track every bite I put into my mouth. I don't want to think that hard.
So I've come up with a system for myself that I'm calling "Off Switch Eating."
My own space apart from the babble of the internet
Showing posts with label eating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eating. Show all posts
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
What I'm Eating
Or, I guess, what I'm not eating, which is sugar, dairy, and wheat. Although, honestly, I focus on what I'm happy about eating and not things I'm avoiding.
Back at the beginning of the summer when I wrote about how I needed to get serious about my weight but wasn't sure anymore what to do, I made a decision to just do something and stick with it and see what happens. And so far so good, actually. I've been losing about a pound a week and I'm feeling better. Do I miss things? Sure. But I figure the choice is between having those things and not feeling healthier, or feeling healthier and not having those things. I've done it one way for a while, now I'm doing it the other. I don't get to have it all so I'm not going to worry about what I'm missing. I'll always be missing something.
So why am I cutting out those things? Because it's easier for me in general to just cut out certain categories of food so I don't have to think too hard or struggle with anything. When you flat out make some things off limits you kind of stop seeing them. I did the paleo thing for a bit a while back, and the concept behind it is bunk, but it did work. It taught me to read labels and focus on simple foods and avoid processed items, so going back to some form of that seemed like a good idea.
Back at the beginning of the summer when I wrote about how I needed to get serious about my weight but wasn't sure anymore what to do, I made a decision to just do something and stick with it and see what happens. And so far so good, actually. I've been losing about a pound a week and I'm feeling better. Do I miss things? Sure. But I figure the choice is between having those things and not feeling healthier, or feeling healthier and not having those things. I've done it one way for a while, now I'm doing it the other. I don't get to have it all so I'm not going to worry about what I'm missing. I'll always be missing something.
So why am I cutting out those things? Because it's easier for me in general to just cut out certain categories of food so I don't have to think too hard or struggle with anything. When you flat out make some things off limits you kind of stop seeing them. I did the paleo thing for a bit a while back, and the concept behind it is bunk, but it did work. It taught me to read labels and focus on simple foods and avoid processed items, so going back to some form of that seemed like a good idea.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
What do your kids eat? (Babble)
The second time Ian was deployed in Iraq a relative in town offered
to make dinner for my family one night of our choosing. Food is always a
nice gesture to offer a stressed household, and in this case it was
particularly welcome because she cooked the meal in our home and joined
us at the dinner table. I loved having adult company and no
responsibility for cooking and cleanup for a night. The only stumbling
block came when she asked me ahead of time, “What do your kids eat?”
That sounds like such a simple question. And I suppose it is a simple question, it’s just the answer that gets complicated. My first response was, “I don’t know,” which sounds insane. I’m the mom and I fed them every day so how could I not know?
I realized that the problem wasn’t that I couldn’t name things they ate, I just couldn’t name anything healthy that they ALL ate. At the time the only thing all three of them ate was spinach quiche. Spinach quiche has been our go-to dish at least once a week since Aden was about two. I don’t know why they magically all liked spinach quiche, but we were grateful they did because it isn’t hard to make and it covers all the major food groups in one dish. But besides that? I didn’t have an answer.
“What about broccoli?” my relative asked. Mona and Quinn eat broccoli. “Peas?” Aden eats peas. “Mashed potatoes?” Aden and Quinn eat mashed potatoes. I finally told her that, honestly, she should just make whatever she wanted, I would like it, different kids would like different parts of it, and if they didn’t find anything to eat among the things she served they would get over it. That’s not a satisfying answer to give a cook who wants to please everyone, but it’s just life with feeding kids.
Many kids get into weird picky eating patterns. I know for people without kids or who have forgotten what life with small kids is like it can look like overindulgence to acquiesce to certain food demands, but I think we overlook the fact that most of us aren’t that much better, we just get to choose the food.
Of course I like everything I serve because I made it! I have an inflated sense of my own culinary adventurousness because I’ve had over 40 years to sort through what I like and what I don’t, and it’s rare that something unfamiliar gets set in front of me.
When I was in Southern India I remember sitting at a table set with banana leaves for plates and my brother looked at the menu in a language we didn’t know and just kind of gestured to the waiter that we’d take one of everything because there was no way to predict what any of it would be anyhow. The yellow ball of goo tasted the best, but I had to get past that childish sense of anxiety about the unknown. It’s a big leap of faith to put a strange food in your mouth when you don’t know what to expect, I don’t care what age you are.
I don’t think kids are silly to be wary of that. Even when my kids were in a phase where we had to have three kinds of ravioli on hand because one ate meat, two ate cheese, but of the cheese eaters one only ate round ravioli, I don’t think it’s that crazy. I was at the store the other day with a craving for unsalted sweet potato chips and couldn’t find them, and then I laughed because there were dozens upon dozens of different chips in every variety you could imagine and yet I still was not satisfied. Somehow if a toddler makes that kind of specific demand we think they are crazy, but honestly, I would be very unhappy if someone else picked out all my food all the time and I didn’t get a say.
I’m fascinated by how other families eat. It’s such a basic thing, and no two homes do it the same way. We inherit certain recipes or patterns of eating from where we grew up and add to that our own preferences and experiences and eventually develop a unique manner of eating and preparing food that becomes the new pattern that gets passed down. I think that’s why there is such a strong nostalgia component to certain foods for people because few things evoke a sense of what your specific home is more clearly. It’s like each family has a food fingerprint.
I never think about that in any detail until we go stay in someone else’s house and the things we take for granted aren’t there. A different house means different bread, different peanut butter, and different jelly, so even a lunchtime staple looks new. I’m always touched when we go to my brother’s home in New York every spring that his wife, who is a lifelong vegetarian (and has a bumper sticker in her kitchen reading ‘Friends don’t let friends eat meat’), always stocks up on whatever will make my kids happy, even if that means ham or hot dogs. On our last visit she asked Aden in the grocery store what she wanted and Aden said ‘meatballs,’ and my poor sister-in-law knowing nothing of meatballs looked for them in vain on the shelves because she didn’t know that was something people make instead of buy, generally. Food is a quick way to either divide people or bring them together, and I’m grateful the people I love do their best to have it be the latter.
So what do my kids eat? Well, not surprisingly, desserts are universally popular. Whenever we use the grill we make s’mores for dessert and that always goes over well. I can get a lot of toys and laundry picked up by the kids with the promise of s’mores after dinner. Strawberry shortcake, pumpkin pie, cookies, any kind of cake, ice cream….
Everything you’d expect kids to eat too much of given the chance, they eat. Our only issue is that Aden happens to be allergic to tree nuts (including coconut) so she has to be wary of mystery cookies and pastries outside of our home. In our house dessert is at most a once a week phenomenon. There are enough candy laden holidays and birthday parties and bake sales floating around that adding extra sugar to their diets is overkill much of the time, but occasionally it’s still fun to work with the kids to make an apple pie or a batch of snickerdoodles. We are not anti-dessert, we just don’t make a habit of it.
Beyond the sweet things? That’s where the agreement breaks down. And sadly the rein of the spinach quiche finally ended a couple of weeks ago when Quinn declared out of the blue that he no longer likes the spinach part and would only eat the crust. Now when we serve spinach quiche he gets himself out some yogurt or a slice of turkey ham to bring to his plate. At the moment they will all eat hamburgers, although the last time we made them Aden inexplicably peeled off the outer layer of her bun and ate nothing else, so I don’t know what that means. They will all eat my matzoh ball soup if I serve Mona’s without the matzoh balls. They all eat mashed potatoes, just not at the same time. Usually either Mona or Quinn will decline but I never know which one it will be. Sometimes they all eat spaghetti.
I’m amazed by the phases things go through. Aden used to be crazy about these chicken and mushroom stuffed crepes I would sometimes make and Mona wouldn’t touch them. This year it switched around, and I served them one night at Aden’s request and she decided she didn’t like them, but Mona scarfed them down. Now we make them per Mona’s request from time to time.
Things they were crazy about will go out of favor if they’ve been out of the menu rotation for more than a few months. There is a chicken and wild rice casserole that they used to love that I’m sure they would be suspicious of now. Zucchini-crusted pizza remains unpredictable, where they either eat it all or don’t even want it on their plates. Aden used to be a huge fan of salmon until she ate some while she had a stomach bug and threw it up, and now that’s done. Mona still asks for salmon, and Aden just looks sullen when we serve it. I may have the only kids in America who don’t ask for mac and cheese.
If I want to push a certain food I serve it in a pattern. If I need to use up some bananas, for instance, I cut them up and arrange them on a big plate in the shape of a spiral or a star which attracts their attention, and then they find it amusing to ruin the pattern, forcing me to arrange the remaining slices into a smaller pattern, until it’s gone. My kids are also more likely to try something if I just serve it to myself and tell them about how they used to steal whatever it is off my plate when they were little (which is true). Often after a few bites from my plate where they think they are being silly and I pretend to act annoyed that my food is disappearing, they ask for some on their own plates.
Renaming things often helps. If I buy the carrots with the tops still on we call them bunny carrots, and suddenly they all want carrots so they can pretend they are bunnies. If I can throw the word ‘yummy’ or ‘cheesey’ onto something, that spikes interest. We call baked beans ‘sugar beans’ (which is pretty accurate when you get down to it) and that gets Aden and Quinn to eat those. Parmesan is ‘sprinkle cheese.’ If it sounds like something a cartoon character would eat then they are more likely to try it.
The rule in our house is that dinner is dinner, and for the most part we don’t make separate extra meals for people. There are some exceptions, such as if we order in Chinese food, Mona doesn’t want any but asks if she can have ramen. It takes about one minute to cook her some noodles, and on a night where we don’t have to cook anything else it’s not a big deal. But most nights we just try to serve enough of a variety of things on the table that there is something for each person to eat. They may not try the main course, but if there are peas and potatoes and cut up bananas on the side, everyone will get something. If they don’t like what’s on the table they still have to sit with us during dinner, and they are allowed to supplement if they do the work themselves. If they want to heat up some ravioli or make some toast or a sandwich, that’s okay, as long as Ian or I don’t have to do it and they come eat it at the table.
I don’t believe in fighting about food, but dessert is only for people willing to at least try some of the vegetables. If they know there is dessert coming they will point out that they are eating the broccoli or the beans early in the meal so they get credit. My kids are actually pretty good about fruits and vegetables. We try to keep grapes and apples and bananas around all the time in easy reach, and they can always have a piece of fruit (or a vegetable) without having to ask. They will turn to things like crackers for a snack first if we have them in the house, but are just as likely to eat grapes if they are there. Quinn loves cucumbers. Mona eats a lot of bananas. Aden likes carrots. Mona surprised me at a pasta dinner at her school where she helped herself to salad on the side. I knew she loved tomatoes, but I didn’t expect her to choose salad when it was optional. She told me she always has some of the salad when they offer it to her at school! And she ate every bite. Who knew?
Because of the random levels of pickiness among the three kids we serve a lot of deconstructed dinners whenever we can. Taco night and BLT night are both examples of serving all the individual components on the table and letting everyone pick and choose what they want. Mona makes a full BLT and adds Swiss cheese. Quinn sometimes skips the bacon, and last time forgot that he doesn’t eat tomatoes until he was halfway through one and handed me the rest of it. Aden uses only the bacon and calls her sandwich a BOB (bacon on bread). None of my children will make a taco, but they all eat bits and pieces of everything on the table and usually turn the tortillas and cheese into quesadillas on their own.
Whenever I have the kids with me at the grocery store I let them pick out some fruit or vegetable to try, and that’s been a good way to get them interested in more unusual things. Aden, we’ve discovered, loves steamed artichokes. Every once in awhile we’ll have a little artichoke party where we eat a couple of them together after school. Last time Quinn joined in, but Mona steers clear.
When Ian and I take the time at the beginning of the week to plan our meals they go much better, but we’re not as consistent about that as we’d like to be. We try to let each of the kids pick one meal a week, but they aren’t good at it. Quinn can never decide what he wants and half the time shrugs his shoulders and the other half just says pizza. Ian makes good pizza dough, and often on pizza night the kids get to make their own. We mostly use pineapple on our pizza. Mona nearly always picks spinach quiche for her dinner night. Aden, if she can’t think of anything better, tends to pick spaghetti and meatballs.
Other typical meals are chicken and rice, or sloppy Joes. When the fridge is looking too messy we have a leftover auction for dinner, where we clear out as many of the little containers of old food that we can. We try really hard to eat a home cooked dinner together whenever possible, but every couple of weeks there will be a time crunch where no one is home between work and shuttling kids around to different activities and we just pick up pizza and call it a night.
During the school year we don’t think about lunch very often, but a typical lunch at the moment is some combination of sandwiches, yogurt, hard boiled eggs if we have them, fruit… They all like grilled cheese, but for Mona that means a ‘grown up sandwich.’ I like to make a grilled sandwich that has mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, and avocado on it, and the first time Mona saw it she was curious and asked what it was and I told her it was a kind of grown up sandwich rather than a kid sandwich. She tried it and was hooked.
Breakfast is probably more elaborate at our house than seems typical among people we know, but I think that goes back to my childhood. When I was a kid, my mom (who is the most amazing cook, and I’m not just saying that because she’s my mom–ask anyone who has eaten at her house and you will hear the same thing) had an idea for teaching her three kids to cook. She came up with a schedule where each of us would help/learn how to cook a meal. The first week I was on breakfast, Barrett was on lunch, and Arno was on dinner. Dinner was the busiest assignment, and lunch was kind of the freebie week because we were in charge of our own lunches anyway. It was a great plan, but life being the busy mess it is we never got past that first week, so Arno learned some decent cooking skills, Barrett learned nothing, I became pretty good at breakfast foods, and that was that.
So before school my kids are used to things like banana pancakes, French toast, crepes, something called a David Eyre Pancake which is a German style pancake you bake in a skillet until it gets puffy and curls up on the edges. On the weekends when there is no rush to get to school we do waffles or popovers. (When we make popovers we serve them with strawberry butter, which is just butter blended together with strawberry jam, but it’s really good.) It sounds like I’m pulling some weird Martha Stewart stunt, but the truth is even crepes are easy if you are in a habit of making them. I timed it once, and from the minute I step into the kitchen to the time I can get pancakes made from scratch on the table is ten minutes. Crepes take longer only because they are bigger and I can’t fit eight of them at once on the griddle like I can pancakes or French toast, but the girls have started making the batter on their own so that speeds things up from my end. I told them anytime they want to get up early and make the crepe batter I will cook it for them. Saturday I came downstairs to find crepe batter portioned out in three bowls, each one tinted with a different food coloring. Pink, green, and blue crepes don’t look that appetizing to me, but hey, I’ll still cook them.
I don’t have any interest in whether things are supposedly organic, but I do like buying things from our local farmer’s market in the park in the summer. It’s only a few blocks from my violin store, so I try to walk over there and pick up some things before we open on Saturdays when I can. We don’t keep soda in the house but occasionally buy it for birthday parties. For the most part we just drink water from the tap. We’re not vegetarian, but there are enough vegetarians among our friends and family that we regularly cook meals without meat. All of us look forward to funnel cakes at the fair in our neighborhood every year.
I have my own complicated issues with food, but I’m trying to set a good example for my kids. They are interested in the idea of healthy food and are more likely to try something new if we tell them it’s good for their bodies. I like passing down family recipes and having the kids help me make banana bread. I’m glad that Aden is getting more self-sufficient in the kitchen all the time and that Quinn will always at least try something before he decides he doesn’t like it. I’m sure the way we eat looks different from what other people do, but as long as the food fingerprint for our family includes some healthy meals and the house sometimes smells like pie I think we’re doing okay.
That sounds like such a simple question. And I suppose it is a simple question, it’s just the answer that gets complicated. My first response was, “I don’t know,” which sounds insane. I’m the mom and I fed them every day so how could I not know?
I realized that the problem wasn’t that I couldn’t name things they ate, I just couldn’t name anything healthy that they ALL ate. At the time the only thing all three of them ate was spinach quiche. Spinach quiche has been our go-to dish at least once a week since Aden was about two. I don’t know why they magically all liked spinach quiche, but we were grateful they did because it isn’t hard to make and it covers all the major food groups in one dish. But besides that? I didn’t have an answer.
“What about broccoli?” my relative asked. Mona and Quinn eat broccoli. “Peas?” Aden eats peas. “Mashed potatoes?” Aden and Quinn eat mashed potatoes. I finally told her that, honestly, she should just make whatever she wanted, I would like it, different kids would like different parts of it, and if they didn’t find anything to eat among the things she served they would get over it. That’s not a satisfying answer to give a cook who wants to please everyone, but it’s just life with feeding kids.
Many kids get into weird picky eating patterns. I know for people without kids or who have forgotten what life with small kids is like it can look like overindulgence to acquiesce to certain food demands, but I think we overlook the fact that most of us aren’t that much better, we just get to choose the food.
Of course I like everything I serve because I made it! I have an inflated sense of my own culinary adventurousness because I’ve had over 40 years to sort through what I like and what I don’t, and it’s rare that something unfamiliar gets set in front of me.
When I was in Southern India I remember sitting at a table set with banana leaves for plates and my brother looked at the menu in a language we didn’t know and just kind of gestured to the waiter that we’d take one of everything because there was no way to predict what any of it would be anyhow. The yellow ball of goo tasted the best, but I had to get past that childish sense of anxiety about the unknown. It’s a big leap of faith to put a strange food in your mouth when you don’t know what to expect, I don’t care what age you are.
I don’t think kids are silly to be wary of that. Even when my kids were in a phase where we had to have three kinds of ravioli on hand because one ate meat, two ate cheese, but of the cheese eaters one only ate round ravioli, I don’t think it’s that crazy. I was at the store the other day with a craving for unsalted sweet potato chips and couldn’t find them, and then I laughed because there were dozens upon dozens of different chips in every variety you could imagine and yet I still was not satisfied. Somehow if a toddler makes that kind of specific demand we think they are crazy, but honestly, I would be very unhappy if someone else picked out all my food all the time and I didn’t get a say.
I’m fascinated by how other families eat. It’s such a basic thing, and no two homes do it the same way. We inherit certain recipes or patterns of eating from where we grew up and add to that our own preferences and experiences and eventually develop a unique manner of eating and preparing food that becomes the new pattern that gets passed down. I think that’s why there is such a strong nostalgia component to certain foods for people because few things evoke a sense of what your specific home is more clearly. It’s like each family has a food fingerprint.
I never think about that in any detail until we go stay in someone else’s house and the things we take for granted aren’t there. A different house means different bread, different peanut butter, and different jelly, so even a lunchtime staple looks new. I’m always touched when we go to my brother’s home in New York every spring that his wife, who is a lifelong vegetarian (and has a bumper sticker in her kitchen reading ‘Friends don’t let friends eat meat’), always stocks up on whatever will make my kids happy, even if that means ham or hot dogs. On our last visit she asked Aden in the grocery store what she wanted and Aden said ‘meatballs,’ and my poor sister-in-law knowing nothing of meatballs looked for them in vain on the shelves because she didn’t know that was something people make instead of buy, generally. Food is a quick way to either divide people or bring them together, and I’m grateful the people I love do their best to have it be the latter.
So what do my kids eat? Well, not surprisingly, desserts are universally popular. Whenever we use the grill we make s’mores for dessert and that always goes over well. I can get a lot of toys and laundry picked up by the kids with the promise of s’mores after dinner. Strawberry shortcake, pumpkin pie, cookies, any kind of cake, ice cream….
Everything you’d expect kids to eat too much of given the chance, they eat. Our only issue is that Aden happens to be allergic to tree nuts (including coconut) so she has to be wary of mystery cookies and pastries outside of our home. In our house dessert is at most a once a week phenomenon. There are enough candy laden holidays and birthday parties and bake sales floating around that adding extra sugar to their diets is overkill much of the time, but occasionally it’s still fun to work with the kids to make an apple pie or a batch of snickerdoodles. We are not anti-dessert, we just don’t make a habit of it.
Beyond the sweet things? That’s where the agreement breaks down. And sadly the rein of the spinach quiche finally ended a couple of weeks ago when Quinn declared out of the blue that he no longer likes the spinach part and would only eat the crust. Now when we serve spinach quiche he gets himself out some yogurt or a slice of turkey ham to bring to his plate. At the moment they will all eat hamburgers, although the last time we made them Aden inexplicably peeled off the outer layer of her bun and ate nothing else, so I don’t know what that means. They will all eat my matzoh ball soup if I serve Mona’s without the matzoh balls. They all eat mashed potatoes, just not at the same time. Usually either Mona or Quinn will decline but I never know which one it will be. Sometimes they all eat spaghetti.
I’m amazed by the phases things go through. Aden used to be crazy about these chicken and mushroom stuffed crepes I would sometimes make and Mona wouldn’t touch them. This year it switched around, and I served them one night at Aden’s request and she decided she didn’t like them, but Mona scarfed them down. Now we make them per Mona’s request from time to time.
Things they were crazy about will go out of favor if they’ve been out of the menu rotation for more than a few months. There is a chicken and wild rice casserole that they used to love that I’m sure they would be suspicious of now. Zucchini-crusted pizza remains unpredictable, where they either eat it all or don’t even want it on their plates. Aden used to be a huge fan of salmon until she ate some while she had a stomach bug and threw it up, and now that’s done. Mona still asks for salmon, and Aden just looks sullen when we serve it. I may have the only kids in America who don’t ask for mac and cheese.
If I want to push a certain food I serve it in a pattern. If I need to use up some bananas, for instance, I cut them up and arrange them on a big plate in the shape of a spiral or a star which attracts their attention, and then they find it amusing to ruin the pattern, forcing me to arrange the remaining slices into a smaller pattern, until it’s gone. My kids are also more likely to try something if I just serve it to myself and tell them about how they used to steal whatever it is off my plate when they were little (which is true). Often after a few bites from my plate where they think they are being silly and I pretend to act annoyed that my food is disappearing, they ask for some on their own plates.
Renaming things often helps. If I buy the carrots with the tops still on we call them bunny carrots, and suddenly they all want carrots so they can pretend they are bunnies. If I can throw the word ‘yummy’ or ‘cheesey’ onto something, that spikes interest. We call baked beans ‘sugar beans’ (which is pretty accurate when you get down to it) and that gets Aden and Quinn to eat those. Parmesan is ‘sprinkle cheese.’ If it sounds like something a cartoon character would eat then they are more likely to try it.
The rule in our house is that dinner is dinner, and for the most part we don’t make separate extra meals for people. There are some exceptions, such as if we order in Chinese food, Mona doesn’t want any but asks if she can have ramen. It takes about one minute to cook her some noodles, and on a night where we don’t have to cook anything else it’s not a big deal. But most nights we just try to serve enough of a variety of things on the table that there is something for each person to eat. They may not try the main course, but if there are peas and potatoes and cut up bananas on the side, everyone will get something. If they don’t like what’s on the table they still have to sit with us during dinner, and they are allowed to supplement if they do the work themselves. If they want to heat up some ravioli or make some toast or a sandwich, that’s okay, as long as Ian or I don’t have to do it and they come eat it at the table.
I don’t believe in fighting about food, but dessert is only for people willing to at least try some of the vegetables. If they know there is dessert coming they will point out that they are eating the broccoli or the beans early in the meal so they get credit. My kids are actually pretty good about fruits and vegetables. We try to keep grapes and apples and bananas around all the time in easy reach, and they can always have a piece of fruit (or a vegetable) without having to ask. They will turn to things like crackers for a snack first if we have them in the house, but are just as likely to eat grapes if they are there. Quinn loves cucumbers. Mona eats a lot of bananas. Aden likes carrots. Mona surprised me at a pasta dinner at her school where she helped herself to salad on the side. I knew she loved tomatoes, but I didn’t expect her to choose salad when it was optional. She told me she always has some of the salad when they offer it to her at school! And she ate every bite. Who knew?
Because of the random levels of pickiness among the three kids we serve a lot of deconstructed dinners whenever we can. Taco night and BLT night are both examples of serving all the individual components on the table and letting everyone pick and choose what they want. Mona makes a full BLT and adds Swiss cheese. Quinn sometimes skips the bacon, and last time forgot that he doesn’t eat tomatoes until he was halfway through one and handed me the rest of it. Aden uses only the bacon and calls her sandwich a BOB (bacon on bread). None of my children will make a taco, but they all eat bits and pieces of everything on the table and usually turn the tortillas and cheese into quesadillas on their own.
Whenever I have the kids with me at the grocery store I let them pick out some fruit or vegetable to try, and that’s been a good way to get them interested in more unusual things. Aden, we’ve discovered, loves steamed artichokes. Every once in awhile we’ll have a little artichoke party where we eat a couple of them together after school. Last time Quinn joined in, but Mona steers clear.
When Ian and I take the time at the beginning of the week to plan our meals they go much better, but we’re not as consistent about that as we’d like to be. We try to let each of the kids pick one meal a week, but they aren’t good at it. Quinn can never decide what he wants and half the time shrugs his shoulders and the other half just says pizza. Ian makes good pizza dough, and often on pizza night the kids get to make their own. We mostly use pineapple on our pizza. Mona nearly always picks spinach quiche for her dinner night. Aden, if she can’t think of anything better, tends to pick spaghetti and meatballs.
Other typical meals are chicken and rice, or sloppy Joes. When the fridge is looking too messy we have a leftover auction for dinner, where we clear out as many of the little containers of old food that we can. We try really hard to eat a home cooked dinner together whenever possible, but every couple of weeks there will be a time crunch where no one is home between work and shuttling kids around to different activities and we just pick up pizza and call it a night.
During the school year we don’t think about lunch very often, but a typical lunch at the moment is some combination of sandwiches, yogurt, hard boiled eggs if we have them, fruit… They all like grilled cheese, but for Mona that means a ‘grown up sandwich.’ I like to make a grilled sandwich that has mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, and avocado on it, and the first time Mona saw it she was curious and asked what it was and I told her it was a kind of grown up sandwich rather than a kid sandwich. She tried it and was hooked.
Breakfast is probably more elaborate at our house than seems typical among people we know, but I think that goes back to my childhood. When I was a kid, my mom (who is the most amazing cook, and I’m not just saying that because she’s my mom–ask anyone who has eaten at her house and you will hear the same thing) had an idea for teaching her three kids to cook. She came up with a schedule where each of us would help/learn how to cook a meal. The first week I was on breakfast, Barrett was on lunch, and Arno was on dinner. Dinner was the busiest assignment, and lunch was kind of the freebie week because we were in charge of our own lunches anyway. It was a great plan, but life being the busy mess it is we never got past that first week, so Arno learned some decent cooking skills, Barrett learned nothing, I became pretty good at breakfast foods, and that was that.
So before school my kids are used to things like banana pancakes, French toast, crepes, something called a David Eyre Pancake which is a German style pancake you bake in a skillet until it gets puffy and curls up on the edges. On the weekends when there is no rush to get to school we do waffles or popovers. (When we make popovers we serve them with strawberry butter, which is just butter blended together with strawberry jam, but it’s really good.) It sounds like I’m pulling some weird Martha Stewart stunt, but the truth is even crepes are easy if you are in a habit of making them. I timed it once, and from the minute I step into the kitchen to the time I can get pancakes made from scratch on the table is ten minutes. Crepes take longer only because they are bigger and I can’t fit eight of them at once on the griddle like I can pancakes or French toast, but the girls have started making the batter on their own so that speeds things up from my end. I told them anytime they want to get up early and make the crepe batter I will cook it for them. Saturday I came downstairs to find crepe batter portioned out in three bowls, each one tinted with a different food coloring. Pink, green, and blue crepes don’t look that appetizing to me, but hey, I’ll still cook them.
I don’t have any interest in whether things are supposedly organic, but I do like buying things from our local farmer’s market in the park in the summer. It’s only a few blocks from my violin store, so I try to walk over there and pick up some things before we open on Saturdays when I can. We don’t keep soda in the house but occasionally buy it for birthday parties. For the most part we just drink water from the tap. We’re not vegetarian, but there are enough vegetarians among our friends and family that we regularly cook meals without meat. All of us look forward to funnel cakes at the fair in our neighborhood every year.
I have my own complicated issues with food, but I’m trying to set a good example for my kids. They are interested in the idea of healthy food and are more likely to try something new if we tell them it’s good for their bodies. I like passing down family recipes and having the kids help me make banana bread. I’m glad that Aden is getting more self-sufficient in the kitchen all the time and that Quinn will always at least try something before he decides he doesn’t like it. I’m sure the way we eat looks different from what other people do, but as long as the food fingerprint for our family includes some healthy meals and the house sometimes smells like pie I think we’re doing okay.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
The Other F Word (Babble)
One of the bigger adjustments for Ian after returning from active
duty in Iraq was figuring out when to exercise. When he’s home he is
the in house parent, and cooking, grocery shopping, and shuttling kids
around is not conducive to staying fit. My weight gain
during his deployment when that was all my job is testament to that.
So both of us have been trying harder in the past few months to make
exercise and eating better a priority. In Ian’s case his weight and
fitness level are literally part of his job as an Army Reservist, so
when it’s not possible to make time for both of us to go to the Y his
needs take precedence.
We try to head straight for the Y right after dropping the kids off at school, and there is just enough time before picking up Quinn from half day kindergarten for me to swim a mile and for Ian to get in a run on the treadmill and use the weight machines. In theory we should be getting out to exercise nearly every day, but things come up. There are early morning meetings with teachers, or one of the kids is sick, or there are dentist appointments, the frequent trips to Michigan aren’t helping…. There are a million reasons why getting in that little block of exercise time doesn’t happen because there just aren’t always enough hours in a day, but we’ve at least been able to make sure Ian can do some kind of exercise every day. He’s looking good and feeling better and I’m proud of him. He’s doing better than I am.
Aside from the exercise part of the equation there is food. I have more trouble than I’d like with food. Part of my struggle with watching what I eat is that I believe in family dinners. They are short, but they are nice, and I like that time together when we can share a meal and talk. But some days I shouldn’t have all the same things the kids are having. They don’t really seem to care or notice if I have vegetables on my spaghetti instead of meatballs, but I want to make it seem that we’re all sort of having the same thing. I don’t want to draw attention to the fact that Ian and I are eating differently. Not that I want to be deceptive, but girls in particular can develop body image issues so early anymore that I just don’t want it on their radar screen if it can be avoided. What they are eating is healthy and fine–for them. They can have a bagel. Most of the time, I shouldn’t.
So the other night we were having hamburgers and green beans and fruit and Ian and I decided we should have Boca Burgers for ourselves instead because the caloric content is significantly less. I was kind of hoping the kids wouldn’t notice, but Aden asked why dad’s burger looked different. He innocently said what for him was the truth, “I’d rather have what you’re having, but I’m eating this because I’m fat.”
I don’t normally think of myself as the kind of person who shoots her spouse a LOOK, but my head snapped toward him so fast he looked uncomfortable, and then I turned toward the girls and said, “We need to eat different things from you sometimes because we want to be healthy. You are still growing, but daddy and I aren’t, so sometimes we make other choices that are better for us.” Which seemed to work fine, and then the conversation turned to important things like lemurs and gym class and rice scooping work.
It’s funny the things you assume another person knows just because you are around each other. Simply because I’ve obsessed about a particular topic doesn’t mean it’s something my husband thinks about at all. How would he have any idea what my concerns for my kids and their potential body image issues are if I don’t discuss them? He wouldn’t.
It reminds me of a Women’s Studies class I took in college where on the first day we were asked to fill out a questionnaire that included the question: “What do you think about when you walk alone at night?” The few men in the class were completely mystified. They looked puzzled, and said, “What does this question mean? You think about whatever you think about.” And every woman in the class got wide-eyed and said, “You get to think about whatever you want?” We went on to explain that walking alone at night as a woman meant constantly monitoring who else was in the vicinity, which places were open that might be safe to run to, and being prepared to gouge someone in the eyes with our keys if necessary. Letting your mind completely wander meant putting yourself in danger. The men were stunned. But how would they know?
So for Ian, the word ‘fat’ is just a word. He certainly cares about being in good shape and thinks about the work it takes to get there and stay that way, but the word ‘fat’ is not used as a weapon in his world. It’s just a blunt description. For girls and women, it’s something else. Something as tricky to grapple with as walking alone at night. ‘Fat’ isn’t merely descriptive among women, it’s pejorative. It’s painful. It’s wrapped up more deeply than it has any right to be in our self-worth.
I explained to him later that I am very careful not to use the word ‘fat’ in front of the kids. When I go exercise I tell them it’s because I want to be healthy and strong. Yes, it will be great if I can fit into a smaller size more appropriate for my height at some point, but I want my kids to know that I’m glad to have a body that works. It’s good body, and I like it, even if it’s flabby in places. I don’t want to convey that I think of my body as disgusting. I let my kids poke my belly if it makes them giggle and I try to laugh about it too. There are days I’m depressed about how I look and wish I could magically fix it, but I don’t want my kids to see that. They love me. If they see me being overly critical of my body they will very likely start looking at their own bodies in a harsher light. The longer they can be spared from that the better.
I wish I didn’t struggle with my own body image as much as I do. Most days I think I do pretty well, because I do appreciate my health and my overall endurance. I don’t want to look like someone else, I just want to be a better version of myself. But it’s hard not to feel like a failure when something that matters so much seems out of my own control. I’m trying, though. I’m swimming my mile about two to six times a week depending on how much disruption there is to my schedule. My hopes for blogging while using my treadmill have been thwarted in the past couple of months by a bad knee which hurts if I walk on it too long, but I plan to get back to that as soon as I heal.
The struggle is frustrating, and I’m annoyed by the fact that it exists at all. It should not be this hard and it should not mean the myriad of things it seems to mean. When I wonder what’s wrong with me that I can’t just maintain the weight I should be, I remember that if someone like Oprah Winfrey who can afford to pay someone to do nothing but swat cookies out of her hand all day has the same problem, it’s not a simple problem, and I try not to hate myself for it. But it’s hard.
I look at my kids and their perfect little bodies and want them to not have to go through any of the ridiculous body image struggle I argue with myself about every day of my life. And when I say their bodies are perfect, I don’t mean that they are flawless, I mean that they are unique and strong and functional and I love every dimple and toe and freckle and there is nothing lacking or in need of change. Right now they seem to like the bodies they are in and I’m glad, because they are beautiful inside and out. Why is it so hard to see myself that way?
We try to head straight for the Y right after dropping the kids off at school, and there is just enough time before picking up Quinn from half day kindergarten for me to swim a mile and for Ian to get in a run on the treadmill and use the weight machines. In theory we should be getting out to exercise nearly every day, but things come up. There are early morning meetings with teachers, or one of the kids is sick, or there are dentist appointments, the frequent trips to Michigan aren’t helping…. There are a million reasons why getting in that little block of exercise time doesn’t happen because there just aren’t always enough hours in a day, but we’ve at least been able to make sure Ian can do some kind of exercise every day. He’s looking good and feeling better and I’m proud of him. He’s doing better than I am.
Aside from the exercise part of the equation there is food. I have more trouble than I’d like with food. Part of my struggle with watching what I eat is that I believe in family dinners. They are short, but they are nice, and I like that time together when we can share a meal and talk. But some days I shouldn’t have all the same things the kids are having. They don’t really seem to care or notice if I have vegetables on my spaghetti instead of meatballs, but I want to make it seem that we’re all sort of having the same thing. I don’t want to draw attention to the fact that Ian and I are eating differently. Not that I want to be deceptive, but girls in particular can develop body image issues so early anymore that I just don’t want it on their radar screen if it can be avoided. What they are eating is healthy and fine–for them. They can have a bagel. Most of the time, I shouldn’t.
So the other night we were having hamburgers and green beans and fruit and Ian and I decided we should have Boca Burgers for ourselves instead because the caloric content is significantly less. I was kind of hoping the kids wouldn’t notice, but Aden asked why dad’s burger looked different. He innocently said what for him was the truth, “I’d rather have what you’re having, but I’m eating this because I’m fat.”
I don’t normally think of myself as the kind of person who shoots her spouse a LOOK, but my head snapped toward him so fast he looked uncomfortable, and then I turned toward the girls and said, “We need to eat different things from you sometimes because we want to be healthy. You are still growing, but daddy and I aren’t, so sometimes we make other choices that are better for us.” Which seemed to work fine, and then the conversation turned to important things like lemurs and gym class and rice scooping work.
It’s funny the things you assume another person knows just because you are around each other. Simply because I’ve obsessed about a particular topic doesn’t mean it’s something my husband thinks about at all. How would he have any idea what my concerns for my kids and their potential body image issues are if I don’t discuss them? He wouldn’t.
It reminds me of a Women’s Studies class I took in college where on the first day we were asked to fill out a questionnaire that included the question: “What do you think about when you walk alone at night?” The few men in the class were completely mystified. They looked puzzled, and said, “What does this question mean? You think about whatever you think about.” And every woman in the class got wide-eyed and said, “You get to think about whatever you want?” We went on to explain that walking alone at night as a woman meant constantly monitoring who else was in the vicinity, which places were open that might be safe to run to, and being prepared to gouge someone in the eyes with our keys if necessary. Letting your mind completely wander meant putting yourself in danger. The men were stunned. But how would they know?
So for Ian, the word ‘fat’ is just a word. He certainly cares about being in good shape and thinks about the work it takes to get there and stay that way, but the word ‘fat’ is not used as a weapon in his world. It’s just a blunt description. For girls and women, it’s something else. Something as tricky to grapple with as walking alone at night. ‘Fat’ isn’t merely descriptive among women, it’s pejorative. It’s painful. It’s wrapped up more deeply than it has any right to be in our self-worth.
I explained to him later that I am very careful not to use the word ‘fat’ in front of the kids. When I go exercise I tell them it’s because I want to be healthy and strong. Yes, it will be great if I can fit into a smaller size more appropriate for my height at some point, but I want my kids to know that I’m glad to have a body that works. It’s good body, and I like it, even if it’s flabby in places. I don’t want to convey that I think of my body as disgusting. I let my kids poke my belly if it makes them giggle and I try to laugh about it too. There are days I’m depressed about how I look and wish I could magically fix it, but I don’t want my kids to see that. They love me. If they see me being overly critical of my body they will very likely start looking at their own bodies in a harsher light. The longer they can be spared from that the better.
I wish I didn’t struggle with my own body image as much as I do. Most days I think I do pretty well, because I do appreciate my health and my overall endurance. I don’t want to look like someone else, I just want to be a better version of myself. But it’s hard not to feel like a failure when something that matters so much seems out of my own control. I’m trying, though. I’m swimming my mile about two to six times a week depending on how much disruption there is to my schedule. My hopes for blogging while using my treadmill have been thwarted in the past couple of months by a bad knee which hurts if I walk on it too long, but I plan to get back to that as soon as I heal.
The struggle is frustrating, and I’m annoyed by the fact that it exists at all. It should not be this hard and it should not mean the myriad of things it seems to mean. When I wonder what’s wrong with me that I can’t just maintain the weight I should be, I remember that if someone like Oprah Winfrey who can afford to pay someone to do nothing but swat cookies out of her hand all day has the same problem, it’s not a simple problem, and I try not to hate myself for it. But it’s hard.
I look at my kids and their perfect little bodies and want them to not have to go through any of the ridiculous body image struggle I argue with myself about every day of my life. And when I say their bodies are perfect, I don’t mean that they are flawless, I mean that they are unique and strong and functional and I love every dimple and toe and freckle and there is nothing lacking or in need of change. Right now they seem to like the bodies they are in and I’m glad, because they are beautiful inside and out. Why is it so hard to see myself that way?
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Weighting It Out (Babble)
I actually struggle about struggling with my weight. I need to lose
weight, but I don’t want my kids to really notice it. I do and I
don’t. I am careful not to criticize myself in front of them by using
words like ‘fat.’ We talk about exercising in terms of needing to be
healthy and strong, not in terms of weight. I want to be a good example
without somehow drawing attention the example I’m hoping to set. Body
image can be such a minefield, and I don’t want to contribute to
potential problems in that area for my kids.
I’ve never been particularly happy with my weight, but I have height on my side. According to various charts I’m technically obese, but I have lots of room to carry that weight on a five foot, ten inch frame, so I don’t look to most people like I’m that bad, but it’s not good. I gained a lot of weight after I had Aden because I was concentrating on the baby and I was home all the time. Aden was a very easy baby, and we did go for walks across the park when the weather was nice, but most of the time we were just in the house and there were long stretches of boredom.
After I organized everything I could think to organize I got into cooking. My mom’s recipes were all geared toward a family of five, so they work great for us now, but when it was just two of us and a breast feeding child, it was too much. I wasn’t looking at myself anymore because I was looking at the baby, plus breast feeding made me hungry. I’m sure it’s true for someone somewhere that breast feeding helps you lose the pregnancy weight, but it was the opposite for me. I was ravenous all the time when I was breast feeding. Under normal circumstances I’m in trouble because I don’t seem to have a working switch anywhere the tells me I’m full, but when I was hungry all the time it was hard not to keep eating.
When I took a good look at myself just after Aden turned one and breast feeding her was over, I was pretty horrified and got serious. I got into a routine of swimming and walking and kept track of what I ate. It was going pretty well, and apparently I was looking pretty good because I soon got pregnant with Mona. After having Mona I went right back into my exercise routine. Ian was home so I didn’t have to spend all my time in the kitchen. I could escape to the pool or Curves or anyplace that wasn’t the house. Even though I breast fed Mona for a year, I was careful about what I ate and lost over forty pounds. I was really happy about it, because I felt good and clothes fit nicely and I felt like I’d gotten control over something that had always bothered me.
Then came the double whammy of getting pregnant with Quinn and Ian getting deployed. I was really stuck at home in a way I’d never been before. I had two kids who needed to be fed regular meals, and between cooking and cleaning and dishes and even art projects, I felt like we never left the kitchen. The pregnancy put pressure on my sciatic nerve which made walking incredibly painful. After Quinn was born it was a little easier, but I was still trapped. Food was one of the few things that was fun and available and made me feel better. I liked baking with the girls and trying different recipes. It was cozy and simple and very fattening. I gained back all that weight that I’d worked so hard to lose. I was aware it was happening and just surrendered to it. There was so much stress in my life and I just couldn’t feel pressure about one more thing. I bought bigger pants and enjoyed the snickerdoodles.
Because for me to lose weight it has to be at the forefront of my mind all the time. It’s tedious and dull. There are so many more interesting things to think about, and I hate wasting my attention on it, but I’ve reached a sort of crisis point again where I have to do something. I write down everything I eat so I can keep track. I don’t deny myself anything in particular, I just make conscious choices about if the cookie is worth it at that moment (it usually isn’t). I’m making time for the treadmill at night after the girls are in bed. About ten pounds from now when I’m ready to put on my bathing suit again I’ll start taking Quinn with me to the Y in the mornings while the girls are in school. I’ve done this before so I know I can do it again, and this time I won’t get sidetracked by pregnancy, so that’s something.
The trickiest thing is eating with the kids. I still want to sit down to the table with them at meals, but their needs are different from mine. I had a revelation a few years ago about why it’s so easy for stay at home parents to gain weight. I think of it as the ‘juice box factor.’ I was reading an article in National Geographic about how much portion sizes have changed in the US, and they made the point that if you simply added one juice box a day to a normally healthy routine, by the end of the year you would have gained ten pounds.
The hardest part about feeding kids while trying to lose weight is embracing waste. The left over fish stick? The last bite of mac and cheese? There’s the juice box. It’s hard to throw those last bits of food out, but I do it. At dinner I do my best not to prepare more food than we need at a meal, but that is far from an exact science with three kids. I’ve taken to not really planning to feed myself at mealtimes. I help myself to whatever vegetables or fruit we’re having as we sit together and eat, but I only have whatever rice or fish or anything else from what they leave. If they eat it all, great. It’s easy enough for me to make myself something else afterward.
I know one of the up sides for Ian about being at Fort Polk is being out of the kitchen. He struggles with his weight when he’s the one home with the kids, too, and he has the added burden of the Army weighing him periodically. He’s in better shape now in Louisiana than he was before he left because he’s able to make reasonable food choices and he can go exercise without having to arrange for child care. I promised him when he comes home from Iraq we will hammer out a better routine for both of us this time. The problem is neither of us actually likes to exercise, so it’s easy to talk each other out of it. Maybe when all the kids are in school and we can do it together we can make it fun. (Or at least less boring.)
So I think I’m on the right track again. And with a little luck I won’t feel like writing another blog post about my weight, even thought it’s too much in my thoughts. I’m hoping by writing my good intentions in a public forum that it will help keep me honest about it, but even I’m bored by my own weight loss struggles. I can’t imagine it’s interesting for anyone else, so forgive me for putting it out there.
But as a parent, I do think about my kids and how their own feelings about their bodies will evolve. I marvel at my children’s perfect little legs and arms and tummies and wonder when they may develop dissatisfaction with them. I hope never, but that’s not realistic. Aden did have a boy tell her once in kindergarten that she was fat. When she told me about it, I asked what she did, and she replied, “I told him I was just right!” And she is. I was proud she knew it. Chances are there will come a day when such a ridiculous comment from a boy may not roll off her so easily. It makes me sad. I wish they could always see themselves the way I see them and know with certainty how amazing they are.
And as a result, I’m kinder to my own self image. I’m someone’s child, too, and it would pain my parents if I were not happy. It’s a disservice to them and myself not to appreciate the body I have. I’m not at the weight I want to be, but I can aim for something better without hating where I am. Wish me luck.
I’ve never been particularly happy with my weight, but I have height on my side. According to various charts I’m technically obese, but I have lots of room to carry that weight on a five foot, ten inch frame, so I don’t look to most people like I’m that bad, but it’s not good. I gained a lot of weight after I had Aden because I was concentrating on the baby and I was home all the time. Aden was a very easy baby, and we did go for walks across the park when the weather was nice, but most of the time we were just in the house and there were long stretches of boredom.
After I organized everything I could think to organize I got into cooking. My mom’s recipes were all geared toward a family of five, so they work great for us now, but when it was just two of us and a breast feeding child, it was too much. I wasn’t looking at myself anymore because I was looking at the baby, plus breast feeding made me hungry. I’m sure it’s true for someone somewhere that breast feeding helps you lose the pregnancy weight, but it was the opposite for me. I was ravenous all the time when I was breast feeding. Under normal circumstances I’m in trouble because I don’t seem to have a working switch anywhere the tells me I’m full, but when I was hungry all the time it was hard not to keep eating.
When I took a good look at myself just after Aden turned one and breast feeding her was over, I was pretty horrified and got serious. I got into a routine of swimming and walking and kept track of what I ate. It was going pretty well, and apparently I was looking pretty good because I soon got pregnant with Mona. After having Mona I went right back into my exercise routine. Ian was home so I didn’t have to spend all my time in the kitchen. I could escape to the pool or Curves or anyplace that wasn’t the house. Even though I breast fed Mona for a year, I was careful about what I ate and lost over forty pounds. I was really happy about it, because I felt good and clothes fit nicely and I felt like I’d gotten control over something that had always bothered me.
Then came the double whammy of getting pregnant with Quinn and Ian getting deployed. I was really stuck at home in a way I’d never been before. I had two kids who needed to be fed regular meals, and between cooking and cleaning and dishes and even art projects, I felt like we never left the kitchen. The pregnancy put pressure on my sciatic nerve which made walking incredibly painful. After Quinn was born it was a little easier, but I was still trapped. Food was one of the few things that was fun and available and made me feel better. I liked baking with the girls and trying different recipes. It was cozy and simple and very fattening. I gained back all that weight that I’d worked so hard to lose. I was aware it was happening and just surrendered to it. There was so much stress in my life and I just couldn’t feel pressure about one more thing. I bought bigger pants and enjoyed the snickerdoodles.
Because for me to lose weight it has to be at the forefront of my mind all the time. It’s tedious and dull. There are so many more interesting things to think about, and I hate wasting my attention on it, but I’ve reached a sort of crisis point again where I have to do something. I write down everything I eat so I can keep track. I don’t deny myself anything in particular, I just make conscious choices about if the cookie is worth it at that moment (it usually isn’t). I’m making time for the treadmill at night after the girls are in bed. About ten pounds from now when I’m ready to put on my bathing suit again I’ll start taking Quinn with me to the Y in the mornings while the girls are in school. I’ve done this before so I know I can do it again, and this time I won’t get sidetracked by pregnancy, so that’s something.
The trickiest thing is eating with the kids. I still want to sit down to the table with them at meals, but their needs are different from mine. I had a revelation a few years ago about why it’s so easy for stay at home parents to gain weight. I think of it as the ‘juice box factor.’ I was reading an article in National Geographic about how much portion sizes have changed in the US, and they made the point that if you simply added one juice box a day to a normally healthy routine, by the end of the year you would have gained ten pounds.
The hardest part about feeding kids while trying to lose weight is embracing waste. The left over fish stick? The last bite of mac and cheese? There’s the juice box. It’s hard to throw those last bits of food out, but I do it. At dinner I do my best not to prepare more food than we need at a meal, but that is far from an exact science with three kids. I’ve taken to not really planning to feed myself at mealtimes. I help myself to whatever vegetables or fruit we’re having as we sit together and eat, but I only have whatever rice or fish or anything else from what they leave. If they eat it all, great. It’s easy enough for me to make myself something else afterward.
I know one of the up sides for Ian about being at Fort Polk is being out of the kitchen. He struggles with his weight when he’s the one home with the kids, too, and he has the added burden of the Army weighing him periodically. He’s in better shape now in Louisiana than he was before he left because he’s able to make reasonable food choices and he can go exercise without having to arrange for child care. I promised him when he comes home from Iraq we will hammer out a better routine for both of us this time. The problem is neither of us actually likes to exercise, so it’s easy to talk each other out of it. Maybe when all the kids are in school and we can do it together we can make it fun. (Or at least less boring.)
So I think I’m on the right track again. And with a little luck I won’t feel like writing another blog post about my weight, even thought it’s too much in my thoughts. I’m hoping by writing my good intentions in a public forum that it will help keep me honest about it, but even I’m bored by my own weight loss struggles. I can’t imagine it’s interesting for anyone else, so forgive me for putting it out there.
But as a parent, I do think about my kids and how their own feelings about their bodies will evolve. I marvel at my children’s perfect little legs and arms and tummies and wonder when they may develop dissatisfaction with them. I hope never, but that’s not realistic. Aden did have a boy tell her once in kindergarten that she was fat. When she told me about it, I asked what she did, and she replied, “I told him I was just right!” And she is. I was proud she knew it. Chances are there will come a day when such a ridiculous comment from a boy may not roll off her so easily. It makes me sad. I wish they could always see themselves the way I see them and know with certainty how amazing they are.
And as a result, I’m kinder to my own self image. I’m someone’s child, too, and it would pain my parents if I were not happy. It’s a disservice to them and myself not to appreciate the body I have. I’m not at the weight I want to be, but I can aim for something better without hating where I am. Wish me luck.
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