Tag: kids

Still eating that piece of cake…and learning

.Reading time 7 minutes.

Two of my most read blog pieces were about dealing with food and my kids. See them here and here. Writing is a way for me to put to paper, to the world sometimes, what is going on. And it’s a way to show my learning. Both pieces I wrote feel out of date, and ages ago. Both pieces show some of my own ignorance around food. And my own enticement by the food and diet industry.

Today, I am exploring, even choosing to do it differently. To see how this goes. I’ve found the movement of intuitive eating, which really is just eating. When I understood what it meant for me, I was in. ALL IN. The idea is simply that we eat to survive and that any type of restriction causes the body to go into stress and famine mode. It explains my deep obsession with ice cream, pizza, and “they take forever to bake” brownies. Seriously though, I may not be on an active diet but I restrict and enact rules about the food we eat every day. Here are some examples…

  • Food waste is unacceptable, finish your plate or eat it later…there are starving children in this world and we won’t waste when others don’t have. TRUTH: my eating has little impact on the food access for the rest of the world. We need changes in policy, capitalism, and humanity. And our composting gives this food back to the earth.
  • Meat and dairy are bad for you. You must eat less of them. TRUTH: My genetics, lifestyle, and environmental circumstance will kill me before any steak or glass of milk.
  • Sugar is a treat and is to be limited, controlled. TRUTH: sugar is energy, all of your cells need it to survive. And sometimes your body craves it because it’s fucking starving and needs energy to get through the next 10 minutes of it’s life.
  • My kids don’t eat enough…of this..or that…or in general. TRUTH: their bodies know better than mine after 37 years of restriction and obsession. Obsessing over their food is simply displacement for obsession over my own.
  • Weight equates health. TRUTH: I am now seeing how this is not true. That health indicator variations are found throughout us as humans no matter our size. That only 25% of health indicators are a result of our choices, the rest are out of our control. That the stress we put on our bodies through restriction is far worse for your health than Cheetos. Or Chips Ahoy. Check out Health At Every Size if you’ve never heard about it.

So here’s where I’m at…

Desperately trying to unplug all of the restriction I place onto my own body. And to do so, I’m eating unrestricted. And, I’m eating a lot. Normal amounts according to the healing process. But, I’d be lying if I didn’t say it’s terrifying. What if I gain all of this weight? Society might hate me, but I can love me. What if I get sick or have bad health indicators? Then I can look to my stress level, lack of sleep, and genetics.

As I eat, I’m deflecting restriction to my kids. And I’m trying to hold the fact that my restriction of them also makes them want to eat, a lot, right now too.

So what’s next? I’m healing this body of mine. And I’m letting things go for these kids right now. It’s ever present in my mind how to teach them better, but I’m giving myself a break for a bit. I know myself. If I let myself obsess over parenting, I’ll ignore the whole point of this…to heal me.

Which in turn sets the example for their own healing and a life hopefully free of food restriction.

Don’t worry, you might about my health or theirs. But know that we are simply allowing ourselves to eat. As Caroline Dooner says in The F*ck It Diet, our body doesn’t know we are dieting to fit into absurdly small jeans, it just knows to make you eat to live. And that means you should listen.

If you’re still worried, here are my parenting to dos for the upcoming months….

– make sure this house is in fact body neutral.

– never talk about bodies, talk about people

– use the word fat as a descriptor not as an insult, and absolutely not as a self-insult.

– to talk about food as neutral, food has no morality so it can’t be good or bad.

– shift our talks about food to discussions on lifestyle and nourishment, what fuels us.

– eliminate the notion of exercise for weight loss and emphasize movement and only in ways that we enjoy it and it makes us feel good

– wear whatever the heck we want.

– laugh, a lot.

– love ourselves deeply – These bodies are amazing. Our feet help us to walk everyday. That’s evolutionary magic. Our body fuels us to live, love, laugh, move, experience joy, pleasure, anger, sadness. Your skin feels the warmth of the sun, the coolness of the rain and the tickle of your toddlers kisses on your check.

Fucking amazing…

*So many resources are teaching me. Here are a few…

The robin

.Reading time 3 minutes.
“Mom, come quick, you have to see this bird. It’s so beautiful,” she said.
I was in the baby’s room getting them ready for something.
“Can I borrow your phone? I want to take a picture,” she asked.
I handed over the phone and finished what I was doing quickly to make it over to the window to see what she saw. “Right there,” she said pointing. “It has a bright, orange belly!” she exclaimed.
I peeked through out window down into our yard. By the white cement path, surrounded by blooming weeds and trodden soil, I saw the bird staring up at the house. A robin, searching in the goodness of the earth for grubs and worms.
My head did this – “It’s just a robin, they are everywhere.” I stopped myself from saying this out loud. I looked at her as she stood on the bench in front of the window, holding my phone just right, desperately trying to zoom in to get a picture that showed its orange belly. It was too far away for it to be in focus, but she took ten shots anyhow.
“It’s so cool,” she exclaimed.
“It is,” I agreed.
In this moment, I witnessed something I hadn’t seen in a while from her. A first interaction. I almost missed it. Almost made it so that her response was not fitting to the circumstance, inappropriate even. I almost smashed her joy in this simple moment of seeing a robin for the very first time. An ordinary, beautiful, life giving, earth sustaining robin who was sitting in our new yard posing for my daughter’s pictures.
In the days to come, we came to witness many robins in our yard. Several every morning and afternoon searching through the grass for their daily meals. Before a robin was simply a robin. Sometimes a reminder of my childhood, or even a reminder of a share from a friend about robins in their backyard. But now the robin is a sign of childhood, amazement, interaction, and first glimpses into the wonders of this earth.
Robins are a reminder to look closely, to see what the world is offering us, and to seek joy in the ordinary yet extraordinary life around us. And certainly to take joy in the joy of these little humans who make the effort and take the time to see and experience something new nearly every single moment.

Jelly beans

.Reading time 6 minutes.

“Mommy, you should eat slower so you don’t eat so much,” she slipped into our dinner conversation.

I jumped, without thinking.

“We don’t tell people how to eat, not how much or what speed or their choices,” I sternly responded.

I wish I had replied more gently, made it a moment to share why. But I was angry. We don’t talk about things like that in this house. In fact, we make a point to try to make food simply a way to feed our bodies. We even have a night during the week where you get to choose whatever you want. And she’s chosen jelly beans and starburst. We think it’s important that she learns how her body feels and responds to food. That she listens to her desires and wants. I am trying to do the same, and without judgment. I want her to avoid the judgment as long as possible.

She’s doing great. If I push too hard, or we ask her to eat in a way that out of this alignment, she calls us on it.

“But my body is full”…”I am listening to my body”…”My body doesn’t like that”…”Mom, that’s not listening to what my body is saying.”

I am so grateful in these moments, woven in-between my frustration that she eats only a handful of things and is stubborn when trying something new. It’s clearly more than being stubborn, likely anxiety producing to eat something she is unfamiliar with. This same behavior is seen with new friends, new events, new after-school activities, new places. I let it go most of the time, allowing her to trust herself and feel it out.

I am doing my best to not be a health troll even though I feel responsible for her livelihood, her health. My doctor certainly makes me feel so asking what she eats and encouraging her to eat more things.

But health is a hoax. Well maybe not all of the way. But it is a way to control people, to make us feel like our individual role in health is the sole way to be healthy. But the truth is that this world is not set up for kids. In fact, it makes it very hard for them. Restaurants don’t serve healthy choices for kids, and I don’t want to pay three times the amount for her to try something new. It’s easier to pay for what I know she’ll eat. It hinders her risk taking, and my openness to her risks as her parent.

Jellybeans on her plate one day a week won’t ruin her health. And my words will certainly not deter her body’s language in telling her that they are delicious. This is the contradiction for all of us. You tell us it’s not healthy, but our body loves it. The sweet taste of chocolate ice cream as it kisses your tongue. The bubbles of soda pop tickling your throat. The scent of warm baked bread straight our of the oven. The satisfying creaminess of cheese in any form. It’s a lie to say these aren’t healthy. They aren’t by the medical fields definition. But maybe they are healthy to my mind. To my control to choose what makes me happy every once in a while. To choose food without shame, remorse, or thoughts of what people might think with every bite.

I was so mad when she questioned the speed of my eating. Not at her, but wherever that message came from. I suspect it won’t be the first. And honestly, I’m surprised it came at age six when so many six years are all too familiar with diet culture.

I know I’ll talk with her about it more in the coming future. My rage is not the answer in her early learning of the appreciation of food. And I need to learn myself what my body is telling. I’ve spent so long listening to doctors, people, media, strangers, that my voice has chosen to stay silent, tired of being shut down by all of the messages. Maybe when I can welcome back this part of me, can I then think about how to respond to my kid’s criticism of my eating. In the meantime, I’m just listening to what she sees and hears. And having jellybeans for dinner every once and a while.