The Perils of Navigating Dieting Lifestyle Changes While Raising Little Girls

So, this article gave me quite the sad, and a bit of rage-face as well.

Mom Puts 7-Year-Old on a Diet in the Worst Vogue Article Ever

Be warned, it could be a bit triggering for both both eating disorders and child abuse.  The article basically outlines how this woman was concerned about her somewhat chubby seven-year-old and instead of taking a reasonable route like buying some healthier snacks and maybe putting the kid into dance lessons or team sports, she decided to send her kid on the path to a life-time of disordered relationships with food by putting her on a strict diet and brow-beating and shaming said kid for going off said diet.

And then selling her story to Vogue.

Little girls are under so much pressure from such a young age.  I have to wonder how much we help perpetuate it.  Hell, half the time we aren't even cognizant of the way the media constantly picks at us and tells us how we can be thinner, younger, smoother, and all other manner of adjectives, so how do we know when we are pushing these same unrealistic ideals on our daughters and more importantly how do we cushion them against the same toxic messages when we DO recognize them?

This is something I've struggled with along my weight-loss journey.  I try to recognize what kind of messages about self-image and self-worth I am sending to my daughters, who are at the particularly vulnerable ages of 8 and 10.  The way I negotiate my own weight-maintenance can have long-reaching effects on their own relationships with food and their bodies.

I try to be mindful about emphasizing how I want to feel, that is, healthier and more confident.  I hate when they see me weigh myself, and I tend to wear a pokerface if they are around, regardless of whether I like the number I see or not. In a house full of girls, privacy in the bathroom hasn't been a huge issue so sometimes they will walk in while I weigh myself.  Point being, I don't want them to get the idea that whether or not I have a good day or bad is tied in with whether I am feeling fat that day.

When dealing with food choices I try to always speak in terms of some foods being 'better for you' rather than relying on a 'good/bad' dichotomy.  I don't want them to feel guilt for having treats, or to berate themselves for not always choosing the 'healthy' option.  I do enjoy the idea of 'sometimes' foods.

If I have to restrict them on some items (for example, we can have cookies.. but we're not going to have six cookies in a day) I don't EVER frame restriction in terms of the "EFF" word (eep.. FAT!) because I want to keep them from worrying about their weight as soon as humanly possible.  Instead, I'll limit them to two or three a day because "Mommy isn't made of money and can't go buying cookies all the time!"

Financial insecurity is better than Body image insecurity, isn't it?  I sure hope so.  I'd rather see them grow up annoyingly cheap than with a life-threatening eating disorder.

I love my mom to death, but I will acknowledge that watching her struggle with her weight as I grew up, as well as the on-going concerns for my own health that were often expressed, not maliciously mind you, in terms of my weight when the real concern was not how much I ate, but the fact that I ate shit, did a number on both my body image and my relationship with food.  And I have tied a lot of my self-worth in with my weight.  I didn't totally internalize it, but I did spend a lot of time under the impression that I was A) grossly fat and that B) this meant I was a less worthy human being.

Just to clarify, because like I said, my mom is awesome and I don't want to pin it all on her.  She never said I was less worthy because I was overweight, but that is how I felt.  The truth is, these are the kinds of messages we are bombarded with every single day so that even many people who don't have a 'weight problem' per se see themselves as potentially fat, which to some is a fate worse than death.

No seriously.

Bea Beautiful posted about a woman a while ago who cited 'getting fat' as her worst fear.  Worse than shark attacks, worse than giant spiders, worse than being bludgeoned to death by an friggin' axe murderer.

That, my friends, is some fucked up, if y'all will pardon my French.

This is what I want to avoid for my children.  I don't want them to fear getting fat.. not because it 'won't ever happen' to them because it totally could.  But if it ever does, I want them to know they are still worthy human beings.  Whether we all here succeed on our respective journeys to lose weight and/or be healthier we are all worthy human beings and deserve to love ourselves as we are and as what we become in the future.

I want my girls to know that they are worthy, no matter their size and I think the longer I can keep them from thinking negatively about their body and reinforcing that they are beautiful inside and out, then maybe the idea of unconditional worth will stick with them.

I can only hope.

Food, food. Glorious food.

Hello again. B at your service, and today we're talking about food. Not the kind of food that I eat when I want to lose weight, but the kind that turned me into the balloon woman that you know now. Bad food in all it's gloriousness is the topic of discussion today.

I have to say this before I say anything else. This entry was extremely hard for me to write. It's bad enough to admit you might be just a little bit out of shape, but to admit what I'm about to tell all of you? This would so not happen 5 years ago. But, I've grown up a little, learned a little bit more, and I realize that reflecting on your eating habits is the only way to a true healthy self, so I'm ready to spill the beans on my bad eating habits in order for some of you to take a look at and analyze your own.

Here we go with that.

Now, I admit that there's some defect in me that doesn't like to cook all the time. Some women love their time in the kitchen and can razzle dazzle some delicious food, but to me, the kitchen was like Mars. I could turn a burner on, but most of my food ended up that way. Burned. But I could make a ramen soup that would make you slap. yo. momma.

In my ignorance of all the different sorts of food out there, I became a picky asshole, and I refused to eat it if it wasn't deep fried or came with a bun with cheese and bacon.

Since I can't cook, and it wasn't possible to Harry Potter a spread of various delicacies without putting in too much effort, most of my eating was done at restaurants and fast good joints. My personal favorite was Culvers. At my fattiest, I could put a major dent in my wallet at Culvers. And it was about a mile down the road from my house. Score! Easy freakin dinners all the time. But at what cost?

For me, an average meal at Culvers consisted of this:

1 Bacon Butterburger deluxe (double), fries and a large diet dr pepper (LOL at the Dr Pepper, by the way. Like that means anything.)

AND

1 Vanilla Concrete mixer and another small order of fries.

Fries were my addicition as you can tell. And, despite the fact that I want to drop a few pounds, I still crave them like mad. I have a pang for them almost everyday. Weird, huh?

Anyway, since I started to diet, I got a food app on my Android (Calorie Count)that listed all the nitty gritties of my eating. Fat, calories and all. Since I just gave you an example of a typical meal, I'll also give you an example of my typical intake. Fat and all.

1 bacon butterburger deluxe (double) is 751 calories, 50 grams of fat, and 34 grams of carbs.

1 large order of crinkle cut fries is 495 calories, 22 grams of fat, and 68 grams of carbs.

1 vanilla concrete mixer is 682 calories, 40 grams of fat, and 67 grams of carbs

In total, that one meal is 1,928 calories, 112 grams of carbs, and 169 grams of fat.

So, if I had this meal more than once a day, I pretty much fucked myself with every single bite. And rest assured, I did have this meal once a day. Sometimes multiple times a day depending on how lazy or tired I felt.

You guys, it's no wonder that I had a meltdown. This is horribly, horribly bad for you. I ate like this multiple times a day with almost no second thought. It's a wonder to me that I'm not even bigger than I am already, or just plain dead.

When I finally decided that enough was enough, I made some changes. As hard as this was to post and as embarassed as I am to be putting this up for everybody to talk about, this is the only way for me to wake up, and to hopefully wake up some other people too. And if I have to embarass myself a bit in order to get it into my head (and yours) that I need to stay home and cook, so be it!

What have I done since the discovery of the baaaad that I was doing to myself? This:

I opened up my wallet: I always bought processed food that was quick to make and made excuses when confronted with choosing something healthy over something fast. I make more of an effort as far as cooking and buying healthier food. I also take stabs at making food for the family. You know, by trying not to burn it.
Even my burnt food is healthier than the stuff I mentioned earlier in the post.

I stopped drinking soda: This one was really difficult for me. Where I work has a free soda/fruit program, and it is so easy for me to go to our cafe and grab a 32 ounce cup and fill it up with fizzies. However, for the past 3 weeks, I haven't done that. I'm proud of myself because cutting out the consumption of Dr Pepper (or as I call it, crack in a cup) has saved me 388 calories everyday. And let's not forget the 32 grams of sugar that I'm no longer consuming either.

I exercise: There's no way around it. I have to work out in order to drop the weight. At this point, I'm doing 30 minutes of cardio and 45 minutes of weight exercise 3 times a week. It should be everyday, but I work hideous hours, and this is all I can make time for at the moment. As I get deeper into exercise, I will most likely end up modifying this.

Make small changes, show some big results! (Hopefully)

Thanks for reading my story today.

Until next time.