Getting Big

Just figure, as a mother, you're gonna get blamed no matter what you do...LOL!!  Fact of life. I know, don't know which way you should go.  I think the best bet is to teach by example....have only healthy food in the house (within reason) and have them see you make wise choices and exercise.  My mother used to harp about my weight all the time and then make dessert every night of the week and casseroles that must have been full of carbs!  When I went off to college, she would make all my "favorite" fattening foods when I came home for the weekend (and I was already managing to gain 10lb each year of college.  She still does it!  Food was love in my house and has remained that throughout my life.

Holly, I think there is a fine line between the do's and do nots. I don't believe I should force my kids to eat a certain way but I also don't think I should ignore the problem and not educate them at all. I teach my daughters through example. The see me eat, they see what I eat and how much I eat. When I shop, I take them with me and they see me read labels and sometimes ask questions and I explain. When I cook, I talk about the food I cook and how I am cooking and why. I feel I am informing them without shoving it down their throats. As a result, I have seen them back down to one serving of supper when they used to eat seconds. They help cook or even cook the meal more often. They ask me about their food options and if I think they are healthy. Yeah they still like normal kid stuff..candy, cookies, cupcakes. Do I buy this stuff for them? Outside of holidays, no but they still get it. I think the important thing is that they are eating better overall and they understand that it is good for them. I will not ridicule my children for their weight because I know all too well how that feels but I won't leave them without the knowledge to make wise decisions about their food either.  You know, we often speak of food addictions. Well, we tell our children about the evils of drugs and alcohol. Why would we not inform them and tell them about the evils of food as well?

Yanno what... that really struck me... a doctor telling your parents you could have a heart attack at any time and it wasn't addressed.  WOW! You're absolutely correct.... kids don't come with instruction manuals.   I really don't have any bad feelings about my mother saying things because she was never nasty, she wasn't trying to justify anything... just making observations.  She was so tiny that everyone was big to her anyway!  lol  I'll tell ya, I resent my sisters more for the "you're so ugly.. how can you stand yourself" stuff..  Like it's not hard enough being a kid.. .  and even as a full grown woman.. there are times I look in a mirror and say to myself "you can't go out in public like this".. and stop in my tracks....  it could take me days to get over it.  Some things cut like a knife.. and it stays with you forever.  My mother watched my brother balloon to over 600 lbs and it KILLED her to see this.  She didn't do anything to cause it and there wasn't a darned thing she could do to stop it.  Quite frankly, I feel worse about doing this TO her... letting her see me in the condition I was in. I have no clue how to handle my daughter!  NONE!  When she started to get a little pudgy I took her to the doctor and he talked to her a bit.  They even talked about her doing the DDR for exercise.. and that lasted all of a week.   I've always approached it by way of discussing "health", not appearance.  I ask her to please look at me and see what is possible if she doesn't do something now that she's just "overweight" ... healthwise though.   I see my concerns as legitimate considering the genetic predisposition to diabetes in our family..... she sees it as me being an "alarmist".   I see what you're saying.... I just don't know where the happy medium is.  Again... your post.....  very, very thought provoking.  

Why when we saw our reflection in the mirror didn't we stop and think about just how big we were becoming and put a halt to it?  ...was one of your questions. As a yo-yo ho most of my adult life, I had no idea when I was fatter...or thinner...for that matter.  I really didn't.  In odd ways, i was truly addicted to food abuse, yet I really did not think about it too much, either. Luckily for me,  if you can classify luck by use of  illegal drugs, purging, starvation, over exercise...I never got to Morbid stage...merely Obese. In retrospect, it seems that I actually did not understand that the act of abuse of food was causing my obesity. One thing did not add up to the other, in my sick mind.  I know that does not make sense, but seriously, that is how it was. I thought all intake of any food was the problem.  I was in reality scared of food, yet I hid from life problems in a way when I ate crazily. I did not have to really see how f*cked up my first husband was or what my role was in that train wreck called a marriage. Before that, I used food to not deal (and how could i as a child?) with how f*cked up my parents marriage was.  My parents did their part to kill my self esteem, too.  I was a big kid, and ironically, if I had been taught to accept my larger body, my ED would have not happened, i will even go as far as to say that maybe I would have loved myself more to never allow for one second the treatment i put up with in my first "marriage". Society played its part as well. Twiggy was in...classic shapes were out. Media cried with high protein, all vegetarian, spot reducing, low fat, THIS DIET...you could get "fixed".  I was not broken...I was FINE the way I was born. I fell for the Game and trying to play it. Fast forward to now:  I try to not think of it as struggling...it is the hand I was dealt. I am learning to work with it. Just getting to that notion was some work, too!  Great thought provoking post. Lots here to think about.  

I always, always thought I was fat.  I can remember being a very young kid (first or second grade at most) and telling my cousin i was going on a diet because I was too fat.  a big part of that was my mother...she has always been really overwhelmed (for lack of better word) about weight.  She is always thinking about it, always talking about it...she still is just like that.  she won't DO anything about it, necessarily, she'll just talk about it.  She was here visiting me this weekend and was still the same way...overeating and then still ordering dessert, and then making apologies for it the entire time.  I don't like to blame everything on her, though...she also taught me a lot of good things, but the behavior learned from her in this regard was extremely damaging.  I can still remember feeling like I couldn't stop gaining.  I also remember always feeling bad about myself, always a feeling of self-doubt and fatness, a sort of wall that went up where I never felt attractive.  this led me to always be quiet and sort of the outcast...which i of course told myself that i was actually being outcasted b/c i was chubby and undesirable..when in reality it was because i wasn't letting people in and trying to make friends.  ANYWAY.  when i actually BECAME overweight (after graduating from high school), I don't even really remember thinking very much about it..i just remember it happening.  i always felt like there was noway to stop it (hmm..exactly like my mother, actually).  It wasn't until graduating from college and moving on to graduate school that i finally started to do somemthing about it.  at some point, i just realized...hey, i've either got to lose this weight or die.  thats how i felt.  so i started to lose....and no, i've never stopped struggling.  one thing that helps is meditation.  just trying to be more aware of my surroundings and the direction my brain is heading, and trying to stop the obsessive behavior and thoughts before they take over has helped immensely.  i've tried to talk to my mom about this, but she just sort of half-listens and then continues w/ her ways.  i love her, but sometimes she drives me totally nuts.