Goodbye Frumpy...maybe next year...

http://anothertiredmommy.blogspot.com/2011/10/it-turns-out-i-used-to-be-hot.html

What do YOU eat for dinner?

So Monday's meme didn't really pan out because I had something on my mind that I felt needed to be discussed. That is STILL on my mind and I STILL have things to discuss about it, but I will sit on it (Ha...Fonzie...sit on it...I'll stop now) for a day or so to try to gather my thoughts. Translated, this means that I will completely forget that I even mentioned it and may or may not get back to it. Because THAT my friends is how I roll.

Speaking of "rolling," I feel as though I am rolling around these days, so I decided to try to go "raw." It sounds dirty for some reason and my husband looked a little TOO excited (AND a bit scared) when I told him about it--until I explained that it in no way involves him or body parts (except for parts I want GONE from my body) and will really not hinder his way of life in any way shape or form. I finished day one and...I bet you think I am going to say, "I feel GREAT" here, but I really don't. I don't feel deprived either and I certainly don't feel hungry. I think I may be getting sick. THAT would put a damper on the data, now wouldn't it?

Back to YOU. What is the craziest "diet" (though they are ALL called "Way(s) of life" now) you have ever been on AND/OR what is the BEST diet (WAY OF LIFE) you have followed and liked. I really DON'T like the whole "DIET" thing--I was way too hard on my body years ago and now I REALLY just want to be healthy. That is why I am interested to hear from others about their experiences. I am intrigued by the Paleo "way of life," and am obviously interested in the "RAW...way of life," but I would love to hear stories from those of you who only ate bananas for a month or only eat bacon wrapped bacon with bacon and...bacon...you know...THOSE "way(s) of life..."

I just wasn't quite finished with that last one

So yesterday's "meme" elicited some very interesting response and although I didn't get as many as I'd hoped, I DO appreciate the fact that some of you commented. I will try to copy and paste the facebook comments on here so that those who are not on facebook are able to read them. If you DON'T know what I am talking about, check out yesterday's post, http://anothertiredmommy.blogspot.com/2012/02/really-chicken-nuggets-over-turkey.html and the blog post that inspired me, http://www.youknowithappensatyourhousetoo.blogspot.com/.

TODAY'S post is going to continue with the discussion--until it doesn't, because THAT my friends is how I roll. Yes--I "roll" by yammering on about one thing and then switching to the next while everyone else is still on the first thing. I was inspired today  by http://unpublishedworksofme.blogspot.com/ who wrote:


This really angered me because, while I think that child obesity is on the increase and a great deal of the parent population are to blame (I recall watching a documentary on kids as young as 10 years old being given gastric bands because their parents were incapable of monitoring their food intake. One girl, after having a gastric band put in, was invited to a family meal where they all sat down to KFC. Her KFC was liquidised ... please explain to me how this is RESPONSIBLE parenting?!) But, I digress ... it's going a bit far to scare little children by confiscating their lunch. All that succeeds in doing is giving a little girl a complex about food and weight. In the UK, a doctor sent a young girl a letter saying she was 'obese' for being about 5 pounds above the national average. What kind of message does that give a child? The key is to not make a big deal about food. And to educate kids (and parents) on healthy ways of eating. This police-state approach will never work. All it will do is aggravate the situation. Because, what happens when you tell a child they can't have something? They want it more. 

It's all about education, education, in my opinion. And since when is chicken nuggets a healthy option ever?! Looks to me like the inspectors and teachers need to be educated too.

To which I responded...and responded...and responded. Instead of doing all of that "responding" as a comment, I decided to copy and paste my responses as today's post. Only I thought I LOST all of those responses, which is one of the WORST. FEELINGS. EVER. LUCKILY, I'm not as dumb as some of you think I am and my work was not lost (though after reading it you may wish it HAD been...)

Doesn't everything come down to education? The problem is, too many people are like my son--they came out of the womb KNOWING everything, so they figure, they don't need to listen when others try to teach or educate them! THIS is my BIGGEST pet peeve (though "pet peeve" is too kind)! I go into every situation assuming I know very little. THIS doesn't make me less intelligent than  others (there are OTHER things that make me less intelligent than others, but THIS is not one of them). IN FACT, being able to admit to not knowing things helps to make people MORE intelligent. Amazing, right?! Why are so many people afraid to admit that they do not know everything? HUMILITY people. Get some.

 I am trying to unthink the whole liquefied (or liquidized) KFC thing and I threw up a little bit when I read it. EEW--there it is again--make it go away! I cannot even IMAGINE being responsible for my children having to get gastric bypass. I know that obesity is often times genetic (and there are MANY unhealthy slender people), but my philosophy was (until I was outnumbered, but THAT is a different story!) why start giving the junk to the children? They don't know what they are missing if they have never had it. Unfortunately, we can't lock them away like some bizarro Tangled movie and only expose them to the foods WE want them to eat, though that seems like the only way to REALLY keep the whole food insanity under control.

I used to battle with my husband and mother about food for my children. My mother wants them to have "fun" food because she is the grandparent and she already lived through the days of saying no. When my son was nearly three, we went to a carnival down the street from my mom and dad's house. My mom INSISTED on giving my son orange soda pop. After deliberating for what felt like hours, she won (or simply didn't listen). My son took a sip, spit it out and said, "This is yucky--too spicy..." and that settled THAT argument--for that day at least! These days, he would probably sell his sister for ANY sweet beverage, but that may say more about his relationship with his sister than his relationship with sweet beverages!

My husband uses (I swear!) almost an entire bottle of syrup at one sitting. You could DRINK the syrup off of his plate with a straw--it's disturbing. The first few times ANY of my kids had pancakes (or french toast) I didn't give them syrup or butter and I never put salt on any of their food either. Everyone gave me a hard time, saying that my children should be able to enjoy their food (and I kind of agree now), but my theory was that since they were never introduced to syrup, butter, or salt, they wouldn't NEED those things. I was (and still am) so afraid of them A. becoming the "typical" American junk-food hound or 2. having any of the issues (with food and with health) that I have.

That's not to say that I didn't eat healthy growing up--I think we were the first people to eat wheat bread ever (the closest thing to wheat bread anyone I ever knew got was the poptart sandwich one kid brought to school one day. We LOVED him...but everyone else ate white bread) and we NEVER had sugared cereals. We drank water most of the time and were allowed KoolAid on occasion. Maybe my mom figures that keeping us healthy as children didn't really work for us as adults, so we should take a new approach with our children? Or maybe she wants to see her grandchildren having fun ALL the time and children don't have fun eating veggies all the time? Or maybe it is fun for her to see us tormented like we tormented her?  Whatever it is, I've learned not to worry about it since 98% of the time my children are eating healthy meals--why shouldn't they be able to splurge here and there?

I am horrified and appalled that a DOCTOR would condone let alone be responsible for writing a letter like that--to anyone. Five pounds over the NATIONAL AVERAGE?! I understand that OUR national average is considered to be obese, but writing a letter to a young girl about being overweight is more detrimental to her health than five pounds will ever be. My NOSE weighs five pounds! I remember in high school asking a guy friend of mine if he thought I would win for class officer. The girl I was running against was about five feet tall and 70 pounds soaking wet (NOT that it should matter, mind you). I was just shy of 5'9" and 125. My friend told me, "Well, she IS much littler than you and people like that..." SERIOUSLY?! What I heard was, "Well, you are fat and disgusting and she is not, so she will definitely win..."

I stopped eating. I was working at the time (at McDonald's--GREAT cover!) and in the school play (along with a zillion other activities), so it was easy for me to claim I had eaten elsewhere. At one point I got down to 110 (and STILL wore my size elevens and a coat over my outfit because I was afraid that people would see my body. THAT is a problem, though I don't know who to blame. I'd like to blame a family that was consumed with weight and size, my sisters for always being so little, or my mother--because you always blame THE MOTHER, right?! I could blame the "friend" who so callously sent me down an unhealthy path. Only, when my daughter started wearing HER coat during the school day (at the age of SIX), I started to think.

It is no secret that I am (and always have been) unhappy with my weight, but I try DESPERATELY to not make weight a factor in ANYTHING with my children--I try to simply make it about health (and try to eliminate my own self-doubt when my children are present). So why then is my daughter wearing HER jacket and covering up all day? Could it really be an inherent quality and if so, how do I help her to fight it? It took ME over twenty years and truly BECOMING what I thought I was to learn--I certainly don't want to see her go through THAT. The good news is, I think she was blessed with my husband's ridiculously speedy metabolism, which will definitely be helpful, though I refrain from commenting on size--skinny or otherwise--and simply commend them all  on being healthy, stressing that healthy is beautiful.

Today, I packed carrots, peppers, ants on a log (celery, peanut butter and raisins) and cucumbers in my son's lunch. he also asked for a PB &J on whole grain. I was going to let him take a treat from Valentine's Day to have for dessert and he told me, "We aren't allowed to have candy at school, but thanks anyway, mom. I'll take a clementine instead." Now my daughter had smuggled a dozen candy hearts and a pixie stick into HER lunch (which I found and confiscated) even though A. they are not allowed to have candy and@. even if they WERE, SHE would not be allowed to have it because she doesn't eat her lunch.What works for one...well, I don't know how the saying goes, but you get it.

I guess my whole issue with other people telling my kids what to eat is the fact that it takes away what little control I have left. I KNOW that I am feeding my children healthy (sometimes ridiculously so) foods and that is my only insurance that I am keeping them safe. I need to send them off every day and hope that they are behaving the way I've taught them to behave, that they are safe and happy on their own, and that nothing happens to them while they are gone. There is so little I am able to control in their lives and that is scary. Horrible things can happen that I have no control over, but no one can make fresh red peppers, cucumbers and carrot sticks unhealthy (unless they deep fry them, but I feel quite certain that no one is going to steal my children's lunches for the purpose of deep frying them). If I want to give my son a treat in his lunch because he is such an unbelievably healthy eater--ALL of the time--then I should be allowed to do so.

So...I may mess up my children mentally and emotionally, but they will be the best EATERS you will ever meet. If it kills me (and if the school gets involved, it just may...)

Do you ever wonder what it is I am even TALKING about? Always, you say?

I went to the gym today. I decided that I am going to start EVERY post with this news--IF I do indeed make it to the gym. I know most (okay, probably ALL--except for maybe my aunt or my mother IF they are even READING this!) of you do not care AT ALL about whether or not I go to the gym (unless I share a story like the time I was at the gym with my friend, Kristen and we were chatting while on the treadmill (Our own individual treadmills. Obviously.) and suddenly I was holding on to the bars as my legs were dragging behind me yelling like a lunatic. I think Kristen was yelling, too and then after what seemed like hours, she was able to turn off the treadmill. The funniest part (okay--THAT was the FUNNIEST part...the WEIRDEST part) was that no one...I mean NO ONE even looked up from their machines or the front desk or anywhere, to see what the commotion was. It wasn't like we were tucked away or anything. We were in a huge open gym (about twenty feet from the front desk) called American Family Fitness and it is enormous, but open. There were people close enough to hear. LUCKILY they didn't care--AT ALL! I ended up with a gnarly gash on my leg THAT HURT LIKE A MOTHER--a bruised arm and a crushed ego. Have I mentioned how much I HATE the gym?!), but if I start with this information--even if it does not fit into the rest of my post--I will at least have SOME motivation to get there. Health isn't enough of a motivator for me because my psyche is five and still pissed about all the time it DID spend at the gym without any rewards at all. I keep telling [my psyche] that it was a good thing I WAS going to the gym regularly at that point because I could be SO MUCH worse right now, but my psyche does not believe that I could be ANY worse and is pissed at my whole general make-up. My psyche looks at other psyches and has psyche envy. It wonders why WE can't have good genes and why WE can't live on a diet of chocolate and...well, chocolate. I understand completely. THIS is why I need to trick us into being motivated for OTHER reasons and those "other" reasons are all of you(Or BOTH of you...)who are reading. I have a few friends who are ALWAYS at the gym AND they are ALWAYS happy,so you would think there is a direct correlation between the two, but there is not. It is merely coincidental--it has to be, because going to the gym makes ME angry. It wasn't ALWAYS this way--I used to be okay with actually going (though I NEVER loved it nor was I ever EXCITED to go. I started to get pissed THEN because I knew so many people who did NOT go to the gym, who abused their bodies, and they looked FANTASTIC. Not. Cool.), but when I started having health issues and vowed to eat healthier and workout more regularly, I got even worse. I KNOW it was not BECAUSE of the gym. I KNOW that working through the pain would have been BETTER for me, but INSTEAD, I stopped. Completely. For two years I did NOTHING. Well, I had my children (then 4,3 and 2!) with me, so that's SOMETHING, but I did not partake in any activity that was solely for the purpose of exercising. Okay, maybe I went on a bunch of walks, but you get the point. I was recently [kind of] diagnosed and am being treated for my bazillion ailments (it's like I am NINETY), so now it's time. I said it was time last April when I JOINED the gym, but evidently what I meant then was: "It is time for me to open the door just IN CASE I WANT to go to the gym MAYBE three times a week" and I DID--go about three times a week for a while. The problem is I planned to go every day. THEN in the summer I did not go at ALL, but I swore that EVERY TIME I was in the pool I would be sure to be moving constantly. I actually stuck to that on most days, but it turns out I needed more. MUCH more. I already told you about my "training" for the big Thanksgiving football game/capture the flag--four or five times at the gym from August to November--so sad--and two of those days were the Monday and Tuesday BEFORE Thanksgiving--so my new motivator is you. I will be sharing on here IF I go each day and my goal is to bore the hell out of you with this information each day. You're welcome. The OTHER thing I wanted to tell you about is that I want to start reviewing television shows. I am a TV-HEAD. I seriously LOVE too many television shows and get WAY too attached to them. I'm still smarting a bit because of shows that were pulled in '04 and '05 and believe that my "friends" from those shows are off living a wonderful life in the land of forgotten sitcoms and/or dramas. My husband is just as bad as I am. We DVR EVERYTHING. In fact, we are almost at capacity (we have 4% left!) on our DVR because we tape SO MUCH. It really only makes sense--do you know how many OTHER shows we can watch if we eliminate commercials?! It's BRILLIANT! I also have my guilty pleasure shows--those are the shows I am either A. EMBARRASSED to watch (ANY show that has "houswife(wives)" of ANY kind--deperate or otherwise in the title or 2. Shows that my husband doesn't watch because he knows we watch WAY too many already (Once Upon a Time...Revenge) and THESE shows I generally watch On Demand. We actually HOPE that some of our new shows get cancelled each season just so that we can have an easier lineup, but most of the shows we choose (ANY CBS crime show and USA/TNT comedic dramas fall into this category) stay on FOR-EVER. We even tend to stick with a show far past its shelf -life, hoping it will pull through in the end. Suburgatory is one of those shows. It isn't quite funny, but it isn't terrible either. We aren't sure what to do with it, but we DO know that every time we watch it we want our twenty-two minutes back. Up All Night is the same. These are shows that are funny in THEORY, but in actuality, they are just circling the funny drain. I know this may seem extensive for a grown man and woman as far as television goes, but when you have three ridiculously exhausting children, you just want to be able to veg out on the sofa each night and have someone else do the entertiaining for you and you DON'T have time to waste (THANKS A LOT Suburgatory). SO at the end of the night when Whitney's sassiness is up against Coach's new gig as a hippie father and grandfather to Lorelai and that guy who is always on Punk'd, it would be helpful to hear from a crabby-gym-going-gal who happily assesses shows like Suburgatory to save me from wasting my time. I've decided to BE that gal--it's for the greater good and although I may not be motivated to do a whole lot, I DO like to advise people on important things like television. That's just the kind of gal I am. Oh--and I am evidently the kind of gal who uses the word "gal," though I really need to modify THAT sometime soon.

Goodbye, Frumpy...(easier said than done...)

It turns out, I used to be hot. No--it's true. I KNOW what you are thinking..."I KNEW her then (whenever "used to" was...) or dated her then and she was NOT 'hot'," but I'm sorry to say it--you are wrong.

I looked at old pictures the other night and didn't even RECOGNIZE the person in those photos. I literally ran (yes--LITERALLY) to the mirror to do a comparative study. The result? I used to be hot. Now...well, let's just say I USED to be hot. It's really all relative.

 Here's the thing--I never THOUGHT I was hot--or even too pleasing to the eye. I knew I wasn't a heinous abomination or anything and children didn't run screaming from the room when I entered (though they don't do that now, either--unfortunately...), I just didn't realize just how good I looked. Comparatively speaking. You see, if we all had a glimpse into what COULD happen, we would be far more secure with ourselves and our present state of...hotness. Compared to the facial hair-ridden-under-eye-bag-wearin'- child-totin'-overweight mess I've become, I would even go as far as to say I was SMOKIN'. Yeah--that's right--I said it. And I will not hear otherwise from naysayers.

I look at pictures of high school and college friends and they look like they walked off of the Desperate Housewives set. Perfect makeup (pshaw...MAKEUP!), perfect hair, perfect bodies...I think they may even...SHOWER. REGULARLY. Bitches. Just kidding--excuse the language. Especially since those of you reading ARE hot--and have kept your hotness throughout childbirth and parenting. Some of you are even HOTTER than you were (as if that could even be POSSIBLE!). Instead of calling you names, I need to be happy for you--and I am. Really. In fact, there should be some kind of an award or something for those of you who didn't lose it...I know how hard it had to be considering how hard it was for ME to be HERE! Yes...it could get WORSE...I need to do something about it. TODAY.

 So if I get "hot" again, will I know it, or will I constantly be reaching for something that is unattainable? I think of when I used to babysit (I didn't stop until I was like thirty--I made more money doing that than what I made TEACHING. So sad...) and some of the moms REALLY had it together and were still hot. Some of the moms, however, didn't start to look (their degree of) "hot" until well after their children left the toddler years. Don't get me wrong--no one got THIS bad and they were all pretty--I'm talking about HOT. You could tell they missed it and when they got it back, they took frumpy by the neck and laid it out for good. THIS inspires me. A little laser-hair treatment (a dear friend asked me after the chin hair debacle why I haven't done this yet. Money? Time? Complacency? Good question!), regular trips to the gym (instead of four days on...one week off...one day on...two weeks off...three days...you get it), clothing that doesn't look like I got it from the PE lost and found...THESE things will help in my quest. And THIS time I will appreciate HOT. I will embrace it, love it and nurture it like it is a deserted baby on a stoop. Hopefully then, it won't leave me again.