The Parent Diet - Loose Unwanted Pounds in Just Days
Just in time for your New Year’s resolutions (more or less), I have solved age-old dieting mysteries and developed a sure-fire plan to loose unwanted pounds in just days…
Technorati Tags: Diet, holidays, New Year’s Resolutions, parenting
Well, OK, I tend to exaggerate and I didn’t really say how many pounds in how many days, but I think I’m really onto something, so hang out with me for a sort-of-long post (think of it as a REALLY short book) that may change your life (possibly another exaggeration).
To start, I must say that I’m not a doctor or a nutritionist, nor do I have any qualification whatsoever to be giving dieting advice. These are just ideas that have helped me and now I share them, for your information, in case they are interesting.
The Skinny
The Parent Diet is centered around one basic and fundamental rule - Model good eating and exercise habits for your kids.
It really isn’t a diet at all, it is about adopting new habits a little at a time, nothing that you can’t maintain, because this isn’t about loosing ten pounds in thirty days, it is about your whole life. Become a little more healthy over time in ways that your kids will benefit from now and learn from for later, so they will be more likely to be healthy as adults.
Dieting, um, no, Changing Habits in the Matrix
Do you remember in the first Matrix movie when they explained that the machines programmed the dreams of first generation of pod people to be happy dreams and the people started to die? The machines learned that people need conflict and struggle to survive.
I think this is true in the real world with food. For a zillion years, up to just about now, the struggle of humans has been to have enough food. Now there is more food than we can possibly eat and there are even things that aren’t really food that we can eat, so maybe we should be overjoyed all the time, right? But instead we have created the next struggle - that we eat too much food.
Does that mean the struggle isn’t real? Does it mean it is all in our heads? Well, maybe it is in our heads, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. I think the truths we define in our heads are very real and very powerful.
What Would Oprah Do?
I read Oprah magazine, well some of it anyway, since I have kids to take care of and laundry to fold and the magazine is about six hundred pages long. Just about every month, there is an article about dieting and the latest science that explains why dieting is so hard. Here is the Cliff Notes version of all of that. Our brains build pathways for things we have done over and over so these things are easier to do again. These pathways can be changed, but it is very difficult.
So, it might feel like a fundamental, unchangeable, biological reality that a hamburger is more satisfying than a salad and more french fries are more satisfying than less french fries. And who wants to go through life being unsatisfied? And, it might feel like a fundamental, unchangeable, biological reality that exercise makes a person miserable (and takes an awful lot of time from other things like eating hamburgers and french fries). And who wants to go through life being miserable?
But these fundamental, unchangeable, biological realities are really pathways in the brain that we have learned over time. They aren’t a physical part of our human brains that we can’t change.
We’ve Learned from The Matrix, What About Star Wars?
Star Wars taught me that there is good and bad in all of us, so it is important to focus, meditate and feed the good side of the force. This soooo reminds me of trying to eat well! The greasy plate of cheese enchiladas with onions on top is SOOOOO good, but, you know, it also makes me super full so I feel like I need a nap. And jogging may make my muscles ache, but after a while, I notice that my posture is a little better and my back doesn’t hurt as much. Sometimes the good things are more subtle than the cramp in your side, but if you look our for them, notice them, tell your friends about them and write about them in your journal, then the good will become more powerful than the bad and eventually they will have their own pathways in your brain and just seem normal.
The Parent’s Secret for Change
I knew a guy once who enjoyed smoking, but knew it was unhealthy, but couldn’t quit. His girlfriend didn’t like his smoking, so one year he gave her a No-Smoking-For-One-Year commitment for Christmas. He had trouble on his own, but if he thought of her each time he wanted to light up, it was easier.
Maybe it is hard to change on your own, but maybe it is easier to do it for your kids. If you are eating unhealthy foods or too much food or not exercising, you aren’t only strengthening the current pathways in your own brain, you are also building the pathways in your children’s brains. They will learn eating and exercise habits from you and what a gift it would be for them if they learned healthy habits early.
OK Change, but Change What?
Marilyn Sewell, a Unitarian Universalist minister at First Church in Portland, Oregon, gave a sermon once with this story. A farmer’s convention was coming to town with talks and demonstrations on the best farming techniques. A salesman for the convention called a farmer to ask him to attend. He asked the farmer, “Don’t you want to farm better?” The farmer said “I already know how to farm better, I just choose not to.”
This is so true about eating healthy and exercising! We usually know what to do - eat less sweets, carbs and fats, eat more vegetables, whole grains and fiber and drink plenty of water. Get sweaty at least three times a week and don’t forget to stretch. There are so many diet and exercise books on all that, but I think, in general, people know more than they do and the tricky part is just doing it.
Some Final Thoughts
This is what has worked for our family. When Blue Eyes and I first got married, we bought beer and wine at the grocery store every week, we ate chips and salsa in front of the TV on the weekends and we at pasta like Italians because it was so yummy. Blue Eyes has taken the lead on this, asking for a little change at a time, over a long time, so now our meals are healthier, we snack less and everyone does some kind of exercise. We aren’t done yet, the practice of adoption healthier habits has become a habit itself. Sometimes I pretend like I’m mad at Blue Eyes for taking all the fun out of life, but I’m just kidding. I really appreciate and value his leadership on this. It feels better now and it feels better for later, when our girls are older and they have fewer bad habits to struggle with on their own.
Not to get too windy on your lovely blog here, but for me, it’s more than knowing what to do and doing it; it’s about whether or not I really buy the thoughts of the day regarding exercise and nutrition.
My great-grandfather lived on meat and potatoes - literally - and never exercised. (Thrived well into his nineties.) My dad goes through occasional bouts of exercise (much like me), but, on the whole, is sedentary and a little rotund. He’s never been sick.
My mother, on the other hand, exercises 5 times a week, eats moderately, and is quite slender. But holy cow, she sees her doctor more than she sees her children!
We demonize flesh in this culture. We’ve made weight a moral issue. And we equate slimness and exercise with health. When we say NO! to a piece of cake we feel oddly powerful.)
But I question the validity of that. We know that bodies are not all created equal. Some of us have had high blood pressure since we were 5. Some of us can eat what we want an never gain a pound.
I’ve been exploring this idea for years. But it’s difficult to get my head around. Historically, our cultural ideas do not stay put. They are shifty things. At one time we believed that fat made us fat. We also believed that pregnant women shouldn’t gain weight. (Now, we go.. “What?!”)
It’s hard to tune out all the rhetoric and pay attention to what feels healthy for me. My hope is that our children develop robust understandings of who they are, not what their culture wants them to be.
(Ummm, can you tell I’m a little passionate about this topic?)