Doing it for the kids

Interesting article in the Guardian today (the link has a lot about dieting and it's mentality), which can be read as a writer's change of attitude to food.

Her story has tow distinct strains, a return to and respect for normal eating, interspersed with an how I lost weight dieting story. Maybe this is a little bit of a leap, but is one for those in the know and one for the obesity crisis adherents?

It's as if the total incompatibility of the delusion and reality, cannot be Incorporated, so let's write one for each. The realists will see both sides, and the surrealists will see their delusion.

I don't know how much this compromises the important underlying message; that obsessing about food and weight tends to set in motion a pattern of unsustainable scrutiny, exhaustion and release of loss of control, and again. Nothing good can be salvaged from it but the wisdom not to do it and the experiences to back that up.

The control- monitoring diet and weight obsessively- is actually lack of control and the loss of control- when exhaustion with the rules comes into effect, is the attempt to regain control by getting rid of these exhausting rules and regulations.

The whole process of 'weight watching' is essentially, unstable.

Solution

She diagnoses the dilemma;

I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of my daughter Vera, then two, growing up hearing me talk about being on a diet, denying myself food or stressing about looking large. I lived through all this with my own mum and the outcome was not healthy.

The source;

My mother was permanently on a diet while I was a child and always telling me I had to be careful not to become "fat". (She herself has always been a size 12 but would rather be a size 10.)

She then formulates the solution;

I'm quietly vigilant around my daughter and I notice already that her attitude to food is different from mine.

She finds a way to put it into practice;

I say very little about food to my children because I know my own attitudes are a bit warped.

And;

I try to keep it all as neutral as possible. As a result, so far they eat everything and don't fixate on anything.

But, uh oh, fails to apply it to herself, and appears to find it a mystery that continuing on the diet rollercoaster, means a continuation of the diet roller coaster.

Reality is forcing itself into our collective psyche, whilst some of us continue to resist it.