Shannon’s BodyBlog

I wish they’d see that.  But many who I know, don’t.

Case in point.  This morning I woke up to find my 8yr old son fixing himself breakfast.  Now, he’s got it a bit more complicated because he has to weigh his food so that we know how many carbohydrates he’s taking in so that we know how much insulin to dose him to cover his food.

I do buy Rice Krispies because it’s only 22 carbs per serving and he only gets one serving.  So he had a bowl on the scale with Rice Krispies in it and next to that was a bowl of fresh strawberries.  He had already weighed the strawberries.  I keep a list of foods he commonly eats with the weight (or cup measurement) and how many carbs for that serving.  He then quartered the strawberries and put them on top of his cereal and covered it all with some skim milk.
Let’s contrast that bowl of Rice Krispies with the bowl I used to have at his age topped with a spoon full of sugar to make it sweet!!

Anyway, the kids and I were hanging out at my friend’s pool yesterday.  While the kids were all swimming, getting out and running around, playing baseball, getting back into the pool (keep circulating that scene), she was "gossiping" about another mom who was in the PTA with her (really, I live such a cliché suburban life).

She told  me how this other mom would take her kids out to lunch everyday to places like Friendly’s and The Olive Garden.  I asked if her kids were overweight and she said that they are well on their way…and the oldest of her 3 kids is 10 yrs old!  The mom is very heavy and she said the husband is about 300 pounds.  The reason why I asked if her kids were overweight is because I imagined they would certainly be getting to that point if they ate out like that all the time…even if it’s for only one meal a day, but the food in their household apparently is nothing to sneeze at either.

I grew up in a two parent household where both of my parents worked.  That was pretty unusual back in the 70’s and even the early to mid-80’s.  And because fast food was not as prolific back then as it is today (a fast food joint on every street corner), they chose to cook fast food instead.

Common meals for me consisted of food like La Choy, Swanson’s TV dinners, etc.  They also cooked fresh foods, but because my father was a biologist, he cooked the crap out of everything because he was afraid of salmonella.  He knew about salmonella before salmonella knew about salmonella.  The man was ahead of his time!!  Yay!…not.  So, I’d eat a forkful of food, an entire glass of milk to wash it down, and I called it a day.  So my calorie intake was low, but the food choices weren’t the best.  My father’s background is Irish and my mother is second generation Polish, so I really can’t fault them too much for being lousy cooks.
When I got older, I knew how to cook eggs and pasta.  In college, I relied on the school food, and when I got married, we relied on take out.  But, my metabolism got screwed up from all of the fat intake and so I got fat.  I took for granted that I’d always stay skinny.  I exercised on a regular basis all throughout my childhood and through college and never rose above 128 on the scale despite my lousy eating habits, but my body was too overwhelmed with the takeout crap we were eating and my sedentary job and I gained 20 pounds.

Throughout my marriage, I taught myself to cook and I started watching Food Network.  I was opened up to new foods and I enjoyed challenging myself to see if I could make really good HEALTHY meals.

So, now I’m grateful that I taught myself to cook.  I’ve always been an adventurous eater, so I’ll try any cuisine.  I teach my kids to make simple meals and unless I’m in a rush to get dinner on the table, I let them help me in the kitchen unlike my parents who’d kick us out the minute we stepped foot into the room.  Not that they had much to teach us anyway.

So, when I saw my son putting those fresh strawberries on top of his cereal, it made me proud of him….even though it was such a simple act.

It also motivates me to keep at it….even if I’m not doing it perfectly right now.  It’s better than doing nothing at all, right?

When I did the triathlon last year, my kids all came up and hugged me and said they couldn’t believe I finished it, LOL.  Anyway, my 8 year old son, who has Type 1 diabetes, said he wanted to do a kid’s version that they held at the same competition.

Parents’ actions have an absolute effect on kids.  Which reminds me…I really have to clean up my language, too.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 4:45 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.