Here's To Health! Group

by karenloh on Feb 11, 2012 at 12:09 pm

I can't imagine a life without mac and cheese or pancakes.  Sounds like your mother was very weight conscious - or was she health conscious?  We ate classic middle america food - meat, potatoes, and a vegetable for family meals.  Cereal for breakfast and lunch at school or PBJs if at home.  Very little fruit.  Occassionally a salad.  I remember Dad being a good cook (he said he learned in the Navy) but the food was NOT healthy or low calorie by any means.  Fried stuff and gravy were normal for family meals. 
 
It's a whole new world out there now, isn't it?  It's fun to learn new things and new foods and new ways to eat healthy and within boundaries. 

by CharityShantell on Feb 11, 2012 at 12:13 pm

When I look back on my childhood, the biggest overall consistent factor was inconsistency. My mother was always battling food and weight. And truly my father was too, but he had a very physical job so it wasn't as apparant in his size. Sometimes my mom was totally giving up and eating everything bad in sight, and other times she was trying moderately, and other times she was trying HARD, and other times --- let's face it, she was just starving herself thin. Here are a few thoughts that prevail from my childhood:

1) EXERCISE - Exercise for my dad was pretty non-existant, but he had an active job in construction. For my mom, exercise was never consistent. She would exercise like mad at times, and then not at all other times. Exercise was always for one reason --- To lose weight. No other reason. About 2 weeks ago, I was on the phone with my mom. I asked her if she had kept up her track walking, and she hadn't. She complained that the last time she was going to the gym recently, she worked and worked and didn't lose anything. I have been trying to encourage her that if she doesn't start exercising regularly, she's likely to lose all mobility in the next 10-15 years. It's serious! It doesn't seem to sink in.

2) FOOD: OMGoodness, I know I'm listing ice cream down below, because it deserves a whole category on it's own, but just food in general! I joke that I didn't know you could even eat broccoli without cheese sauce until I was 20 years old, but it's true! The gravy...... the fried foods... the JUNK we ate. All southern home cookin'. And we GORGED ourselves. Oh, I just ate til I thought I would pop. And my parents really didn't monitor me. I was depressed in high school, and I would come home at 3-3:30 my sophmore year, and I would start eating. Leftovers...... FULL of cheese and junk. I remember that's the year I started putting mayonaise and cheese in leftover spaghetti and microwaving it into a mushy, oily MESS. And I would just eat SOOOOOO many calories between 3 pm and 6 pm. And by dinner I was so stuffed, I didn't want to come to the table. But we always ate dinner together so I would come, and inevitably I would eat MORE. I look at my freshman pictures versus my sophmore pictures and there was SUCH an obvious spike in weight. From the time I was a liiiiiittle little girl, I was just obsessed with getting my hands on a WHOLE package of food and eating it ALL by myself. I wanted a WHOLE carton of ice, a WHOLE bag of candy, a WHOLE pizza. I remember being 7 or 9 years old and wanting this. The obsession continues, but I'm trying to surpress it, and begging God to help me with it and (maybe?) deliver me from it.

3) ICE CREAM - Ice cream was extremely important. Paramount in my family. And in a big family, it seemed like I never got 'enough'. Always wanted more, but had to share with 7 family members. When I was just 2 or 3 years old, we lived in Germany where my father was stationed in the Army during Viet Nam. The story goes that EVERY night my parents and I would walk down the street to an ice cream shop and get ice cream. And the lady thought I was so cute, she wouldn't charge for my scoop. Pictures of me at 3 years old show I was already such a chub. When my father was 57 he visited us out here in California and he wanted ice cream. We don't keep it in the house regularly so I went to buy one 1/2 gallon. After he had a big bowl, he wanted seconds. I told him I had only bought 1 carton and it was gone. It was 10 pm but he was serious about getting seconds so we went BACK the store late at night and got another carton for him. He was well over 300 pounds at this time. He died of a massive heart attack 2 months later. I was grateful to have seen him one last time.
 

by Noressa on Feb 13, 2012 at 9:25 am

 Our family cared, but portions weren't really explaind, and that's kind of where I fail now.  We would have a veggie with dinner, a side, and a main dish.  But for snacks, I'd eat balled up bread.  Or I'd nibble nuts, or chips.  We always had snack foods around and we were encouraged to eat everything on our plates.  Dad would often say something when we were having "too much" like "Do you really need that?" but once it was on our plates, it was our responsibility to not waste it.  Which would often lead to me eating more than I needed!
 
And ice cream.  We always had ice cream.  Several kinds!  And the bowls would be huge!  I'd have like, 3 or 4 big sized scoops and we'd have toppings at home too!  So good... But honestly, really not what we needed.  Sigh.  Yes, a lot of my weight came from well intentioned parents who didn't know how to teach us portions.  Good healthy food, sure!  But too much of a good thing is still... Well, too much.