Changing Old Patterns

Today is my younger daughter's 29th birthday . . . sigh! Her sister will be 33 in two weeks, which makes me shake my head in amazement. How can my girls be this old when I just turned 30 myself? :-)

Today both my daughters are wives and mothers, and I'm so happy to see that my former issues with food and weight have apparently not adversely affected them. They are focused on providing good food choices for their children and are trying hard to not make food an issue - not an easy thing to do, especially since my oldest daughter has two year old twins! I think my daughters made a conscious decision to change how they think about food, choosing to teach their children to have a healthier approach, because they watched me struggle with my weight for most of their adult life. I'm thankful that my ingrained patterns weren't passed on to my children and my grandchildren, and I'm hopeful that all of them will be able to maintain a healthy attitude and a healthy weight their entire lives.

So many of us grew up with an over-emphasis on food. We were raised to not waste food "because of all the starving children in India, China, or Africa." Food was used as a reward ("eat all of your dinner and you can have dessert" or "Feeling sad or had a bad day at school? Have a cookie and you'll feel better.") Naughty children might have been sent to bed without dinner (this didn't happen in my childhood home, but I know it wasn't uncommon to do this as punishment in some homes). Since I'm really older than 30 :-), I had a lot of mixed messages about food that collided with a growing pop culture that brought a stick-thin model named Twiggy to popularity, making ultra-thin the new look that young girls aspired to copy.

As a young mom myself, I tried to not make food an issue with my children, but as I reflect back on those early years, I was only partially successful. I had an almost primal response to seeing food "wasted" and often urged my children to take "just one more bite", even when they insisted they were full. Sometimes I would finish what was left on their plates, just so the food wouldn't be "wasted." It wasn't until I was on 5&1 and working through my own food issues that I came to the sad realization that I allowed myself to become the garbage can, eating food I didn't want and didn't need rather than putting it into the REAL garbage can. Ugh!

An important part of this weight loss journey is learning how to disengage from old food habits, including, at times, reprogramming our hearts and minds. Old patterns, some of which may have been passed down from generation to generation, have to be rejected. This is MUCH easier said than done! I have to be honest when I tell you that I still struggle to see food thrown away, but I'm getting better at it, because I know it's better to throw away the two bites of whatever rather than eat it "just to make it gone." Does anybody relate to this?

I'm continuing to learn and refine my new habits. I don't always do this perfectly, and sometimes it's just difficult because those patterns were pretty well entrenched for over 50 years, but practice makes better (not perfect)! The 5&1 program was the beginning of helping me redefine how I related to food. I had to learn how to deal with the stuff of life, good and bad, and still stay on plan. I had to learn the difference between being satisfied and being full, and learn that it's OK to stop when I've satisfied, even if there is still food left on my plate.

You are learning the same things! Day by day, as you stay on plan, you are changing how you think and feel about food - you are developing new habits that will help you not only reach your goal, but stay there for the rest of your life. It's not easy, but it's a journey worth taking, so hang in there!

Who's committed to an on-plan day today?