Fat parents

[PoppySeed2014]

I'm up with a colicky baby and feeling brave enough to throw an aibu out there...

I'm overweight and unfit. Mainly because I eat too much Nothing more or less mysterious than that!

Lots of my friends are a healthy weight and fit. I'll use one as an example.

My dc eat really healthily, my friend's dc less so.

Eg Plain organic yoghurt vs "kids" yoghurt full of sugar. Fillets of fish vs fish fingers. Jacket potato vs potato waffles. Water or milk vs ribena. The odd chocolate button vs daily chocolate biscuits/bars. I guess the main difference is that I feed my dc healthy, normal, (mainly) organic food - masses of vegetables and fruit etc. my friend mainly feeds her dc "kids" processed food.

So. Well done for reading this far! Aibu to think that what I feed my dc has more impact on their long term health than my weight? I'm genuinely not sure and when I (inwardly) cringe as she gives her children daily snacks of biscuits and ribena while my dc have fruit and milk I think, yes, but I'm unhealthy, she's healthy... Surely being fit and slim and active is a better example long term? (She's really fit - runs marathons, surfs...)

So please help me to see sense! (I'm trying to lose weight and get fit, but Rome wasn't built in a day, blah blah...)

(To clarify, I eat the same healthy food as my dc. But also chocolate, cake etc when they're in bed or at school etc. so they don't see me eat much crap. Oh, and chocolate/cake etc are not banned - they just don't have much at home and don't really ask for much "junk" food. I'm happy for them to have homemade cake, a few buttons etc, but not lots of processed crap every day. But they are allowed to eat everything - nothing is banned. I also use the word "treat" to mean anything from a trip to the playground to a banana. "Treat" isn't just junk food.

Children always do as you do and not as you say. It will not work if you feed them a diet that you don't stick to yourself.
All eat together and all exercise together.
They may be fooled for a short while if you are eating junk food after they have gone to bed, but they won't be fooled for long!

Sorry my phone is playing up and I seem to have missed half the thread!

How old are your children, PoppySeed? Are they still quite young? From my experience/observations, kids' eating habits really evolve as they get older and have the freedom to buy foods out of the house. What their friends are eating can have a big influence. So if your children are not at that stage yet, don't assume that their eating habits will stay the same!

It's no use pontificating on how fabulous you are and how crap your friend is when it's you who is more at risk of numerous life limiting conditions through how you treat your body which in the long run will have a far bigger impact on your children's lives than being fed processed food.

In my experience it's the kids who are limited in their diet to only brown rice and sugar free yogurt that rebel and are the ones having double Big Mac and fries in McDonald's as soon as they have their own money.

Moderation in all things- for all the family- is what works.

I think you will be less clever at hiding the crap you eat the older they get! They aren't going to be little forever, and kids aren't daft

I lost 5 stone last year..... Relatively easily on the biwi low carbing threads

I took up sports too

Now the dc are older they eat all my spinach and insist on coming running with me!! But I did it for me and the good food is mine!!! They never wanted bloody tuna steaks/sweet potatoes/kale before ! But now they are teens they have changed a bit

"I suppose I mean why give a toddler ribena rather than water or milk? "

Because they won't touch water, or milk*, and it's a hot day and they haven't had a drink since breakfast and although they don't seem concerned, you are worried sick, so you try them with something you think they will like and phew! They actually gulp it down. What a relief! Thus a precedent is set.

• have one child anaphylactic to milk, and two who were consequently not allowed it until tested at 1 year old, who by them would not entertain it. DD started drinking milk aged about 4 I think, DS2 at 7 still won't have it.

FWIW I think you are doing a good job and I wish my DCs ate as healthily as yours.

I do think that the sporty example your friend is setting might well turn out to be more useful than a good diet however. As soon as your DCs become teens they will be eating crap, no doubt about it. Probably setting down an example of "three meals a day and no snacks" is a habit that will maintain in future life.

I have one DC who eats quite healthily (DC1, the allergic one - he likes fruit and veg, and due to his allergies cannot eat all that much fat). The other two are awful with food. All are thin and practically never ill. I was very thin when young (am now at my heaviest ever of 9st 6 and about to go out shopping for salad this morning), and come from a "thin" family, so I think that helps. Thin does not always equal good health all your life though. My Dad was always skeletally thin his whole life, yet died from Type 2 diabetes!

Gosh what a long post! Anyhoo, I think you are doing a grand job!

But madamec my children ONLY eat brown rice and natural yoghurt... Oh no, wait... I think you only read my op!

My son and friends son were both off the scale in their red books but our HV wanted my friends sons daily diet details because she's overweight. They were just both big lads. But she was judging friends son due to her weight issue.

I think you're both doing partly right things but you are comforting yourself with cakes and chocolate when they're in bed. What about when they are older? They will see you eat your stash and thinking that's ok? Nip it in the bud now. Try and break your comfort eating snack cycle.

If you have your own stash of food the only message is 'as soon as I am old enough I can have that too'.

And children are never fooled! Or not for long.

Yep I was trying to get everything done. Shove some dry Cheerios in Dd (10 months and stopped eating completely) and make up a spinach and raspberry smoothie for DS as he too has eating issues due to health problem.

Oh and I have a spin class at 9.30 which I don't want to miss for fear if getting fat and ending up popping my cloggs prematurely or ending up having a leg amputated from developing diabetes.

Poppy you probably also do well to start considering why the secret eating happens, could there be a gap elsewhere in life that you are attempting to fill or something you are distracting yourself from? That kind of eating rarely has anything to do with the food or true hunger (although it can just be addictive).

Thanks balloon!

My 22yr old DS has known so many girls over the years who've had awful relationships with food.

From secret diets, throwing up, taking laxatives to constantly refusing a biscuit even though they'd really love one.

All too often, their reason was "I don't want to get fat like my Mum".

Even if they also had fat Dads, the reason was always 'Mum'. However, their parents rarely knew unless it became completely apparent.

I was pretty much exactly in your position, OP - though with only one toddler - until I decided that me being significantly overweight was not only a poor example to my son, but limited my fitness (running, which I used to love, just not possible for me at almost 5 stone overweight) and that weight loss was the single biggest thing I could do to ensure I was around and healthy for as much of my boy's life as possible. (Am an older mother.) I am now almost three stone down since the start of the summer and still losing. It's hard, I won't lie, but I think it's important.

Like some previous posters, I don't eat 'junk', I got overweight on too much good, homemade food. Both DH and I like cooking. I take issue with Michael Pollan there (he says somewhere that more or less anything is fine as long as you make it yourself, which I call bullshit on - yesterday after work I made blackberry and apple crumble and blackberry ice-cream, and a root vegetable and cheese bake, and in the past I would have eaten far too much of all three!)

You sound as if you're doing great, OP. But I think that you should do your best to shift your mindset so that you consider your own body as just as important as those of your children. (And give up Pringles cold turkey, because there's crack in them...)

I do think there is an obesity gene though. My DH is slim and was twig-like as a child. I am obese (although I do exercise a lot) and was 'solid' as a child (though not overweight due to junk-food free childhood). We have one DS who is ok BMI-wise but never runs/breaks a sweat in sports and will home in on any calorific food. The other is very slim and isn't interested in food. Yet they have both been brought up the same. My parents are both overweight and my Granny (who died at 84) was so heavy that her coffin had to be wheeled into the church at her funeral. DH's parents were both very slim (although his dad died at 61 from a heart attack).

Anyway, that's a long-winded way of saying there is more to it than ribena versus water and anyway some people are just fat. Get over it - it's not exactly ebola.

We have one DS who is ok BMI-wise but never runs/breaks a sweat in sports and will home in on any calorific food. The other is very slim and isn't interested in food. Yet they have both been brought up the same.

How would that have anything to do with an obesity gene?

Here's the thing, on the one hand your doing the right thing giving them the best food you can and while you're in total control of their diets then that's great but when they grow up they will begin subconsciously assessing health and attractiveness and link it to diet, (unavoidable in our society) if they think the meals you serve contribute to your obesity they might start restricting or changing their eating habits for the worse. I feed my children as good food as I can afford and that they will eat and make sure I'm leading by example in being active and eating the same as them (except for wine-but I don't hide it from them either...)

Poopyseesd this is an interesting thread , my advice to you is to google Paul Mckenna (or go the thread here) because his way of eating makes the MOST sense of all,You can do it with the dcs. It re educates your appetite and helps with feelings of low self esteem etc.

I lost nearly 3 stone on it and am maintaining (I do follow other eating plans too) but no CC or chemical laden 'slimming' foods, or weighing of food.

In my experience it's the kids who are limited in their diet to only brown rice and sugar free yogurt that rebel and are the ones having double Big Mac and fries in McDonald's as soon as they have their own money

I think that's rubbish.

What I want to do for my dc (6 and 4) is create 'food norms' for meals that are ingrained. The only things they ever see in the breadbin is wholemeal bread/rolls. Wholemeal pasta. The freezer is full of actual pieces of meat, a few bits of frozen veg. The ready meals we have in the freezer are portions of home made and frozen meals. The yoghurts in the fridge are organic low sugar, the cheese is an actual block of cheese, not reformed strings or squares.

All of their main meals are simple (because I dislike cooking) home made things. Salad sticks and egg/tuna sandwiches for lunch.

Over the summer, ds1 had 'homework' to do, where he had to choose what to have for tea one night, shop for it himself and help prepare/cook it. He spent days agonising over the perfect meal...should he choose chicken breast, pork loins or prawns? What veg should he choose? Should he use potatoes or rice to go with it? Choosing burger and chips or chicken nuggets (which many of his friends did) as an option wasn't even something that occurred to him, never mind desired. Because to him, they're not a 'dinner' food. They're something we have from McDonald's sometimes, things he sometimes eats at friends houses because that's the food that exists there.

I'm far from a lentil weaving earth-mother. My kids eat their fair share of crap at parties. They have a glass of coke every Sunday with lunch. We have a Chinese or McDonald's every so often on a weekend. Nothing is banned.

Not every child who only eats natural, home made food for the majority of the time at home is chomping at the bit for junk and going to automatically stuff themselves on it at any opportunity

OH and I've always eaten healthily IMO and Paul Mckenna's it's HOW you eat not so much WHAT!

Genetics I just do not get, I am in my forties and as a child I remember overweight people but I do not remember morbidly obese people. The genetics are rare for people to have no control of their weight and not the numbers we see now. Other genetics means a predisposition not an eventuality. For me the biggest issues you can give to your child is emotional eating and food as a reward.

I think we can spend too much time over thinking the whole healthy diet that we feed our dc so that it ends up being a huge hang up for them.

I remember dd's friend age 7 saying that she was dieting and had lists of 'bad' food. She was copying her mum and was so confused over what to eat and what not to eat that she wasn't able to do 'normal' 7 year old girl things! dieting became her focus. At 7!