Healthy eating is healthy living

My dear husband,

For the first time in our parenting career, we have run into a real challenge: a tough question about one of the fundamentals of parenting. As I continue my journey into healthy eating, I am gathering strength and motivation to take my kids along. Over the course of the past year, we have been doing better and better.  I have learned to cook in a way that makes them happy, create a variety that make meal times enjoyable, learned to avoid unhealthy snacking by predicting hungry times and creating snacks the kids can't say no too.

The last question that remains is this: Is eating unhealthy wrong?  Note that there is a substantial difference between the claim that eating healthy is right and the question I pose. Should candy be looked upon as a source of problem and disease, or an acceptable indulgence? Should our old tradition of family doughnut days be buried for good? Can I insist that cookies never be present in a way that confuses the kids?

There are many reasons, this question is hard to answer. One is social: do you really want to raise kids that choose not to eat pizza with their soccer team? Do you refrain from participating in trick-or-treating because its soul purpose is to acquire a bag of illness? Do you spend your childhood looking envious upon your friends' lunch bag?

Today, I have found my answer in another parent's blog.  Words of wisdom and inspiration:

To be successful we have to retrain our brains to disassociate food with pain and fun. We no longer go out to ice cream to cheer up, or to the bakery to start the day off right. We learn to find other reasons to laugh, other sources to comfort us in pain, and another focus for gatherings with friends. All our lives food has been the topic of discussion, our psychologist, and our door to new cultures. Not only must we seek alternatives but it is our added responsibility to offer these alternatives to our children.

Every word written in that post is a pearl to think about, come back to, read over and over again.  It draws attention to the fact that all the pain in the decision about eating unhealthy comes from the idea that we need food to bring joy into our lives.  And not only food: cigarettes, alcohol, sex, television... There is a long list of things we engage in just to smooth out the rough corners, make our life more tolerable, cheer up. (Most of them, of course, can be engaged in for the right reasons! How notable it is that pursuing them for the wrong reason devalues the thing itself!)

When I become stressed, the advice I often receive is: take a break, have a glass of wine, go watch a TV show...  Time and again I have found that engaging in something like this invariably turns me into a mess the next day. Having accomplished nothing productive during my break, I have allowed the problems that stressed me out to begin with turn into monsters that haunt me. The pain was momentarily gone - now it is back with a vengeance.

Is eating ice cream to cheer up as a child a precursor to evasion and inability to deal with real problems as an adult?  Well, not exactly. However, learning approaches to handling disappointment, pain and problems without the means of sugar to lift our spirits is definitely a precursor to handling such things well in the future.

Today, I ask you:  

    Can you stand by me as I make healthy eating a major value in our home?

    Can we do away with making kids happy with treats and seek other means, such as hugs and games?

    Can we send them a clear message that healthy eating is healthy living. One does not just do it most of the time.

Today is also the day we started the morning with a Pink Line!  YES!  It is a new beginning for us.  Another life in our hands, to help shape and direct into the future.  What better day to hold hands and go on a new path of partnership and camaraderie!  Let's make our kids proud.