One thing I have been struggling with recently is finding a way to teach the children to lead an active lifestyle and eat healthy, balanced diets without making them self conscious about their bodies. Especially when one of them is a pre-teen girl.

There is a girl the same age as E that has decided to call her fat. E goes back an forth from thinking the girl is joking to over-thinking it and calling herself fat. The girl who has decided to tell E she is fat is an obese child. E on the other hand is perfectly healthy. Not overweight, not under, and I would have killed to look like her when I was 10. When we try to tell E that the other girl is the overweight one not her she is adamant that the other girl is not fat.

We are finding it difficult to tell her “no” when she asks for sweets or telling her that she needs to be more active without her considering it a suggestion that she needs to lose weight. She most certainly does not need to lose even an ounce of weight. I just want to instill in her the good habits that will ensure that she never will have to struggle with her weight like myself and her parents do.

It is interesting that in their eyes chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese are healthy. When we tell them that they aren’t then they are shocked that we let them have them. I try to use that as a teaching point for moderation. That things like nuggets and mac n’ cheese are good to have every once and a while but not every day.

I have a feeling this is one of those things where I will never know if we are doing the right thing. We just need to try to lead by example and hope that in the end they at least come out not eating a pint of Ben and Jerry’s every day.

Tonight we get the kids back from their Mom and we need to get them back into a routine. The past couple weeks of being able to focus on me have been great. I feel more energized and stronger. I need to keep that momentum going when the kids come back into the house. We did have them with us Friday night into Saturday and I was able to get up yesterday morning and get my workout in before anyone else woke up. That has always been the way I have been the most successful when it comes to a workout routine is getting things in before the day starts for everyone else. Now I just need to determine if that is what I want to do going forward. Ahhh decisions, decisions…

So I signed up for Weight Watchers yet again.  It worked for me once I know it can work for again.  One step I took this time that I haven’t in my other attempts was I went in and hit the magical little button that wiped out your weight loss history.  It is symbolic of the bigger picture for me.  I can’t try to recreate what I have done in the past.  I need to start from scratch and create a whole new story not recreate my past.  Part of it is also a little selfish in that I want to earn those 5lb stars.  I want a chance to get my 75lb star.  Little rewards go a long way on these kinds of journeys and those little jpegs mean a lot to a tech geek like me.