As you might imagine, our children's health is very important to me, and not just in the physical sense. To me, at least, being healthy also includes having a solid self-esteem no matter what size you are.
The truth is, everyone, that loving yourself and your body doesn't mean that we are not capable of seeing and accepting that perhaps our body isn't at its healthiest. We should be able to love everything our body does, every single day. It's that body - whether it's underweight, fit, overweight, big, small, round, pear shaped - that allows us to do things throughout our day that we really take for granted.
It's that body that allows you to stay or get in shape.
If you have a few "trouble" areas, guess what? Everyone does! But there are two kinds of "trouble" areas; the kind you can change and the kind you cannot. Simple truth. There ARE things you CANNOT change. If that's something you can't live with and want to go the cosmetic surgery route, that's a personal choice but, also, another blog.
For most of us who either don't want to go that route, or can't for whatever reason, our body's flaws is just something we have to accept. I want you to see yourself and be able to ask, "Is this something I can change?", "Will it make me a better me, physically, mentally and emotionally?". If the answers are "yes" then by all means, go for it! Changing your body when it's for your well-being doesn't mean you don't love your body. On the contrary, it means you love yourself and your body enough to recognize when change is necessary.
However, while we should be able to see those pounds creeping up on the belly (worst place to have fat because it's wrapped around your organs and can lead to diabetes, insulin resistance, cardiovascular disease, etc.), it's important to keep a healthy mentality. When we begin to obsess about a number on a scale, get depression over it, beat ourselves up mentally and/or even hate our body, it is no longer healthy! Our mental well-being is just as important and, at all times, we should be able to say, "My body isn't perfect but I love it for all it can do, all it will do and all it could do."
You might be wondering what all that has to do with our children and the answer is that it has a lot to do with our children. How we see ourselves and how we see and describe others is what YOU are passing on to those young, innocent minds. I really am so disturbed by this video on Yahoo! ( "Maggie Goes On A Diet" ) that I feel compelled to write how it made me feel.
If you don't want to go to the link, it's about a children's book about a little 14 year old girl who goes on a diet and becomes healthy and fit, joins soccer and becomes popular and famous. While I get, and actually like, parts of the book, I just can't agree with the idea that telling young children that being thin is going to make them popular or famous.
The video goes on with the journalist interviewing 5 & 6 year olds, shows them pictures, asks them which girl stands out and a little girls actually calls her "chubby wubby". I just don't get how come, we as parents, actually TEACH our children to be so cruel. I have to say, the word "fat" is not allowed up in this household. And before anyone goes up in arms about why I consider "fat" a bad word, let me explain that what I consider bad is the context in which the word is usually used and I have found that if my daughters want to describe something to me (teddy bear, cat, what-have-you), there is almost always a better, more intellectual way of saying that the object/animal is big rather than just saying "it's fat".
With that said, I don't allow meanness at all. There are many people, young and old, who struggle with being under-weight and actually get picked on, being called "anorexic", "stick", among other things. It's just not nice to go on describing someones body in a non-complimentary manner as if we knew their health history. So why would anyone teach their child to do that?
I've said this before in other blogs; I am not a perfect parent but I know right from wrong and as soon as I could, I began to teach my child the very basic lesson of "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." I also sat down with them and explained that while many people who are too overweight are unhealthy, so are many people who are too underweight. I explained that we cannot tell someones diet or lifestyle just by looking at them so it's really just better to not judge. What if the person has an underlying medical condition? What if the person has already taken steps to become healthier? But we can't tell so WHY judge?
What we really gets me is that we can teach our children to be motivators, friends, caring, understanding human beings but because we, as adults, have such an unhealthy relationship with our own bodies, we have passed on a sort of hatred to our children towards other children who are "too skinny" or "too fat". It has a horrible domino effect because, in case you didn't see the video I linked earlier, eating disorders amongst children is up 119%. That same unhealthy relationship most have with their own body is being passed on to children 10 fold. That's a sad truth I hope we can change.
It starts at home.
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