SPARING OUR CHILDREN OUR STRUGGLES (to whatever extent is possible!)
“Mommy, am I going to get fat?”, my beautiful little princess asks me… Sometimes three or four times per day (I kid you not).
And each time she does, I feel like I’m taking a bullet. Because it’s largely my fault that she’s conscious of such things, well before her time.
“Mommy, what number is my tummy?”, she’ll ask, pulling up her t-shirt for me to assess and quantify her perfect washboard abdomen, complete with little-girl-six-pack. My responses vacillate between telling her she’s perfect, and assigning a very low number, like “1” or “2”.
In her short lifetime, I’ve been a very fat mommy. She told me, at that time, how I’m a “wobbly mommy” but she loves me anyway. Because I’m nice. Even if I don’t look like Emily’s mommy. BULLET.
Then I had weight loss surgery. And didn’t think to explain too much to her. I skirted the issue somewhat because she was little and I expected an uneventful procedure that she’d hardly notice (well that didn’t go as planned – I ended up in a coma in ICU, with a 90% mortality risk).
And then I recovered and became a very slim mommy.
With batwing arms, tongue-like boobies flopping from my chest, and a loose skin-apron hanging from the pouch she’d grown in years prior.
I was fortunate enough to be able to afford what is lightly referred to as a ‘mommy makeover’. But mine corrected far more than motherhood had broken. Mine corrected a lifetime of just-never-winning. My bariatric surgery and plastic surgery didn’t restore anything. I’ve NEVER had the body I do now. Not EVEN when I was my beautiful Ariana’s age. Rather, MY surgeries GIFTED me. They gave me something otherworldly and impossible for me ever to have achieved non-medically.
But the gift is not without obligation or expiry. Au contraire! It requires constant active curatorship to keep. As I’ve written elsewhere, the weight loss was miraculous for the first seven months. And at almost the stroke of May, I became hungry. Snacky. Peckish. My old compulsive itches begged for scratching, and the bad food habits of old reignited themselves, like the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes.
And I was horrified.
Distressed.
Anxious.
Ashamed, even.
Faced with a crossroads, I had two options. To the left, I could capitulate. Resign myself to it having been too good to be true… Acquiesce to the cravings, the compulsions, the urges. To the inner voice mocking me cruelly, berating me for ever believing I could really transcend my struggles. And then, at that crossroads, to the right I had a world of knowledge and experience hard-coded into me from my 15 years as a private practice psychologist. I knew that I knew better… I knew I had assisted patients over tougher terrain than I was facing… I knew I knew the way through…
If I only I would dig my heels in and hold firm. If only I would STAND.
And so, from that moment on, I poured my energy into what I now call “BARIATRIC MIND MASTERY”.
I immersed myself in psychology concepts and theories, modalities and applications. And I modified them to make sense to a person who had radically accepted her obesity and the futility of the non-medical struggle, submitted herself to surgery, lost all her weight, and now found herself mentally at square one, and on the precipice of emotional and physical ruin.
And while I was winning, I was writing… I was blogging, vlogging and creating content. And all of that content is now power-packed into a series of digital programs available to my bariatric audience who want more than a diet… More than food police giving advice they simply cannot follow… Who want to learn how to regulate their emotion and their compulsions to get their MINDS into the driving seat on their bariatric journeys.
And ALL of this I have done in the presence of Ariana, my beautiful, sensitive little girl who is over-conscientized towards food, fat and fear of fat!
This is a short list of what I do to assist her:
“Mommy, am I going to get fat if I eat this?”
My standard answer – “NO! No single serving of ANYTHING is ever going to make you fat…”. We are not scared of sugar, or carbs, or fat. But we are mindful and aware.
I do ask her if she’s hungry… We talk about what food choices might best feed her muscles and her bones and provide maximum energy and brain power. And I may ask her what else she’s eaten today… And when she decides that path to take, I encourage her to savour her snack, with full sensory enjoyment, so that one is enough.
No “clean plate” clubs in my home!
We don’t make any issue at all about finishing food. My children tell me when they’ve had enough to eat, and I am absolutely content with that being their last mouthful. Irrespective of how much or how little they have eaten. I want them to listen to their bodies. Food is (thankfully) not a finite resource. It doesn’t run out and there will always be more. For this I am grateful; I understand it isn’t always the case. So I foster gratitude, but reject a scarcity, ‘gobble now in fear’ mentality out of hand.
Bariatric Mind Mastery is MIND mastery.
When I overcame my own struggles, as I described earlier, I didn’t do so (only) to be slim. I did so because it was a matter of psychological life or death… It may sound dramatic, but any of you facing this struggle will relate. I needed victory in this area of my life in order to be victorious in other areas. I needed to relieve myself of this boring old burden so that I could channel my energy into bigger, bolder, better plans and dreams. Antony Robbins says he admires a wealthy man not for his wealth, but for how savvy, skillful, resilient and wise he (may well have) had to be in order to acquire such. And I see bariatric success the same way.
And the tools, skills and strategies are generic, really. I’ve tweaked them to make them acutely specific in my Bariatric Mind Masters program, and even my BACK ON TRACK MASTER PLAN Mini Course. But they can be applied to all sorts of issues my daughter’s might struggle with… Self-esteem… Anger… Bullying and being bullied… Communication… Self-love and grace. Delayed gratification and diligence… Charity and contribution… Calming themselves through mindfulness and meditation.
And so in my home, we focus on THOSE things as we do life together. I try to channel my girls’ conversations from fat, to health… From food, to gratitude… From meal choice, to appreciation of life and the wonder of human connection and company. And I never idealise treats. Food is just food. There are better choices and worse choices, and reasons to make all of them at various times.
But food is just food. Not a reward.
Not a prize. And not the be-all-and-end-all.
It is, perhaps tragically, perhaps fortunately, impossible not to leave marks on our children… To not bequeath upon them a version of our own struggles and victories. But the best we can hope for and work towards is that that version be less acute than our own… Or that their inherited version comes with a factory-fitted wisdom learnt from our struggles, and our loving impartation of that hard-earned wisdom. Not birthing and repeating the struggle within them, but rather coaxing them in a more enlightened, more mindful, more aware direction than was ever possible for us. To own for them the parts of us that are broken. To showcase the parts that will always be in recovery. But to fan into flames the parts of them that are untainted. Uncontaminated. Pristine. And yearning, as all humanity does, to be the very best version of
itself. For all the broken pieces to ‘fall together’, rather than apart.
