Letting Kids Be Who They Want to Be

I am the proud parent of two teenagers.  I am proud of them for who they are, and I am honestly proud of myself for doing my best to raise them.  I want to be clear on the "doing my best" part of this, because I am so, so far from perfect.  As a matter of fact, I am constantly questioning everything that I say and do.  Sometimes things don't seem to translate over so well and I wonder if we are speaking different languages.  I am on a steep learning curve of understanding when to get involved and when to give them their space.  But I am clear with them that I am trying, and that I care.  I want them to know that I truly am trying my hardest to be the best parent for them that I can be.  Because that is all I can do, given what I have and what I know.

That being said, I was recently faced with a situation that I really had to wrestle with.  My kids are tennis players, and they are pretty good.  I grew up as a junior tennis player.  I traveled around Michigan, played tournaments, and made the varsity high school tennis team all the years of my high school career.  I ended my senior year as captain of the team, and our team even made it to the state finals for the first time in many moons.  I was offered college scholarships and turned down the opportunity to play for Western Michigan University.

I don't share this all to brag.  As I look back at those times, it was a different parenting generation.  My parents were very hands off.  They both worked, a lot.  In high school, my parents both worked second shift.  That meant that I was on my own, as my older brothers were in college.  I researched and signed myself up for tournaments.  I drove myself to tournaments.  I did not have a fan base in the stands, unless it was a friend of mine.  And by the way, this was normal at the time - rare was the parent who sat in the bleachers at a tennis match, though it did happen.  I still remember one of the freshmen on our high school team, who had her parents at every match during my senior year.  But they were truly the only parents who attended consistently.  My parents came out a few times when they could.  But the point is that I had to be the driver.  My parents supported me financially, and I am forever grateful for that.

So now the tables are turned a bit.  Sure, I financially support my children, but I am more helicopter parent than my parents were.  Part of it is because I can.  I work days.  I can take flex my hours or take a day off in order to tend to my kids and their activities.  My parents worked afternoons, and when you work on the assembly line, you can't leave for a couple of hours.  But the other difference is this generation of parenting.  Parents are more hands on.  The tennis matches have parents there, consistently.  The norm has shifted an entire 180.

The other change is the driver.  This is my big realization.  I have to be careful.  Just because I wanted to do all these things - take lessons, go to clinics, drive to tournaments, play on the high school team - doesn't mean that my kids want what I want.  This year, my daughter did try out and make the high school tennis team.  I am proud of her beyond measure.  Tryouts were tough.  They worked a lot harder than the kids did when I was a player, for sure.  There were two a days, there were late nights and early mornings, there was a lot of running, and even agility drills.  It was so hard for me to bite my lip and watch the end of some of these tryout sessions.  She was exhausted.  It was HOT.  And what I had to do was watch, support, and NOT tell her what to do.  I wondered if she was going to quit.  I questioned what I should say if she told me she was dropping out.  She didn't.  She worked it out, on her own.  I realized something big at that point: she is growing up.  She has to experience herself these challenges and work through them herself.  I can't sit there and share with her what I did.  My experience doesn't matter to her.  Her experience matters to her.

In short, I realize that what I wanted as a teen is not necessarily what she wants as a teen.  I wanted to be one of the top junior players in the region.  I wanted to play as many USTA tournaments as I could.  I wanted to play tennis for a college team.  I was driven to play kids who were more skilled than me.  I wanted to be pushed to be the best that I could possibly be.

What I just realized is all that doesn't mean anything to my kids.  I don't know that they want all these things.  Actually, I highly doubt it.  This concept really smacked me in the face this week.

My son and I are looking at where he should take tennis lessons.  He tried out two different places this week.  Place number 1 was pretty good.  The instruction was solid.  The level of play was on par with my son's ability level.  Actually, he was winning a lot of point play match ups.  The drive and cost were reasonable.

Place number 2 was also good.  The instruction I thought was slightly superior.  The level of play was higher.  My son was very challenged.  He hardly won any point play.  The drive and the cost were about the same as place number 1.

My son wanted to sign up at place number 1.  Meanwhile, I wanted to sign up at place number 2.

I spent two days debating what to do.  And here is what I realized.  I wanted place number 2 because all I was thinking about was his progression as a tennis player.  I knew that at place number 2, he would be able to rise to the next level of performance, win more matches, progress farther in high school tennis, and improve his form/strokes/game strategy.  Playing those harder players would force him to play harder and better, in my mind.

I wasn't thinking about what place number 1 was giving him.  Being able to win some point play I find builds his self confidence.  He also was starting to make some friends on the court.  In short, he was having more fun there. 

I had to take a step back and ask myself what we are trying to do here?  We aren't at Wimbledon and we aren't trying to get there, either.  We are here to play a sport, hopefully for life.  Ultimately, I did not even wind up playing college tennis, because I decided to choose academics over athletics in my decision making.  I have no regrets over that, and though I have taken breaks from tennis over the years, I always come back to playing and I love the sport for what it is.

I don't see my kids as wanting to play college tennis.  Ultimately, what I hope for my kids is that they are able to grow in confidence by playing this game, and make some friends along the way.  Winning matches and solving challenges on the court, and even at times going down in defeat, are building blocks of experience.  It doesn't have to be crazy competitive to be character building.  Tennis made me stronger as a person and gave me grit.  But I didn't have to be at a fancy tennis academy in order to achieve that.  In retrospect, I wish I would have spent more time enjoying it, having fun and being in the moment.  That's how my son plays.  He enjoys it and I want him to keep coming back for more, naturally.  Place number 2 would not keep him coming back.  I signed him up for place number 1.

If he doesn't make the high school tennis team, it is not a big deal.  If my daughter decides to quit the team, it's not the end of the world.  I have had to make peace that my dreams are not theirs.  And their life is theirs only.  It's their turn.  They get to decide their own goals and desires.  I have to hold back.  I am here to watch, support, and be their safety net if they fall.

66 Days of Food Freedom

I wrote this back in March, but after re-reading it an additional five months later, everything continues to hold true.  I am compelled to share this in hopes that you know that – there is hope. Because I am still going strong!

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I am excited to share that I have just made it to 66 days without calorie counting!  Why is 66 days a big deal, you may ask?  Because research has found that on average, it takes 66 days to develop a new habit. My goal is to keep this new habit going, but it’s not easy for me.  I have a long ways to go, but now I am happy to share and hope this may inspire or encourage you in whatever you may be pursuing for your own health.  

I have been calorie counting for the last 3 years, every single day.  Even on vacation, even when I am offline, I have been constantly tracking food.  MyFitnessPal had become my best friend.  Well, sometimes relationships need to end.  This break up was necessary for me after hitting a mental, physical, and emotional rock bottom.  I had become so restrictive that my digestive issues flared up immensely and it was also interfering with my social life and causing me a lot of stress.  I had no fight left in me to continue expending the mental energy to methodically plan every detail of what I consumed. 

I only picked restaurants with calorie information!
Crazy times.

So, what did I learn?  That you can’t hide from your mental health issues.  That habits matter more than weight because one is an action, and the other is an uncontrollable outcome.  That the number on the scale doesn’t define my worth. That I want to live my life, and if that means I’m not totally cut and ripped that is ok, because being cut and ripped is not what makes me happy.  That I have to sit with my feelings, even when sometimes I feel like crap. And that is ok.

Planning, prepping, packing...
It was starting to drive me nutty.

Whew!  There is so much more that I can unpack, but let me start with the surface and in subsequent posts, I can get deeper.  So, the MyFitnessPal obsession actually led to a lot of unhealthy habits.

I am so thankful to have moved to an intuitive eating mindset.  To be clear, this is not a weight gain or weight loss model.  It’s just a way to be.  It’s an approach that has worked well for me.  Using this approach, I have learned a lot and wanted to share my top 10 insights in case it helps you:

1. My binging ended.  Seriously.  I can have cake and tubs of peanut butter in the house and I don’t eat it all.  I used to get so deprived keeping anything like that out of the house that if it showed up, I would then turn around and binge on these “trigger” foods.  Then I would eliminate it out of my life, beat myself up over it, and get extra restrictive as punishment.  Then the cycle would repeat.  Not anymore.  I know that this sounds crazy. I have had people tell me that if they had their “trigger” foods in the house that they would eat it all. I thought that too. The thing is that when you deprive yourself of a food for a long time, your body just wants it so much more, because it is like a forbidden food. So if it does show up, you go all out eating it like mad crazy because your brain isn’t sure if it will ever show up again.  If you have it in your pantry and eat it when you want, over time, the fun is lost. I feel like I have carved out a new neural pathway. I was warned I may binge for a while, but after eating cake for a week you probably also will reject it.
2. I feel satisfied.  I had treated myself like a robot before, eating the exact same meals and number of calories each day while ignoring feelings of hunger or fullness.  Usually, I would eat my allocated amount of meal or snack and still feel hungry. I would then be counting down to the next time I could eat. I would never allow myself any more food, because I was counting calories.  Now I just pay more attention, eating mindfully, and I can sense when I am full.  I currently have no idea how many calories I take in on a daily basis, which has been really tough, but I had to let it go. Now that I know food is plentiful and I can eat when I am hungry, I don’t think about food all the time the way I used to.  
3. My digestion improved.  Before I started this path, I was suffering from frequent stomach pain and cramps.  I was convinced that I had flared up IBS.  So I kept cutting food groups, both for gaining “control” in my life and also because I thought that would help my digestive issues – but my issues only got worse.  Within a week of eating a variety of foods, all my symptoms cleared. Now I find I only get a flare up when I don’t get in a variety of foods or I eat crazy processed food.  Recently I spent a week eating fun foods, but I knew I was low on fruits and veggies. I didn’t feel well and neither did my stomach. Once I got back into getting fruits and veggies back in my plan, I felt great.  When you don’t balance out your nutrients, your body tells you. This process has taught me to trust my body.
4. Eating is fun.  I am trying so many new things, and I naturally gravitate to whole grains, lean proteins, and fruits and vegetables.  It tastes good and it makes me feel good. I got rid of everything I had that I didn’t like the taste of, like zero calorie dressings and peanut butter flour.  Instead, I use olive oil and peanut butter. And dang, my food tastes soooo good and I derive so much more pleasure in eating what I like.
5. I gained time.  A ton of head space has been cleared up to allow me to write long musings such as this, but more importantly, time to invest in my family and my own mental health.  It is so refreshing to be able to go about my day without robotically planning when/what I am going to eat.    
6. There’s no judgement.  When I treat all food as just that – food – I don’t carry shame or guilt for what I eat.  This is a big challenge for me but if I eat a cookie, for example, I am working on accepting it for what it is and not demonizing it.  I used to judge this stuff.  The thing I realized is that the more I told myself “no” to the “bad” food, the more I craved it.  Now I can eat the “bad” food but I just have some and move on.  (“Bad” isn’t really bad you know).
7. Traveling is easy.  I still do toss some nuts and Lara bars in my backpack if I am on the road and in a pinch, but I don’t worry any more about finding food or how many calories are in a plate.  I just make do with what I encounter along the way.  I used to pack so many containers of food when I was on the road, because I was so scared of not finding food that met my narrow criteria. It’s so freeing to not do that anymore.
8. My hunger varies.  Some days I am hungrier than others, and that is all right.  I find that my eating is cyclical. There are days that I eat more and days that I eat less.  Most days I eat 3 times a day, but some days I eat 4 meals with snacks and other days I eat 2 meals with no snacks.  In all cases I am not going hungry! I have realized that I am not a robot that needs the exact same number of calories every single day.  Some days my body needs more than others, so I just follow it.
9. I’m social again.  I can react easily now to changes in routine, because it won’t mess up any meal plan.  And that is because I do not have a meal plan! I love being able to be in social situations now and not worry about counting food, or discretely skipping eating at a potluck.  It is so fun to be part of the group and break bread together.  
10. I’ve accepted science.  Here is what I learned after 3 years of calorie counting.  Despite repeatedly changing calorie counts and macronutrients, I couldn’t change my body’s natural state.  No matter what I do, my body has a natural set point and it will fight for that. Yep, I could get super restrictive again and get down to the lower end of my set point.  But I’m no longer willing to try to work to the point of obsession just to make myself smaller. It’s stressful and being smaller won’t make me happier. I have been there and it’s not fun.  I am at my set point and I am good with that.

We can’t control what our exterior looks like when you think about it.  We are all going to age, and in different seasons our body will change too.  But what we can control are our habits. While there is a lot that I have had to accept with changes in my body in the past 66 days, the positive benefits to ending my calorie counting days have been numerous.  My list is about what I have experienced personally, but I can also share that the outpouring of support from family and friends is what has really kept me going. While too personal to share on the internet, I have been told stories that truly warm my heart and remind me that my actions have the potential to inspire others like you readers.  And I truly hope that you know that you are worth it. Just eat well, move your body, keep your mental health as a priority, and accept yourself inside and out for everything God has made you to be.

References

The Human Brain’s Attack on Weight Loss

Intuitive Eating and Body Kindness for Gut Health + Beyond

Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift

TED Talk: Why Dieting Usually Doesn’t Work

TEDx Talk: Trust Your Hunger and Make Peace with Food

What is Intuitive Eating?

My Disordered Eating and Road to Recovery

It is hard for me to look back at my disordered journey with food. It’s difficult to admit what it did to me mentally, but worse than that, how it impacted my entire family.

What is scary is that it started with a desire to get healthy, and then it spiraled. Trust me, nobody plans to have disordered eating. Here is my story. My hope in sharing this is to raise awareness around how something that appears to be "healthy" eating can lead to disordered eating. Maybe this will help you, or you can identify a loved one who is going down this path and you can help them. This is an issue, and it needs to be elevated as it oftentimes goes unnoticed or even praised.

I started with a commitment to changing my eating, and I lost weight doing it. I got a lot of compliments, and a lot of people asking me what I was doing. I started posting pictures on Facebook of different recipes and foods that I was preparing. I started meal prepping on the weekends for the week, and sharing what I was doing on social media. The interest grew, and I then decided to start a food blog. I called it “Cathy’s Clean Eating Chronicles”. Yep, a food blog all around “clean eating”.

News flash: there really is no definition for what is clean, and I won’t get in to those details here. But suffice it to state that there are no good or bad foods, and there are also no clean or dirty foods. I confess that I was gravely misinformed at that time.

I still love blueberries, but for the right reasons today.
They taste darn good!

I was cooking with all sorts of fruits and vegetables, as well as making sweets with ingredients like oats, applesauce, and powdered peanut butter.  I was so proud of the banana raisin cookies that I had baked, that I would take them with me and eat them instead of the cake being served at a party. This is really where things started to go down a darker path.

You may have never heard of something called orthorexia. I had heard of it in passing, but never
thought much of it. It wasn’t until more recently that I was enlightened in a podcast by mental health counselor and psychology teacher Tiffany Roe of what exactly it is, and what the signs of it are. That is when I realized that I was suffering from it.

Orthorexia is a sneaky illness. Not everyone agrees on the label. It is not listed as an official diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-5. It is considered an Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder, or OSFED. But it is an issue, because it can go unnoticed.

Orthorexia often starts out as an innocent attempt to eat more “clean”, but can take a turn to a fixation on food quality and purity. This then develops into a rigid eating style, which can crowd out other activities, interests, and relationships, and can actually cause health issues.

How can you tell if your healthy eating is just a solid commitment, or a pathological condition? Can’t meal prepping and let’s say, going dairy free just be considered a healthy habit? Tiffany does a great job in her podcast to explain when it goes too far. This is when I knew I had a problem and I will share the examples I have to illustrate. What I describe below manifested over a period of 3 years.

1. Fixation on food. If you find food consuming your thoughts and taking up your time, you may have a problem. I became so obsessed with tracking every single bite of everything that I ate.
MyFitnessPal was by far my most used app. I would plan my entire schedule of eating every night
for the next day. I had to meet my targets for calories and macros, and then I would track other
ingredients as well. When you have a good relationship with food, you naturally trust the way you
eat and you don’t think about it. You know your body can handle sugar, for example. Meanwhile, I
wasn’t trusting the way that I ate. If I ate something that I hadn’t planned for or I had demonized as
unhealthy, I would mentally beat myself up over it.

I must have offended so many on the plane with my smelly tuna.
Did I mention that I hate rice cakes?

2. Social isolation. My social life changed as a result of my eating habits. I would avoid eating at events, or bring something in a container and that is the only thing that I would eat. All too often I had my Tupperwares of food and I remember using the school kitchen microwave to nuke my food at my kid’s events. I would avoid going to the bar with friends or gym buddies, because I knew none of the options there would fit my rules. If we were going out to eat with the family, I would research restaurants to find one with a menu that I deemed suitable. I asked all kinds of questions about menu items and typically I would avoid anything cooked because I was too concerned with how it was prepared. So I would always order a salad, dressing on the side, with chicken. A super low point for me was when I decided not to host my annual holiday cookie swap, because I was afraid to bake and I didn’t think that I could say say no to desserts. This was an annual tradition that I had put on for over a decade. I was that terrified of even being near a cookie.  I knew I hit rock bottom when I totally lost it at a football game, because I had walked 3 times around the stadium and could not find one single food item that fit my criteria. I was hangry and on the hunt for coffee to shut up my stomach, and I couldn’t find that either. I had a massive meltdown while my kids and husband stared at me. It really sucks that a defining moment like that had to happen to mobilize change. But in retrospect I am also glad that it did, because I could finally admit that I had a problem and needed to seek help.

I look so happy.  Yet, I was at my rock bottom.
This was the day and place where I had my epic food meltdown.

3. Cutting food groups. I mean cutting them even though you do not have an allergy. I kept doing this. When my journey started, I was enjoying exploring recipes with beets, butternut squash, parsnips, and pears. I loved snacking on sugar snap peas and carrots. But the more and more that I read, the more concerned I got that maybe I shouldn’t eat these foods. I know this sounds crazy, but first went the fruit, then away went the hummus and all beans, then I cut starchy vegetables. I had my reasons for each of them but the overarching theme was in the name of consuming less carbs (another news flash: carbs are not the devil). What is so funny is that the more I cut, the worse my digestive system became, so then I would cut more because I thought that the food group was causing my issues. The real culprit was not having the diversity of food, but I did not realize this at the time.

Traveling with coolers...I did this all the time.

4. Judging others. I basically had put myself on a nutritional pedestal and wondered how others could possibly be eating the things that they consumed. I would eye other people’s grocery carts and even eye my own husband eating chips or drinking beer! Now I realize that this constant evaluation was actually a reflection of my own disordered thoughts and reinforcing a positive image in my mind of following the “rules”. Again, there are no good or bad foods. There was never anything wrong with what my husband or anyone else was eating. The issue was me, using that data as ammunition to reinforce my own disordered thinking under the guise of how “healthy” I was being. In retrospect, I am mortified. But now I know that I was being protective of my eating disorder. Sadly, I tied my disordered eating to my own self loveability.

There are other markers, but these are the major ones that impacted me personally. I thought that I had control and was in power, but the reality was that I was suffering and obsessed. I flew under the radar for years because we live in a culture that supports “healthy” eating and getting thinner.

I also want to mention that this is about much more than food. Please, if you are suffering, don’t think that all you have to do is fix the food part. That may be your first step, but I encourage you to dig deep.

Food was control for me, but I was doing this because of issues in my personal life that felt completely out of my control. I subconsciously recognized this situation and decided that since I could not control the personal stuff, I would control what went in to my mouth. As the personal situation intensified, so did my disorder. It was only until I managed my way through the personal issue that I could finally start to heal my mind. And with healing my mind, I am healing my body with intuitive eating.

It's been a journey.
And I am not done yet!

Please do not worry about me! I am on the recovery path and have been for eight months going strong. I just hope that sharing my story can help others avoid getting in to a similar situation. If you think you need help, I highly encourage you to find a professional that specializes in eating disorders and intuitive eating. Don’t go it alone. And make sure you get to the core of the issue, so that you can heal as a whole person.