Friday, March 1, 2013

Why I'm Doing Weight Watchers

I always blog about different parenting decisions I make as well as various aspects of my life with J, but never about a big decision I made to return to Weight Watchers and finally lose my excess weight for good. In the past, my sole reason was vanity; I just wanted to look good in smaller clothing. However, now that I am a mother, my reason has completely changed. My leader always says that if you know your real reason for wanting to lose the weight, that will help keep you going, and in my case I think that putting this into writing will help.

My reason, of course, is my son J; yet it goes much deeper than that. My mom passed away in 2005 at the age of 40, leaving me motherless at the age of 20. Of course, I went through all those stages of grief: denial, sadness, anger, and on it goes; but the anger never fully went away. She never took care of herself; her relationship with food was not a healthy one and that was passed onto me. For years, my mom would go on fad diets, starve herself, or would binge and purge. When she was in her 30's, my mom was diagnosed with diabetes but she refused to use insulin "because it would make her fat." After years of her blood sugar remaining out of control and quite a few hospital visits, my mom was strong-armed into using insulin and pills to control her diabetes. Yet ironically, against the doctor's orders, she continued to smoke, drink, and even buy Entenmann's cakes which she would eat in one sitting every night. No, it was not a big surprise when she passed away from complications of diabetes, but how could she refuse to take care of herself when she has two daughters who needed her??? I am not diabetic, but given my mom's history and my age of 30, I do not want to leave my son motherless in 10 years from now. I want to be around for many years to see him graduate Kindergarten, Middle School, High School, maybe college, to someday get married, and maybe even to become a parent himself someday. 

From the time I was a young child, I watched and took on my mom's unhealthy eating habits; I obsessed over food and even had my own bouts of unhealthy habits such as taking laxatives to lose weight. The time for that is passed, though. One of the important things I want for J is to have a healthy relationship with food. I want for healthy eating to be second nature to my son, and for him to understand that we can eat fun treats in moderation but that food doesn't fill a void in your life; i.e. he should eat to live but not live to eat. To ensure that J does live a healthy lifestyle, I need to be a living example of a healthy person. I will not be a hypocritical parent and I don't want to be a closet binger anymore.

So far, I have lost 20 lbs since joining Weight Watchers and I intend to steadily keep losing the weight. I am well aware that I will have tough weeks when I eat like a human vaccuum cleaner (hello, been there done that), but I will not let that stop me be from being the healthy mother my son deserves.

2 comments:

  1. Stephanie HeckenkampMarch 7, 2013 at 7:52 AM

    Very inspiring! We're trying to be better people, so we can be better parents. So far we haven't tackled the food demons, but I know it's something we must do soon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aww thanks Stephanie! I've had food issues for a long time, but it's being a mom and realizing that if I follow in my mom's footsteps then I'd only have 10 years left with J that really kicked me into gear. I find going to the meetings at Weight Watchers is helpful for me; it's like therapy.

    ReplyDelete