Today was day 3 of the new goals and so far so good… I have done my cardio each day (going to do my bike right after I post this), have stayed on track with the food and have blogged everyday. The weight is dropping so it is nice to see results… there have been some hard parts… we went out to eat the first night at Outback… I researched the menu before we left and stayed on track… then today we ate at Yolanda’s (Mexican food) and I stayed on track there too… I found some recent posts that I never posted so I will use one here… this was written about 2 weeks ago.
A message today and an event last night made me realize how badly I have taught my children. First, last night… without going into too much embarrassing detail one of my kids used our new scale yesterday and told my wife what they weighed… it has been obvious lately that this child has been putting on weight. The weight they told my wife was way under what we expected it to be (as it turns out about 50 pounds less than the real weight). After some discussion it was realized that the scale wasn’t being used right… I know… stand on the scale and read the weight… but not this scale… you have to touch it with your foot… and then wait to get on until the zeros show up… if you just stand on it it can show you the last weight taken since it has a bunch of features to show your weight loss progress. So this child did what most would do and just stepped up onto the scale and saw the weight.. but that was the last weight from someone else that was about 50 pounds lighter than the child’s real weight… which puts them in the ‘severely obese’ category and also put them at a weight that I didn’t break until after my second marriage. Then I gave a short talk about how important it is for them to get active and lose the weight and the response was what I expected since here I am, still 150 pounds overweight, telling a child that they are at risk and need to be more active and eat right…
Then this morning I get this tweet from Richard Simmons (www.twitter.com/theweightsaint) “Your children will want to do what they see you do! What are you “training” your children to do?”
So now I sit here pondering what a bad example I have set over the years for my kids and how it will affect them for their lifetimes… for a long time I have thought about work etthic and how it goes (or doesn’t go) from parent to child.. I don’t recal my mother or father telling me about being a reliable employee.. going to work even when you don’t want to or don’t feel good… but that is what I do.. and that is what my mother and father did. So did I just ‘learn’ that from them because that is what they did and that is what I saw? I believe so. Do I hope that my kids will learn about good relationships by seeing my wife and I together.. of course I do. So why would it hit me so hard that my battle with weight, which at times seems to be a losing battle, would be learned by them also?
As a parent I tend to enjoy my children’s successes and feel at some level a bit success for guiding them toward that success… but I also take their non-successes personally too, probably more so than the successes, and feel partially responsible for them… almost like failing to teach them properly… I know that they are the ones ultimately responsible for their own successes and failures, but I still have that pride/shame thing going on.
So over the years of my children’s lives they have seen me go from a relatively normal 235 pounds up to an enormous 406 pounds and everywhere in between… I have been irresponsible in my eating habits and they have seen that… I have been lazy in my exercise habits and they have seen that.. what they have never seen is me eating right and working hard to lose and keep off the weight!
I know that even if they see that from this point on that may or may not change their own habits, but I have to do this for them as well as me. If I can motivate myself to do the right thing and eat proper portions of a balanced diet and exercise regularly to get healthy, lose the weight and then maintain it so they see that, perhaps it will be the motivation them to do the same.
The last thing in the world that I want is for any of my kids to suffer. I know from my own experiences that being overweight does make you suffer.
So now I must do this and make sure they see how it changes me physically and mentally.