We're wrapping up simplify your life month here at To Love, Honor and Vacuum. We've talked about finding your purpose, and organizing, and paring down, and all kinds of things that will help your life become more peaceful.
Today I want to talk about another fundamental one, and it's this: give yourself a break.
Many years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I made some career goals for myself. One in particular I was supposed to have attained when I hit 40.
Guess what? It's not going to happen. For years I was trying to twist myself into a pretzel to try to shortcut my way to that goal, so that when my 41st birthday hit I would have done it. But no matter what I do at this point I won't have time to meet that goal. It's fallen by the wayside.
I've realized that the issue isn't whether or not I meet the goal; the issue is whether or not I am at peace about not meeting that goal.
We women just don't tend to like ourselves. We can see all our shortcomings, and we feel as if we should be pushing ourselves, beating ourselves, forcing ourselves to change and be different. We shouldn't be this heavy; we should exercise more, lose weight, eat less. We shouldn't be this lazy; we should be able to earn some money at home, create a small business, generate some income. We shouldn't be this shy; we should have more friends, more social engagements, more people over to dinner.
Do all those "shoulds" help you actually accomplish anything? Or do they just paralyze you?
I find so often that when we set up goals for ourselves, we just end up paralyzed, unable to move forward, because we feel overwhelmed and guilty. I know goal setting can be important, and some goals are worthy. But not all goals are.
Let's go back to my professional goal that I had for myself at 40. Do you know why I won't meet it? It's because since I made that goal, my life has changed. I decided to homeschool my children. I decided to work with the youth of our church. I decided to do more at home to support my husband's career, because our life was becoming too busy. I made decisions that were smart for my family, but those decisions made that goal pretty much impossible to attain. Usually the reason that we haven't met a goal in our lives is not because we're lazy and undisciplined; often it's because we have used our time to do something else. We have decided that something else is momentarily more important than that goal.
For instance, I've gained fifteen pounds over the last ten years. For a while I felt really badly about this, and desperately wanted to lose the weight. But over the last year or two I've come to the conclusion that as long as I maintain what I am now, that's okay. I don't need to have the body of a mid-twentysomething woman when I'm forty. It's okay to learn to be comfortable in your skin.
And it's much more emotionally healthy to accept yourself for what you are than to hate yourself because you haven't beaten your body into submission.
In order to have that body again I would have to radically change how I eat (because I already eat quite well), and I would have to add a lot more exercise to my schedule. My girls and I already start the day with a jog, at least four times a week. It's not overly long; we're usually only gone for twenty minutes, but it's something. But I've realized I don't really have time to do much more than that if I want to attain the other goals I've made for myself. It's not that I'm lazy; it's just that everything has an opportunity cost. In order to have that body of the twenty-something, I would have to work out for an hour a day. I would rather spend that hour going over Katie's math with her, or writing, or organizing something with our youth group, or making dinner. I am consciously choosing that there are other things in my life that are more important right now.
Here's the truth: we cannot do everything. We cannot maintain the perfect body, and maintain a perfect home, and spend tons of time with the kids, and have romantic getaways with our husbands, and create small businesses to make income for our families. We just can't. Why not instead talk to God about what is good enough in each of those areas of your life? And then accept the good enough; don't keep feeling badly that you're not doing more.
Of course, many of us aren't getting important things done because we waste time. We spend too much time in front of the TV, or the computer, or on the phone. If that's the case, then maybe you need to re-evaluate. You certainly don't want television to keep you from attaining an important goal in your family. But many of us don't have that many hours, even if we wanted to find them. They're already being used. And we still, after all, do need downtime.
I think we are completely unrealistic about what is possible for us to accomplish in this life. Everything comes with a price, and if you're not willing to pay the price, then that's okay. But don't just say, "I don't have time to do this," and then continue to feel guilty. Say, "I don't have time to reach this goal," and then accept it. Accept who you are right now, even with your limitations, because you are doing the best you can. And your best is always good enough.
Isn't that what we tell our children? We don't care what they get on the test, as long as they tried their best. If they get a 95% but they didn't try, we'd be unhappy. But if they got a 65% and that genuinely was their best, then that's okay. We'd get them some more help, but we wouldn't be angry.
So why be angry at ourselves? If we're doing our best, and we're talking to God about how to prioritize our lives, and we're talking to our husbands about our lives, then let's give ourselves a break. We're doing what we can do, and in this season of our life, this is the best we can offer. Don't compare yourself to someone with more time, more money, or more energy, because that is not how God made you. Just be the best of who you were made to be, and whatever that is, that is okay.
Wouldn't that feel so much better?
What do you struggle with accepting about yourself? Do you often feel negatively towards yourself because you aren't meeting some goal? Let's talk!
As I reported earlier this summer, my husband and I are in a race to see who will lose 10-15 pounds first. I'm aiming for 10, he's aiming for 15. I like to tell myself that it's not about vanity. My mother, after all, started having real issues with her weight in her forties, and I don't want to get like that. Keith has genes which easily lead him to being a little heftier. So we want to stay healthy.
But I also do want to look nice. I like looking pretty. And just because I'm married--or perhaps because I'm married--I try a little harder. I think looking nice for your man is a good thing, because it keeps the marriage fresh, and I want him to enjoy coming home to me.
I do, however, feel the tension between vanity and health, and nowhere more so than when I think of the message I'm sending my girls and their friends. I certainly don't want them to think that my self-esteem is primarily in how I look, or that they need to be super skinny to be worth something. Enough negative messages about beauty pervade our culture that I don't want to add to them.
Yet I know that my girls, and their friends, do need to understand some basic things about health.
They are growing up in a culture that eats for pleasure far more than other cultures did, because we have so much food. I eat when I'm bored sometimes, too. Don't you? You have nothing to do, so the first thought that comes into your head is, "what's in the fridge"? Many of our children naturally think of food, too, when they're bored, and hence so much of their social life exists around food.
A dear woman I know who heads up a ministry aimed at junior high kids recently told me about a day she spent with several girls, where all the girls did was want to eat. They ate a huge breakfast--far larger than this woman ate herself--and then an hour later asked when the next snack was. Everytime food was brought out they grabbed handfulls of it and stuffed it in, and consumed just as large a lunch. She figures they ate as many calories by 11 that morning as she normally eats all day. How do you respond?
Obviously you could stop providing so much food for kids like this at events, because it really isn't necessary. But that doesn't stop the problem that many children don't seem to have a switch that says, "I'm full now". They love the feeling of stuffing themselves, and the idea that "I am not particularly hungry right now" has never stopped them from eating before, so why should it now?
So here's my question: how do you address that in, let's say, a church setting? How do you talk to kids about health without it becoming an issue about losing weight or being a particular body size? We can talk all we want about how the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and how we should treat it well, but that doesn't even work for most adult women who struggle with our weight. Even right now, as I type this, I am resisting the temptation of going and getting a bowl of ice cream, because I know I'm not hungry. I just had a huge dinner. But I would love some ice cream anyway.
Instead I'm going to pour myself a glass of water and drink all of it before I eat another thing. Usually when I drink, I stop thinking about food. Yet many of our children have it even worse than I do, because they've grown up eating constantly. They're not necessarily taught at home to resist eating if they're already full. They're given junk at home quite often. How do you teach them otherwise?
When our oldest was around 7, a little friend down the block used to hang out at our house constantly. I still remember the day she ate her first stick of celery. She didn't know what it was. The only vegetables she had ever eaten were carrots and cucumber. And she had never eaten any cooked (unless you count french fries).
We served her stew one night and she didn't know what to do with it, though once she tried it she liked it.
So imagine a youth group where kids don't know what celery is, where the greatest social pastime is eating, and where nobody has ever learned to say "no" to inner cravings. What do you do? How do you teach kids the proper way to think of food? I'd love to know your thoughts!
Thanks for all your feedback about yesterday's daycare post! I'm enjoying the comments.
I thought I'd write another of my "big picture" posts today, this time about kids & weight. The increase in childhood obesity began dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s, accelerating to the present.
Some of it may not be an actual rise in children's weight as much as it is physicians sounding the alarm a little too much; often the way they measure obesity isn't what most of us would consider obese.
But there's no doubt children are getting larger. I remember in grade 3 feeling so sorry for the two "fat" kids in my class. They were Edmund and Lisa, and boy did they stand out from the rest of us beanpoles. I tried to talk to Lisa more than the other girls did, because I felt so sorry for her.
Recently, in going through my family photos, I found my grade 3 picture, and saw Lisa and Edmund through the eyes of a 2000s woman, rather than a 1978 girl. And they're not fat. Not at all. We would consider them stocky today, but certainly not fat. That's how much things have changed.
You can blame childhood obesity on all sorts of things, from too much television and not enough exercise because parents are afraid to let their children run free, to the preponderance of sugar and preservatives in so many foods. But let me tell you the story of what I think happened.
At one point in time, food was fairly expensive, as a ratio of people's income. You didn't waste. Housewives spent time clipping coupons and shopping for deals. They learned how to make tuna casseroles and ground beef casseroles and any kind of casserole they could, because they were warm and hearty and made the meat go a long way (if you want an excellent insight into this, just read the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary out loud to your children. They're brilliant, and so fun! And set in the 1970s, they often focus on the price of food and the menu the family ate). They packed school lunches that were cheap, too, like bologna sandwiches and fruit.
Because food was expensive, and because Mom spent a long time making it, it was expected that people would come to the table and eat and enjoy. Family meals were central to family time. You didn't eat before dinner because it might spoil your dinner. And besides that, there wasn't a lot of food around the house just to eat if you felt like it. Parents had to keep track of food, and make sure that it would stretch to the next paycheque.
Then families changed. Mothers started heading out to work, leaving families with more disposable income. They could buy more food. They could buy more treats. But most of all, it was difficult to make those casseroles that were the family staple. And companies started realizing that families with moms working were a prime target for a new kind of product: instant dinners that you didn't need to cook.
Thus, we had Kraft Dinner. We had Swanson's TV Dinners. And all kinds of snack foods entered the market that hadn't been there before to make school lunches easier to prepare.
And gradually these things expanded. Instead of one or two brands of spaghetti sauce, we had twenty-two. Soon we had sauces for chicken, too. We had frozen pastas and lasagnas. We had chicken fingers, and not just frozen fish.
The supermarket was filled with products that made cooking and eating a breeze! And with the increase in disposable income, more people started to buy them. The prices started to come down. And soon families where moms didn't work started to buy them, too, because their children wanted them as well. It was easier to use a frozen dinner once in a while than it was to cook from scratch. So more and more people began relying on processed foods, prepared foods, and low-nutritional value foods because they were easy, tasty, and inexpensive. And thus a whole generation forgot how to cook.
So many of my friends can't cook anything! They can barbecue, but that's about it. And our children aren't learning to cook, either, because it's not necessary. I remember learning how to roast a chicken for the first time when I was married, because I had never done it before. I took a cookbook with pictures and just did what it said, and then I followed the directions for gravy. I was so proud of myself! But why roast a chicken now when you can buy a frozen chicken all ready to go, and gravy on the side?
Here's me stuffing my turkey on Christmas morning, for instance (note, I hadn't had my shower yet or put on any makeup, so don't judge me). I can't chop onions without my eyes watering, hence the fancy get-up:
Food has become plentiful and easy. It started to fulfill a role when people weren't around to cook anymore, but now it has crept into every family type.
And the same is true with exercise! As Mary Ebserstadt points out in her book, Home Alone America, one of the reasons that children were allowed to play outside in bygone days--whether it was road hockey, or soccer, or baseball, or just catch--was because someone was there to supervise. Even if some mothers worked, not all did. And because all neighbourhoods had at least some adults around, children could be outside. Once everybody started to working, then the number of adults available greatly diminished, and suddenly kids had to be kept inside.
It also seems to me that we have more shift work than we used to. Before, only nurses and night watchmen worked at night. Today so many do, whether it's in healthcare or manufacturing or other industries. With more shift work, adults are unavailable to be with their kids outdoors, even if those adults are home, because they need to rest. And when we're too busy to be with our kids, but our kids want to have fun, what do we do? We feed them. We give them a treat.
Kids come running in from outdoors, just when we were in the middle of getting something done, and we want to placate them for a little longer, so we get out the box of Goldfish crackers. Kids were playing a game peacefully, but a fight breaks out, and we don't want to deal with it, so we call the kids in for popsicles. Food has become a great way to channel kids away from chaos, and so food has become just another game to kids. It's what they do when they're bored. They eat, because we're too tired and too busy to figure out how to encourage them just to play.
The moral of the story? Kids are growing fatter because society is changing. Those traditions that families used to have, from home cooked meals to eating around the table to not snacking between meals to playing outside, have all gone by the wayside. More parents are working, so fewer are there to cook healthy meals or watch what their kids eat. And because of work, the very nature of food has changed, even for those who do not have both parents working outside the home. Convenience foods are now so common that they have become almost indispensable.
That doesn't mean we can't get back to the way it was, though. It just takes each new generation committing to learning how to cook, to teaching their children not to snack between meals too much (unless it's something healthy), and parents teaching their kids how to play again. So spend some time with your kids. Pick up a recipe book, with pictures, and read it in the bathtub. Dream of learning to cook. And perhaps we can bring back that family togetherness again.
This is the kind of story that gets my blood boiling:
Family claims they're "too fat to work", so they live off of welfare in Britain and do nothing but watch TV and eat junk all day. And now they want more money to buy more food.
Both Philip Chawner, 53, and his 57-year-old wife Audrey weigh 24st. Their youngest daughter, Emma, is 5ft 3in and weighs 17st, while her older sister Samantha, 21, is 5ft 9in and weighs 18st.
They haven’t worked in 11 years, claiming their weight is due to a hereditary condition. Instead, the family spend their days in front of a television borrowed from a friend.
Mr Chawner said: ‘We love TV. It’s on from the moment we get up. Often I’m so tired from watching TV I have to have a nap.’
Yet of their £22,508 a year in tax-free benefits - equivalent to a £30,000 salary - Mr Chawner said: ‘What we get barely covers the bills and puts food on the table. It’s not our fault we can’t work. We deserve more.’
How about getting rid of the TV and starting to walk? And maybe eating some vegetables?
Why is everything now a disease? They are "suffering from obesity", as if they're victims.
Now I know some people have a much harder time losing weight. My husband comes from a large family, but everyone is working hard to control their weight, and Keith's doing a great job! But he deliberately watches what he eats, and he jogs. It's not fun, but he does it, because he has to. I, on the other hand, tend to be on the thin side, though my metabolism is catching up with me with age. So I'm starting to exercise more, too.
When we tell people it's a disease, it's like saying they can't do anything about it. Yes, you can. Certainly it will be harder for some people. That may not be fair. But it's life.
Have you broken all your New Year's Resolutions yet? I've jogged once, but I'm going to get there. My goal, as opposed to a resolution, is that I be able to run three miles by my birthday in May. I think I can do it! Even better, I think I really am beating that Diet Pepsi habit. I have to get rid of aspartame.
But why is it that we often make these New Year's Resolutions that we never keep? And then we feel so guilty? Today, listen in on my podcast when I talk about what's wrong with many of our resolutions, and how to aim for the right thing! It's not too long, and you can listen while you surf the web. Just click here.
And most likely we never will! So why do we spend so much of the Christmas season feeling guilty about our weight?
We do all that baking, and then we feel like a louse when we sneak some of it.
Wouldn't your Christmas be much better if you could concentrate more on the meaning behind the season, rather than feeling so guilty for not living up to an unrealistic ideal?
So if you want a funny pick-me-up, listen to my latest To Love, Honor and Vacuum podcast ! It's only 8 minutes long, so you can have it playing while you surf the net. And I'm sure it will make you laugh!
They say that women's number one emotion is guilt--at any particular time we're feeling guilty about at least one thing. And if you don't think you're feeling guilty right now, if you think about it I'm sure you can talk yourself into it!
And the number one thing we feel guilty for, if surveys are to be believed, is our weight.
Here's a clip of a talk I gave recently on women and weight. I think it's pretty funny, but you can be the judge of that! I know that it's good to stay healthy, and I do say that in other parts of that same talk, but the main point I'm trying to make in the rest of this talk is how to keep our eyes on what is really important--namely receiving from God, and then passing His blessings on to others.
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
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