Reverse Psychology and Low-Carb Parenting
As a single mom, I sometimes think that it doesn’t matter what the subject under discussion is: whether we’re talking about eating well, budgeting, or why my dang bedroom still isn’t painted, the answer to the question “What is the factor of most difficulty in this situation?” is always “parenting”.
For quite awhile I was pretty miserably depressed over my body having lost interest in losing weight, despite that I seemed to be eating fine. Then my eating got ‘iffy at times’, which didn’t help, but if the result is “not losing weight” no matter what you do, it gets rather difficult to convince yourself that you really should eat ‘meat’ instead of ‘everything else’. I lost interest in blogging here because I don’t want to be a bad example. I lost heart in talking to my friends in a forum because I feel like a poser if I’m not “doing” what I’m talking about well-enough.
Me and the kid (”R”) as you may recall from ancient history of this blog, were on lowcarb together for awhile. She lost 5 pants sizes and felt great and was very happy. She lost interest after that though, and the more I leaned on lowcarbing, the more every single meal became a drama-queen event. She is 12 going on 15, ‘became a woman’ a few months ago, and is SO hormonal it’s hard not to pity her frankly. Puberty to mid-teens is like 5 years of solid PMS.
But it became such an issue I finally said, “Fine.” and we went back to eating some of what we used to eat, spaghetti with meat sauce and other kinds of grains (thanks to gluten I could barely breathe), and a lot of junk, whatever was fast and near and cheap. At times, I made an effort to be LC myself despite this but I just felt depressed and the urges didn’t last long.
I regained a little weight, not a ton but enough to annoy me. About 20#. More than that, but the rest is water weight that will be falling off me over the next few weeks if I’m eating low-carb, so I don’t really count that as a weight loss accomplishment.
Over time she has really regained weight. She’s also grown a few inches. Her hips and scale weight nearly made me keel over when we measured this morning. I didn’t weigh that much until I was 23 and definitely overweight, and I’m a couple inches taller. I tried not to hyperventilate; I try to be casual with her. “Yeah, that’s too much babe, we’ll have to get that off you, ok.” I want her to understand it’s possible and believe in it and know she is responsible for not sabotaging her own eating plan and mine as well.
So over the last month she has mourned her size and talked about going back to eating lowcarb. I shrugged, I made it seem like something I didn’t consider her seriously interested in so I wasn’t either anymore. No more fights 3x a day at meals, no more having a hard enough time making food for ME to eat several times a day let alone her when “she won’t eat meat or eggs.” About a week ago she admitted that she’d never really disliked meat but was just mad and wanted ‘other stuff’. But every time she has brought up something I’ve basically shrugged it off. Once I said, “Aw, well, I’m fat, I might as well get fatter, it’s too much trouble to eat lowcarb.” Heh.
Last night she insisted that we “return to lowcarb” today. “Mostly meat,” she says. She is insisting also that we take vitamins and drink water, and she wants to exercise a little. Now she insists; it is HER decision and I MUST support her in this, she says!
I tried to be casual. Sure, ok.
I did not leap into the air yelling HALLELUJIAH THANK YOU JESUS YAY-UH! and happy-dance around the room.
Some days, the world goes ok.
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