STORY MEETS LIFE OR HOW DID I GET HERE?
One of my favorite parts of writing a memoir is the way the story ricochets around my present life, like a misfired ping pong ball. As my story and my real life connect, over and over again in different places, occasionally one of those points of contact ignites a new idea. Usually, the real life feeds the story, but in this case, the story offered a solution to the present.
The Story
The end of my first year in college found me 15 pounds heavier. I could go into some of the emotional reasons for this, but I do, someday, want you to read my book. To cope, I visited a psychologist who recommended Jane Hirshmann’s Overcoming Overeating. I devoured it, along with of my habitual box of chocolates, in one night. It lead me to two other gems, Susie Orbach’s Fat is a Feminist Issue and Geneen Roth’s Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating. These authors introduced me to a completely different way of choosing and eating food than I was accustomed to. More about this in a minute.
Their methods shocked me so that I boxed up the books and started Weight Watchers instead. It worked really well and I lost the 15 pounds. For awhile.
February of my second year in college found me 8 pounds heavier and counting. Tentatively, I unearthed the books. Hirshmann, Orbach, Roth (and certainly others) proposed on-demand eating. The basics were: eat only when you are hungry, mindfully eat what you want, and stop when you are full. The scary bit is that there are no forbidden foods, portions, or strict meal times. If you are hungry for mint chocolate chip ice cream at 8:30 am, have at it, taking care to slow down enough to enjoy every bite. Eat this way, they said, and eventually you will reach the weight that is right for your body, and your body will want to stay there.
I started eating this way when I was 19. I lost the 15 pounds and it never came back. It took a lot of time, mistakes, and faith.
Real Life
I now have three children, ages 9, 12 and 14. I am constantly asked questions like:
Mom, how may carrots do I have to eat to have dessert?
How many scoops of ice cream can I have?
How many toppings?
Can I have soda when we go out to restaurant? Why not? You have wine.
How many pieces of Halloween candy can I have?
Why can’t we have Fruit Loops for breakfast?
Why do I have to have green vegetables? I hate green vegetables.
I have tried one dessert every day, two desserts every day, no soda, one juice per day, two scoops of ice cream with two toppings, one piece of Halloween candy per day, unless it is small or I am exhausted, then it is two. One soda as dessert. But not anything with caffeine after 4:00 pm. Sweets whenever you want on Christmas, but nothing the day after. These are just the rules I can remember.
I think I have succeeded only in making my kids as obsessed with sweets as I used to be.
The Ping Pong Ball Connects
In drafting the memoir, I discovered that Hirshmann co-authored a subsequent book about on-demand eating for kids. What if I can teach my kids to eat the way that I do now? If I can trust my body to feed me well, can’t their bodies do the same?
I am not a doctor, nor a scientist. I have no nutritional training whatsoever. I am not recommending this way of feeding your children. Frankly, I am not at all certain it’s going to work for mine. I am writing this blog because I couldn’t find any first-hand accounts of on demand feeding for children out of infancy. Here we go.