What the heck is wrong with me?!?!?!!????

geekymom57

SO...WHY is that not enough to motivate me? I feel alone. My boyfriend is losing pounds every time he turns around! He doesn't even try! My daughter is naturally skinny. I'm sure my son will be too once he grows out of the baby fat stage. It's frustrating that I have to work so hard and being thin doesnt come so naturally for me. But I know that that is life and I have to accept it.

OK, I'm going to be a bit blunt. You're 21, you have two children who appear to be 3 and 1? 4 and 2?, you have 100 pounds to lose, an apparently unhealthy biological father and a morbidly obese stepmother. You don't mention whether your boyfriend is the father or both or either child, so that's another variable that could be in the equation. And he's losing weight without really trying, which many of us have seen in our households--my husband can lose weight very quickly as well. Very frustrating when I'm doing so much to lose so little but that's the way it is and it's not going to change.

So--you have a LOT of "stuff" going on in your life and what seems to be little or no support system. Perhaps you eat because you can--it's one of the few parts of your life you control and it gives you some sort of comfort that you're not getting elsewhere.

I quoted this part of your post because I think you're missing an important piece of why you need to do to this. You need to be healthy first and foremost for you and then for your kids. But it's my strong belief that this is also an opportunity to show your children how to cope with life and how to control the things they can control. Your daughter may be naturally skinny, but if she sees you use food as a coping mechanism, guess what she'll learn. This is huge to me. I wasn't born fat and I was a pretty normal-sized kid until my father died when I was in 3rd or 4th grade and all of sudden, food started making more and more of an appearance in our house as a comfort food. I developed habits that are taking me decades to change. Your son needs to see you model healthy eating or he'll grow up thinking "Hey! I'm a guy and guys don't need to watch what they eat because they can lose weight easily with little effort."

So my bottom line is that taking control of what you eat is an important step for you AND to role model for your young children what you want them to learn about food. There's no guarantee naturally skinny kids stay that way.