#momlife and I'm at it again

itslinasuarez wrote: »

After years of being awesomely selfish, I am now living the mom life. Fitness (and career) was the main priority, the diet was on point, the waist was tenny tiny, and then.... I got a 3 for one deal. Reconnected with my highschool sweetheart who is a full-time dad of two amazing little girls... fast forward we are now married and I've taken on a mom role (which I thought I would never do). So the question to the moms out there.... how do you make the time??? I am terrified to diet around the girls because I don't want them growing up thinking that food should be something to be afraid of but at 36 I definitely can't eat what they do without repercussions.. but I can't live in the gym anymore either... How did you all find the balance? Lol is finding the balance a fallacy? Should also note that I'm also a corporate exec.....40 hour works weeks are an elusive unicorn.

Full disclosure: I'm not a mom. However, I am a fat woman who could have done with a lot less negative messaging around food and body size growing up.

It's good that you recognize the power you have in influencing these girls and their relationship to food and their bodies. I like a lot of the language @steveko89 used when describing how he and his wife talk to their son about food and exercise. I think it would help if you could reframe your thinking, because it sounds like you might still be buying into the idea that fat is the worst thing a woman can be, which is both offensive and untrue. These girls are going to deal with plenty of sexism, ableism, sizeism, other -isms as they grow up, it's just the world we live in; lots of folks are working to combat that, and you can be one of them.

You didn't specify in your post but I assume that you're trying to avoid weight gain as opposed to lose weight at this moment in time. Even if, right now, your body is of a size that is generally considered "acceptable," such that someone upon learning that you're doing any purposeful weight management might remark "You're so skinny, you don't need to be on a diet!" or similarly ableist/sizeist garbage, it is okay to use technology to manage your health in this way. If you have too much going on in your life to devote energy to managing your calorie intake, you can outsource that brainpower to an app, that's as valid as wearing eyeglasses to see clearly or using a calendar to track appointments or washing your dirty clothes in a machine.

You're here on MFP, so I'm guessing you're at least theoretically open to calorie counting/CICO as an approach to weight management. The great thing about CICO/calorie counting/MFP's approach is that there are no forbidden foods. There are no "good" foods or "bad" foods. There are only foods that serve your long-term goals and foods that serve your short-term goals, and which of those is more important at any given time is up to you. You can eat anything. Just account for it. You don't need to hide that you're keeping track of what you eat. You're using technology to help you live your best life, there's no shame in it.

The other side of that coin is that you also don't need to "perform" diet and fitness. You don't need to announce how many (or how few) calories your meal has, you don't need to make a show of measuring your portions, you don't need to comment on anyone else's plate (positively or negatively - "I wish I could eat like that" is not a compliment). You don't need to scrutinize yourself out loud in the mirror, Mean Girls-style, analyzing every perceived flaw as if it is an abject moral failure and not just a human body being how bodies be.

This got kind of long so I apologize, but I hope something in there resonates at least a little.