Advice from older women, please?!! How can I remain at a healthy weight while raising

[Ruthie]

Kids?!!!

 

What do I do? My kids are growing and eating more and more, ALL DAY LONG. And they are so healthy. But handling food ALL DAY long is making me gain weight. If I had no kids, I would naturally eat less just cause I don't have to think about all the time, BUt all I do is think about food, what to buy, what to make, etc etc. Esp cause I cook from scratch alot. And cause we hs, we are home alot and sit around working, it makes it so much worse for me!

 

Any advice, please?

Ruthie

[FrogMom5]

Ruthie,

 

With all the years of homeschooling, I have gained a lot of weight. It's not just the teaching, it's the researching, price comparing, planning, grading - the amount of seat work never ends.

 

What I've begun doing is taking the kids swimming every morning for 1-2 hours. I don't get as much exercise as they do, because my 4 yr. old can't swim well, but I get some. In fact, I get enough to be sore on some days. The 10 min. walk to and then back from the pool is good too. In the winter, we will walk. A good hour or so of exercise settles the kids to do their work in the afternoons, which is a great bonus.

 

If you don't have access to a pool, try something else. Walking is the best, imo, but anything that is close by and cheap, if not free, is good. Try to build it in to your day. It's not easy, especially in the beginning. Keep trying though. Shedding pounds while having fun w/your kids is a great use of time.

Denise

[SonshineLearner]

Maybe look at what you're letting the kids have? Whole grains (and if you don't have an electric grinder, think about it) Think about putting out veggies and fruit while you're cooking. (good for the kids, too) Lots of water, or herbal tea.. (iced) And, don't drink sugar. I liked sugar in tea and coffee, but I stopped. You can do whole grains for everything and fill up faster... be healthier... Then, if you have kids old enough, treat yourself to a morning walk... (Or do nature walks with everyone.) Remember to eat breakfast... Again, oatmeal or whole grain breads... etc.. start you off right. :) When all else fails, remember to wear the tightest clothes you own, as a reminder to keep losing. I find that if I walk around in sweats, I don't feel the need to get thinner ;)

[Serenade]

I've been thinking about this same thing lately -- how much easier it is to watch what you eat when you don't have kids! We have a family policy that everybody basically eats the same thing -- no catering here. And while we generally have nutritious food, it is not necessarily the lowest calorie stuff around, and I would feel so awkward and weird having teeny-tiny portions while everyone else eats voraciously. It is uncomfortable to me, and my kids would notice and would pester me about it. (They did when I once tried to eat low carb, but it just didn't fit in with our family plan.) If I only had myself to think about, it would be much easier to watch what I eat and control portions.

[Cassy]

We have three meals a day, all cooked from scratch. They're mostly healthy meals, but we're not obsessive about it, there's always some comfort food, some treats.

 

I'm absolutely strict with myself about not eating in between meals though. I do not pick while I'm preparing food, I do not finish off whatever is left on the kids plates afterwards. If I'm ever hungry in between meals, which is rarely, I'll have an apple or an orange, nothing else.

 

I'm 47 years old, 5' 8" and weigh 132 lbs, which is about 5 lbs heavier than when I got married - the heaviest I've ever been, when not pregnant, was 140 lbs.

 

Oh, and I do no exercise whatsoever - a walk to the shops once a week, a bit of light housework, that's it.

 

Cassy

[LaxMom]

My kids eat something like breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner... maybe a snack, maybe not, depending on what time we eat. They're skinny and need the calories.

 

The snacks they have are things they can get themselves: yogurt, fruit, a muffin left over from breakfast, cheese and crackers. I'm not handling the snacks. That makes it easier for me to avoid them.

[bagel270]

I try to grab a piece of gum when I will be in the kitchen for a while. And not having junk in the house helps too.

[SailorMom]

Eating all day long is a bad habit for them as well as you :)

 

Three healhty meals, and two small snacks consisting of fruit, cheese, whole grain crackers.... on a schedule.

[BlsdMama]

Maybe look at what you're letting the kids have? Whole grains (and if you don't have an electric grinder, think about it) Think about putting out veggies and fruit while you're cooking. (good for the kids, too) Lots of water, or herbal tea.. (iced) And, don't drink sugar. I liked sugar in tea and coffee, but I stopped. You can do whole grains for everything and fill up faster... be healthier... Then, if you have kids old enough, treat yourself to a morning walk... (Or do nature walks with everyone.) Remember to eat breakfast... Again, oatmeal or whole grain breads... etc.. start you off right.

 

 

I'd second all of this. :) If you snack like the kids, you have to get outside like the kids too. :D There can be no hiding behind the computer while they swing through the trees in the backyard unfortunately!

[Remudamom]

All of this is good advice, but the bottom line is don't eat too much. Saying that you are around food all day and cook from scratch and are always thinking about buying food is just an excuse. One could just as well say "I work all day and have to eat a lot of fast food, and can't prepare good homemade meals."

 

Just quit eating too much. And get some exercise.

[Ruthie]

I'd second all of this. :) If you snack like the kids, you have to get outside like the kids too. :D There can be no hiding behind the computer while they swing through the trees in the backyard unfortunately!

 

 

Ugh, so I guess no one has a magic answer:tongue_smilie:

 

When I said around food all day, honestly, that is just how I feel. In my natural state, when the kids are not around, I eat once per day. My kids eat three meals with snacks of veggies or fruit. If they are truly hungry, they'll eat a sandwich. We already do the grain grinding thing and no sugar thing. We only drink water or milk.

 

I guess I just see how my body is slowing down with age, like I had heard all during my younger years. And I had recently read about this one woman, who after menopause, her body completely changed. She kept gaining although she was dieting and exercising like crazy. I am terrified that will happen to me, esp cause my family tends to gain weight only in the middle and I have a very high risk of strokes and I have 6 yrs of hsing in front of me, YIKES!!

 

Have a great day!

Ruthie

[Dmmetler]

Well, for me, first it took having some motivation. For me it was that my biological clock struck "Baby" and I wanted to get back to my preconception weight, especially since I have a history of my blood pressure going crazy anyway, and going into a pregnancy overweight can't help. The fact that I tried clothes shopping and realized that nothing fit and looked good also contributed.

 

So, in January, I made an effort. And it's tough, because DD has been perennially off the bottom of the weight charts for her height, and is physically active to boot, so her pediatrician is usually suggesting that I incorporate higher calorie foods, more fat, more protein, and generally just plain more into her diet-which, over the past 6 years, had contributed to my weight gain substantially.

 

When I made a concerted effort to make DD's snacks into mini-meals to meet her needs, but make our family meals what DH and I need, and to not snack myself, I was able to lose weight. It is perfectly fine for us to have lean chicken and vegetables for dinner-DD can always add avocado or a handful of nuts or a cheese slice if she needs more now, or have a sandwich and some fresh fruit an hour or two later.

 

I also started incorporating just plain more moving. I do this in two ways. The first was that a group of us moms who had been sitting in the hall and talking while our DDs were in dance class decided that we would be better served by walking the halls of the arts center instead. So we started doing that for the hours our daughters were dancing. It's not particularly aerobic-we're still talking and not moving terribly fast, but walking, even slowly, for 3-4 hours a week vs sitting and talking for 3-4 hours a week adds up. And individually, I started going out in the morning for an hour before DH left for work and walking/jogging. It's really nice to have that time of solitude in the morning, and in the summer, at least, it's pretty nice early in the morning. I'm not sure I'll be able to sustain this when it gets cold and nasty outside, but right now it's working well. And an added bonus is that DD appears to like the challenge of checking tasks off her list before I get back. We're not doing much school right now, but it's very nice to come back and discover that she's ready to show me the two pages of a math workbook she's done, or that she's already sorted the laundry and loaded the darks. (I keep expecting this to wear off, though).