Pay it Forward

I've been thinking today about the legacy my parents gave me about body image and relationships with food. I think I got pretty lucky.

Children develop their ideas about food from their parents' relationship with food. Emotional eaters, for example, learned that food would somehow make things better, or something like that. When I got hurt as a kid, my mom would give me a glass of water. She told me, now that I'm grown and she can confess all of her parenting 'wisdom' (and sins), that she gave us water because it's impossible to drink and cry at the same time. So I guess I look at water as the substance that is meant to cure ills. If you have a bad day, drink water.

My husband got a different message. When he was hurt or had a bad day, his stepdad gave him.....OREOS. So guess what he craves when he's having a really bad day? That's right, sweets. (Oreos are now saved for a crisis, so I know there's something big going on when they come home in the grocery bags.) But he'll go for things such as cookies, pudding, M&Ms, etc. when he's stressed getting his school done.

My grandma started the water-when-you're-hurt thing because her mother used to give her cake, and she caught on as an overweight adult that she looked to cake to fix her problems. She wanted to change that for her children. Smart woman. I didn't give her nearly enough credit when she was alive

My parents also passed on a fitness ethic. To live, it's essential to eat, sleep, and work out. Also, women are better when they have curves than when they are skinny and flat-chested like a boy. Well, they passed on that women are women and it's not the weight that makes the person. The whole time I was pregnant and blowing up like a balloon, my family just told me it wasn't a big deal because I'd for sure lose the weight because I'm an active person and they'd seen me do it before. It's how they support me--that and giving me bowflexes and a job teaching karate.

I think of this often with my own kids. What kind of relationship with food am I teaching them to have? What kind of workout ethic am I passing on? What kind of relationship with my body am I modeling for them?