Motivation

I have been reading this book called Moose, by Stephanie Klein. It is a memoir of her childhood as an overweight child and teenager. She tells about her experiences at home and at "fat camp." A main theme in the book is how food was a huge motivator for her. For example, as a child, she was motivated to win a swimming race so she could have first pick of the popsicles offered afterwards. It made me think about my own relationship with food. How often is food a motivator for me? Do I look forward to eating food? Do I eat unhealthy food as a reaction to things going on in my life? Do I make food central to my life? How can I change this behavior and not pass it on to my kids?

I believe that the healthiest relationship with food is to look at it as fuel. We obviously need food to survive, but we do not need to gorge ourselves, or fill ourselves up with tons of bad stuff. Klein, in her memoir, talks about the quantity of food she used to eat, sometimes when she wasn't even hungry. She would obsess about food. I go through times when I do too. It becomes a sort of drug. Socializing, many times, is all about food. It is so easy to have it be a main focus. Sometimes when my husband travels for work, I will go junk-food shopping to "get myself through the week." How sad is that.

Hopefully, as I am on this journey to change my lifestyle, I can change my views about food. Can I eat treats sparingly and be satisfied? (I could never give them up completely) Can I have balance in my eating habits? Can I have food fit in to my full life, not have my life revolve around food?

Heidi Klum in an Oprah interview, when asked how she lost her baby-weight so fast, said that she ate healthy her entire pregnancy. She said that it is hard. She would like to eat the cookies and other stuff all the time, but she can't eat everything she wants. She only eats them once in a while. I know we look at celebrities and talk about how they have nannies and chefs and trainers, and it's better to look elsewhere for motivation, but I have always remembered what she said in that interview. If we want to be healthy and skinny, we cannot eat whatever we want. We have to watch it. It's as simple as that.

Any thoughts???