4 Things I’ll Never Say (or Do) in front of my Daughter.
This was a Guest Post by Lara Zibarras on Elephant Journal
When I was a child, I watched my mum dieting—a lot.
She spent several years doing Weight Watchers and constantly counting points. Wednesday was “weigh-in” day, and the day we were allowed extra biscuits after school.
She also followed other fad diets. I remember one summer when I was 16, we even tried a diet together. It was the wildest four-day diet I’ve ever tried. We ate only potatoes on day 1, chicken and tomatoes on day 2, bananas on day 3, and then potatoes again on day 4. Yuck!
And it wasn’t just my mum. This was the 90s and everyone seemed to be dieting those days. Food and diets were a topic of conversation whenever my family got together, bemoaning those “last few kilos,” my aunts trying to “be good,” my uncle refusing seconds and patting his stomach as the reason why, and people complaining about weight gain. It was constant chatter.
Of course, it’s unlikely that my dreadful relationship with food could be entirely attributable to these moments. But it couldn’t have helped seeing these adults unhappy with their weight and size, constantly denying themselves and seeing food as their enemy.