"Dear Scale, we need to talk. It's nothing personal but we need to break up. It's not me...it's you."
The other night my son decided to join me during my workout. I love when this happens because it shows that what I'm doing is actually working. I want my "journey to health" to benefit me and my babies. I've spent most of my life being overweight and unhealthy. Naturally, I want better for them. I want to instill a love of exercise and being active while they are young so they don't have to deal with all the baggage that comes along with being obese.
Unfortunately, the example I am setting isn't always a good one and I don't even realize I'm doing it until it slaps me in the face. After we finished working out, my 8 year old son ran into the bathroom and weighed himself to see if he lost weight. A child should NOT be worried about how much they weight. I've always told them that it is about being healthy and not being skinny. That Mommy was working this hard because she wanted to be a healthy person. I told him the number on the scale didn't matter. What mattered was that he just did a workout and had fun doing it. Of course, he looked at me like I was crazy. I'm not fooling him at all. Both my children see me weigh myself all of the time. I'm obsessed with the scale. I'm happy when the number goes down and depressed when it doesn't. And heaven forbid it goes up. Yikes!! I realized at this moment that I definitely talk the talk but I don't walk the walk.
It's important to remember that our kids are always watching us. They
don't only observe what we want them to see. They see EVERYTHING. They
mirror our behaviors and habits. We don't realize how destructive some
of those behaviors are until we see our little ones doing the same
thing. Instead of just talking to my kids about being healthy and expecting them to just listen to me (like that ever happens...LOL), I need to set a better example. I think it's time to break up with my scale. Or at least limit our dates. :-)
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