Hello Classmates,
I would like to share my personal experience with weight challenges I face as an adult. I feel that your behaviors when it comes to diet and food are learned as a child. I grew up in a large German-Catholic family. Almost every memory I have as a child was focused around food. My family believed in having at least one large meal per day where everyone was in attendance that consisted of several courses including dessert. The women in the family would spend hours preparing a large meal while the boys worked on the farm and milked the cows.
My parents were very strict when it came to leaving food on your plate. I was not allowed to leave the table until I ate everything on my plate. I can remember sitting at the table long after everyone left trying to force myself to eat. My parents tried to guilt me into eating always referencing the "starving kids of Africa." I fought my parents for several years until I finally gave in and forced myself to eat to avoid conflict with my parents. I could maintain my weight because I was physically active, and I played a lot of sports.
My weight never became an issue until after I started having children and my metabolism began to slow down. Before I knew it, I had three children while maintaining a full-time job. The sports and activities that I loved became a thing of the past. I rarely had time to exercise, and when I did, I was too tired to complete. Each year I started gaining weight. The past two years I have not gained weight, but I have not been successful in losing weight either. I still have difficulty leaving food on my plate, and restaurant servings in Texas just keep getting and bigger. Fortunately, I learned not to raise my children on guilt, and I also learned that children would not starve if they did not clean their plate. I am trying to schedule time for exercise even when I am tired. I am making an effort to change my eating habits for a safe and healthy weight loss and I hope that I can maintain these life changes. My sisters have joined me with my efforts and hopefully, together we can achieve our goals.
