Shows about people losing weight are another. I cheer for them, especially the ones about teenagers. I get angry at the slackers and self destructive behaviors. But more than anything, I've been amazed by some of the families. Some of them are as hard on the kids as their trainers, really pushing them to succeed and making large changes in the family lifestyle as well. I want to hug those parents. But some of them are so negative. They eat fast food in front of their kids who are trying desperately to change their lives. Discouraging their kids by disparaging their progress. Those parents I want to slap. Kids are a product of their environment. We have an obesity epidemic in our country among kids because they learn to be lazy and eat poorly from their parents. Those kids become adults who have kids and perpetuate the cycle.
My best friend and I have often talked about our wildly different upbringing and how that has effected our adult lives. I learned from an early age to regard fruits and vegetables as snacks. We had salad at every dinner and my sister and I ate it liberally. Even when there were cookies in the house, mom made them and they were out of site - never snacks, only dessert. More often, though, dessert was strawberries or some such. My friend, however, grew up making her own food decisions usually since her mom was in school at night, trying to make a better life for them. When her mom did cook, she made a lot of pasta and not much in the vegetable arena. She has fought being heavy her entire life and finally took matters into her own hands and lost 70 lbs by overhauling her eating habits.
Parents have a responsibility to their children to teach them how to be healthy. The fact that we just ignore that as a society is disheartening. Letting children do other things that will kill them would be a huge problem, but we can't tell parents to fix their children's eating habits. Absurd.
I'd like to comment a little on Hoarders, if you don't mind.
ReplyDeleteHoarding is actually an offshoot of OCD. Its about creating a protective wall of STUFF against the outside world. It has both genetic and environmental factors.
And its darn hard to fight.
*didn't realize I got on a soapbox there. Sorry.*
I'm actually very familiar with what hoarding is as well as the complications that arise in trying to effectively treat it. That doesn't make it any less difficult to understand how someone could accept that as normal. Very few hoarders have been that way their entire life, which means there was a time when they didn't live that way, even if in childhood. Like all psychological illnesses, I give credit to how difficult they are to face, but those who choose not to seek help get very little sympathy from me. And this is speaking as someone who has those illnesses.
ReplyDeleteSomehow, I get the feeling that everyone has a little Hoarder in them. Its a matter of what you allow in your life. Because I also have it in my life.
ReplyDelete