I started Bright Line Eating in January of 2020. To date, I am down about 60 lbs with another 40 ish to go. When I started, to really get going, I had to “mind my own plate” and take care of my needs first. I had to focus on myself. Which, being a mother to four young children (2 year old girl, 4 year old boy, 6 year old girl and 8 year old boy) was sometimes hard to do. This family keeps me busy trying to sail the ship of career, family, housekeeping and of course, the never ending question of “What’s for dinner.”
After years of putting my needs last, where I wouldn’t even bother making myself dinner, where I would just eat the left over scraps off my kids plates because, “we don’t waste food”, this new mindset was a big shift. I ended up making two meals most nights, one for my family and one for me. That is what I had to do to get started because if you have ever cooked a home cooked, from scratch meal just to have EVERYONE refuse to eat it, you know what it’s like to have to save your sanity and do what you must to get by. You think, “let’s pick one battle at a time.”
Yet, I found comments from people who made the same thing for their families as themselves and just “added the grain” for the family to feel judgmental. I thought, “They clearly do not understand what it is like to have four, young, needy, picky eater kids.”
But really, some of them probably did understand. It was me who didn’t understand. I didn’t understand that I am the one who had trained my kids to not like “healthy food”. I am the one who makes them chicken nuggets and mac n cheese. I am the one who let’s them eat granola bars by the Costco box. Me. They are picky kids because I have trained them to like certain foods and the vicious cycle of poor eating habits plagues another generation.
I was determined to stop the bad habits, but growth takes time. Honestly, it wasn’t until my tastes started changing after months of BLE that I really realized theirs would also, if I lead the way. And so began my attempts to bring them, unknowingly, under my BLE influence.
I set out on a mission, I would become one of those “judgmental” people that annoyed me. I would make one meal that was adaptable to their needs and mine. We started with tacos. Simple. Easy. I get a bowl, they get a tortilla. They ate it up. This wasn’t a big stretch for them, they often ate tacos and burritos. But these tacos had more veggies. I put all the fixings out on the table and let them choose what to put in their tortillas. My 4 year old added meat, beans, lettuce, cheese and peas. I said nothing, he ate it all.
Eventually, my kids have started asking questions about my food selections and started making comments of their own. My six year old has decided she wants a salad at every meal so she “can be like me.” When she says, “Mom’s on a diet.” I gently correct her and tell her, no, “Mom eats a healthy diet.” Talking to your kids about eating healthy is a challenge. Clearly, the messaging got mixed up for me.
But everyday I work at it a little harder and try my best to share my food choices and new positive habits with my kids. It is a work in progress, but it gets better every day. Making separate meals for everyone in my house multiple times a day is just not sustainable. Learning to be BLE as a family is going to be an essential component to my success. So finding kid approved BLE influenced meals is going to be a major focus of this blog. We’ll test recipes and food combinations and give feedback on Bright Line Eating as a family.
Whole 365 