mamamilkandme

I often play a game with myself to protect my children from potential angry outbursts from their mother – these outbursts are not unprovoked – no one can push your buttons like your offspring but it is my responsibility, my job, to model appropriate behavior. However, I am only human so I must enable strategies to guide my babies into functioning adults.

The game is that I pretend that I am the subject of a documentary or television show and I am supposed to demonstrate good parenting. Maybe this comes from being a Southerner who gives a damn what others think – though this aspect of my psyche is fading with my youth – but this idea had to spring from somewhere.

My children are growing (and so is my body) so I am finding less of a need to “act” like a decent mother. Or perhaps I acted like it so much that as a Method actor I became the Decent Mother!

I have had a new epiphany. You see, I noticed back at Thanksgiving that I was bursting out of my clothes as I gobbled up turkey and gravy and pecan pie and this wine and that cocktail and this cheese and that Pernil.

Something had to give besides my seams. So, I joined Weight Watchers in early December.

It is now June and I am within five pounds of my starting weight. I could celebrate a pound a month but at this rate I may be retired before I hit goal. In December my membership was truly a preemptive act to avoid more weight gain – let me hold steady through the holidays then come January I will slim down. Ha!

I know how to do this as I am a Lifetime Weight Watchers Member but the last time I lost any weight on the program I was nursing a baby into toddlerhood and let him suck the calories right out of me. I don’t know how large the wet nurse market is and I do not need another baby!

So, today I decided that I would use my parenting strategies in my weight loss journey. I will pretend that Weight Watchers has a film crew following me around and I am the epitome of the model Weight Watchers Member. I will make smart choices. I will choose smaller portions, more nutrient dense, high fiber foods. I will eschew my beloved gluten free brownies. When I make my children buttery eggs in a hole I will eat a boiled egg and a half a grapefruit. I will leave morsels behind on my plate. I will choose mangos over cookies.

I will be the envy of those humans bursting at their seams as I begin to swim in my clothes.

Weight Watchers will make me their new spokes person and I will be voted Mother of the Year!