I Did Something Radical

"Mom, why is the head of the middle school sending you a zoom link?" 

"Please get off my email, and I need to talk to her about something that the school promoted that I didn't like". 

My daughter's middle school sent out an email promoting a "managing anxiety" seminar. Who couldn't use a little anxiety and stress reduction right now? I quickly checked out the presenter who advertised herself as a certified integrative health coach. 

Hmmm, sounds diet-y, but less anxiety sounds good.

To say life with six kids has been busy would be an understatement. Shockingly, I missed the zoom presentation. Anyone else sick of zoom anyways?

The school kindly sent out a few resources from the talk and I clicked on one of them which was a YouTube about mindful eating. This Youtube wasn't good. It was dieting wrapped up with a "mindful" bow. 

I'm going to get out my megaphone here. I wish I had polyester gym shorts and a whistle like my grade school PE teacher, but my lululemon joggers and madewell t-shirt will suffice. 

(I'm shouting) MINDFUL EATING IS USUALLY JUST ANOTHER CHEAP SHOT AT GETTING YOU TO GO ON A DIET. 

I'm all about the kind of mindfulness that involves a few deep breaths before you eat. This can actually be really beneficial for people recovering from disordered eating. People with anorexia literally have a biologically based fear response to food, so taking a few deep breaths to calm the nervous system before eating food is great. 

What's not so great, is taking deep breaths to become more mindful so that you can chew your food thirty five times to lose weight. Seriously, this is a thing. Don't look it up and go down the rabbit hole. This particular women preached that if you were more mindful, you'd make better choices and be able to control your weight. 

(Shouty caps again) THE LAST THING WE WANT TO BE ENCOURAGING MOMS OF TEENAGE DAUGHTERS TO DO IS DIET. 

When our daughters see us diet, they'll diet, too. You swear off sugar and dairy? Your daughter will likely follow. You pick at your food or skip your meals,? Your daughter absorbs this, too. 

We can't predict who'll have an eating disorder, but the way that these biologically based disorders get started is very often through a diet (or other energy deficit that can result from trauma or illness). 

I had a nice chat with the head of school who assured me that their focus was on health and strength and not body size and she was grateful that I brought this to her attention. 

If you see something come home from your child's school that's a bunch of diet culture verbiage about good and bad foods and limiting unhealthy foods. Call them out. If you don't want to, email me and I'll draft an email for you to send (I really will do this for you). 

You might think that was a Karen move. I don't care. I'm getting more radical these days, and I hope you'll join me. We need to be radical together to change the diet culture we're swimming through daily.  

Get out your megaphone, ladies. We've got work to do. 

xoxo,