La Dolce Vita is Italian for 'The Good Life'. This is what I strive for every day. I strive for happiness, balance, fun and love. Here you will read about my insights and struggles and how I try to deal with life's challenges in a way that improves my life, the life of my friends and family and of my children.
Are you teaching your child to be a binge eater?
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I don’t keep junk food in our house. I stopped buying it when I noticed that my children were snacking on it most days.
I bought it thinking we’d have a little every now and then and I bought the ‘healthiest’ choices I could but hardly a day went by when we all didn’t indulge a little.
So I stopped buying it. If it wasn’t in the house, we couldn’t eat it. I’d save indulgences for special occasions. But here’s the problem.
When we see a movie, we go crazy at the candy bar. So deprived of sugar our eyes are on stalks and we run around like headless chooks, trying to choose our snacks (they get to choose one each) and then we cram it down fast. When the special occasion is a video night we seem to end up doing the same. I try and limit how much we buy but even I am in the mood for popcorn and ice-cream after a week of healthy eating.
This has left me thinking that maybe I had it right the first time. If I have a little junk food in our house, perhaps the novelty will wear off? It’s like the technology ban some mums are doing at the moment. So deprived of their game players during the week their children play them non-stop at the weekend, seemingly making up for lost time. My kids can play them whenever they want and most days they forget all about them.
Am I teaching my children to be binge-eaters? The reality is that junk food is everywhere. It’s on the TV, on the radio, in shops, in schools, at parties...if I try and avoid it at all times it will be a constant battle. I truly wish it just wasn’t there at all.
I’ve always wanted to be the kind of person who can have just one biscuit each afternoon with my coffee (not six) and I am determined to teach my children that they can do this too.
Balancing my diet and the diets of my children is a constant challenge thanks to our environment of cheap and easy-to-access junk food. It would be so great if we could all sit down at share a plate of ‘healthy’ lollies without resembling a plague of locusts and all fighting over the red ones. I live in hope...
Do you keep junk food in the house? Do you find it hard to control?
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