Friday, May 29, 2015

The Meal Time Monster


Oh my Goodness, this has been a long time coming - It has been mulling around in my mind for a while now and today I seemed to get it all sorted out. You probably didn't need to know that to read this post, but sometimes I feel like I need to share with you the process that happens before things end up on this page.

Random Topic Jump - My littlest is getting ready to crawl. When he lays on his stomach he can get his front end up, and he can get his back end up, but he isn't even close to getting both ends up at the same time. He sits pretty well but he hasn't been able to quite tip himself forward enough to get onto all fours yet. He doesn't get frustrated by his lack of "progress". He doesn't get overwhelmed. He doesn't even get bothered by the fact that other babies at church (born Way after him have their crawl on all over the place) He just keeps working on it, some days he makes progress and some days he doesn't. But he'll keep working on it, and when he gets it, he'll find something else to work on - then something else... and then something else.


The entire world is obsessed with food. I have come to that conclusion recently. People are consumed with knowing what to eat - what to eat to get skinny, to stay skinny, to have more energy, to cure diseases, to be happy, Cheap food, expensive food, Food that is fun and food that is pretty.  If you have a hard time making ends meet you may worry about how you are going to afford food. You probably worry about how to buy the best foods - maybe you miss the foods that you feel like you can't have or can't afford. Food on Pinterest, Food on Instagram, What's for Dinner?!

There has to been some magic answer, right?  How do you get them to eat... ? How do you lose the weight...? How do you stretch your dollars...?  Or get dinner on the table in 30 minutes...? The entire web seems to be filled with people trying to find these answers. After all, that is probably why you ended up here, right? Food?

I am staring down the barrel of Summer, Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner, Healthy Snacks and Empty Bellies, are calling my name from the moment I peek open my eyes in the morning - yours too?

So what do we do about it, what IS that magic pill? And that's just it, there isn't one.

Like my little Charlie learning to crawl, you just keep stretching and tipping over and trying again. It is a lot to take in all at once - there will always be someone making moving robots out of their kids kale and quinoa snacks. There will always be someone in your Instagram feed that is posing in their bathroom in their sports bra with a spinach smoothie in their hand. And sadly there will probably always be somebody who's pantry is bare and belly is empty. - Hopefully most of us, most of the time fall somewhere in the middle.

So keep plugging along. Keep making those Meal Plans, Keep adding those extras veggies and offering that strange new food. And don't beat yourself up too much when dinner ends up being drive thru, when those donuts end up in your grocery cart. You might have to fall on your face a few times to learn - and that is okay too.

The only real tragedy would be to give up trying to be better.