Incident One: Mommy-Induced Guilty Meltdown
I've been working on everyone eating meals as a family. I asked my six year old what he would like for lunch: taco (leftovers from the previous night's dinner). I prepared one for him along with food for me and my other two children. As we all sat to eat, he chatted and played and took not one single bite.Finally he said, "I'm not hungry. I'm putting my taco away." When snack time rolled around three hours later, he wanted a serving of strawberry crisp.
"No, buddy--you have to eat your taco first."
"My tummy is not hungry for a taco; may I have a sandwich?"
"No, buddy--we can't waste food like that. You asked for a taco."
Cue hysteria. At first I thought it was about not getting his way, but his level of distress escalated. As he finally calmed down enough to talk, it became clear that his distress erupted out of deep guilt that it was terrible to waste food--that in wasting that taco he'd committed some dark transgression and he was begging forgiveness.
I don't talk a lot about wasting food--at least I don't think I do. I am very frugal, however. What messages has he absorbed creating this level of guilt at the prospect of wasting food?
Incident Two: Guilt-Induced Overeating
During his hysteria, I prepped a snack for the other two children: frozen banana mock-ice cream. It made servings for four and isn't something that would store well. So I served up three larger-than-normal servings and ate one myself--even though I wasn't hungry.Cue tummy ache for the next three hours.
Wasting Food:
In her book, Breaking Free From Emotional Eating, Geneen Roth writes, "Loading a body with food it doesn't need is the same as throwing it away, and just as wasteful."Talking in extra calories is the same as throwing food in the garbage: it's not nourishing my body--I'm just turning my waist-line into a lumpy garbage can.
I want to be a good steward of the resources we've been given. I want to honor the work that some one (often me!) has put into preparing nourishing food.
But . . .
I must be a good steward of my body first and change my thinking about what it means to waste food.
And (apparently), I must find loving, gracious ways to share this perspective on stewardship with my children to break this cycle of eating out of guilt.
