(Authors Note: I did not actually have a conversation with a Panda Bear. The fact is there are only so many times you can tell people that the key to losing weight is to eat more fruits, vegetables and lean proteins while eating less doughnuts. Eventually it becomes boring for both the author and the reader. Hence this steaming pile of you know what.)
Dr. Mr. Shank,
My name is Claire, Claire Panda. I am writing this with no thumbs so please BEAR with me:
(Thank you, thank you. I will be here all week. Please remember to tip your waitress.)
I have this problem with my son. His name is Schlomo. While I tend to struggle a bit myself with eating only a diet of shoots, leaves and a wide variety of insects my poor little Schlomo is really having a tough time. He only seems to want to eat Lucky Charms:
(As the box gets more retro and therefore more racist, this blog post is going to keep getting weirder and weirder.)
In fact I would say a great deal of Schlomo Panda’s day consists of eating and then pooping Lucky Charms. I am really concerned because he is sleeping in school and falling behind in his calligraphy lessons.
Can you please help? I need to know what I should be feeding my kids, especially for breakfast.
(At this point in the blog you might be wondering “Does this guy do a lot of drugs?”. The scary thing is the answer is “No”.)
Hello Claire!
Long time no see. Glad to hear from you again. I would love to tell you what to feed your child but here’s the thing. I wear shorts for a living. I am a personal trainer.
(Is it me or are there a lot of right angles in this picture? Either way, when it comes to your kids we trainers are probably the last people on earth you should be taking advice from.)
When it comes to the growth and development of your child you need to refer to the real experts in the field. Namely a Pediatrician that you trust and/or a nutritionist/dietician who specializes in working with kids.
With that being said, while I would never give you specific recommendations regarding your little one’s nutrition, I can say there are some common themes which come up over and over again when it comes to following a healthy lifestyle versus just being on “another diet”. I am sure these “observations” would be very valuable for anybody, especially kids because they are at such an important point in establishing a healthy relationship with what they eat.
Now without further ado here are the three common themes :
1. Food is not a moral choice:
I know some of the more “Diet as a Religion” types will roast me over this one but food is not a moral choice.
(Just for the record Hitler was not always a vegetarian. He only took on a largely vegetarian diet later in life in an effort to deal with the gastric problems that naturally come along with being the biggest douchebag in the history of the planet. Still, the poster is pretty funny and any time you get a chance to dump on Hitler you mights as well take advantage of it.)
When I have a client come in and tell me “They were so bad this weekend” my first question is “Did you rob a bank or kill a kitten or something?’. That often shuts them up because it puts in perspective just how ridiculous they are being.
So what if you ate a bunch of cake or a bag full of cookies or six slices of pizza and a dozen buffalo wings. You need to move on with your life! It’s not like you killed somebody. You certainly won’t be killing yourself unless you do that everyday for years on end.
The second you start attaching moral obligations and labels of guilt upon the foods you eat is the second you start stirring up something that really shouldn’t be that dramatic. Now all of a sudden something that should be a once in a while indulgence and celebration winds up getting put up high on a pedestal of yearning and desire. Forbidden, at least when it comes to human beings anyway, almost always equals “I have to have that now and I have to have more of it then I ever wanted.”.
2. Healthy eating really isn’t that complicated:
A meal consists of two things, a protein and a carbohydrate. Throw in some healthy fat and a vegetable or two and you have what is in a nutshell (which could be your fat source by the way) the foundation for a healthy diet for the rest of your life.
(This is a meal. Please don’t go out of your way to make life any more difficult than it already is.)
Where most people screw this up is they muddy the nutritional waters by running through their heads options and information which really aren’t the limiting factor for where they are at when it comes to losing weight and being healthy. For example, I think organic food is fantastic, it’s just I haven’t met many people where that is the limiting factor in them losing weight. For example, I have never seen this:
Dear Shank,
I cannot seem to lose weight. I am a male and I weigh 200lbs. I have been eating like this for 3 months but I can’t seem to drop fat or stop getting frequent colds. Here is my diet:
Supplements are; a multivitamin
Meal 1:
3 conventionally farmed eggs scrambled in a little olive oil
1 bowl of oatmeal sweetened with regular honey
Meal 2:
1 can of albacore tuna, 1 conventionally farmed apple, 1 conventionally farmed orange and a handful of conventionally farmed grapes
Meal 3:
200 grams grilled Perdue chicken, 200 grams white rice, 1 cup conventionally farmed broccolli, 1 tsp of olive oil, 1 tsp of fish oil
Meal 4:
200 grams of farm raised salmon, plain baked potato, 1 cup of conventionally farmed green beans
Meal 5:
250 grams corn fed lean steak, 3 cups of conventionally farmed salad greens (cukes, spinach, romaine, green peppers, carrots etc.), 2 tbsp low cal dressing and 200 grams white pasta with plain tomato sauce
Now this guy above, he might benefit from 1. some specialized supplementation. 2. switching over to organic fruits, vegetables and meats 3. switching to brown rice versus white 4. wild caught fish versus farm raised 5. specialized pre and post workout nutrition strategies 6. Carb cycling etc.
The problem is most peoples nutrition strategies and the questions I usually get tend to revolve around what I like to call these “secondary principles”. By not getting the basics right and instead focusing on the advanced stuff it’s like people are trying to raise the sails in a boat without a mast:
(Sailing might take Christopher Cross to where he always heard it could be, it always just made me sea sick.)
(Please note that is Christopher Cross and not these two cats a.k.a Kriss Kross.)
3. There will always be “Forces of evil in a bozo nightmare”:
As long as there is a lot of this to be made:
(Drug Cartel Money)
There will always be some evil corporation Bozo CEO willing to manufacture this nightmare to human nutrition:
(Excellent source of calcium my ass.)
When it comes to Madison Avenue, all parents are in a dietary battle for the hearts and minds of their children. The people who sell the aforementioned swill are always betting on peoples natural inclination towards convenience. Now if I ruled the world you can bet one of my first laws, besides mandating year round Reese’s Holiday Peanut Butter Cups, would be to ban advertising to children.
But I don’t rule the world so this is just something we will all just have to learn to deal with. The first step to dealing with it is to not buy that garbage in the first place.
In closing my dearest Claire Panda I hope that helps. Good luck with Schlomo and more importantly good luck with yourself. Remember that once you choose to look past all the Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan’s, Mia Hamm’s and Wayne Gretzky’s, our childrens real role models are mainly their parents and the other adults they interact with on a daily basis. They learn to live, react and adapt to the world largely by the example that we set and that includes having a healthy relationship with their bodies and what they eat.
Till next time,
Yours in Chocolate Chip Cookies,
Mike Cruickshank
(I can’t tell you how many times I have seen someone like the parent on the right walk in with the kid on the left and say “What tape can I watch, what book can I buy or what can you do to stop my kid from eating so much junk food?”. The apple, or in this case the Candy Coated One, does not fall to far from the tree.)
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