Fat Dad, Fat Kid: One Father and Son's Journey to Take Power Away from the "F-Word"

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In spite of two incomes we lived on a shoestring budget, so we had a huge garden that supplied much of our produce for the year via freezing. Where my Dad is the optimist and health oriented my mother is the realist and prefers butter with her butter.

Every year after trick-or-treating, I used to hide my candy in a little paisley suitcase under my bed. My dad, on the other hand, nearly always eats pre-packaged foods, which to me isnt’ really food at all. It wasn’t until I started cooking (in college) that I realized there was so much more of a gray area, fell in love with food and flavor, and really began to understand what it means to eat well in the long run.Recently, I discovered a fantastic series on the New York Times blog, entitled “ Growing Up With a Fat Dad” by Dawn Lerman. As for my parents, and mainly my dad, I hope they can begin to discover a new way to approach their relationship with food. My mom did diets constantly and my dad would throw a fit whenever she would try to sneak in low fat options.

We were well fed and nourished with three square meals a day and dinner always included a vegetable and salad. I am eating to fill up something that is missing and to hide from emotions I don’t feel equip to handle. No – because it makes me cringe to say someone isn’t a good parent if they aren’t a healthy weight, I don’t think that’s true at all.He introduced me to foods I’d never tasted before, like mushrooms, avacados, grilled onions, zucchinni, eggplant parmesan, seaside fish ‘n’ chips, broiled salmon, tri-tip steaks. So I also grew up with an appreciation for fresh food, local food (how much more local can it get, with milk and beef from our own cows, as well as pork and chicken, and produce from our garden). They have certainly had a negative influence on my confidence, self-esteem, relationship with my body and food.

French toast slathered in butter and dripping with syrup was topped off with a generous sprinkling of sugar. Read more about the condition Very Good: A book that has been read and does not look new, but is in excellent condition. We never sat down as a family and ate together and when it did happen, everyone would just leave as they were finished. My mom lost over 100 pounds 15+ years ago, and I began to loathe myself for not losing the 50 that I needed to lose.My husband has always been overweight, but he has lost 40 lbs this year from just watching how much he eats and not overdoing it. I never really did the crazy diet thing, but I have done my own unhealthy things to keep my weight down. What really flipped the switch for me was when, around the age of 12, with my brother aged 10, we started getting hungrier, eating more, and my dad would tell us to stop eating.