Take The Never Say Dieting Oath

The statistics are not surprising.  A recent survey commissioned by Multi-Grain Cheerios examining young women ages 10-17 revealed:

• 3 in 5 women have been on a diet
• 52% of girls get their information about dieting and nutrition from family members
• 1 in 5 girls under 18 is currently dieting

Unlike the generation before us, we have access to not only amazing YouTube videos highlighting the complete transformation taken to create a cover model but information like the above is being shared just as quickly – if not more quickly – than the latest fad diet (blood type diet, are you kidding me??)

I have high hopes for my daughter’s generation, I really do.  We’ve never been more educated about what being healthy really means, and never been more aware of the dangers and pitfalls of dieting.  So, we’re in a good spot, moms.

Of course, we moms were raised in an entirely different generation and we’ve got to work our way through that.  The way we were raised – the images we saw in the media, the dieting crazes we heard about and the dieting we watched our own mothers struggle with have all left their mark.

My mother has dieted for most of her life and she’s turning 74 this spring.  The cabbage soup diet, the apple diet, and of course the literature and dogma of many of the popular diet companies have all been through our household when I was growing up.  Each diet was inevitably a fail because it was a diet.  It had nothing to do with lifestyle or being healthy and each promised a quick fix which our generation now knows isn’t possible.

Growing up, I knew my mom didn’t like her body.  She used self-depreciating terms when referring to it and the inevitable diet always showed me that she was trying to ‘fix’ what was wrong.

The thing is, in my eyes my mom was and is always beautiful.  Every curve, every stretch mark, every thing about her signifies beauty to me because it’s in those curves that all four kids found our warm, huggable, mother.  Those stretch marks are the path that brought us here.  I wish she could have accepted her body as the beautiful person I know she is – but it’s not all her fault.  She was raised in an entirely different generation.  Still, at 74 years old it’s frustrating to me that she has never been happy with it.

I don’t want to give that legacy, and that memory of mom looking in the mirror to my daughters.  Sure, I don’t look in the mirror and proclaim to love every one of my jiggly bits but I also don’t sigh and frown and point them out to my girls either.  I stand proud, I share confidence, and I can say with 100% honestly that we never ever use the term dieting in our household.

No, for us it’s about being healthy.  Eating nutriotious food, and eating better.  When I make a smoothy for lunch instead of picking off the girls plates, it’s not considered a diet, or odd.  It’s just “mom eating healthy today” (because yesterday might have been yummy french fries!)  So, I’m more than happy to jump on board and support the Cheerios #WorldWithoutDieting campaign and take the Never Say Diet Oath on the site.

I love this.  Even though I am careful about the word dieting already, it’s an important reminder on how much our little girls look up to us and take cues from us on their own body image.  I wish my mom had information and campaigns like this when I was a little girl.  It would have helped both of us at the time I’m sure.  It’s interesting that the campaign is targeted to moms and girls, but when you think about it, little boys can learn a lot about a woman’s true beauty from their mothers too so I suggest mothers of little boys give it some thought as well.

Want to take the oath too?  Just visit www.worldwithoutdieting.ca and take the oath on the site.  Once you submit it, you can then download a copy of it to keep.  It’s a great first step to help us all become more positive role models for our kids.  Take a look around the site while you’re there; there’s great information on ways to live a more balanced lifestyle there too.

To help promote a healthy lifestyle, I’m offering one of my readers the opportunity to win a $100 Loblaws gift card to shop for healthy nutritious items!  To enter to win just take the Never Say Dieting Oath and tell me: your name and who you took the oath for (it’s searchable by name after about 24 hours).

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