Pause. Reflect.
I was thinking this weekend about Snack Time. You know, that time of day, between meals, when kids pause for 12.2 seconds to grab some nourishment before they continue on their mission to color on every piece of paper in your home. That’s Snack Time. I was thinking about what Snack Time would have looked like, if anything, before the advent of super-processed foods wrapped in plastic wrap and stored on shelves for days weeks months years.
See…in theory I’m very against these type of foods. I understand that whatever processing and chemicals help them last forever, is most definitely not something my body should ingest copious amounts of. I really do get it. When I think about it…really think about it…I even get angry sometimes. I get frustrated that foods marketed as “healthy” for my kids still have chemical coloring components instead of the natural coloring options the SAME PRODUCT uses in other parts of the world with different food regulations.
But here’s the thing…what I believe in theory and what I put into action are two totally different things. When I need snack time to change out loads of laundry, or take the garbage to the street, I want to be able to just tell my kids to grab something out of the snack box and eat it. And stocking that snack box with “All-Natural” or “Organic” treats is difficult because A) They don’t make a lot of them yet and B) They are SUPER expensive.
So…of course…the best alternative would be for me to do something like – cut up an apple. Wash off some grapes. My kids don’t like a lot of healthy foods, but they do like some. We keep organic peanut butter around and we buy good breads, I could make them half a sandwich. There are tons of more affordable options that I could give them for snack that would have them ingesting lest chemical coloring and toxic preservatives.
And sometimes? I do that.
But mostly? I do not.
Because – like most of my Not-So-Great-Decisions in my life – it all traces back to two of my most AWESOME traits.
1) Impatience
2) Procrastination
I don’t want to prepare early for snack time – like making a sandwich before they get hungry – that would go against the part of me who wrote research papers and studied for exams during the final hours before they were due. I don’t want to take the time to actually make them a snack by hand because that goes against the part of me who used to hunt down my Christmas presents when I was a kid because I couldn’t wait to open them. The same part of me that – as an adult – never takes on any projects that take more than a few hours – at most a whole day – because I don’t like waiting for results.
But…these traits don’t just affect my snack time behavior. They affect EVERY bad behavior in my life. If I’m having an anxiety-triggered eating frenzy – do I stop and just think and talk myself out of it before ingesting 2000 calories for lunch? No. Because I just want the instant relief of eating, who cares about the consequences later. Do I take the time to have healthy foods prepared and on hand for those eating frenzies? No. Because I just like to put off thinking about fixing food until everyone is STARVING to death.
Same thing with entertaining the kids. If I have something I need/want to do – I stick them in front of the TV. It’s just a quick and easy way for me to get 20 minutes of peace while I work on a webpage, send a few emails, or watch last night’s Daily Show. TV requires no preparation and is always there ready to entertain. AND it always works. No trial and error there!
So…what is the point of all of my rambling? I just started connecting the dots of multiple poor decision making tendencies I have. That maybe, if I took time in every aspect of my life, to pause and reflect on what I was doing…I would probably make better decisions. And this had me wondering, if I did that, how much real time would I lose in my day? I’m guessing not that much. I’m guessing the frenzied decision making that saves a few seconds here and there wouldn’t really convert to any real time loss if I just paused and tried to make better decisions for myself and my family.
I already buy less crap for my pantries because I do recognize my poor decision making enough to just remove some options entirely. If I kept those spreadable-cheese cracker snack packs that my kids LOVE on hand all the time? They’d eat them every day. Same with those snack-machine packs of crackers. And while everything is okay in moderation? I know my faults well enough to know that if they’re in the house? There’s no moderation. They’re too easy to grab on the way out the door.
So…I’ve taken the bad choices away from myself as much as possible. Now it’s time to maybe try to get to the root of the bad choices. The Quick Fix Decision Making. Instead of waiting for Snack Time to think about snacks, making it so I’m desperate for that peace and wanting the kids to just do it themselves, I’ll plan to take MY break at the same time. So we can sit down and have a healthier snack together. Instead of putting the kids in front of the TV, I need to schedule my day better and make better use of their nap times or come up with better options to give me peace so that TV is more of a treat and less of a babysitter.
I need to think about what and why I’m eating. Am I really hungry? Pause. What do I really need to eat right now? Pause. Can I take some time to prepare the food making me value it more instead of just standing in front of the pantry and cramming food in my mouth faster than I can even open it? Pause.
I’m going to give it a try. It goes against EVERY SINGLE INSTINCT in my body. To just pause and try to make a bigger effort or a better decision. Because, I still watch a lot of TV and stalk a lot of Facebook friends (Not you! I totally don’t stalk you!) and that means I have plenty of time to use to try to make better decisions. If I was making the kids fix their own snack because I had an open-heart surgery going on in the next room? That would be different. But just wanting to see what some Starlet wore to the Oscars? Not something that should take precedence over my family.
Pause. Reflect. Make BETTER decisions, not FASTER ones. Am I capable of such a huge shift in mindset? Eh. Probably not. But I think I would like to at least try. I mean – for at least five minutes – until I see something shiny over there to distract me.
(I’ll save my self-diagnosis of Adult Onset Attention Disorder for another blog entry.)
Honestly, I think it’s no big deal. We all have places where, in a perfect world, we’d improve things a bit, but I think you’re doing a great job. No, we shouldn’t be eating processed foods often, but for the most part I feel like they aren’t as big a deal as nutrition people want us to think. And the TV? Whatever. Sometimes you need a minute or twelve, and if the TV works that’s fine. As long as you’re not sitting them there all day every day, they are fine. Your kids are clearly happy, intelligent, and fun-loving just like they ought to be, so they’re flourishing.
If it makes you feel any better, I look at what you do with your kids and feel like the world’s biggest slacker mom for not doing more with mine.
So see? We’re all hard on ourselves. And I do the eating thing too, though for me (like you said) controlling what I keep in the house has saved me a million times. If I have to make something to eat tons of it, I’m less likely to do it, or at least more likely to make a healthier choice.
Also, am I allowed to be absurdly proud of being on the top of the comment mvp list?
i have four kids. i could have written this post myself
I’m a lot like you in this respect, I think, and I agree that it would probably make my life better if I made decisions with time and information rather than with the emotions/”needs” of the moment. On the other hand, I think it’s entirely possible to go too far the other way. If you (or I) attach too much importance to every.single.snacktime, you will make yourself nuts.
I don’t have kids, but I run into this same dilemma when it comes to making my own meals and snacks. I actually LOVE fresh veggies as a snack. But prepping them? Not so much. For awhile there I was a huge fan of the 100 calorie packs–they were portioned for me so I didn’t mindlessly eat half a box of crackers. But then I started to realize that regardless of calorie count, they just weren’t snacks that were good for me. So, like you, I stopped buying them.
Instead I’ve switched to trail mix (easy, quick, but a little on the pricey side), applesauce cups, muffins (easy enough to make ahead of time and they even freeze well so you can batch cook), and fresh fruit. I’m still struggling with taking the time to prep fruit and veggies in advance, but I’m working on it.
What I can’t figure out is why something so little (washing and slicing an apple really doesn’t take long) seems like SO MUCH WORK when I’m hungry.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I just eat, not because I am hungry, because the food is there, and I don’t make good choices, but I am trying to change that…Good luck to you!
I think it is great that you are thinking about these aspects of your daily life differently. Yay for you!
I also think you are being pretty harsh with yourself when you talk about your “bad” decisions.
I’ve often reflected on my past choices, particularly with respect to food, thinking “Gee, if I only knew/understood then what I know now.” But you can’t change the past, you can only move forward. Fortunately, I got wiser about nutrition when my kids were in their early teens (they’re now in their early 20s). As a result, we were able to talk about food choices in an intelligent way, and they eventually came around to preferring the whole wheat bread over the white, and making other seemingly little changes that add up to a BIG difference in overall health. It also helped that the two boys were in wrestling and their coaches talked to them about making good food choices, too. Sometimes the things we say at home don’t sink in, until they hear the same thing from another respected adult.
I used to cringe a little when you would write about being a “bad cook,” or talk about meals made from “convenience foods,” boxes, stuff with lots of unhealthy additives and preservatives. I SO wanted to say, “But Kim, it isn’t that hard! You can do it!” But that would have been overstepping my bounds. You didn’t need faceless internet commenters telling you to change how you were choosing, quite happily, to live your life. And look at you now! You’re making REAL food and loving it — and truly, it really isn’t all that much harder, it just — as you said — takes a little thought. The switch to being a SAHM made the difference but I’ll bet at this point you’re not really spending a lot more time cooking the essentials than you used to (sure you might do more fun cooking projects now that you’re home more, but that’s not the issue at hand).
So here you are giving other aspects of your life a little more thought, too. Cutting veggies or fruits in advance certainly isn’t difficult, it just takes a little thought.
I pack a “lunch” every morning — but it doesn’t just have what I intend to eat in the morning; it has something I’ll eat mid-morning, and something I’ll eat in the afternoon for a snack. I may not always get to those snacks (either I’m not hungry or I’m busy, or occasionally it’s because someone’s left some home-made goodies in the break room). And once you’ve thought of some healthy snacks, it doesn’t take any longer than grabbing prepackaged junk. Everyone has different preferences but my curent ones are “baby” carrots (throw them in a baggie — done!), unsalted nuts (almonds, pecans, etc.), grapes, or a banana.
You could do the same thing for your kids in the morning. Put whatever easy fruits, veggies, half a pbj, etc. they like in a special “snack box.” And then it’s there for when they’re hungry (just as you might if they were packing a lunch for pre-school).
Whoa! It didn’t seem like I was writing that much. But that’s how I am… once I get an idea it just keeps going and going and going… no wonder there are all these things sitting around undone!
Sometimes when I read your blog I feel like we are living a similar life–except that my daughter is now 9. I loathed snack time. I had to stop what I was doing and find something for her to eat. Like you, I had a snack box. When she was little it was easy but now that she’s older, I find her eating more than is allowed or sneaking snacks. I finally had to put a stop to the snack box. I try keep a bowl of fruit on the counter and stuff in the fridge. Of course there is always snacky stuff around but I have more control over it.
I would love to eat salads more often but I hate the prep work and I’m to cheap to buy it all ready–how pathetic is that? Sigh….why does eating have to be so complicated? LOL!
Every single day I tell myself I’m not going to bother making lunches at night, because I really want to watch TV/go to bed/etc and I can just wake up 10 minutes earlier in the morning and slap together a PBJ sandwich. I mean, honestly, how hard is it to get out of bed just a little bit earlier?
And then every. single. day I wake up 10 min before I need to leave the house and I end up either scavenging the office kitchen for abandoned hershey kisses and stale crackers or spending $7 on a sub-par boxed sandwich from the coffee shop.
Right there with you, if from a different perspective. I’ve never eaten much in the way of processed food. (Thanks, Mom!) But, with a new baby in the house some days it just feels like too much effort to make anything. I’m tired, and she’s only going to give me a few minutes of quiet anyway. So, I do alot more grab and eat these days. I’m having to really stop and think when I’m grocery shopping. What do I need to have in the fridge or pantry? Cutting up a block of cheese in to slices while my husband is home in the evening is great when I think to do it. I’m also stocking the yogurt cups meant for babies, a fruit bowl of easy to eat fruits, jars of trail mix, dried apricots – I am making many a meal out of these recently.
For snacks, we are especially fond of the vanilla bean scones from Starbucks. Yeah, I could try ants on a log, i suppose…
U r funny the way u write^^ and kudos for going for healthy options ^^ ~hmm I think they really do make a difference x
Your ‘bad’ decision was probably because u wanted to do something that u value more in that instant =D so it isn’t a bad decision ^^
Heh. I recently wrote a similar post. I don’t think it’s about being perfect. Knowing the “triggers” and keeping them out of the house is really really good and puts you miles ahead of where you could be.
p.s. to say you put it so much better than I did.
I’m really sad now because I actually thought it was me on the top of the comment list and now sushi pyjama Heather. I guess I have been falling behind in my commenting! Alas!
I often have noble intentions regarding snacking in particular and food in general but once you get to a certain point of hungry it’s as though you (or rather, I) become incapable of making good, healthy decisions. Note to self: do not put things off to that point.