Happy Meals Are Bad, Twinkies Are Good: Welcome to the Food Wars

Or make them fat. Whatever.

How could something so happy - it's even got happy in the name! - cause so much angst? By now you've certainly heard about San Francisco banning the McDonald's Happy Meal. (Note: they actually just banned the toy from being included in meals that don't meet certain nutritional criteria but as a mother of four I can tell you that's pretty much the same thing.) You've probably also heard that a judge overturned the ban. The war on Happy Meals has grown pretty heated in the past couple of weeks and naturally, this battle has filtered down to the fitness blog world.

Last week, MizFit headed up Team Happy Meals (which, if you read her post, is not actually pro-junk food but rather pro-parental responsibility.) In the other corner, Workout Mommy started up Team Healthy Meals for all the reasons you'd expect. Would you rather be healthy or happy, people?! Me, I can't decide.

Against the ban: If you ban the Happy Meal toy kids can still get their fix (and parents their 30 minutes of playland-induced peace) by walking across the street to a variety of other establishments. There is no shortage of junk food or cheap, plastic, movie tie-in crap in this country.

Pro ban: my kids only want the Happy Meal for the toy. They will actually throw their chicken nuggets in the garbage. I know. (I circumvented this wasteful ritual by going to the thrift store and buying a huge bag of old Happy Meal toys for 1$ and then handing them out to the kids for various reasons like pooping in the potty rather than just in the general vicinity, sharing their gum with their brothers even if it was prechewed and sometimes just as a bribe to be quiet and let mommy poop on her potty and chew her own gum in peace.) So if you ban the toy my kids will never want the chicken nuggets or junior cheeseburger all on their own - yay!

Pro: I can't even remember the last time we went to McDonald's - we generally save the Golden Arches for long road trips where we stop every few hours to make an offering at the shrine of the man who invented the indoor playland, unsung hero that he is. So what do I care if they ban them or not?

Against: We have another long road trip in our future. Probably many. A free toy (even if I think it is the lamest thing ever) + a slide that smells like urine = toddler joy. God bless Ronald.

Pro: Maybe this is the kick in the pants fast food establishments needed to offer healthier choices for kids.

Against: They already do, people just don't buy them.

Against: Where does the legislation stop? We've talked before about the slippery slope of letting the government define what is and is not "healthy" food.

Pro: It's more of a gesture, a statement against childhood obesity, than anything else. We have to draw the line in the sand somewhere, right?

Against: Do we really want to make Happy Meals the forbidden fruit?

Against: Legislation targeted at fast food usually affects poor people disproportionally.

Against: It's the parent's job to decide what to feed their children and where to spend their money.

Pro: Perhaps this will spark some conversation about how to better educate parents and children about healthy eating.

Against: Children have to learn sometime how to make healthy choices and they're not going to learn that skill by having some junk food randomly banned. Less than healthy food abounds and it is okay to eat it sometimes, just not all the time.

Pro: So use this new law as a teaching tool!

Pro: This kind of food is addicting. Literally. Plus those things are so processed they don't even rot! So we need to do anything we can to keep it out of the hands of little bodies that are still forming neural pathways (unlike my brain which is shedding neurons by the second - every time I have to listen to the Animaniacs song another cell dies).

Against: So then this law is a piddly drop in the bucket - go big or go home! Hello, school lunches!

Against: Europe has tons of McDonald's (I know, I've seen them!) and Europeans are notoriously Not Fat.

Pro: Really? You know you've reached the end of the debate when someone throws in the everything-is-better-in-Europe argument.

ANYHOW. It's been a long day that started with the kids whining about having to eat whole-wheat chocolate zucchini muffins for breakfast (despite the name, they actually taste amazing) and ended with a fist fight that left two of them bloody and the baby screaming just because she figures why not, that's just what people do in our house. So help my poor addled brain decide.

Oh, and just in case your brain hasn't exploded yet, check out this new study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (see - you already know it's going to be good because it's European!) that showed that obese children ate more whole grains, fruits, vegetables and lean meats than their slim counterparts. According to the researchers, it's not what you eat but rather how good you are at portion control. Twinkie diet anyone?? (Cliff notes version: Professor lost 27 pounds by eating mostly snack cakes. AND his blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides all went down.)

Are you in favor of legislation that would make junk food harder to buy? Does it make a difference if the food is intended for and marketed to, children? What do you make of the Norwegian study results? Did the Twinkie Diet blow your mind as much as it did mine?

The Emergency At-Home Workout [No equipment necessary]

Every family has their seasonal traditions and today we are commemorating a big one at our house. It's annual Pink Eye Day. We celebrate this special day every year come winter - sometimes more than once! While this day doesn't usually involve festive decorations or special foods, it does involve missing school (and, for me, the gym, the store, and all adult company). Pink is the color of the day and each child is gifted with his own bottle of Purel, a box of Kleenexes and the admonition to touch nothing, including themselves.

The first thing we always do on this great day (and every 4 hours afterward) is the Ceremony of the Eye Drops. Some parents think this ceremony is not very fun as it often involves kicking, screaming, scratching and crying. The children often behave no better. However, since this ceremony is required to celebrate Pink Eye Day, not to mention the Great Day of Returning To School, I have developed a patented eye drop administration technique. First you place the child on their back on a padded floor. Next you place both legs over their body, pinning their arms to their sides. You have to really use those quad muscles here. Just ignore any protestations from the child - remember it was them and their germy fingers that got you into this mess in the first place. Use one hand to hold their head and hold the other at the ready with the eye drops. Now here's the trick: hold a piece of candy between your teeth and yell "Look! A treat!!" As soon as they open their eyes to see that Tootsie Roll dangling above them, strike with the eye drops. Then - don't be a jerk - give them the treat.

Despite the fact that the Eye Drop Ceremony usually gets me all sweaty, I was still bummed to have to miss my daily sweat fest at the gym. Today was supposed to be boot camp and I was greatly looking forward to doing my best to reinact those Gatorade commericals with the colored sweat (I ate beets last night, it was a possibility!) but thanks to my disease-carrying progeny I am stuck at home. So instead since today was "metabolic circuit" day of the Rachel Cosgrove Experiment (which I have to say, one week in, is going great!) I assigned the Gym Buddies some homework and we each did these circuits at home. The great thing about these is that they don't require any equipment except a clock!

Circuit 1: Perform each movement for 45 seconds followed by a 10 second rest. Repeat circuit twice.

Walking lunges

Single leg squat thrusts (the bottom half of a burpee but with only 1 leg)

Pushups

Box jumps (use your stairs and jump up as many as you can, landing with two feet. Also, don't fall!)

Circuit 2: Perform each movement for 45 seconds followed by a 10 second rest. Repeat circuit twice.

Lateral ski jump (also known as skaters)

Explosive step up (use your stairs)

Prone Cross Toe Touch (do plank, then bring your right leg underneath and lift your left hand to touch your right toe. Repeat on other side)

Jump squats

Sixteen intense minutes and then you're done! Sounds great in theory. In execution it looked a bit different but it sure beat running in place on my pretend treadmill for 30 minutes. I threw on some clothes (it's amazing how little care I put into wardrobe selection when I know no one is going to see me!), set up a fort to keep the wee ones occupied and went to work!

At first the kiddos (a.k.a. The Lepers) stayed holed up in their den with a bag of contraband Teddy Grahams and watched mommy go all Flashdance on the 6-square feet of carpet their fort did not take up.

But then they saw how much fun I was having as evidenced by the sweat drops splattering their tent off my elbows and my heavy breathing and decided to further investigate. (Note protective eyewear. Their idea, not mine. I figure if you're in our house during the Pink Eye Festival, you're just doomed. Admit it, your eyes are suddenly feeling itchy.)

The four-year-old decided he wanted to be the official photographer of our group exercise event so he chronicled the fun. Here's me doing jump squats (the tongue is part of having good form, trust me.)

Momentary distraction to take a picture of an owie incurred when Mommy stepped on his foot while doing skaters. Don't worry, he'll live.

While the four-year-old could basically follow along, the two-year-old's favorite activity was crawling through my legs when I did the plank. It's like reverse birthing. I'm sure we just saved money on therapy there.

We ended with the baby's impersonation of me doing the Carioca. (Notice the broom? The four-year-old apparently thought that random dancing around the room meant limbo time.) Personally, I dig his choice of workout wear. Tomorrow I'm totally going to the gym in my pajama shirt, no pants, one sock and ski goggles.

What do you do when your planned workout gets foiled? Do you have a favorite at-home workout? Or do you call it a rest day? Anyone had pinkeye as an adult? I have (during the Pink Eye Fest last year) and trust me it's way worse than you remember. Took me two solid weeks to get over that. This year I'm wearing surgical gloves.

Working in an Office or Working at Home: Which is Better For Your Waistline?

Has there ever been a better-named snack than this one? Why do we not have these in the US?? I need some crunky nudity!

"What smells like... salsa?" My coworker at the computer lab (told you I was a born nerd!) looked around until his eyes settled on me, eating lunch tucked into my cubicle. "What is that thing?" he screeched as if he'd caught me gorging on rat innards. This of course caused all my coworkers to come popping out of their cubes like a life-size game of whack-a-mole.

"It's a red pepper," I replied simply. Due to time constraints I hadn't bothered to cut it up and was just eating it whole, like an apple. The moles retreated.

"I thought peppers were just green. They come in red?" he asked, clearly flustered.

"And yellow and orange. Sometimes purple."

"And you just eat it?"

"I just eat it." Ah the days when fresh produce was newsworthy!

I was a lot skinnier in college. This is not unique to me of course - chalk it up to the nuclear metabolisms of youth. For me, however, I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was never home. For one thing I had a roommate who was being stalked by debt collectors who insisted on yelling at any female who answered the phone but it also helped that I was as neurotic as they come using every hour not in class or working to study.

Ignoring for a moment the periods where I was actively eating disordered, it seemed to be easier to control what I ate when I wasn't around my kitchen all the time. (Note: it was also much easier to be eating disordered in college.) I'm the planning queen so while office mates were hitting the vending machines for a meal of chewy Runts and diet Dew, I was pulling out my tupperware of salad with sliced pears and cheese crumbles. I hardly ever snacked and I only ate when I was really hungry. (Sometimes really really hungry - I was a terrible meal skipper).

All of which is a far cry from my life now where, thanks to demanding little people, snacks are on the agenda about every waking hour. There is always food on the table, the counters, the floor, and in my baby's neck rolls. (Note to new moms: make sure to lift up your little darling's chin when you bathe him or her. Tons of gunk gets stuck down there and since babies have no necks, you never see it. I learned this the hard way when I found black specks all over my baby's neck. I was sure he had fleas and rushed him to the doctor's. Turns out they were Oreo cookie crumbs. From me. That I'd eaten while I was nursing him. Don't be me.) ANYHOW, as much as I'd like to say that I never eat the PB&J crusts or the soggy nub of a cheese stick, I totally do. In addition to all the visible food, since I do all the shopping our cupboards are filled with food that I love to eat. So when I get writer's block or just hit with a block (happens more than you'd think), it's all too easy to de-stress standing in front of the freezer with a fork and a pint of ice cream. The last issue is how much of my life I spend cooking - I've already 'fessed up to cooking about 20 out of 21 meals a week - and when I cook, I taste. Sometimes I taste so much I have "tasted" an entire meal before even sitting down with my family.

But while I do impart a glossy sheen to my pre-child work days (I could wear a cute top with a skirt and heels without anyone asking me why I'm dressed up so fancy and then bursting into tears because that usually means I'm going somewhere without my entourage of minis.) I do remember the pitfalls of the office diet. Many of my working friends, and quite a few of you in the comments section of my last Intuitive Eating post, reminded me how hard it is to eat healthily at work. Between the client dinners and the office doughnuts and the face cake for everyone's birthdays, the office can be a minefield of temptation. Not to mention the lack of kitchen facilities for fresh food prep and storage, the overtime and the lunch hours that slowly turn into lunch minutes between meetings.

So! Which is better - working in an office or working at home? Cue the mompetition! Second only to the "does this make me look fat" conversation, the career vs. stay-at-home argument is generally a guaranteed way to end up with hurt feelings, strained friendships and possibly a stiletto heel in your eye. Thankfully for me, I'm only talking about which is better for your waistline, not the cosmic implications of where you choose to raise your Special Ovarian Deliveries. (You will notice that I use the phrase "working" in both descriptions because having done both I will tell you that it's hard work no matter which venue you choose to do it in. You may also note that I choose to refrain from limiting the fun to one gender- um, dudes can totally wear stilettos too. Lots of Daddies work at home these days.) The research says that people are more likely to overeat when they are stressed out and their cortisol levels rise so perhaps it's just a question of who stresses you out more - your kids or your boss?

There are advantages and disadvantages to both but I'm going to vote that for me, being in a different zip code than my refrigerator really quells my predilection for mindless grazing. What's your vote? Do you do better with your eating at home or at work? At home - what are your tips to keep from grazing? At work - what are your tricks for avoiding the candy jar? And - anyone else eat ice cream with a fork? I cannot use a spoon; it just feels wrong!

How To Truly Enjoy Your Food

As demonstrated by Jelly Bean. Little Sister looooves her blueberries! Now if only I could learn to eat with such glee - although I daresay I couldn't get away with taking my shirt off and rolling in it like she does. Ah, the privileges of youth! (Not that you asked but as I feel like she's sort of the blog baby, I feel inclined to share. She is crawling now! She does the funniest little one-knee and one-foot scootch. If she goes far enough it makes her turn in a circle, which always confuses her. And amuses me. Her favorite destination is - of course - the toilet. Walking, and the official intro into toddler-dom is just around the corner! Can you believe it's been 11 months??)

With no further adieu, the winner of the Pop Chips giveaway is:

keyalus who said...

I welcome all snacks - salty and sweet - depending on my mood!

E-mail me your details and I'll hook you up with your prize!

Can Exercise Hurt Your Breast Milk? [A Study in Mother Guilt]

A mother's love - they say that nothing is more powerful. (At least if you believe Harry Potter, which of course I do. I'm a sucker for green eyes.) So if this is true then I know the second most powerful force on the planet: A mother's guilt.

Whether they hand it to you as you exit the hospital, a neat little package of the shame you carry for sending your precious infant to the nursery to spend his first night on the planet alone amongst the bright lights and loud noises or whether you don't discover the little box hidden like a pipe bomb under the baby seat that you realize you've installed incorrectly and yet have been using it to tote your fragile baby around for months, it is an inevitability. It hits you like a knife to the stomach twisting your innards as your mind races to all the what-could-haves and thank-God-it-didn'ts as you repeat the Happiest Baby on the Block like so many nursery rhyme Hail Marys in an effort to prevent the worst by imagining all incarnations of it. Once the guilt has finished consuming you from the gut upward in its fiendish flames, it settles in quietly, rock-like, deep inside your person. Some mothers carry their neutron-star guilt in their stomachs perpetually churning with acid, others in their heads in the migraine spot right behind their eyes, but I, I carry mine in my heart. With every beat of my own I can feel the pulse, like an echo, of the hearts of each of my children. From their utmost beginning their hearts have beat inside me - how could I not still be swayed by their rhythm?

I shall tell you all the facts. There aren't many, it won't take long. Indeed, on the grand scale of parental mistakes this one is perhaps minor. But it is the thing that it represents that so wounds me: my ability to hurt my children even while doing my best to protect them. But I am ahead of myself.

Anyone who has had a baby, seen a baby, read about a baby or just happens to have breasts will know what a contentious topic breast feeding is. Breast is best! The zeal imbued into this cannot be overstated. It's healthier for both mom and baby - it is a magic elixir that prevents health problems now and in the future! Plus, it's free. And yet, knowing this as all of us breast-endowed women (and most men too, I'd wager) do, how is that the vast majority do not breast feed? Or if they do, they don't do it for long?

I'll tell you why. It's hard. It may be a natural process but it sure doesn't come naturally. At least it didn't for me. Nobody told me how much it would hurt - like rug burns with the scabs getting ripped off every 2-3 hours around the clock - until the baby's suckling finally turned my nipples into pencil erasers. Nobody told me of the yeast infections passed back and forth like some insane game of hot potato but where the winner gets their mouth painted purple with gentian violet. Nobody told me of the stage where infants turn piranha and, literally, bite the one that feeds them. Nobody warned me of the nursing strikes, the engorgement, the clogged ducts, the cumbersome nursing bras, the mastitis, the banning of all medicine except worthless Tylenol, the double pump milking machine that is so similar to the ones they use on cows that you can't help but moo, the spontaneous public let downs at the mere thought of my baby's cry. (On an airplane, wetting a stranger's head no less! The only thing that could have made that flight more perfect was if my last name were Joad.)

I don't tell you this to discourage you from ever nursing but rather, having been through all of this multiple times, to explain to you why nursing means so much to me. I have fought so hard to do this simplest of things. To be the mother who can feed her baby.

But now for the facts I promised you. The Jelly Bean was born hale and hearty at 8 1/2 pounds, by far my smallest baby but fairly large as babies in general go. She took to nursing right away and at first all seemed to go well. She was back up to her birth weight by two weeks, just as expected. She pooped and peed like a champ. But along about 3 months, something changed. She stopped gaining weight. The doctor wasn't overly concerned. "Bring her back in a month for another weigh-in." I did. But at that check-up and every check-up that has followed, her weight percentile has continued to drop. Eventually the doctor suggested a lactation consultant who in turn suggested a number things of which I all tried. While she still didn't gain any weight, I comforted myself that she was meeting all of her milestones and seemed happy and healthy in every other measurable way.

And then she weaned herself. Or perhaps my milk gave out. I think the problem might have started with my breasts. I began to notice her fussing when it came time to nurse and despite her frantic sucking, the milk would not let down. Eventually she stopped trying to suck all together, straight-arming me and crying whenever I laid her down to nurse. I, always stubborn, refused to let the nursing go. I went for days trying to keep feeding her only to continue to be rejected. Finally, after a particularly teary session on both our parts, I gave up and made her a bottle of formula. She didn't like that either. At my wit's end, I called the beleaguered pediatrician again who said I either had to get her nurse again or to take the formula and it had to be done now. My milk was finished. I enticed her to drink the bottle by adding a sprinkling of Strawberry Quik powder to it (desperate times call for artificially flavored measures!).

I am happy to say that Jelly Bean loves her formula now (and we no longer have to spike it with Quik to get her to drink it). I am also happy to report that in the few weeks she's been on formula her weight bounced up to the appropriate percentile quite quickly. All's well that ends well. Right?

Those are the facts. Now for the questions. Was my milk compromised because of my obsession with losing the baby weight? Was her failure to gain weight due to my early and intense return to exercise? Or because of my very restrictive diet? It was during those middle months of my being a no-wheat, no-dairy calorie-counting vegetarian that she lost the most ground. Was my tumble into sane eating too late? The question that haunts me: Did I sacrifice my daughter's health on the altar of my own vanity?

My guilt may be misplaced. There are other explanations, other narratives I could tell for this story. (At the very least, the process of weaning has called down a hellstorm of hormones that alone could account for my angst.) And yet the guilt gnaws at me. I carry their very lives in my hands - how could it not?

If you're a mom - how did nursing go for you? Were you able to nurse and exercise with no problems? If you aren't a mom, what do you have irrational guilt about? Or are you one of those rare women (whom I envy) that is impervious to guilt?

Who Would I Be If I Weren't Broken?

Image Credit

I'm broken. In so many ways: PTSD from my sexual assault (is that weird that I claim it as "my" sexual assault?), anxiety, OCD, depression, SAD and even extreme PMS. Oh and don't forget to add every permutation of eating disorders known to mankind; I've been anorexic, exercise-purging bulimic/compulsive overexerciser, orthorexic, ED-NOS. I'm a veritable alphabet soup of crazy. (Somewhere people with real problems are laughing. And then craving soup.) But it isn't enough for me to do crazy things. If I just acted crazy then that would be fixable. No, for my whole life I have felt intrinsically flawed. Deeply broken. My very essence a divine mistake.

This, as you can imagine, made for some very poor decisions. (But great dinner party conversations! Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I thought doing acrobatics hanging 70 feet over a canyon with no safety net was a good idea? No??) In all honesty, that's why I stayed with my Very Bad Boyfriend as long as I did. I thought I didn't deserve better. Thankfully other people, like my mom who threatened to send me to another country to get me away from him, did. This belief in my innate wrongness has also informed my general outlook on life. How do I trust a God who screwed up so badly making me? I mean, this is the same Guy who created sea cucumbers after all. Obviously He has a sense of humor - hey, who pooped in the ocean again?! - but how could I follow Him and help other people when I can't even fix myself?

I know I'm getting deep here but I want you to understand how very seriously I have taken my brokenness. It's generally the first thing I tell people about me. "Hi, I'm Charlotte! Lovely to meet you! Oh and by the way I'm crazy."

Years ago, when I first started this blog - and I had like 2 readers which to this day amazes me considering I was still posting under my Goth persona (seriously, I know) with a terrible white-text-on-black-background site to match - Andrew, who has long since disappeared into the Internet ether, left me a very thought provoking comment on a post I wrote about metabolic testing. Essentially he wrote, "Why would I want to mess with my metabolism? It's not broken." He advocated a style of eating and working out that hinged primarily on listening to oneself - trusting your body to tell you when it needs to eat and when it needs to exercise and when it needs to rest. He's not the first person to tell me this but my response has always been the same: "I can't trust myself! I'm BROKEN!" And then, because I wear my deficiencies like a name tag, "duh."

The thing is, it's not true.

So why would I hold so tightly onto a belief that lacerated me every day with its cruelty? This weekend I read - nay, devoured - Geneeen Roth's new book Women, Food and God (recommended to me by about 100 of you astute folks). In it, she tells an anecdote of a woman who exclaims that she is afraid people won't love her anymore if she's healed from her emotional issues. The woman uses compulsive overeating as a way to stay broken. She didn't want to make others feel diminished in her presence, despite the fact that one's successes do not take away from another's. Despite the fact that any time a single person is truly great it lifts all of humanity.

It had never occurred to me before to consider that my self-flagellating belief served a vital purpose in my life. It saved me from failing. From not living up to my potential. See, if I'm broken then I have no potential so anything good I do is just gravy.

Who would I be if I weren't so busy being broken all the time?

Would I be the mom who forgets one of her children for 2 hours? (True story: I forgot son #3 at his preschool a few weeks ago. I finished volunteering as Reading Mom in son #2's classroom, took Jelly Bean and went home. I put her down for a nap, took a shower and got some work done. Never once did it occur to me that the house was so peaceful because I was short one child. I didn't realize my error until his teacher called to ask me when I planned on coming to get him. What kind of mother does that? Not a good one, I tell you.) Or, would I discover that I have it in me to be a good mom? A great mom, even? If I weren't so obsessed over my food issues and control issues and issue-y issues, would I have the mental space to come up with creative crafts and polish my floors and make egg rolls (son #1's favorite food) from scratch? Perhaps not. Mothering has never come naturally or easily to me - nor has egg roll rolling - but maybe God could take this unnatural mother and make up for her deficiencies. If I let Him. My brokenness is really faithlessness.

Would I be the friend who automatically sees another's need and takes action to fill it? The other day I was at a friend's house for a birthday party and after all the kids in attendance inhaled the cake like so many tiny vultures, another guest quietly got out the broom and swept up the crumbs before all those little feet could track green frosting onto the white carpet. It was so simple and yet it hadn't even occurred to me to do it. Perhaps if I hadn't been so busy avoiding the cake and all the other party food, I would have looked outside myself and found the crumbs and then the broom and then the dustpan. Naturally. My brokenness is really selfishness.

Would I be the writer who has the courage to pursue the craft that I love, to tell editors that I'm really good and then prove it to them? Would I be the wife who not only packs the lunch but thinks to put a love note in it too? Would I be the body who knows when too much exercise is too much, who knows what it needs to eat and when? Without any person, diet or book telling me? Would I be the soul who takes time to meditate and and pray and be still and breathe when all I want to do is run from one manufactured crisis to the next? (I'm good in a crisis, by golly!) My brokenness is really fear.

I'm afraid of trying and not being good enough.

Sitting with Jelly Bean today after nursing and changing her, I realized something that felt important. To her I am not just enough, I'm everything. I'm food. I'm safety. I'm rest. I'm shelter. I'm entertainment. I'm love. And if I can be that for her, I owe it to myself - and to the God who made me, the God who "don't make no junk" - to be that for me. I need to stop pretending to be broken - I am no more flawed than any other human - and get to work. It starts with learning how to trust myself, to know that my body will want what is best for it. It starts with learning how to forgive myself for all the mistakes that I do make without resorting to making it a spiritual failing. These things are hard; I'm not good at trusting or forgiving. Especially not when it comes to myself. But, like several of you have told me, sometimes you have to fake it till you make it. It starts with faith.

Who would you be if you were not broken? Anyone else feel that being broken is an intrinsic part of their personality? Anyone else ever forgotten a child somewhere???

Addendum: It seems that a few readers have interpreted this post to mean that I'm not okay with me - or others - making mistakes, being broken. Truly that is not what I meant. What I wished to have said that didn't come through very clear is that it's okay to make mistakes, to be broken - everyone is broken in their own way - but that I was wrong to make my brokenness a global aspect of my personality. Sometimes I do good things, sometimes I make mistakes but, as a human being, I am not broken.

Pregnancy: Attack of the Body Snatchers, Jillian Michaels Edition

Tiger Lady. That's what my oldest son christened me as soon as he could talk, thanks to my knees-to-navel stretch marks. (Note: that proud day was also the day I decided he was too old to shower with mommy anymore.) So I will be the last person to tell you that you can have a baby and bounce back to exactly the same shape you were in before having a human erupt from your loins. Even if you do get down to your pre-pregnancy weight - a touchy enough subject - most likely things will settle into new positions. (We won't even talk about the disasters that befall your nipples.) For every Heidi Klum in her Victoria's Secrets, there are a hundred Charlottes in our control-top tights.

And yet it still rubbed me the wrong way when Jillian Michaels said in a recent interview with Women's Health that she didn't want to get pregnant because of the effect it would have on her body:

There is no doubt that “The Biggest Loser” trainer Jillian Michaels has one of the best bodies in America, and given her childhood history of being overweight, it's something the 36-year-old has worked ultra-hard to achieve. So hard in fact, that she’s not willing to let it slide even to become a biological mother.

“I’m going to adopt. I can’t handle doing that to my body,” Michaels told the new issue of Women’s Health magazine. “Also, when you rescue something, it’s like rescuing a part of yourself.”

Not being an adoptive mother, I'm going to let that comment about "rescuing something" slide (okay I can't let it slide: Children aren't puppies. And also, adoption is not about fixing yourself. Now I'm done.) but I'm always a little leery when women tell me they don't want to biologically have children for fear of marring their bodies.

While there are many good reasons not to have children - and I am in no way saying that all women should start popping out young 'uns like a Pez dispenser (oh, if only labor was that easy!) - I don't think fear is a good one. Especially not fear of losing your looks.

Jillian may be in a particularly unique position due to her job depending primarily on her physique but she certainly isn't the first woman who has voiced this concern. In a society that trades in sexuality and abhors aging it is often seen as a woman's currency to stay looking as youthful is possible. (The irony of living in a culture that worships sex but freaks out over the product of sex - see: men who love looking at boobs... until there is a baby attached to them and then they're "disgusting" - is a different rant for another day.) The problem with that is that everyone, even Demi Moore, will age eventually. The laws of physics will not be denied: Your body will move towards entropy. Not having children may buy you a few more years but in the end, everyone's boobs sag and their butts droop and their tummies deflate to bread dough.

Whether or not Jillian (or anyone else) ever has kids, or even wants kids, is none of my business. I wouldn't have batted an eyelash if she'd just said "I don't want to have children" or "I'm planning to adopt." Likewise I would have been fine with "I have a family history of illness I don't want to risk passing down" or "I don't have the resources to support a child" or even "I have a deep-seated fear of Ronald McDonald and the chance of running into that evil clown is exponentially higher with wee ones around and I'm just not willing to risk it."

Putting the blame on her body bothers me for two reasons: 1) I think her stance reinforces the view that pregnancy is an illness or a condition to be feared, rather than a natural bodily function for women and 2) It reads as if she is saying that women who have had children are inherently less beautiful and that our self worth should be tied to what we look like rather than who we are.

My last point may be purely speculative based on the wonderful experiences I've had with my kids but I also worry about regret. Call me biased (I did birth 5 of the little nippers after all) but I just think that if the only reason you choose not to have kids is fear of stretch marks and loose skin then there is a good chance you'll regret that choice when you realize you have stretch marks from puberty and loose skin from aging anyhow.

I'm not trying to come down on Jillian for speaking honestly; I just don't want her to miss out on an amazing experience because of something so ephemeral. You tell me - is Jillian just saying what everyone else is thinking? Did I misinterpret Jillian's meaning? Does fear of ruining your body impact your decision to have a baby? Do you feel like pregnancy has wrecked your body? Any thoughts on "rescuing yourself" by adopting a baby?


UPDATE: Jillian Michaels has taken to Twitter to further explain her comment. Like many of you suggested might be the case, she clarifies by saying "I never said I was anti-pregnancy or taht pregnancy ruins a body. I said that 'I can't put my body through it.' There are emotional issues and physical LIMITATIONS that have resulted in that conclusion. Some I have discussed publicly and some I haven't." [emphasis hers]

I want to thank Jillian for taking the time to clarify her comments and to apologize for misunderstanding her intent.

How Do You Commemorate an Athletic Achievement? [Giveaway!!]

I have never yet finished a race on my hands and knees but this necklace sure makes me want to try! Funny!

Part of being fitness oriented is setting goals. Everyone has them, whether it's to run to the next lamppost before walking or to qualify for Boston. To stay and finish the kickboxing class or to get your black belt before you're 5oth birthday. To learn how to swim or to swim around the world and get your own reality show. (That's the real American Dream! Screw chickens in pots, we want a home redecorated in the style of Product Placement and the Jillian stamp of approval on our well-toned tushies!) Whatever your goal, nothing beats the rush of accomplishment and pride you feel when cross that finish line, whatever it may be.

So what could be more awesome than finishing? Getting a finisher's medal to show the world that you finished! I jest. Sort of. While there is something to be said for just mentally congratulating yourself on a job well done, when you make a major accomplishment sometimes it's fun to commemorate that moment with a little physical token. Some people buy a new piece of gear (hot little Lululemon running skirt, SeaBreeze?). Others get a tattoo but I'm risk-averse and also not confident of my ability to pick a design that would age well (this fear bred of a horror incurred as a young child catching a glimpse of a fairy-on-shroom inked on a very geriatric breast). And while I do love those giant, flashy medals it's just not socially acceptable to wear them to, say, the office party or PTA meeting without looking like a braggart.

So I stick to jewelry. My thing used to be rings but I've started to run out of fingers - you can only wear so many before people start mistaking them for brass knuckles and sending you invites to MMA (mixed-martial arts) parties. (Had to throw that in there since I did, actually, today get invited to an official MMA press mixer. It's in New York so obviously I won't be attending but I was just flattered to be invited, especially since they thanked my blog for being such a big supporter of the MMA community. Apparently reading my blog before you e-mail me is overrated.) Moving onwards and upwards to the next available skin real estate, I've become attached to necklaces. Not to mention you can fit a whole lot more words on a necklace than you can a ring! Which came in handy when Sarah, GFE reader and owner of Tag! You're It! Designs, contacted me about her fitness-themed jewelry.


Did I have an athletic accomplishment I wanted to commemorate in stamped metal? Does the world need a Tiger Woods statue fashioned entirely out of condoms?? OF COURSE! (You'd better believe there's a picture in that above link. His belt buckle reads "Let's do it, Tiger.")



So what event did I pick to commemorate? Well it certainly wasn't the time I ran until I fainted (see, I skipped the crawling part - the necklace would have had to read "Run" "Walk" "Faint" "Idiot" and that's just not very inspirational). No, I picked my children's names! Anyone who thinks childbirth is not an athletic accomplishment in its own right hasn't seen the way I birth children. There was arm wrestling, lunges and 4 hours of speed walking, if you recall.

So Sarah made me a gorgeous necklace (full disclosure: it was free, thank you FTC) with all five of my kids' names on it - she even remembered to include my daughter who died! I adore it and wear it every day. And she'd like to give one of you a free necklace! To see the design I would pick for you and to get all the details on entering, click over to my giveaway page.

What athletic goals do you have? What achievement are you most proud of? How do you celebrate your victories? Update: Y'all have got to read the directions! To be entered into this contest you have to leave a comment here AND one on Sarah's giveaway page with the code GFE!

All pictures property of Tag! You're it! Designs

This post copyrighted by Charlotte Hilton Andersen for use only on The Great Fitness Experiment.

New Scary Research: Stress Eating Can Lead to Food Addiction?

Right now my baby is crying it out*. I've been trying for 45 minutes (the length of time she's been crying) to think of some way to make this funny but the truth is I just want to crawl out of my skin and shove nails in my ears. But since I am unable to shed my skin snake-like - although that would make my post workout showers quicker! - and I will likely need my ear drums to be intact for future activities like listening to my son recount the entire plot of Lego Star Wars while my eyeballs roll back in my head, I am dealing with the wailing in another manner. I'm stress eating.

People talk about emotional eating all the time as being one of the core reasons people become overweight and have a hard time losing weight. For me, emotional eating isn't usually my problem. Being upset, angry or depressed actually makes me less hungry. But stress? Has me running to the jelly beans every time. I'll cut to the chase: this evening I have eaten half a pan of cinnamon rolls and 4 homemade (dairy free!) coconut almond chocolates. The calorie calculator in my brain just shorted out.

I know I'm not eating because I'm hungry. And I'm not stuffing my face because the food is just that delicious - I barely tasted the last two rolls. There's just something about prolonged stress that makes me want to eat until I explode. The harder she cries, the faster I eat. Of course this isn't the first time this has happened. Just the other day we were stuck in traffic and my middle two children were fighting so loudly that they were literally foaming at the mouth. Oh yes they were. My hand found the bag of hot cinnamon jelly beans in the glove box (doesn't everyone keep a bag of jelly beans in their glove box? They should be a part of everyone's emergency kits: flashlight, flares and high fructose corn syrup.) and I ate a few. In spite of all my yelling at them from the front seat (it's probably for the best that I couldn't reach them), they persisted in killing each other. The more they fought, the more jelly beans I ate. When it finally looked as though my family was about to become a three-child clan again, I realized that I could barely breathe I had so many jelly beans crammed in my mouth. Looming fratricide notwithstanding, I decided to focus on the really important thing in this situation: my waistline. I spat the wad of sugar out into my hand and then chucked it out the window. Strangely that solved the situation as the kids were so upset that I had wasted perfectly good candy - and hadn't shared any with them - that all of them took up wailing and stopped punching each other. On another note: For my birthday I want one of those windshield shades that says CALL 911 in big red letters on it.

The thing that stopped me in my tracks then and got me to get rid of the rest of the cinnamon rolls now, is a new piece of research published in Scientific American via Nature Neuroscience that shows that rats allowed to binge on fatty, sugary rat chow became chemically dependent on it, their brain pathways lighting up in the same way as they would if they were addicted to cocaine. (Two extraneous thoughts: 1) What exactly constitutes rat junk food? Do they make them Whopper Jr. Jr. Jr.s? Sprinkles instead of rat pellets? Deep fat fried Oreo bites? 2) Who is in charge of procuring the cocaine for the rats? Is there a government bureau of Opiates for Animal Studies? Also, do the rats snort it? Eat it? Inject it between their toes so they won't have to quit modeling?) In the study, the luckiest rodents on earth - well, after the ones with the glowing livers - were allowed to eat as much junkie (Get it? Junkie?? Hee.) fare as they wanted. And then the gravy train ended. The results were ominous:

The new study showed that after eating a diet full of sausage and sweets for 40 days—even though regular lab rat chow was available—the obese rats had little interest in reverting to the more healthful diet when the tasty stuff was taken away. In fact, after depriving the high-fat habituated rats of their human junk foods, the rats would refuse to eat their standard chow for an average of 14 days. "I was really shocked at the magnitude of the effect," Kenny says. "They basically don't eat anything. If that translates over to us as a species, that's a major problem."

What the researchers didn't realize is that this exact same study has already been done on human beings. Children, to be precise. Many of you have seen Chef Jamie Oliver's new reality show Food Revolution where he goes to the unhealthiest school district in America (West Virginia for those of you who are curious) and makes over their chicken-nugget-and-pizza hot lunches with healthy, local fare. Considering that Oliver is a chef and that he has a TV series sized budget to work with you'd think that those kids would be reveling in their good fortune - Who has a personal chef in elementary school? Well, besides Lindsay Lohan but you saw where that got her - but this is not the case. What do the kids think of their healthified lunches? "A
survey of the school in his new ABC reality show found children overwhelmingly preferred institutional fare to his freshly made offerings — so much so that many stopped buying lunch." 8 out of 10 reported being "very unhappy" with their new lunches. Just like the rats, the kids are addicted to crap.

That's enough to scare me into throwing all my bags of jelly beans out the window.

The problem, of course, with food addiction - and now we can say that it is an actual physical dependency - is that one cannot just quit eating cold turkey (hee!) like you would if you were trying to quit cocaine. There's a reason why they tell you in AA that you can never ever drink again, because once you are an addict those chemical pathways are very hard to break. It's easier to abstain that to be moderate.

All of which leaves us with some very unpleasant questions to ponder: How do you avoid becoming addicted to food in the first place? What do you do if you already are? Are you condemned to a life of white-knuckling it through every holiday and dinner party? And lastly, when will research stop making me wet myself??

*And now, my baby has finally stopped crying! Joy!! For those of you who think I am evil and/or cruel, letting a baby "cry it out" is not as abusive as it sounds. Once babies reach a certain age (4 months old according to most doctors) they are capable of soothing themselves to sleep. You just have to teach them how. We've done this with all our kids and all of them are marvelous sleepers now. The first night, by the way, is the worst. But I'm totally not baking tomorrow. Just in case.

I Live a Dirty Life ($200 Giveaway!!!)

"Mom, why can't we have a dog?" My son begged.

I gave my standard answer. "Because between you, your two brothers and sister, I already have enough butts to clean up after."

"But mom," he beamed as if he'd solved cold fusion, "dogs totally lick their own butts!" It will speak to his faultless reasoning skills, or my exhaustion, that I actually considered it for a moment before remembering this is the same child who suggested I buy a box of cereal because "it only has 6 pounds of sugar in it."

Butt wiping aside, the mess promulgated by 4 tiny kids is astounding - it's like living in a frat house: underwear on the table, food on the floor and enough pee on the bathroom walls you'd think we'd have just installed wall-to-wall urinals and been done with it. Thankfully they're short so the pee stays below shoulder level. But by far their most high maintenance habit - after their 2,000 piece Lego minefield - is the amount of laundry they generate. So when Arm and Hammer asked if I'd try out their new stain fighting gel detergent I knew I'd have plenty to test it out on. They were particularly interested in seeing if their stain-fighting powers were up to my family's love of the great outdoors.

To see all the embarrassing evidence of my less-than-stellar housekeeping, how Arm & Hammer helped me clean up my act and HOW ONE GFE READER WILL WIN $200 click through to my giveaway page! (Leave all contest entries in the comments of THAT post. Contest winner will be announced Monday March 29.)


Written By Charlotte Hilton Andersen for http://thegreatfitnessexperiment.blogspot.com only! Not to be re-published without permission.

I Dream of Flying

Gym Buddy Allison took this pic - in addition to being She-Ra in the gym, she's also a phenomenal photog.

He was just a small boy on a swing.

A boy like any other boy on a swing like any other swing on a day like any other day. Nothing remarkable. Nothing special. Just a boy. One very small boy.

So why was I crying? It started with his feet. You see, his legs were too short to touch the ground which left his Spiderman-clad feet swinging ineffectively in the air. The swing would not obey his impotent commands and twisted gently in the breeze, thwarting his dreams of touching tree branches. Of flying. Of falling back to earth to be caught at the last second and jerked upward again until the sun shone full in his face and the laughter escaped his throat. But he couldn't kick off and even if he were to somehow overcome the initial inertia binding him to the earth, he hadn't learned how to pump his wee legs yet and so would be quickly righted by gravity.

He called out for someone to push him but his voice had no sense of urgency, almost as if it were done merely out of habit and not because he thought anyone could hear him. He was not altogether wrong. Up until that very second nobody could hear him.

In one sharp moment my world of vision-less words collided with his world of wordless visions. He was calling for me. His tiny, tinny voice which rasps my exhaustion-honed nerves more than I'd like to admit, finally pierced the swirling cloud of words and ideas that cushion me so tightly that small things like appointments and friends' birthdays and dinner menus aren't merely forgotten but are actively not remembered. Things like small boys.

Three things I learned outside today:
1. There is half of a dead rabbit in our backyard. Just the bottom half, in case you are curious. Discovering that there is a wild raptor in our suburban trees is oddly thrilling. Also: I have no good answer to "Why that rabbit has no face, mommy?" other than the truth: A bird ate it off. That feels wrong.
2. My baby has light auburn, almost strawberry blond, hair and in the sunshine her eyes look like two sapphires. Nobody in our immediate family has light hair or blue eyes. She is a beautiful alien creature that I know less about than I thought I did.
3. A six-year-old and a seven-year-old will give up their video games to poke sticks in the mud if I let them take off their shoes. Even though it is 60 degrees cold outside. Mud can only be appreciated with bare toes.

People have been telling me ever since I had children to enjoy this time now while they are young because it passes so very quickly, that the magic that enlivens Velveteen Rabbits and vanquishes dragons and allows mommy kisses to heal wounds will disappear like so many Lite Brite pieces on Christmas morning. I thought I understood what they meant. The problem with that advice - besides the fact I find the sharp little Lite Brite pieces every time I sit down on our pee-perfumed couch - is that it often comes from a place of forgetful regret. These advice-givers are not pacing the floors at 3 a.m. with my inconsolable, colicky infant and chunky vomit crusted on the inside of their bra. These random people in the grocery store are not humiliated when my son drops trou in the middle of a crowded amusement park to relieve himself on a plastic tree. These elderly people were not there the day my son climbed out of his car seat, over the back of my chair, jumped on my head and tried to claw my eyes out while I was driving down the freeway because - and I'm serious - I wouldn't buy him Chinese food for lunch at the mall food court. But most of all these Further Along Parents aren't there for the daily grind of meals and baths and bedtimes and tantrums and the relentless around-the-clock stream of demands. Children are black holes of need. Perhaps they have forgotten this.

Admission: Having young children is the boot camp of parenthood. At least it is for me. I'm not proud to confess this. I know it isn't this way for all mothers. But there it is. Which isn't to say I don't love my children. I love them with a ferocity that surprises, stupefies and even frightens me. As their mother, I am the one in charge of this great balancing act of supply and demand - a skill that I am not very good at yet. Perhaps I will never learn to manage both my selfish desire to read and write until I am sated, with their desire to be sated by me. Yet my shortcomings as a mother should not punish them. This neediness is not their fault.

Today my son needed a push. So he could fly.

I dream of flying.

Post Script: Today is the day I drop down to three days a week of blogging, folks. Maybe less if there are more swings that need pushing. You will also see a lot less of me around the 'net. This has been a long time coming. I've been hanging on by my fingernails since the Jelly Bean has been born. Why? When I first started blogging, I read somewhere (Where? Who knows where thoughts come from, Joe?) that the cardinal rule for a good blog is that you must post something every day. I don't know if that's true. All I know is I can't do it anymore. Some of you, I imagine - perhaps vainly - will be disappointed. Others will probably be relieved - one less blog to hit on the comment rounds. Either way this feels like failure to me. I'm a girl that likes to do everything 100% or nothing and I'm tempted to just walk away. Two things hold me back: 1) I can't stop writing, even if I wanted to. 2) I love you guys too much. It's a very selfish thing really but reading your comments and sharing your lives through e-mails and your blogs has been one of the great privileges of my life. I don't want to lose you. So I'm going to try this thing called moderation. Other bloggers have done it and survived. Wish me luck.

Written By Charlotte Hilton Andersen for http://thegreatfitnessexperiment.blogspot.com only! Not to be re-published without permission.

Are You a Secret Eater?

Experiencing the majority of my teen years during the '90s meant a lot of things. First there was Grunge. Not only was it by far the best clothing trend ever - can't beat dumpster diving for economy and you never had to do laundry, hey, hey! Although I could do without the snap-in-the-crotch Adult Onesies a.k.a. bodysuits - who can argue with the genius of Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder? Okay, you can argue but you'll end up either shooting yourself or killed in a tragic 1940's car accident where you sigh, "hold me darlin' just a little while" right before you expire, virgin kiss still warm on your lips. Nothing says romance like those two men.

Second to music, the phenomenon most responsible for warping my developing mind was the After School Special. Don't even pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about. Over the years I've discovered that each person has a personal fave that encouraged them to have random nightmares for years afterwards. For me, that one was Little Miss Perfect, a show about a girl who copes with her parents' expectations and her own perfectionism by becoming bulimic. At least, I'm pretty sure it was this one - there were so many ASS's (wow - was that acronym intentional?) about eating disorders that I sometimes get them confused.

That Was Then
Anyhow, I first saw it in Middle School Health Class and was left with two lasting images: a) the girl hiding her vomit in glass jars in her closet (for reals? Wouldn't you run out of room/jars pretty darn quick? Weren't toilets invented for the very purpose of NOT having to put one's bodily fluids into jars?) and b) how her esophagus literally exploded and she died at the end. SHE DIED, people, of a an esophagus that was so enraged at its mistreatment that it ripped through her throat like so many aliens and disgorged a stomach full of ho-hos and twinkies and Big Macs all over the hospital stretcher while two handsome EMTs clucked disapprovingly (at her banana clip, I imagine now). My friends hid their eyes. I was mesmerized. You should have seen us in the cafeteria that next lunch hour.

Never before had I really paid attention to how my friends ate but suddenly we were all hyperaware that there were rules to eating and "signs" we should be watching for and honestly didn't the show make it seem so disgusting it was almost glamorous in a canning-jar kind of way? Some of my friends went on to take that Special as a do-it-yourself guide to all things eating disordered. Others would just go on to hide their ding-dong wrappers under tissue paper in the waste basket for years and never really realize it was weird until a significant other asked them why they were burying their refuse and if they had a squirrel fetish they wanted to talk about.

This Is Now
So you will understand how I was taken right back to that place by Brian's comment on my Functional Anorexia post:

I was at a Youth Conference last week with 25 kids 14-18yrs old. We had spaghetti/salad/rolls one night and many of the girls did not even touch it. The woman in charge over the girls grew up on a ranch in a small Colorado town and commented to me that she doesn't understand why the girls don't eat. She said when she was their age, when she was hungry, she ate. She then told me the next day that the girls ate every scrap of junk food/snacks we brought up for the nighttime. On the other 4th hand, the guys ate heartily, and did not even touch the nighttime snacks. But then again I hope the girls didn't pass gas all night long either.

It's like my scrawny 11-yr old daughter. She picks at her dinner and eats maybe 3 "mandatory" bites. And then raids the pantry all-night for chocolate chips, and potato chips, and cereal. And then complains that she's fat.

Girls eat weird. We have strange habits when we eat with other girls. When we eat in front of men. Or in front of strangers. Or even by ourselves.

I see it in my current and former female students. This strange dance of abstaining righteously from food when it is served and then later binging in private when it is hoarded. As every grown woman (hopefully) knows, this sets up a terrible dynamic, both in regards to your mental state and your blood sugar. You starve in a fit of self-hate or self-righteousness and then pig out later on even worse foods because you are so hungry. It's a terrible cycle.

How many times have I watched the teenage girls in the cafeteria pick half-heartedly at salads and then down a family-size bag of Starbursts at the late night study group? How many times have we as adults, ate perfectly pea-sized portions at a cocktail party (one nibble of eclair, two bites of broccoli and a lick of cheese quiche) and then gone home to eat an entire half gallon of freezer burned ice cream because we felt deprived?

I'll admit it: I've totally done this. Probably more times than I'd like to admit. Do you eat food in secret rather than in front of people? What kinds of foods do you prefer to eat alone? Do you think this is disordered eating or just par for the course?

This post sound familiar? Friday's are Greatest Hits Day here at the GFE. This post originally ran in April 2008.

Spray it, Don't Say It: Newest Trend For Tween Boys Smells Like Sex

While women are more prone to talk about our body insecurities, we've long known that men are not immune to body image woes. I have discovered this both via research - incidence of eating disorders among young men has shot up over the past decade - and via personal observation. Remember this Gym Adventure? (Incidentally, that man later went on to become a good friend of mine and do quite a few workouts with us!)

As a mother of three sons, I've counted myself lucky that I never had to worry about telling my kindergartner no to wearing fishnets like Miley or my first grader to wash off that face of make-up. But according to The New York Times, I am no longer safe in my smugness as pre-teen and tween boys are the latest targets of cosmetic companies.

To read the rest of my take on this issue (and my slew of punn-y jokes), follow me over to Never Say Diet on iVillage today!

PS> Be warned that their commenting process is wacky. It routinely rejects my comments and I write for them! I've found the best way is to post as anonymous and just sign your name at the bottom. Or sign up for a Never Say Diet account! Or just leave me a comment here if you feel so inclined:)

The Baby Daddy Workout [Giveaway!]

Sometimes when a man and a woman love each other, they make a baby. (I know you were confused - you're welcome.) In this whole scheme, women get all the glory. After all, we're the incubators. But you know who gets lost in all of the gestating, birthing, bleeding and nursing? Men, with their pittance of bodily fluids, that's who. And until a man learns how to lactate on demand, it's probably going to stay that way.

But while a man can't birth his own little bean - a fact I don't think they are at all sorry about - that doesn't mean that sympathy pregnancy weight isn't real. Like a pregnant friend on Facebook recently wrote, "I woke up in the middle of the night to get a drink. My husband asked me where I was going. Then he asked me to bring him a cheese stick while I was up."

It just isn't fair that while there are a plethora of workouts to whip new moms back into prebaby shape, there isn't much for new dads. And frankly, if we have to suffer with this nonsense I don't see why the men should get a pass. Chris Illuminati, author of A**holeology and so hilarious he puts ab rollers out of business, is going to be a new dad soon and asked me to fix this problem. Of course I was willing to oblige.

Charlotte's Baby Daddy Workout*

1. The Pick-Up-The-Baby Squat. Being unable to hold himself up, your little bean will lay around just like, yes, a sack of beans. But a sack of beans that gets heavier every single day. To prepare for this, do goblet squats. First pick a weight resembling your baby (in weight, not looks - if you have a baby that looks like a dumbbell you have bigger problems than stomach flab.) Then double it. Triple it if you're not a wuss. You never know for sure if you might be having twins or triplets until the last bit of placenta comes out! Squat down, pick up weight gently off the floor and then clutching it to your chest as if it is your fragile new PlayStation, slooowwwly stand up. Squat back down, returning weight to floor. That's one rep. Repeat 12-15 times, for 3 sets. Be sure to keep your weight in your heels and BOTH hands on the baby/weight. To add difficulty (and up your wife's blood pressure) hold weight over your head for the duration of the squat. Hint: Most newborns are 5-8 pounds

2. The non-dominant arm curl. Are you right handed? Then prepare to have your left bicep bulk out like the Incredible Hulk in the episode where he candy stripes at the hospital nursery (they did that one, right?) because you will constantly be holding your mini-me in your left arm so that you can get stuff done - like surf the 'net, yo - with your right arm. To prevent looking as lopsided as an Iranian election, start doing bicep curls now. But ONLY on your non-dominant arm. Pick a weight as heavy as you can manage for 8-12 reps, 3 sets. To make it as realistic as possible, hold a carton of eggs in your other arm at the same time. If you end up with quiche, Epic Fail.

3. The colic lunge. New babies cry. Some of them cry a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Thankfully you can make lemonade out of your little lemon. Not only can you get quads of steel doing this move but you'll earn extra bonus points with the wifey (not redeemable until 6 weeks post partum) for letting her get some sleep. First, plant your feet just wider than hip width apart in a sumo squat. Then holding your swaddled (the swaddle is key!) dumbbell/baby very tightly, lunge vigorously from side to side. This is not the time to be namby-pamby. When I say vigorously, I mean there is no such thing as too much motion to your baby. (Not to be confused with shaking your baby. For the love of John Edwards, never ever shake a baby.) Repeat for hours, any time any where. Ignore the evil looks from people who think you shouldn't be taking your newborn to the movies, much less lunging like a maniac in the aisle. You may be a parent but you're still a person and are therefore allowed by law to leave your house.

4. The chest press to throw up. Babies are masters of physics. They come out of the womb knowing that what goes up must come down and therefore anytime you hoist your little petard above your head, vomit is going to come raining down. Into your open mouth if you're really lucky. To prepare yourself for this eventuality, lay on your back holding a dumbbell in each hand. Press straight up. At the top of the movement have someone jump on your stomach and then drop a couple spoonfuls of cottage cheese on your face. Surprise is the key to honing your reflexes along with toning your pectorals. Repeat 8-12 reps for 3 sets.

5. Running away from your responsibilities cardio. At some point after your wee one is born, it will hit you how much work, time, money and sleep you are losing in this deal. You will want to pull a John Edwards. Unfortunately the law does not look kindly upon refusing to care for your spermies that have made it out into the wild. Neither does your wife. So the next best thing to running away is to simply run. If you want to be a hero, put the baby in a jogging stroller and take him or her with you. Just make sure your music isn't turned up so loud you can't hear him or her cry. Start with 30 minutes a day 4 days a week, working up to daily sweat fests by the time the kid is old enough to make you have to stop and hold him over the biffy seat in the park for 20 minutes before he decides he's too cold to poop (hey it's a great move for your shoulders!).

Just remember new daddies - just because she calls you "baby" doesn't mean you need to act like one! For more general hilarity and info. on fitness for new dads check out my interview with Chris Illuminati over on his site today! Leave a comment here and tell him your best fitness advice for new parents to win a copy of his new book!

*No this is not February's Great Fitness Experiment. I needed a little more time to get that one all put together for you guys so you'll find out all about it tomorrow!

Newsflash: 60% of People Have Mismatched Feet

I'm a freak. And I'm not talking about on the dance floor. Well except for Middle School. But nobody counts Middle School, right? No, I am a biological freak. Specifically, my left foot is a size 8.5 and my right is a 7.5. That's right - a whole size different. It's a miracle I can walk without toppling over (somebody start the telethon!).

I'm not alone in this. 60% of the population have mismatched tootsies with 80% of those people having a left appendage of unnatural length. So I'm going to assume that a lot of you are beautiful little freaks as well (and you know I mean that with love).

You would think that a little extra toe-age wouldn't be a problem - it's actually a bonus when I play the legless piano or shoot hoops with my feet - until you go shoe shopping. Just like every other girl, I'm willing to endure a certain amount of pain for cute shoes. But those cute shoes only have to last an evening (less if the restaurant has long tableclothes so I can kick them off under the table). Athletic shoes are an entirely different matter. A small pain when you put them on can sideline you by the end of your workout.

In the past, I have compromised by buying the mathematical average: a size 8. This leaves my left foot a titch scrunched and my right foot a smidge unsupported but overall it's liveable. I was okay with this.

Until this weekend. I took my son to the Mall of America for his 4th birthday - they have a whole amusement park in there! - and, being 4, he had to go potty righthisveryminute. We were in front of a shoe "wearhouse" so that's where we ducked in. The bathrooms were located twenty miles to the back of the store, which I sprinted carrying a 50-lb child (yes, he's big for his age), behind all the clearance racks. So while child number 2 took a leisurely number 2 - twenty minutes, people* - child number 1 and I tried on shoes.

It was then I had my epiphany. I found a whole shelf of clearanced athletic shoes so while child 1 experimented with blue, jeweled stilettos, ("I can't run fast in these, mommy" "Exactly right son, it's just one way society hobbles women.") I tried on mismatched shoes. And it was niiiiiice. My feet didn't even know what to think of their new found joy. They did cheerleader jumps all of their own accord. They tap danced and I don't even know how to tap. It was amazing.

Now before you get your e-mail all fired up, I know that there are places one can buy mismatched shoes - like the really upscale running stores. But I am nothing if not cheap (a fact that endeared me to many a college boyfriend). So cheap, in fact, that I wouldn't even buy two pairs of clearanced shoes to keep my feet jumping for joy. Well, that and they were New Balance. I hate New Balance.

But now that I've seen what life could be, well, I just can't stop thinking about foot bliss. What's a freak to do? Are you a biological freak of nature in some way too? One nostril twice as big as the other? A wingspan that is downright avian? A mole the exact shape of Chile?

*No, he didn't fall in the toilet. He was enraptured with the urinals. I finally had to send a store employee in after him. He thought the grimy "waterfalls" were better than the Diego Bus Ride that I paid $2.17 for him to ride. Kids.

When School Lunch Attacks

"Chips and a rice krispie treat!" My first-grader chirped happily.

"That's what you had for lunch?" I asked incredulously as the preschooler started the tantrum process (everything must be equal in this household) and the baby took up a chorus of "Chip! Chip!!!!"

"Oh yeah, and a chocolate milk." (Note to self: the mystery of the two cavities before age 7? Solved.)

Normally, given the societal cacophony regarding that stuff we put into our mouth and also need to live, I try to reserve judgment on what my son has for lunch on the one day a week he's allowed to have hot lunch with his kickball cronies. Especially since the other four days he's stuck with a nutritionally balanced home lunch packed by me, I try to just take a deep breath and go to my happy place whenever he talks about chicken nuggies or tater tots or french toast sticks with vats of fake syrup. I may have mentioned it here a time or two but I have food issues. And I'm trying really hard not to pass those onto my kids.

But a rice krispie treat, chips and chocolate milk?!?!?

"Wasn't there some protein? Or, say, a fruit or vegetable?" I croaked, visions of Wall-E dancing before my eyes.

"Oh yeah," he nodded seriously. "They had that brown crumbly stuff on tortillas. You know that stuff?"

Do I know cafeteria mystery meat? Were there vegetarians in the Donner party? Some questions are better left unasked, son.

High Fructose Highway to Hell
As my mother is fond of reminding me, you can't bubble wrap your children. Not only does it not work for protecting them from life's hard lessons but it also says specifically on the wrap "not for use with children." (Ironic considering I don't know a single child who doesn't adore the stuff.) It's like those cruel plastics manufacturers read my mind and then stole the dream away.

Anyhow, part of letting my children grow up and develop a healthy relationship to food is allowing them to sometimes eat things I deem questionable (i.e. with more dubious ingredients than Edward Scissorhands had paper cuts). I tell myself that it's about modeling good decision making and then giving them opportunities to make choices themselves.

Of course we are also talking about the same kid who just yesterday licked the metal frame of the bus window in -45 (F) degree temps and discovered for himself that The Christmas Story isn't just a light-hearted holiday classic but also the harrowing tale of what happens when you gamble against the laws of chemistry. He's six; he's not exactly known for making brilliant decisions. (And yes, since I know you are wondering, he panicked and yanked his tongue off and his now the proud owner of a skinned tongue. Like I told my high-schoolers: Don't mess with physics. It wins every time.)

So I tooled around his school's website and discovered that the menu actually listed exactly what my little George Washington had said: soft taco, chips and for dessert they had a choice of a rice krispie treat or a banana. And like my son astutely observed, "We always, like, have bananas at home." The other option listed in teeny tiny print was "green salad." I considered calling the lunch ladies' bluff and showing up to see if any elementary child has ever in the history of the school chosen the green salad option but, like I said, negative forty five here. I can't even walk to my mailbox without my nose hairs forming a unique snowflake pattern.

In an attempt to be helpful, the school menu completed the trifecta of nutritional terror by providing the calories, fat grams and sodium content of each meal. I almost fainted. It makes a Happy Meal look downright sensible. Plus, at McDonald's, at least you get a movie tie-in toy. Double the whiny fun!

So what's a formerly eating-disordered mother to do? We've discussed the sensitive topic of childhood obesity here before. Do I take away his lunchtime ticket to coolville? After all, his fate as a geek was pretty much sealed the day he was born to my husband and I. Or is one school meal/nutritional train wreck a week an acceptable risk to take with growing bodies and minds?

At least the chocolate milk has protein in it, right? Oh fudge.