She will be so hungry by morning that she will hide and binge on buttered pop-tarts.

This past week I was disappointed with some dopey crap.  The obvious would be the guy with one ball now admitting that he doped his way to seven titles...but nope, not him.  Or there is the guy out of Notre Dame who is the epitome of the word dopey.  There is a shred of me that kind of hopes that he was in on the hoax because if he wasn't, he looks like the village idiot.  But no..not him.  My disappointment was about a dopey mom that was gaining media attention for putting her daughter on a strict diet.

When I first saw the headline of the article, I was excited.  Finally, a mom who saw that her child was overweight and was trying to prevent a larger issue down the road.  Perhaps she was setting a positive example, portion control, exercise, etc.  Because this is what maintaining a healthy lifestyle comes down to.  (Let me scrape my soapbox across the floor and take a step up.)  I cannot stress how sick and tired I am of so many adults complaining that their health isn't good and they need to be treated for some malady...have you looked at what you put away?  Let me be the mirror...your Facebook photo of a meal of a grill full of meat with pasta salad?  That isn't good.  A pile of pasta with some sad looking iceberg lettuce masquerading as salad...not good.  Dial it down...portion control.  Can't be done with a quick fix like a band or a shot of hormones.  Okay, that's enough...my soapbox, kicked aside.

But as I was reading what she was doing to her daughter, my reaction was a disappointing "oh shit".  The diet was some sort of "Red Light/Green Light" program.  (I know, I thought of the same thing...is dessert, Red Rover, Red Rover?)  One of the main premises is if you have too many calories during the day, dinner must be skipped.  Awesome.  Not only has this child's metabolism slowed because of the skipped meal but she will be so hungry by morning that she will hide and binge on buttered pop-tarts. 

I was hoping that I would hear of a solution to constantly letting your kids snack--bad, good?  Currently my theory is 2 good snacks to 1 sugary/salty one.  And is your kid really hungry or are they bored?  Or maybe they ate too fast?  And Jesus, how much guilt do you feel when you tell your kid that they have had enough? Once I was at a family dinner where two boys (9 and 7) inhaled their dinner.  They ate a lot--each had two pieces of chicken, pork and cabbage dumplings and two vegetables.  The parents cut them off and the boys whined that they were still hungry but after not eating for 15 minutes, they were not.  Their stomachs finally had the opportunity to communicate with their brain.  They could have eaten until they got sick and over time, got very large. 

I was hoping the hear the mom talk about situations like this one, not about skipping meals to regulate weight.  What a whack job.  Apparently, her daughter is at a healthy weight now but, that opinion depends on which doctor you ask.  I just hope this young girl had two really good meals if her mom made her skip dinner.  Good God, makes you want to drink your dinner.