I am really pleased with how Operation Make Your Own Damn Dinner is going so far. Both kids have tried and liked some new foods, and better yet, when they don't like what we're having they MAKE THEIR OWN DAMN DINNER! Dinnertime has become much less of a chore for me without having to juggle kid food and adult food, which is all to the good.
When we started this experiment, I banned three foods from our house: chicken nuggets, breaded fish sticks, and fruit snacks. I'm not saying my kids can never have these foods again, I'm just saying I won't be keeping them in the house. They had started eating way too much of this stuff and I was totally enabling it by buying and cooking it. No more! If they want something fruity, they can have some actual FRUIT. If they want chicken, they can have actual CHICKEN. Same with fish. No more food that isn't really food around here, yo.
Just cutting out fruit snacks, to which my kids were completely addicted, has cut way down on the amount of sugar they're getting. I don't know if it's the diet or the relaxed pace of summer or some combination thereof, but I've noticed both kids are on a much more even keel these past several days. (For those who don't know, the boy child has Asperger Syndrome and the girl was recently diagnosed bipolar.) They aren't fighting nearly as much as usual and the girl child has had far fewer mood swings lately. Again, I don't know if it's the new diet, but it certainly isn't HURTING anything!
Anyway, so far so good.
3 comments:
I think you may be on to something - my son is super sensitive to sugar and when we didn't buy the fruit snacks for a few weeks - all of a sudden? There was this kid playing with his sister (as opposed to whacking her in the head with his trucks)and far less tantrums....
I hope it keeps working!
I make the boys chicken nuggets. There was some resistance at first but they like them. Since they douse everything in ketchup anyway, I can see no problem : )
I just chop some chicken breasts up into nugget-sized chunks, squish them around in a baggie with some plain low/nonfat yogurt, roll them around in breadcrumbs, and bake them at 350 in an oiled/Pam-med pan until golden brown/crispy-ish. If you feel decadent, drizzle with some melted butter before baking.
I make this with whole chicken breasts for H and he likes it too.
I think you might be onto something with girlchild. I've battled depression since puberty. In college, my GYN wanted me to give a no sugar diet a try. This was in the day way before Atkins and South Beach and all that jazz. It was really hard.
But I tell you what, my mood swings improved dramatically. I couldn't stick with it back then, but these days, when I eat less sugar/processed food, I find my depression lessens immensely. There's got to be a connection there.
Post a Comment