A Good (Diet) Role Model?

I've always prided myself on preparing a healthy dinner that we sit down to enjoy every evening. But whatever good comes from that family mealtime, it's undone during our daytime hours.

My household is an unconventional one. My husband works from home and my children are homeschooled, so we don't have a "get up and go" routine that includes a good breakfast or a balanced, brown-bag lunch. It's more like this:

• Wake up and have coffee/juice. Possibly eat a piece of fruit or granola if we feel like it.
• Eat an early lunch because we didn't have a good breakfast.
• Eat on the run while driving around to classes, playdates, errands and other activities.
• Snack on junk we shouldn't be snacking on.

Convenience rules the day, so my diet (and consequently my children's diet) consists largely of bagels, pizza, fast food, 1,000-calorie frozen coffee drinks, and cookies. And this nutrition plan? Not working so well for me.

I recently had my yearly physical and spoke to my doctor about my weight. We went back over my records and I was surprised to learn that I weighed 145 pounds as recently as 2001. I thought I hadn't seen the underside of 160 in ten years. I now weigh 180, the heaviest I've been in my life and about how much I weighed during pregnancy.  Clearly something has to change, not only for the sake of my health and frame of mind, but so my children will adopt better eating habits as they grow.

I don't do well with delayed gratification. Dieting is hard for me. REALLY HARD. When I try moderation, I usually end up eating too much and telling myself I'll make up for it the next day. But I rarely do. I need a specific plan to follow. I need rules.

So I'm about to try something drastic. It's called Isagenix and it was recommended to me by someone at my health club. Isagenix is a "nutritional cleansing" system that has "fad diet" and "MLM" written all over it. But I don't have a problem with MLM (multi-level marketing) sales programs and I think sometimes a quick-fix fad is exactly what is called for. The nine-day program is a combination of fasting, meal replacement shakes, and healthy eating and exercise to yield dramatic results. I've done some research on the program and have found mostly positive experiences, with people losing an average of 10 - 15 pounds in nine days. The program also boasts a detoxification factor, which may or may not work and which I don't really care that much about.

Why am I talking about a quick-loss diet scheme in the same breath as I talk about being a good diet role model to my children? Because I am taking action. How can I preach to them the value of good food choices when I do nothing to model that?  I've been telling myself "tomorrow" for years. Tomorrow has come.

I need results. When I see results I become more motivated. The Isagenix program gives me rules to follow and products to drink. There are no options, no room for me to make a poor choice. I'm hoping that by following this cleansing diet and giving myself a jump start on weight loss, I'll feel the positive changes in my body and work harder to feed myself, and my kids, wholesome, healthy foods.

An original New Jersey Moms Blog post. Shannon Entin will be chronicling her day-to-day diet progress on her personal blog, PHAT Mommy.