Body Image: Thoughts and Discussion

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two hundred and sixty two, which is airing in early August of twenty twenty two. We are going to be talking about body image and Sarah, you particularly wanted to cover this topic because you had blogged about this not too long ago. Can you can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I wanted to, I'd blogged about it. I don't know if I was the one who thought we should podcast about it, but I think it is a nice idea. Anytime a blog post gets a lot of comments and a lot of conversation in the comments, it usually means it's something that's relevant to a lot of people and has some interesting aspects, So yes, I think it should hopefully translate. Well, I guess we should open with a little bit of a trigger warning that this episode does talk about body image, not really specific weights or anything, but weight in general and exercise and things like that. So if listening to something with those types of topics would bother you, you just might want to skip this one. Yeah, come back next week we'll be talking about something completely different. Why don't you talk a little bit about what your blog posts said? Yeah, because I mean it's like, I just throw out body image. I'm like, well so what so what was the angle that had people chiming in? Yeah? And I mean, it is an incredibly broad topic and there are many valid angles with which one could take it. But my angle, the title of my post was diet culture, the patriarchy, and real life. And that is because I think I'm just realizing that some of what I feel benefits me in the way I think about body image goes a little bit against what is trendy in terms of the body acceptance movements. And I'll even go so far as to say that in some circles or channels it starts to feel like if you put any intentional thought into, you know, doing nutrition a certain way or exercise a certain way with one of the goals being to look a certain way, then you are bowing to the patriarchy and you kind of suck just yet, and yet I find that in my life when I do put in the effort and kind of in an intentional way, in a way that keeps me on the lower end of my happier weight range, I enjoy my life more and I'm far less distracted by the topics of weight and body image, which is kind of the opposite because what I think you're some of your I love your counterpoint to this, because like the idea that like some women are wasting their lives because they're distracted about body image. But I find that, like if I just kind of like do the stuff that keeps me in a happy place, I'm not distracted versus the other way around, if that makes sense. Yeah, And what she's talking to you know, I I'm perfectly fine with Sarah doing whatever she wants to do in her life, and everything she's doing is healthy and normal, and so we're not talking about, like, you know, excess of dieting or you know, over the top exercising or anything that would be you know, representing some unhealthy choices in that regard, and there are certainly people who do, and so that's an entirely separate line of work. I think my general perspective is, you know, from the time view of this, which is that I know that a lot of women do spend a lot of their precious time obsessing about how they look. And I do find that bothersome. I mean, partly because we only have so much time and there's so many other things we could be doing with it. And also just because our bodies are functional. They are not decorative objects for other people to see and judge. If they are approaching your body as something to see and judge, that is on them. It is not what you exist in the world. I'm not you specifically, but people exist in the world to do right. We are not here for other people to look out and judge. We're here to you know, use our bodies as the tools to take us through life. And so I mean that doesn't mean that I think people should engage in unhealthy behaviors or activities, you know, sitting around on the couch twenty four hours a day wouldn't be supporting all that our bodies can do. I feel like one of the great reasons for women, particularly to take up sports or other intense physical activities that they find fun is that you increase, like you do, see your body as a functional object and not about how it looks right, And so you start eating to fuel it to do these intense physical things as opposed to you know, how do I eat, what does it make me look like? Or you know, I want to develop these muscles because it's going to help me climb that mountain better, as opposed to I want to do this because it makes me, you know, look good in my clothes. So that's just you know, how I would hope people would approach body image from and just sort of what our bodies can do. And I also think it's you know, it's an important topic because some people have bodies that are just never going to be traditionally skinny. I mean, it's just genetically what they are. That's what, you know, what their genetic inheritance is. It doesn't matter what they do, like I mean, short of a famine, it's not going to be anything close to the traditional skinny look. But just about everybody can be healthier and active and eating food that fuels them for the things they need to do, and moving the bodies and ways that they are physically capable of doing. So that's just you know how I'm hoping to see things. Yeah, that's interesting. Somebody in our patreon we kind of opened up this topic to see if people wanted to weigh in on this pun not really into Yes, someone who is a pretty serious runner mentioned that she actually tends to run much better when she pays a lot of attention to fueling and that often includes eating a good amount of carbs that, if anything, drives her weight and fluid retention up a little bigger than she would prefer. But for the sake of like how she can perform from a fitness standpoint and from a sports standpoint, that she finds that very much worth it. And I think that's an interesting perspective. And yet, when you said something about you know, strength training in order to like be strong, I'm like, but wait, can't you strength train to be strong? And well, I mean that when you strength tree. Yeah, the upside of you know, doing intense physical activities, I would say you you often look better and better from that persone, but you care less and less right, as you know, the way those two interact with each other can actually be a pretty cool virtuous cycle as opposed to the vicious cycle that some people wind up in. Yeah, no, it's true. I mean the I've read a lot of you know, running related articles about that that, you know, especially when the low carbon craze was a big thing ten fifteen years ago. That yes, okay, maybe you lose weight on it, but like your energy levels are kind of a lot lower for things like distance running, which does actually require glycogen I guess. So it's yeah, no, interesting, But why don't we go through and talk a little bit about sort of, you know, your body image journey. We can both talk about this, but since you were the one who started with the blog post, why don't you go ahead and talk a little bit about that. Sure? I mean, as I put a disclaimer in my notes to you, I was like, I'm certainly not a poster child for body accept which is probably why I come at it from this angle. And I've never been like overweight from a numbers perspective, but I'm only five foot one and it makes a huge difference to me whether I'm like within a ten pound range, at the top of that range or at the bottom of that range. And honestly, that's probably a range that I've been conscious of ever since high school. And I'm similar in size now to what I was then. I've always done sports. I mean the sports that I did were more like competitive cheerleading. I wasn't like a you know, coordinated ball sports type of an athlete, but I was. I've always been active. I've always run, I've always gone to the gym, like I really enjoy activity. But I guess to me, I've just always been conscious of that range, and I have found that, for better or for worse, a lot of the more unhappy periods of my life are associated with the higher end of that range in my mind, and a lot of the happier periods are on the lower end. And I don't know where the causality arrows go there, Whether it's just like when I'm happy, I'm engage and behaviors that you know, I'm eating better or like just taking better care of myself, or whether it's like I do think there's like a little bit of an aspect. Again, I'm sure like one could name the patriarch or other influence on influences on me that just like, I don't really enjoy living in my body as much when it's at the top of that range, even if technically on paper it's not unhealthy, and the bottom is not unhealthy either, by the way, like I've never strived to be, you know, underweight or anything like that. Yeah, let's say I have not been in the same ten pound range my whole life. It has. It has gone up and down a bit more than I'm not cutting pregnancy, by the way, obviously I gain more than ten pounds, but that one would hope, one would definitely hope. But yeah, I mean I it was a certain weight in high school, though that was up and down a bit in high school too, sort of higher at the end than it was at the in the middle of it. Then I got back down to that weight, you know, when I was training for a marathon and nursing a baby simultaneously, and it was one of those periods of life which was you know, I could I could eat anything, it didn't keep me full for more than like forty five minutes in between, you know, exclusively nursing a baby and running all those miles to tramp for a marathon. There needed to be a lot of fuel in my body, and I was still losing weight doing it. So you know, I got down there and then, you know whatever, I stopped doing both those things and you know, ate normally and it kind of went back up, as one might imagine. Then, after having Alex in twenty fifteen, I decided to try out the low carb bandwagon, and you know, sure enough it worked in the sense that I lost weight. I again got down to the mid high school weight, which was an interesting experience, but I hated it, like I hated what it required, Like I don't want to eat that way. You know, It's just like I like bread. I like you know, a good craft beer. I like, you know, just eating normally too, and being able to participate in sort of communal food experiences, you know, food experience, food as a pleasurable fuel for your body. So anyway, I stopped, and as one might imagine, the way came back on and you know, as it does. So curiously, we didn't unpack the scale when moving here, so it has been sitting in my closet for six months and I just pulled it out now to take a look, and you know, my weight was about the same as it was before, which is kind of interesting since I know that for six months I have been moving significantly more than I was in the six months prior to that. I could see that through my step counter on my phone, So it's I mean, at least an additional mile plus per day in terms of just general steps walking around. I have completely cut out all dairy products, not for any sort of vanity, but as it turns out, you know, I have trouble eating them without severe pain, and so it turns out that pain is a far more immediate motivator than anything in terms of diet for losing weight or something like that. But the net result is that I can't eat a lot of the stuff that might be perceived as a junk. I mean, if you look on the ingredient list of a lot of candy and uh, you know, snack food, milk is in there. If you you know, there's a layer of cheese on every single fast food item out there, like there's just peata you eat. Yeah, So it's just I would assume that from not eating all that stuff, which I would certainly have eaten in the past, you know, shouldn't that make me lose weight? But it doesn't, right, And so my takeaway from this is that if I was going to lose weight, it would require a significant amount of effort, which is incredibly low on my priority list right now. So I wait more than I do in high school, and I guess my current feeling is I just don't really care. Let's take a quick ad break on that note, and we will be back in just a minute with more on body image. Well, we are back talking all things body image. So Sarah, you know this led to some interesting you know, you want to keep your weight a certain range, and you know on the lower side you're a rather thin person. But that led to some issues and when you were trying to start a family, right, I wonder if you can talk about that. Yeah, I mean that's definitely where things have been more difficult. And honestly, I also feel like the medical world and the science world doesn't do this issue enough justice. Like there's this thought that as long as your BMI is technically normal, you really shouldn't have any problems having you know, ovulation, and that weight shouldn't be an issue unless you're, like, you know, extremely thin BMI have seventeen like model territory. For me, that did not turn out to be the case. And as I did struggle with infertility for over two years, I met others who were in a very similar boat. I am actually still in touch with several of them, and it's so interesting. All of our journeys are very similar in that most of us basically had to eventually really ramp down exercise and gain a little bit of weight that we didn't particularly want to, and then with or without medication or fertility assistance, we all got pregnant. And then, interestingly, and this has been true for me and a few others, after that first pregnancy, something happens and well, maybe it's just that we don't have time to exercise as much. It's certainly possible, but the fergility was mostly primary, like it was mostly that first baby or something about like coming off of the pill and being able for that hypothylamic access to ramp back up. But I know it wasn't just me, And yet I know that, like when I asked the reproductive endo in the beginning, she's like, no, you're fine, Like cause on paper I was that we were in that malogical eighteen to twenty five range, like all should be fine correctly, so you should be fine. Why would I tell you to exercise less? Exercise is healthy. Why would I tell you to gain weight? You're at a healthy weight. OBC is such a problem, right anyway, So that that was tough, and honestly, like one of the lowest points of my life was that infertility period. I hated gaining the weight. I hated not running. I felt like there was a mental health problem, not problem, but like mental health consequence of like running being my stress relief and then not being able to do it at a time that was very stressful. And you know, it has a happy ending. Eventually I got pregnant, and thankfully I never really had to deal with those issues with my subsequent pregnancies, and so that was complicated. And then the other area where things had become complicated for me isn't really weight really but more exercise related. And that is that you guys know, if you're a longtime listener that like, pumping is my least favorite thing. I struggle with it. Pump. I have great supply when my kids are nursing, but once I put that pump on, like every single time, no matter what kinds of heroic efforts I took like six times a day pump like crazy, crazy efforts. It was just a struggle to make enough, and my babies never seemed super happy with what I could make, and I always wondered like I usually was running by that point, because it really did help my mental health, and postpartum time is a very stressful time, and there was probably an aspect of like, I want to look the way I look before. I just want to feel like myself. And yet that's like another layer of guilt because if you're not quite pumping enough and you think there's any chance that that could have anything to do with it, you're like, well, I'm also a terrible person because I'm like putting my needs ahead of my poor starving baby. And by the way, that's like hilarious because we've seen pictures of any of my children as babies, none of them appeared to be starving. I mean, I know poor waking can be an issue with some babies, but it was it with mine, and so I don't know, it was just like I'm very really I don't have an answer just to say that, like, if you've gone through this, it does suck, and that it is nice to be very much beyond that and feel like whatever I feel like doing with my own body is only affecting me at this point, although as we'll talk about, like, I also want to be really, really careful in terms of making sure my kids grow up with healthy body image. So I guess it just changes. I guess the just the requirements and the implications change. Now. I wonder if you could. I mean, because I asked you the question of, like, why is that your happy weight? Right? Like? And I mean because you know, I guess if as I'm hearing this, I'm like, well, if it's a weight, you couldn't conceive that, and you wanted to conceive what makes it a happy weight? Right or well I was able to conceive at it with camera engining, so I just couldn't the first time for whatever reason. And also it is hard to know if, like how much of that was how much I was running, So it's hard to separate those two things out because I addressed them both at the same time. So who knows. Maybe I could have stayed the exact same way and just ran less. But like, at that point, I was so ready to have a baby, I did whatever the nutrition has told me, whatever anybody would would tell me, and it worked. Why I mean, as I wrote back to I was like the patriarchy. I don't know. It's just how I feel comfortable. And it's how I've felt comfortable for my entire life, high school, college and beyond. Again, like you know, I guess I don't have a reason for you except for like vanity, and it's just how I feel my best. Yeah, no, it's it's fascinating. I'm very curious about it. Like if it was something about, you know, how clothes fit, or how it feels when you're moving around, or you know how people look at you. I don't know. I mean, because it's not your husband, like like, let's put it out here right now. It's not It's not like Josh is like you need to be a certain way. Oh yeah, sure, that's clearly never never, ever, ever, And in fact, I've never been in any like even younger me was never in a relationship where that was a thing. There is some just sort of eating in my family, so who knows if their influence is there, but yeah, no, this is and again, like I'm totally normal, like I just care about being on the lower end of normal versus the higher end of normal. For me, it makes a difference. And I hope that's not going to upset people. And I'm glad you have your perspective to like provide a much needed counterpoint that, hey, you can be happy and also not care so much. I think that's awesome. Well, and you you are not an extremist in anything. I mean you you moderate on stuff like you I mean, meals with you, No, I love I love food. I mean, we'll get into our little food section. But well, that's the other thing. I'll have to say. My genetics tend towards the thinner side anyway, both, you know, Like, so it's not like I have to go to heroic lengths like I always feel like when I have to go to almost like heroic lengths to like be on, like I have to eat really bad or like what I perceive is really bad to to get out of my happy range. So I still eat everything I don't like. We'll talk about our food section, but yeah, no, I don't want to live in a life where I I mean, I'm so sorry for your dairy freeness, but like I want to be able to eat pizza like that's very important to me. Yeah, well, which is where our transition to eating because honestly, I got to say, I mean trying to eat this way, not again, not vanity, It's about not having physical pain. It takes as much energy as I can devote to any of this, right, like between you know, work and managing five kids in the household, it's like there's not a whole extra pot of mental energy to deal with stuff, right, and so every single bit of that that is on the food front is focused on not eating what's going to trigger the pain. And so it's Uh, I have so much sympathy for people who have to eat, you know, for allergies or anything like that, because it's hard. It's really hard. I can control a lot of it at home, and you know, my husband does the grocery shopping, who knows certain things to buy that you know, I can then eat and snack and not feel like I'm completely starving when there's nothing in the house that I can eat. But but just like traveling, like going to an airport, you know, like what do you eat? Everything has cheese on it? Like, look at it. Sometimes everything has cheese on it. I had to you know, learn like what are the fast food restaurants I can go to? I could go to, you know, Panda Express. Like it turns out that Asian food like does not feature cheese. So that's a good exciting thing to know about. So I've I've become you know, eat a lot more Asian fast food in various forms. But yeah, it's it's not a fun way to eat, which is why I'm always wondering, like, because I can see the amount of mental energy it takes for that. So the people who are doing say low carb to lose weight and trying to do this over the long haulisay, you know, it just seems like it would be a lot of mental energy, and so you know, that's where I'm always wondering, Like how much time women do put into this sort of thing. I wonder if someone figures out a certain eating pattern that really works for them long term, maybe the energy lessons at some point, because you're just like I eat the same things all the time and they're this like, yeah, I think about my patients who are Celiac, and they like absolutely can't have gluten and it's always so hard for them in the beginning and the families talk all about it, and then like a year or two in I hear them just being like, yeah, we're used to it, Like yeah, although dairy is really tough, because it really is and truly everything. And I feel like gluten free has become a more popular offering at a lot of restaurants, but I don't necessarily see dairy free on a lot of menus. So I can see. It's so funny because we went out to eat, like the weekend before. That's my husband and I and we are at a fancy place and on the restaurant, yeah, they the menu, they had GF next to a bunch of different stuff, and I'm like, well, where's your DF, Like I can't have your DAF on here? But they didn't, I guess, which is funny because you know, I am genetically of the stock of people who should be able to consume it with no problem, but a lot of I mean the reason like Asian cuisine doesn't have cheese, is it? You know, historically it's not been something that many people have eaten and a lot of people can't digest it, and and so you know, it's and several other you know, ethnicities as well as sort of genetically. Most people cannot they have the trouble with the lactose, which isn't My problem is something else entirely. But there's a lot of people who aren't going to eat dairy or people who are you know, observant, you know, kosher cuisine like you you know, you have to separate out meat and dairy. So if you are eating meat, you you can't have the cheeseburger, right, you have the burger but not the cheese on it. Or But there's just a lot of people who would be eating this way. So it's kind of curious that there's certainly a lot more now, but you know that there hasn't been historically is kind of crazy. You would have enjoyed my kids summer camp, Yes, that's true. Although what did they have the meat days in the milk days or did they just do I think so? I don't know. I didn't delve into a lot of details, but yeah, it sounded like the kids preferred the milk days over the exactly. How about you? Why don't you talk a little bit about how you eat? Yeah, well, I was going to bring up Gretchen Rubins framework of moderator versus abstainer because I find it very interesting, and also because I think there is for those who follow her stuff, there is a thought that people who are upholders must then also be abstainers because they like things in like very black and white, and they like to follow guidelines and rules. But I will tell you like, I'm definitely a textbook upholder in pretty much most regard, but I am also a full on moderator, Like, don't tell me I can't eat something, like I will just want to eat that particular thing again unless it was like a medically indicated kind of an issue. I really am the kind of person. I guess. She uses the example like could you keep chocolate around and like not eat it? I'm like, of course, because like I do keep chocolate around, and why would I eat it all? Like I'll have some today and I'll have like a little tomorrow, like I don't. Yeah, so definitely moderator. I pretty much eat everything I did have one year of attempting Paleo. I think I was just convinced of all these magical benefits. I liked the food. I actually think Paleo cuisine is like delicious because it's just very like pure and it's very high fat. In many cases, I like fat, and I don't know, like it worked pretty well for that year, and then I just got tired. I went on a trip to North Carolina and was like, I have to eat biscuits because I really really miss biscuits. And I did, and then I was like why was I doing this? So I quit. I really enjoy just eating everything. I don't eat tons of sugar on a regular basis, but like, if I want something specific with sugar, I'm absolutely gonna get it. My current favorite thing is dairy Queen blizzards. It's not very high brown, but they're really really good. Yeah, so I guess that's all to say that I think the story would be different if I felt that has eaten a very restrictive fashion in order to maintain where I like to be. But I actually feel like I know how to balance things having gotten to the sage. And who knows, maybe that will change when I'm like menopausal and I'll have to do things differently. But yeah, now that's it. That certainly is a People do tend to gain some weight as they become older, and you know, you could explain the hormone changes to people but that it is something to keep in mind, and I'm honestly just aware of, like, you know, people who are not naturally thin, I mean, the number of heroics they would have to take to be sort of more of the traditionally thin body type. It just I mean, for many people, probably isn't worth it, you know, it's just Yeah, I think if you're going through your days and you're like distracted by your hunger, or you're distracted by you know, not feeling comfortable because you in order to eat the amount to look the way you want your like just so distracted by that, yeah, it wouldn't I don't think it would be worth it. Yeah, let's talk about exercise, because you've been doing various different things. I mean you've watched, you know, as I've read Star's blog for ten years or so, you know, learning about all the different exercise things she's tried over the years. What's sort of going on with that? Yeah, I mean, I think the one theme that I would say is that I went from being probably in like in my twenties, just a runner, to at age forty two now really prioritizing strength training as well and lifting fairly heavyweights. I mean I the heaviest weights I have are twenty five pound dumballs, so I'm not talking about lifting like giant barbells, but like for me to do squats with two twenty fives, that's fifty Like that's that's like a decent amount of weight to be lifting. And I think enough that I've noticed a difference in strength and muscle definition. I love doing guided programs. I've done different ones, but that's been pretty consistent. I went straight from like I Didgillian Mike, I did Beach Body, I did Peloton, I do Caroline Garvan's on YouTube, like it's all kind of the same thing. It's like a guided home weight based workout. And then I have in different periods, done running in lesser or more amounts, depending on time and my desire. Right now, I'm like in a super running phase and it is you know, as Laura mentioned, her activity went up and her weight didn't change. I do not find that running really influences my weight one way or the other. And in fact, I feel like I've had the best kind of like body composition and ease of maintaining without much running, because I don't know, I think running makes you hungrier and I think there is something to be said about having to like fuel for different runs if you're trying to run faster. But I love running. I love the feeling I get after I run. I love training for stuff. I love seeing myself get faster. I love training plans. I love leaving the house to do my workouts. I don't know so right now I'm back into it, Like I'm thinking about maybe like a spring marathon even and a fall half. But it's really truly not for any body reasons. If I was if I wanted to do something for a body reason, I know exactly what i'd do. I would do like a pure lifting program of like four or five days a week and lift heavier than I'm lifting now. But that doesn't sound super fun to me, whereas running is really fun exactly. Yeah, No, we got gotta have a balance there. Yeah, I'm with you. I should be doing more weightlifting. Not again, it's not about you know, getting the chiseled arms or anything. It's just that I think I would have some solve some back pain issues, some you know it, band issues that I think are developing because of weaker like core muscles, for instance, that I really need to work on, so that's it's something I should get in the habit of doing. Of course, it's just like my exercise time, I want to run, that's what I want to do, So that tends to be what I do. You know, especially summer, I've been waking up in the morning and running for thirty minutes outside and then you know, it's it's just a great way to start the day. Like I come back and I'm like, I've done it. I've done my exercise. I feel good. I have my cup of coffee, which you know is also turns out to be a reflux trigger. But I can take my santac and my next day and make it work. And you know, I haven't had to give up that because that would be sad if I had to give that up too. My husband said something like, what if for your migraines you have to give up coffee. I'm like, then I'll just have It's like maybe the pharmaceutical companies could come up with something and I could just like lean on that, and you know, but yeah, it's so like running is running is awesome. But you know, I've tried to do with some other things too, like you know, hiking, we My husband and I went on an hour long, very swift bike ride over the weekend together. We had a sitter for sort of a longish date night, and so we went out and biked together for an hour and went down to Manny Yank from Kanchacken for anyone who's familiar with the Schuokill River trail, which was a lot of fun. You know, it's a it was a good swift, flat one and you know, I feel like you get a good workout. So hopefully do you know more of that in the future too. That sounds lovely. Yeah, there's something to be said for having like a basal level of fitness where you're just kind of like ready for anything like a decent hike or like a bike ride on a trip or things like that. I don't even know if those opportunities truly come around, but like I couldn't stand the idea of like, oh, let's go do this and be like, oh, I'm like I can't last more than ten minutes because I can't breathe or something yeah, or even something like you know, when we would snorkeling in the Virgin Islands, like to be able to swim and open water for a reasonable period of time. It's just something you have to be a reasonable amount of physical fitness, you know, have the shape to do I was very happy that my kids were able to do it too, Like you know, they're a little little fish. It turns out that they can swim in open water, So who knew? That's amazing speaking of kids, because of course, you know, what's many things we are trying to model certain behaviors, and whether we mean to or not, whatever we think and do and show in our lives winds up impacting our children. And so there's always question of how we talk about our bodies and what actions we take. If you have children, particularly, I would say if you have daughters, you know, so I'm very curious how you are handling that. Yeah, I mean I definitely am very thoughtful about it, very careful not to like demonize different types of food, Like there are foods we really try not to generally have, like soda as an example, because I just feel like there are few redeeming qualities. But if they tell me I had soda at a birthday party, I want my reaction to be super casual, like, hey was it good? Did you like it? We're not buying that. But I hope you had fun with that, you know. So that's a big thing generally, not talking a lot about weight or preperizing, you know, preferring one size over another. I think that's very, very important. Not talking negatively about somebody because of them being overweight, which is a little hypocritical of my own self. Talk goes that direction, But I don't do that around the kids. I had one child ask me like, how much is a normal amount of weight to gain each year, say a doctor's oointment, And I was like, don't worry about it, Like I would never want to give them a specific number. And I do that with my patients as well, Like I'll have parents that are concerned about it, like ask about an ideal weight for their child, and I will never give it out. I'm like, that is that is not the goal here. I'm like, let's talk about healthy behaviors, let's talk about move and let's talk about what makes them feel good. But if you know, if you're looking for a number, like that's that's just not the way a kid needs to be measuring up their self worth or determining their behaviors around. So really really careful about that from a professional standpoint as well. Yeah, no, I think it's I think it's really hard. And I was speaking of you know, we had pulled out the scale, you know, because I found it in my closet and so I had stepped on it. And then my daughter came into my closet and so she say, oh, I'll step on that, let me see, and then she's she was like, wow, I'm that's a higher number than I was before. And she was saying this in a way that was like like that was a problem, Like no, you're you're growing. This is it's supposed to go up. If it doesn't go up, we have a big problem. Like you know, you're supposed to go But it's just like I, you know, I think that scale is going to go away again, so lest it be found and lest anyone continue to step on it. So that is my current plan. I like it. I was I going to say anything else about kids, I don't know, just that this is such a tough road to navigate. And I think if you're being thoughtful about it, if you are thinking twice before you say something like oh I shouldn't have eaten that, or I don't deserve to eat that, or like we do deserve to eat that because we did something good, then you're probably going to be doing the right thing just by kind of thinking about it and giving it some thought. Yeah, I think as with most of you know, many things, whenever we talk about goal setting, right and on this podcast, the difference between outcome goals and process goals that you know you can't I mean obviously that you could like lose a leg and suddenly lose twenty pounds. I mean that's not recommended, right, Like, or you could you know, have a horrible you know, parasite or whatever and lose weight. Like it's not just about the number, right, It's it's that it's supposed to be indicating that there are healthy behaviors happening. And so let's just focus on the healthy behaviors and because those you can often control. And so, yeah, especially with kids, just trying to encourage lots of activity, like we do things together on the weekends. And are you in sports and are you in other things that you know, get you up off the couch and you know, not just with your nose and your video games all day? Okay, great, you know what food do we have in the house, Like, yes, obviously we have snack food, but we you know, have sort of within a limited range of what those snack foods are, and like you said, like less soda for instance, although we have one kid who really really likes root beer, so it's like there's root beer in the house. It's fine, sort of limited, but you know, and just put lots of fruits and veggies on plates. Like when we have our family meals, there's lots of fruits and veggies on the plates, and you know, the expectation is that you eat them. I mean, it doesn't always happen, but that is the expectations. So you know, like obviously people eat outside the house various meals and you know, go elsewhere and have treats and all that. We certainly don't not do it. I think my kids are literally at McDonald's. Yeah, yeah, we've been going to huah wah and getting their icys. Like it's like almost a I mean it's a routine thing in the summer now, I would say. And so yeah, there's there's just the reality of that. But I think you know, you do what you can exactly, all right, love of the week or question first, Well, we can do the question. So here's you know what question. We've been getting different versions of as more people are you know, still working from home? There's some like pretty good data that the proportion of people who are doing summer all of their work at home is canting to be quite high, and particularly people and sort of the you know, information related industries. Obviously, if you do you know, you're a dental hygienist, you're not doing that at home. But you know you're driving a truck, you're not doing that at home, but you are a lot of a lot of you know, information type work. So people are setting their school schedules for the fall, their childcare schedules. Question. I've had a couple versions of, is I work from home so theoretically I can pick up my school kids at school in the afternoon? Should I? So, Sarah, what do you think? Well, there's no one right answer to this. This is absolutely you have to I would draw out all the various scenarios of what you would lose and gain from each one, including remembering the fact that you could do things differently on different days, so you don't have to make the choice, especially because there are a lot of aftercare programs where you can like purchase for like Thursdays and Fridays or like whatever you choose that to be. So I would not think about this in black and white terms. And I would also not think in like, once I decide for the school year, that's what we're going to do for the whole year. I think it really depends are you normally able to get your work done or are you just in the groove at that moment. Do you feel like you get enough hours in because you're able to start earlier because your partner is handling the mornings, or do you feel like, oh my god, now I'm going to end up with a five hour work day and I'm always going to be behind or working after the kids are going to go to sleep. I will say, if picking them up necessitates that you're going to end up working for hours after their bedtime, think really really hard about that. I mean, maybe you love that, you love working at night, but like I feel like a lot of people don't love that. So I would think about what that trade off entails, because you also might not be as present with them in the evenings if you know you're going to have to like run back to your laptop so it's always going to be balancing what works. But I mean if this were me personally, I would probably do a hybrid and like decide I was going to pick them up on certain days, maybe a certain day that I could take them to some fun activity that I wanted to watch them at, and then other days complete my workday so I can be done. Yeah, I would, I would say probably, you know, doing a not either or sort of situation like signing them up for aftercare three days a week and then two days a week picking them up. I think it's also matters are your kids old enough to sort of entertain themselves at home while you're working, Because if they are, you know, old enough, like we're talking kids you know, eight ten and so and you know independent types, you know, you could do some more work after picking them up, right, So that also it's kind of different if you're talking like a five year old who can't really you know, take care of themselves, and you're gonna have to be on them during this time versus them being around the house. But you could still you know, do another hour of work while while they're playing in the backyard or watching a show or whatever it is you're you're willing to have them do at that point. And I think the other thing to think about is how much time it takes to get them. Like, if it's a situation where you are, you know, two blocks from your elementary school, you can just walk over there and just like get them at the gate and go home. You know, So it's like a fifteen minute process. That's kind of different than if it's a you know, ten to fifteen minute drive plus fifteen minutes in a car line and then driving hat Like, then we're talking, you know, forty minutes out of your day versus fifteen, and there's some significant differences there. So I think all of that's going to need to play into the decision. But there's no right or wrong. You are not a great mom if you do it, and you're not a bad mom if you don't. You are also not a horrible employee if you do it, and a great employee if you show how serious you are about your work that you wouldn't dare think about picking up your kids, right, Like, none of this needs to be like that. It can really be a combination, and I think it can be, you know, make make lots of different things, work, love, it all right, Love of the week, Sarah, what do you have? I'm so excited for my love of the week. Okay, So you guys know I've spoken before about the Homoni Chi Techo planners and how much I love them, and how it actually used to be fairly hard to order them, like there was site you had to figure out how to convert it to English, and you know, they ship from Japan and they're all in Japanese. For twenty twenty three, they just announced they have finally released English language versions of two of their very popular planners. They actually had already had an English version of one of them, so I thought that perhaps the others would be coming down the pike, but that's been out for years and I kind of lost hope. And then I saw the announcement. I was so so excited. So if you're a Hobinishi lover but you wanted your planner to be in English, now it's your challenge and their sin. They start selling them in September. You can always go to my blog if you want, you know all the latest news on that awesome. That is awesome, and then you can not be intimidated by ordering things from a Japanese website. That's great. So my love of the week is our thermodoor coffee maker. So it's built into the wall. We have had sort of regular like drip coffee machines for our entire you know, adult lives, but this one on the wall. You put the beans and there's a pipe to it, like it's wired, you know, built the pipe the water into the wall, and so then you just you press the button and it makes you a cup of coffee from freshly ground beans. And it's really really very exciting because it's like one cup at a time, but the fresh ground beans, and you know, it's so you know, just put the mug under there in the morning and press the button. It's like, ah, it's just really and it's better coffee too because it's right from the freshly ground beans. So that has been a nice little treat every single morning, and I'm very very happy about it, and also happy that my combination of reflux medication means that I can drink my coffee and not worry about it. I can only drink really one cup. I suspecting that my husband is drinking a lot of cups because I'm getting the message of like empty coffee grounds frequently and I'm like, really, I feel like I've only had like two cups of coffee since I came last day. There's he's probably had like eight in that time. But anyway, it's a good machine, so really liking it. It sounds awesome. Well, we have been talking all things body image. This is you know, as said, if you've made it through to this point, thank you. I know some people probably didn't want to listen to this topic, which we totally understand. Will not hold it again against anyone at all, but anyway, we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.