A bit more about life in the 50's....

My mother had her own ideas about food and feeding her husband, herself then her children.  That was the order of importance although she would have liked to put herself first however she couldn't as mum wasn't the bread winner of the family.  I think my father was quite easy to please.  He knew mum couldn't cook so he was happy with meat and 3 veg every night at 6pm and eggs and bacon on toast each sunday morning.

Hmmmmm eggs and bacon smell delicious.  Of course we were never allowed to eat them.  "That is for your father not you kids" was the reply when asked where ours was.  So I dont think I ever ate bacon until after I left home which was at 18.  Today I just adore eating bacon and mushrooms for breakfast.

The sad thing is my father was an excellent cook but very rarely ever cooked for his family.

So abviously from having sugar on all my food at such an early age lead to a very sweet tooth.

For my mother there was a definate division between adults (her) and children (us) when it came to food.  Quite simply adults got all the yummy food and we got the left overs or plain boring food.

For example: Biscuits

Kids love biscuits.  Every kid loves biscuits of some type.  We certainly did.  Now I am talking about the 50's where there were no supermarkets with biscuits in packets, I am talking about grocery shops and fresh loose biscuits weighed up and put into brown paper bags.  I bet that brings back a few memories for some of you!

Mum kept her biscuits in a specially made (plastic of course) container with 4 layers, stacked on top of each other, each a different colour and in each layer she would have a different type of biscuit.
These consisted of: 1/2 pound each of Yo-yo's  (my sister's favourites) Ginger snaps,  Scotch fingers (my favourite) and then a cream variety. 

So each week I would go up and get her standard order and a pound of plain 'family' biscuits of us kids.  PLAIN FAMILY BISCUITS for us.  Not only were they boring they lasted 2 days between 4 hungry children....well apart from the last few broken biscuits that no-one wanted to eat.  My mother's lasted all week because she bought so many and never shared them.

So what I did was try to memorize where the Scotch fingers were so I could sneak out in the middle of the night to get some.  Now this was really scarey as my mother had eyes in the back of her head plus excellent hearing to match.  I would have to stay awake then sneak out of bed and creep into the kitchen then try very carefully to take the layers of biscuit trays off without waking the person I most feared in life to get a biscuit.  How exhausting was that.  Honestly, I thought about doing it more than I ever did.

This then developed into an eating disorder later in life.  But more about that later.

Once upon a time................

It all started almost 60 years ago.  I was born in 1952 in Adelaide which is the capitol city of South Australia.  Now back then nothing was known about food allergies or intollerences so I was fed what propably every other child in Australia was fed;  Dairy products, white bread and sugar. Obviously I ate other foods however these 3 were a stable part of our every day diet. 

Now when I tell people what my mother did to get us kids (4 of us) to eat food they dont normally believe me, however recently I checked with my sister just to make sure I didn't dream it and yes she agreed this is what our mother (who did not know any better at that time did).  She put sugar on EVERYTHING so we would eat it.

She put it on lettuce...oh yes she did....and tomatoes and anything else she introduced into our diet.  So I ate everything!!!!  I can actually remember when she stopped putting sugar on the lettuce as she told me I was old enough to go without it....I must have been around 4.  I was devestated......
How could I possibly eat that green tasteless leaf without sugar????
How could I eat that tomato without sugar????

That was the first time I felt deprived of sugar....or possibly deprived of my mother's love.

So now you have read this far I shall just branch out a little and explain a bit more about myself.
I am an Emotional Health Practitioner.  I made up that title because I didn't know what else to call myself.  A therapist?  no not really.  A counsellor?  No I dont counsel people.  What I do is a wee bit different.  Basically I am concerned with people's emotional health.
I use 2 main techneques when I see clients.  NLP which is Neuro Linguistic Programming and FasterEFT.  You can go to my webpage and check those out by just googling them.
www.guidedsolutions.com.au
So how did I get to be an Emotional Health Practitioner?  Because I knew that I needed to look after my own emotional wellbeing. From there I also knew I had to take this knowledge and help other people.

One thing that is consistant in my life is the fact that I am so good at dieting.  I've tried so many the last being the Dukan Diet (only recently after swearing never to diet again).  That's quite the easy part dont you think?  Everyone can diet....most people HAVE at some point in their lives...They do work.  In most caes they do what they say they will....however it's when the diet is over/stopped that the real issues begin.

So this is my story about how I stopped dieting.  How I turned my emotional wellbeing around, well actually that is what this blog is about: it is about how I am turning my emotional wellbeing around.

In January 2011 I made 2 promises to myself.  That this year (2011) I would give up gluten products as I have known about my gluten problem for 30 years then in 2012 I would give up sugar....ALL SUGAR....how exciting is that!!!

So tomorrow I shall explain a bit more about my life and about the interesting struggles I have had along the way with my food intollerances, what I have tried, what has worked and what I have left behind.....how exciting is that!!!!!!!  see ya xoxox