bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • Co-schooling (5). Greeting rituals.

    Ever since our firsts were babies, Hannah's home has been a place where I can count on a comfortable chair and a cup of strong, hot tea, moments after walking in the door.  

    I hope she would write that my house is a place where she can count on a bar stool, a counter, and a cup of hot, strong, and not-too-stewed black coffee!

    When those first littles were little, we hashed out all manner of plans and philosophies over those steaming cups.  For a long time, she would bake bread with the children while I worked on my doctoral thesis at the kitchen table.  For a while, we made dinner together and packed it home to our respective families.  Sometimes we did housework together.  Sometimes we both goofed off, kicking off our shoes and ambling into the grassy back yard to watch our kids play in the sun.  Often we found ourselves taking simultaneous breaks to sit and nurse a baby, a good excuse to put feet up and have a chat about whatever was going on.  Always there was the cup of tea in the morning and the cup of tea in the late afternoon.

    For a little while when our firsts started homeschooling, before we gave in and began schooling together, we weren't having our tea together.  We should have known there was a problem just from that.  I was trying to teach my son my way, and she was trying to teach her son her way, next to each other  at the same table; but not really together.  Tempers ran short, the boys made faces at each other, we barely got all the work done.  At the beginning of the day we had to jump right on the work, lest we run out of time; at the end we rubbed the cricks in our necks, and scrambled to clean up and to get started on dinner.  

     We must have each slurped down some tea at some point, otherwise I think we'd have collapsed, but it's all rather a blur in retrospect. 

    When we sat down together to design a new approach to co-schooling, we weren't exactly sure what the days would look like, but we were both independently certain of one vital component, one thing that we thought might help fix all our problems in one gulp. 

    Our co-schooling days would begin and end with tea.

    Mommy tea. 

    A chance to sit down on a comfy chair with a steaming cup.

    An inviolate half hour at the beginning of the day for catching up, briefing each other on how our own kids are doing, taking note of potential problems, and laying out plans for how to spend our day.

    An inviolate half hour at the end of the day for discussing how the school day had gone, briefing each other on how the other's kids are doing, and laying out expectations for the upcoming few days.

    Opening rituals.  Closing rituals. 

    This time at the beginning and the end is good for our kids too.  They need our greeting time to greet each other, to talk excitedly about the latest Wii game or Lego set.  They need our closing time to blow off steam from the school day, tussling or playing video games together, or heading outside for some solitude on a bicycle.   Some time away from teacher-moms, before the long car ride home or the job setting the table.  

    Maybe the best thing the tea ritual gave us was instant success.   When we first tried to set up the true co-schooling schedule, we weren't exactly sure how to divide up the day, and we knew that it would take some tweaking.  But even though it had been a long time — too long — we remembered how to have a cup of tea together.  That was the first change we made.  And it was an easy change that felt good right away, started and ended our day off right.  It set us on the right track.  And I don't think we've missed one since. 

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    1 comment on Co-schooling (5). Greeting rituals.

  • Co-schooling index.

    Gathering this slowly evolving series into one post.  There will be a permanent link on the right sidebar, and I will add new posts as I go.  The "co-schooling" category will be another place to find them.

    Introduction to the series

    (1).  What is co-schooling?    The three R's are repeated, regular, and reciprocal.

    (2).  How co-schooling changes things.  Some thoughts off the top of my head.

    (3).  Preschoolers tagging along.  What we have ready for the small children.

    (4).  Teaching three readers at once.  How Hannah runs phonics sessions for three emergent readers simultaneously.

    (5).  Greeting rituals.  Possibly the most important part of the day is a cup of tea.

    (6)  Missed days.  What do you do about the material you planned to cover when you can't get together?

    (7) Toward a more independent lesson.  In which I begin teaching the three oldest children how to independently read a chapter from a history book.

    (8) Latin.  How did I wind up teaching three kids a language I'd never learned?  How do I manage?

    Watching station for five.  How I set up the computer in the schooling space so that up to five kids can watch a video using headphones while they wait their turn to be taught.

    Co-schooling record sheet.  How we keep track of what we all accomplish together.

    Migraine edition.  What happens when one of us (me) gets sick midday.

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  • The remains of impulse.

    I was obese [editing note:  I’d say “fat” today] for my entire life, up till age 33.  That year, for no apparent reason, I had an epiphany:  a new desire.

    The twin desires for a better [thinner] body and better health, I’d always had those.  As long as I remember I alternated between wanting thinness badly enough to work hard at trying to lose weight, and trying to resign myself to the “fact” that I likely never would do so permanently.

    Something new came along in that thirty-fourth year.  I can’t say for sure why.  But what popped into my head that year — it was in May — was a new-born desire, not to look different but to live differently.  I have described it before:  All of a sudden, I got tired of eating so damn much.

    [2025 note:  These days the term is “food noise,” right?  I had grown to hate the food noise.]

    It was as simple as that.  But it was also much more than that.

    I had a desire to behave differently.  But I still had two problems to solve.

    First, I didn’t know what I should be doing instead.  All I knew was that I wanted to get away from “eating so damn much.”  I wanted to eat less.  I didn’t know how much less I wanted to eat, or how often I wanted to eat, or even exactly what I wanted to be eating.

    Second, and this is the key point I want to stress, I still felt the impulse to eat, as frequently and as strongly as ever.  I desired to eat less.  I was disgusted by how much I had been eating.  And yet none of my impulses had weakened:  I still felt an urge to nibble on my kids’ leftovers. I still wanted to extend the pleasure of a tasty meal into second helpings and thirds.   I still longed on lonely evenings for the comfort of eating an entire pizza while staring at the computer screen.  I still thought about going through a drive-through all by myself for a secret cheeseburger.   None of that was any different.

    The only thing different was a sudden, gut-level knowledge that I didn’t want to do those things anymore.  Or at least I didn’t want to feel the urge to have those things any more.  Or … I wanted the power to resist the urges.  That is what was new.  A counterbalance.  I had never really wanted that before.  Before, I had wanted to be thinner, but I hadn’t really wanted to give up the secret cheeseburgers, the comfort of the pizza, the extra helpings.  Eating too much food had always meant experiencing more of the pleasure of tasting and swallowing.  I had never stopped, really, until it hurt to have more.

    You have to understand, if you are where I was, and if you are hoping that someday the impulses will just disappear, or that you can kill them… that they may never disappear, and yet even though they persist, it is possible to learn to ignore them.  You see, I still have them.  I still think about secret cheeseburgers.  I still remember the prolonged pleasure of six slices of pizza.  I still pause to study the contents of vending machines.  I still get an urge to pile on the seconds after my plate is empty, every time.  The impulses are not gone, they are not less frequent.  If they seem weaker now (even though occasionally I do give in — I am not perfect, after all), I believe it is only because I am stronger now, after close to two years of resistance training.  In the beginning they were just as strong as ever.

    I didn’t gain willpower overnight.  But I did, it seems, gain a will.  And the will to live differently was enough to drive me to find a way around the obstacles, the impulses.  It was suddenly so obvious to me that to follow these urges would still feel good, but would be the opposite of what I desired — those paths would not just take me the opposite direction from what I desired, they would BE the opposite of what I desired.  I wanted to feel the steeper trail beneath my feet, not just the smooth downward grade.  I wanted more than the view from the top.  Though the effort would hurt, I wanted to climb.

    That desire is something that seems to have come out of nowhere, a pure gift; the closest thing I have ever come to understanding what grace is.  I believe there is more yet I can learn from it.  I believe I know what I am to do with it next.

    Will I?

     

    **** Update.  Erin asked in the comments for a recommendation for a kitchen scale.  The key features for one to keep on the counter are, for me, (1) looks good, (2) wipes clean, (3) battery powered so it doesn’t take up an outlet, (4) tare button, (5) not very large.  I use this one in black, for $24.

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    15 comments on The remains of impulse.

  • Vital statistics.

    My readers can probably tell by now that I am trying to come down hard on the remaining postpartum weight, because weight loss is obviously on my mind.  I have been writing a lot about it.  

    Here's where I am.  I'm not quite 5 feet 

    • Baby:  3 months old
    • Pre-pregnancy:  108 lb
    • Immediately post-pregnancy:  140 lb
    • Post-pregnancy goal:  113 lb
    • Current: 123 lb

    I'm on track to reach my goal when Leo's between 5 and 6 months old, which is great.  There is no reason to be impatient and I wouldn't mind going slower, except that I do not have many clothes in my current size.

      

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  • The resolution that is least likely to take off excess weight.

    Most of the ideas that are good for encouraging healthful real-food eating in general, are also good for taking off excess weight (or at least for not adding any).

    I think there’s one resolution — really a family of resolutions — that is likely to backfire for all but a few people.

    It’s this one, in practically all its forms:

    “I really should try to eat more X.”

    Don’t laugh.  I think this is disturbingly common.  Someone resolves to lose weight.  And that causes them to take a good hard look at their diet.  And suddenly it becomes glaringly obvious that there is a deficiency in something — in “X.”  And so they focus their efforts on getting more X.  And along the way they lose sight of the major problem, which is very likely to be — note I didn’t say certain to be, I said very likely to be  — too much of something, or perhaps everything.  (Possibly including X.)

    Apply Occam’s razor.  Excess is likely to be the problem.  Not deficiency.

    Just take a look at this hypothesis:

    “If you don’t eat enough ________, you’ll gain weight.”

    “Weight gain is caused or exacerbated by not eating enough ____________.”

    What on earth could you POSSIBLY put into that sentence that would, well, sound reasonable?  (There are a couple of candidates, and we will look at them in a moment.)

    Obviously there are cases where one food may be profitably substituted for another.  That’s not what I’m talking about.

    I’m talking about when people set out to lose weight and then suddenly get worried about becoming deficient in one particular nutrient or another.  To the point where they are blinded to the big picture, which is that deficiency is necessary to solve obesity.   

    You have to get to the point where your body is consuming itself.   That doesn’t happen without some serious deficiency going on.

    Let’s look at some of the things people might think they need MORE of….

    (1) “I really should try to eat more dairy products”

    What are you substituting those dairy products for?  If you are substituting milk for soda, great.  But if you are merely adding dairy products because you think you need the calcium…. a calcium supplement will also do the trick.  So will leafy greens, for far fewer calories.

    (2)  “I really should try to eat more protein”

    Most Americans get plenty of protein.

    [Editing note, many years later.  This might not be true, especially when you consider how many folks—women and girls mostly—are systematically starving themselves.  The average is not too bad, but “most get plenty” might well be overstating it.  Here’s a link to some data.]

     If you think you might not, count up the grams in some of your regular foods and see what you get.  Remember that you do not have to eat “pure” protein foods like eggs or tuna to get enough protein.

    My usual breakfast contains one egg.  [Editing note:  in 2025, at age 51, I’m generally trying to get 20-30 grams of protein at breakfast.  That would be, like, 4-5 eggs.]

    I was shocked to discover midway through my weight loss that a bran muffin and three ounces of milk would provide me with the same amount of protein as the egg that I thought I “had” to have to get enough protein for breakfast.

    Many people would benefit from redistributing their protein more evenly throughout the day.  This is not the same as adding more protein.

    (3)  “I really should try to eat more whole grains”

    Again, if you are substituting them for refined grains, the answer is yes.  If you are merely adding them, the answer is probably no.

    (4) “I really should try to eat more breakfast”

    If you are currently eating zero breakfast, then, yes, probably.  Otherwise, likely all you ought to do is redistribute some food to the morning.

    In fact the only thing I can think of which will probably truly help is

    “I really should eat more vegetables.”

    Provided that the “vegetables” in question aren’t potatoes, peas, or corn, and provided that they aren’t soaked in sugary sauce or dressing, it’s hard to see how this could hurt.

    (There’s also “I should drink more water,” but hey, that’s “drink” not “eat.”)

    In summary, if you think that to lose weight you need to eat MORE of something, I suspect the chances are good that you’re wrong.  I wonder why people (me included) are so often tempted to do exactly the opposite of what will meet their goals?

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  • Bell pepper salad.

    I think I got this idea from a Mark Bittman column, but it's obviously a classic combination:

    • 3 red and yellow bell peppers, sliced thinly 
    • About a quarter of a red onion, sliced thinly 
    • 2 fresh tomatoes, chopped
    • Minced fresh jalapeño (I used about a tablespoon
    • Lots of chopped cilantro
    • A cup of frozen corn
    • Juice of 2 limes 
    • Salt and a dusting of chili powder
    • Some crushed corn chips

    Toss together and serve.  I would think if you increased the corn and added a can of drained black beans, there's a one-bowl vegan dinner right there.  But we had it with some sausage patties and a millet side dish.

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  • Recipes you will, erm, love. From a distance.

    Click on this and then click through.  Summary:  Weight Watchers recipe cards.  From 1974.  You've come a long way, fatso baby.  Example that I am not making up:  Fluffy Mackerel Pudding.

    (I was reminded instantly of James Lileks's Gallery of Regrettable Food and was pleased to see that she gave it a shout-out.)

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  • Planning vs. flexibility.

    There's always a tension between planning and flexibility in anything you do, really — something I am still learning.  I like plans.  I like plans so much that I have difficulty jettisoning one even when a much, much better deal comes along.  I like doing what I set out to do.  Living with children as I do now, I'm having to exercise my flexibility a lot more — to change it from "I have a plan" to "I have a plan, but I can change my mind."  

    But I'm still heavily biased towards planning.  I still suspect, for instance, that the key to developing flexibility is more thorough planning.  (Someone somewhere is rolling their eyes at me, I think.  But I press on…)

    I was encouraging pre-planning in the comments at my friend's blog Confessions of a Fat Loser, because writing out the day's meals and snacks the night before (instead of afterwards) had helped me so much.  But of course, what helps one person might not help another, and maybe one of the reasons it worked so well for me was that I get some satisfaction merely from checking off the boxes one by one as I move down the list.  Following a plan makes me happy at some primal level, perhaps enough to make up for the loss of the second servings I planned not to have.   The other two pieces — applying that to the food I would eat, AND putting the right amount of food into the plan — must never have occurred to me before.  Weird, that.

    But then, I am sure there are people who instinctively chafe at plans of any kind, even the sort they make for themselves, and hate being hemmed in.  I would like to be able to offer a suggestion for calorie restriction and/or intentional eating that meshes beautifully with this personality type, the Plan-Free Diet, but honestly, I can't figure out what to do with it.  I keep coming back to …. umm…. restraint and restriction is kind of impossible to do without, even if what you're "restricting" yourself to is on the whole better than what your whimsical, free-spirited self would come up with on the spur of the moment.  

    Let's look at it this way.  As a point of action looms closer and closer, the choices open to you narrow and narrow to the point when you must enact one, and all the freedom collapses into the mere act.   If you do not make a choice in advance, circumstances will make the choice for you.  The sooner you make a decision about what you will do, the more freedom of choice you will have exercised … because the earlier the decision, the larger the pool of options from which the path has been selected.  It's not doublespeak:  Self-restraint is liberating.  You've seen this in other areas.

    So… I just don't think you can do without planning, and still expect to succeed.  But you might do better disguising the plan so you can swallow it more easily… or readying multiple plans that you can pick from in the moment… or have a sort of once-and-for-all plan (an algorithm) that requires hardly any thought once you've begun.

    Disguising the plan.   An example of disguising the plan would be the strategy of "grocery store gate keeper" — keeping the junk out of the house by the simple expedient of not buying any, and making sure there's plenty of healthful choices around instead.  (This mostly works for people whose problem is specific "trigger foods" or being tempted by too much nutrition-poor food, rather than for those whose problem is "too much of a good thing" like mine was.)  It's still a form of planning ahead — intentionally narrowing choices in the future — but because the plan is removed even further back from the decision points, it may not feel like a plan.  

    Multiple plans.  This came up in one of the other comments:

    …[T]he pre-planned menu does have the difficulty that you have to know what you're going to do if it doesn't work, you know, when your menu says 'lasagna' and then you realize you didn't defrost the meat, or that the time got away from you and it is already 6:15, with no time left to make lasagna! This is where I have to rely on a good set of defaults. No matter what, I know I can eat steamed frozen vegetables and beans and rice, or, hard-boiled eggs and salad, or whatever you decide it is going to be. In a home management sense, of course we want to have a nice dinner ready for our family, but it has been important to me to have some 'sure things' up my sleeve for myself. I still do meal planning, of course, but (thankfully!) messing up on my meal planning doesn't have to mean messing up on my eating.

    Plan to be flexible in other words!  Having something "up your sleeve" — a default — is a backup plan.  (And I'll add that it's fine to have a one-person backup plan as well as a whole-family backup plan — yes, the ideal is that the family eats the same foods together at dinner, but when one member really needs to follow a plan for health reasons, it's not going to derail family togetherness if occasionally the backup is "mom has this and kids have that.")  But this is really a good practice for almost anyone.  My dinner plans don't derail very often, so I don't have much trouble with the occasional "screw it, we're ordering pizza" night, but I have default breakfasts, lunches, and snacks ready at all times; I order them up several times a week.  

    Once-and-for-all planning (algorithms).  These are very powerful for the planning-challenged.   An algorithm is a simple, easy-to-remember set of behaviors.  Such a simplified set, it is true, may not cause every single meal to hit the nutritional targets that will help you achieve health.   But the idea is that the simplified set will bring you in to your target on average — if it is easy to follow, so you aren't tempted to cheat yourself, then over the course of a week or so you'll have met your goals just as well as if you had attempted to micromanage yourself.  The classic example of the once-and-for-all algorithm is the No S Diet, which I can't recommend highly enough — it may not turn out to be your thing (it's not really mine), but it is so easy that it is worth a try for almost anyone, especially anyone who is looking for a real lifestyle change and whose problem is mostly excess rather than eating the wrong foods.

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  • How to avoid buying Mom Jeans.

    It's scientific!  (Not really, but fun to read anyway.)

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    1 comment on How to avoid buying Mom Jeans.

  • In which Betty Duffy goes to a poetry reading and stalks for friends.

    Great post that exemplifies the writing you'll find over at Betty Duffy.

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  • The power of memory.

    Oddly enough, one of the skills I have had to cultivate in losing weight, maintaining it, and now losing it again postpartum — is my memory.

    Here's an example.  Today after a full dinner (sauteed mustard greens, raw sugar snap peas and apple slices, and egg-cheese bake), I had a couple of pieces of homemade cinnamon raisin bread, with butter.  Dessert, I told myself!  

    (To tell the truth, they were the last of the breakfast loaf, and I wanted to get to it before the children did.)

    But I was very well aware as I was spreading the butter thickly on the bread that I was thereby disqualifying myself from having anything else the rest of the night.  I can have treats, I can even have dessert; but I can't have treats at every hour of the day.  

    So as I was enjoying the sweet bread with its salty slip of cool butter, I was thinking to myself:  Remember this.  Remember that you are choosing to have this, and also choosing not to have a snack before bed.  Remember that you already made up your mind.  Remember that right now you are sure that this is what you want.

    I concentrated on that for a moment along with the taste and texture of the raisin bread, making a memory strong enough to carry myself through the evening.

    Because it's surprisingly easy to "forget" when my stomach is growling later, that once upon a time, long ago, hours ago, I quite logically knew that what I wanted was NOT to have a snack later on.   But if I tell myself firmly enough this is what I want, and it will still be true that this is what I want later on, when my will is weaker, the memory of that firm will lingers long enough for me to stay true to it.  Or at least, truer than I might hold had I not taken a moment to make the memory.

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  • What Confirmation isn’t.

    Great post on Confirmation at And Sometimes Tea.  Sometimes I wonder if I'm ever going to come to the end of these surprises:  "What do you mean the way we do it here in the U. S. isn't the way it's supposed to be done?"  Although I knew the Eastern rites did it differently, so this just makes it all make sense.

    Confirmation is not a sacrament of maturity; it's meant for children.  Confirmation is not becoming an adult in the church, either.  It is not a sacrament where one claims or affirms the faith for himself, and it is not the sacrament that completes Christian initiation.

    Read and find out what it is.

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