We all remember Socrates’ words from Plato’s works – “It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”

Being overweight takes you further from Nature, from Gods, and from functioning at your full capacity.

The parents are responsible for their kids’ body weight.

As a Pagan father it is your duty to make sure your kids are naturally fit after the image of the Gods.

Thing is, when your kids grow up fat you don’t give them a choice. If you support body positivity so much – let them grow up fit and make a conscious decision to balloon up. Instead you decide on the shape of their body for them, leaving all other doors closed.

So many people try to set their kids up with good education for a better future. Teach them skills, make them perform well at school, make them “kind“, make them conform to societal expectations.

Yet their kids are fat.

Some parents even try to play it as some sort of a cute thing.

Letting your kids grow up fat is the one of worst things you can do to them. It sets them back in almost every aspect of their future life.

This post might piss you off, but it’s not about you – it’s about giving your kids every advantage you can.

Let’s go over what you’re doing to them if you’re feeding them to obesity:

Fat kids have bad nutritional habits

Let’s be honest, it’s almost never some type of hormonal disorder. They just consume too many calories.

The so-called empty calories that don’t come from nourishing & filling foods but instead come from soda, juices, all kinds of bread snacks, ice-cream, chips, and other garbage.

Obese kids are obese because they weren’t fed right, and they weren’t taught to eat right. They will become adults with a luggage of awful food habits, unable to get lean without serious help.

Fat people have low self-control

Bad eating habits go hand in hand with low self-control.

If you teach your kids that it’s OK to become and remain fat, they adopt the general lifestyle of low impulse control. Bad money management, bad relationships, pointless tattoos, lack of perseverance in business – all of that can come from being raised fat.

You as a father are literally responsible for shaping their food habits. Real food, real meals, no snacking, mindful eating – you need to teach them to love all that.

Too many kids nowadays eat processed junk from plastic bags, barely getting any protein, vitamins, and minerals. If you let them get used to that in their childhood, they will have an extremely hard time getting in shape when they grow up.

The Pagan perspective is that there’s a healthy spirit only in a healthy body. We need to be strong and fit, fully realizing our Gods-given physical potential.

Fatness and poverty go hand in hand

It’s a vicious circle.

People who struggle financially choose cheapest and “yummiest” options for every meal, and they end up eating mostly carbs with sauces that are packed with cheap oil fats.

Poverty causes constant stress, so poor people develop food addiction as a coping mechanism.

Same way, poor people are very likely to be less driven and motivated to start businesses and earn money, because they are used to numbing every “unusual” emotion with food. They don’t understand what work accomplishment is, because they get that sense of accomplishment from sugar and fat.

They just never leave their comfort zone, even though it’s really uncomfortable there.

Fat people are insecure and lack confidence

Being fat as a kid is horrible for your character and leads to all kinds of self-esteem and mental health issues.

The modern Western way of life screws up the basics and then spends immense amounts of energy and resources on therapy, medication, and counselling.

Fat kids are bullied often, and some of them may swing into hating themselves, hating food, and hating this world in general.

Fatness corrupts the soul

Fat people are really prone to all the low-energy stuff like lying, addictions, cheating, and so on.

Too many fat people have absolutely no idea how to restrict themselves – they lack discipline. The notions of moderation and delayed gratification are unknown to them and that spreads over all areas of life.

Let one vice enter your life and you will be getting more and more easily corrupt.

The solution

As always, it’s easier to prevent problems than to fix them.

But if things happen so that your kids are reaching unhealthy weight, you can still fix it.

Here’s a couple of things you can do when you realize your kids are getting fat.

Acknowledge

Never ever fall for the mainstream body positivity BS – it’s pure evil. Fix the problem before it goes too deep, because you can do it.

I am always in awe at some parents when they try to justify their kids’ fatness. They say “I just want them to grow up happy, loved, and not neuroticized”. As if being fat is healthy for self-image or guarantees any certain degree of happiness.

Nothing has to be violent or neuroticizing. You, as a parent, have the power to let your kids grow up in shape without them even thinking they are making some sort of an effort or missing out on anything.

The simple truth that it’s not their conscious choice to get fat should activate and motivate you beyond belief.

No one gave you the right to bring them to adulthood out of shape.

Take control

Look, at this point you are responsible for your kids, so stop looking for excuses or ways out. You need to get strict about their nutrition and activity.

They have to start eating clean. Make sure good real food is cooked for them, or start cooking yourself. Make sure they have schedules, rules, and rewards. Make sure they do not appear in situations where they get back to bad eating habits.

Again, this is not a punishment. Being strict does not mean being angry. It’s just how things are in your family from now on, little by little. Impose standards around yourself.

Your wife might resist this and encourage them to resist too. Women will feed their babies to obesity out of love and then send them to therapy for life. This means you as a father have no control over the situation.

Your relatives might be sneaking in some candy bars. That’s part of life – but you still need to help your kids. There will be resistance, especially if all of your family is chubby, but there is no way around it.

Be smart and strategic about it. Start small and get the kids on your side. Watch good movies that inspire them to be fit, follow athletes and show what they eat.

A lot is at stake here. Do you want to look your fat kids in the eyes when they are 20, 25, 30 years old and realize you could’ve brought them up fit?

Have a simple system

Getting in shape is not so much about punishing yourself and excluding the bad foods. The more important part is finding the good foods that you love and sticking to them consistently.

Have a clear list of GOOD foods and a list of BAD foods.

They can eat as much of the good foods as they want.

Be creative. Your own life depends on it.

Shape their habits

You need to break their bad habits and form good ones.

Find places and times where they are getting soda and candy, find who gives it to them, and gradually eliminate these situations.

Rearrange your kids schedule if you have to, so that sugarfat snacking becomes irrelevant. For instance, give them a big meal before they leave home so they are not hungry outside.

Change environments or lifestyles if you have to. Take a summer off and leave in a cabin. It takes two weeks to form or break a habit, can you find two weeks to save your kids from disaster?

Fill up their time with meaningful things – fun stuff, outdoors, physical activities.

Shift their attitude towards food – you have to earn a meal. Get the work done, climb the mountain, finish your workout, get done with fishing – and then we all sit and have a simple fresh hearty meal. Simple healthy things taste the best when they are earned.

Real food above all

Remember that the key component here is not just eliminating bad foods. You need them to get to love eating more of the good foods.

Eat natural protein-rich meals, and then eat nothing until you’re really hungry. Hunger is good for us and we are meant to feel it at least once a day. So many hormones are released and balance us out when we actually let our body use up all of our last meal.

Once everyone is hungry, eat another big clean meal at a table together. Then don’t eat anything again for a while.

Have eggs in the morning and then go hiking. Your next meal is at the top of the mountain. No, juices and sodas are not drinks, they are food. Drink water. No, you can’t have nuts while you’re tying shoelaces. We will eat at the top. Achilles did not eat before battles and neither did any other great heroes.

It won’t even be hard if you do it right, really. A proper breakfast sets them up for half a day. Some of the great options are eggs, sausages with oatmeal, cheese, pasta with cottage cheese and raisins, and so on. Make sure they eat a lot of protein – it satiates them well. Throw in something natural but sweet for fun. Fruits, dried fruits, dates, bananas, a teaspoon of honey – that’s all good stuff.

Remember to be gradual about it. Don’t just show up early from work one day with a printed out menu plan that everyone has to stick to starting tomorrow. People will resist that – and if the kids’ mom or other relatives resist that you will have a harder time.

Cultivate the right mindset

Everyone in our myths and fairy-tales eats A LOT. And no one is obese.

That’s because they feast (on real, nutritious food!) and then they fast.

Travel, battle, love, argue – whatever we read about great heroes and warriors, no one was snacking all the time.

In the very recent past, fatness has always been a deviation, something freakish, very rare, coming either from some hormonal mutation or ultra-lavish lifestyle of the corrupt elites. The way it has been normalized is not normal.

We don’t live to eat. Rather, we nourish our bodies to do great things.

You need to center your whole kids’ life and outlook around doing stuff and growing, rather than picking what to indulge in.

Most of our modern world resembles a huge shopping mall full of bored and empty people roaming around and picking between foods, tv shows, games and drugs, so you have to go against the mainstream one way or another. Shape your own reality.

Show example

Everything I wrote above applies and will work if you, the father, are not obese. If you are, this is a wake-up call.

I understand life is hard, but if you’re too fat yourself then there will be very little effect in everything you try to do.

Kids don’t really see any other adults in their daily life, so you are what they become, at least at first.

There’s tons of stuff online on nutrition, and there will be a learning curve if you’re new to it. But there is no way around learning it.

Learn it with your kids and go through your weight loss journey together, you will become closer thanks to that.

No matter how bad the food habits are in your environment, you can still find a way.

It’s for your kids, AND for you.

Do you want to be reborn into a fat family or a fit family? Break the circle.