{"id":3673,"date":"2012-06-26T21:29:28","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T04:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=3673"},"modified":"2025-11-02T17:29:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T00:29:31","slug":"how-to-create-a-hypchondriac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=3673","title":{"rendered":"How to create a hypchondriac"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>If you take a 14 year old (and I don’t know if said child needs to BE male, I just know mine is) who happens to be BOTH Aspergers and High Anxiety and you ADD a Health class… well that equals Hypochondriac.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the year my oldest son, Luke, began health class.\u00a0 If you’ve read the blog you know his struggles and mine.\u00a0\u00a0 You may even know his twists on normal teen rebellion which manifest into politics and religion.\u00a0\u00a0 But you may not know how he hit the trifecta of extreme when he took Health class.<\/p>\n

sigh.<\/p>\n

The first step down the slippery slope was when the teacher taught about drugs and mental disease.\u00a0 Now, for a boy who is on daily medication this was troubling to him.\u00a0 Lucky for me he has no problem talking to me about things that trouble him.\u00a0 So we had lively discussions about drugs (and most people would agree or find shocking my opinion but since my addiction is books I suppose I’m less of an alarmist than others who may be addicted to food, alcohol or holier-than-thou religious precepts.)\u00a0 And we had a matter of fact discussions of mental disease, how it’s sometimes NOT the fault of the individual but of genetics or environment.\u00a0 So the medication is less like “drugs” and more like “vitamins” in its application.<\/p>\n

I thought we’d weathered that without much problem until the teacher showed a movie in class called Forks Over Knives<\/em>.\u00a0 Sigh.\u00a0 This film brings together ALL the negative consequences to a diet high in meat, processed foods.\u00a0 “Forks Over Knives<\/em> examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting animal-based<\/strong> and processed foods.”<\/p>\n

So of course, he then demanded to become a Vegetarian and began to pepper me with questions whenever I shopped or cooked.\u00a0 “Is this organic?\u00a0 Why don’t you buy organic?\u00a0 Do you WANT to give me cancer?”\u00a0\u00a0 [Yes, boy, I birthed you only to slowly kill you with cancer by feeding you… am I not devious!\u00a0 Sheesh]<\/p>\n

Then his teacher told him that dairy also causes cancer and now he refuses all dairy.\u00a0 He begged for soy milk and tofu and more fruit.\u00a0 My compromise was a small test pint of soy milk and one package of tofu he’d have to learn to cook himself.\u00a0 Which he did, but now just eats it raw and loves the soy vanilla milk.\u00a0 Personally, I’m not sure HOW he can eat straight tofu and his brothers won’t even carry the grocery bag it in cuz they see it as THAT gross.\u00a0\u00a0 But I’m a mother willing to let her teens do a bit of harmless exploration in their self discovery process.<\/p>\n

Yet after a few months of this I noticed a change in his body that began to panic me.\u00a0 Prior to all this he was developing a lean and muscled body and was taking pride in that.\u00a0 Doing sit ups & push ups and he even had a nice 4 pack going!\u00a0 After this diet change which was heavy on carbohydrates and soy as a substitute for EVERYTHING; calcium, protein, fiber.\u00a0 I watched an unsightly layer of fat seem to appear overnight and cover him.\u00a0 Now his stomach protruded as if he had no muscle tone there and were those early man-boobs?\u00a0\u00a0 My thoughts go to “isn’t soy a natural estrogen?\u00a0 Isn’t that BAD for a growing MALE!”<\/p>\n

Yet every time I expressed my concern he would get upset saying, “I’m trying to prevent heart disease!!”\u00a0 I’d shoot back, “You’re 14!!!!\u00a0 You do not HAVE heart disease!”\u00a0 Lectures on moderation were met with deaf ears.\u00a0 Parental orders of meat once or twice a week were met with sullen words of, “You don’t respect my choices.”\u00a0 Cursing the health teacher whenever Luke would come home from school with ANOTHER bad thing he’d now had to take preventative measure for I began to joke about High Anxiety + Health Education = Hypochondria.<\/p>\n

Finally I just stopped buying the soy & tofu.\u00a0 I cited money reasons to Luke and bought Chocolate Almond Milk in hopes the OTHER children would like it.\u00a0 My middle son stopped liking milk a while ago and I’m trying to get HIM to eat less carbs for breakfast and more protein AND variety.\u00a0 That was a no go, but I know Luke will finish it off once he’s done with the soy milk (curse that Costco bulk!)<\/p>\n

The good news is today I found an article to combat the movie Forks Over Knives.\u00a0 Ironically to help write this blog.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/articles.mercola.com\/sites\/articles\/archive\/2011\/10\/13\/vegetarian-movie-forks-over-knives–critically-reviewed.aspx<\/p>\n

Sorry, it won’t link in but you can copy paste I’m sure.\u00a0 This article promotes non-processed food eating but advocates meat and points out the faults in the logic of the movie.\u00a0 Thank Goodness is all I can mumble and cannot WAIT to show this to my 14 year old.<\/p>\n

I don’t mind a health enthusiastic teen and I’ll admit I’m doing a bit more healthy eating than before but extremes are just no fun, right or left!\u00a0\u00a0 I kinda dread the next school year’s batch of learning!\u00a0 What drama lies in wait for me!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you take a 14 year old (and I don’t know if said child needs to BE male, I just know mine is) who happens to be BOTH Aspergers and High Anxiety and you ADD a Health class… well that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3673"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3741,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3673\/revisions\/3741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}