Being Kendra_ Cribs, Cocktails, and Getting My Sexy Back - Kendra Wilkinson [39]
Hank is my worst critic, just like I used to be his. He knows what I want and he knows that I truly want it, so he helps me stay disciplined. But I tried my best to go behind his back. If he catches me he’s like, “Ahhh—what are you doing?” I love it when he does that. No one has ever made me feel like that or put me in my place. I never had a father to yell at me or that male voice in my life that I had to listen to. When I hear that deep voice bellowing, “I know you are sneaking a Dunkaroo!” I love it. He always knows! It’s like that scene in A Christmas Story where the dad is cutting into the turkey and the mom is in the other room screaming, “Stay away from the turkey!”
So, I did what I had always done with things I’m hung up on—I threw it all away. It was hard to do but I did it. I cleaned house. I knew I had to. If it wasn’t in the house, I wouldn’t eat it. I wasn’t ready to get rid of all of this stuff—my cravings weren’t gone yet—but I had to do it. It was just the only option left. Once I stepped back on that treadmill, I regained that sense of self and empowerment that I used to have and used it to fight my food cravings.
You can see how low I got. And how far I strayed from being myself. I felt like I had no control over my body and my health. And my body had been my calling card, my moneymaker, what I was known for for so long. It was a scary journey. Losing that part of my identity, in some way, might have helped me redefine myself in other ways, as a wife and mother. But now that I have lost the baby weight and am back on track, I feel so much better.
Hank and I are making sure that our diet knowledge spills over to Hank Jr. too. I make sure he eats a variety of different healthy options and doesn’t eat the same thing twice on the same day except for veggies and fruit. He can eat those all day long. Anything with meat or bread I don’t let him eat two of the same thing a day. I make sure that if he eats ham for breakfast he won’t eat it for the rest of the day. We make sure we are very balanced in diet. I make sure I don’t give him too much bread or sugar or salt. Kids these days will have juice and sugar cereal in the morning, and then sugared snacks, juice all day, a cookie at lunch, a cheeseburger and fries for dinner with juice, and ice cream. That’s just not right. I’m so OCD about a balanced diet with him. Most of the time we cook his food and make sure that everything (including his sugar and salt) is balanced. He’s so good, he’ll eat steamed veggies without anything on them. We make sure he gets his iron and red meat and chicken and I have fresh-cut deli meat from the deli, not anything that’s prepackaged and soaked in sodium or preservatives.
When we got the clearance that Hank Jr. could eat solid foods, I had so much fun! The very first thing I stuck in his mouth was veggies. I was obsessed with blending; I blended everything I fed him. Carrots, broccoli, squash (spinach was way too stringy)—we gave him everything you could imagine and he loved it. I was so into it that a few times I would meet new moms who had given birth around the same time I did and we’d be talking and they’d say they were just giving their kids jar food, and I passionately started preaching to them—go and get a blender, start blending!
The result? Success. Now he eats straight-on adult food. We are still on the veggie diet for him. You can’t go wrong with any veggies. He loves broccoli and squash. They make it so easy nowadays; everything is