Mother and child update

[LadyPantera]

Hi all,

My name is Alana and I had posted a topic back in July about my daughter's weight issues and that I had decided to go low carb.  Then I kind of fell off the face of the forum.  Sorry for that.  I wanted to let you know that we didn't fall off the wagon.  Low carb living has been a success and even though I decided to go low carb for my daughter's sake, I am at my lowest weight in 7 years.  My daughter, Salena (9 years old), weighed 106 lbs at the beginning of summer and now she weighs 105 lbs and is an inch taller.  She had lost more in August, but I made the mistake of allowing her to have smoothies for breakfast once school started, especially if we were running late.  I noticed that I was losing weight like crazy and she had started gaining weight again.  Then I realized that the only difference in our diets were the smoothies, she was having them, but I wasn't.  I was observing her behavior around food and noticed that she started to want smoothies when she got home from school also.  It was clear that she was in full blown sugar addiction mode and smoothies had become her new fix.  So I cut smoothies from the morning menu and her weight is slowly declining, though she has moved to liking apples and oranges frequently and I know it is slowing down her progress.  We have one day a week that we eat one "regular" meal at a restaurant, but I plan to gradually lessen those meals types as my cooking abilities improve.  My next goal is to make a xylitol sweetened cheesecake with a crushed walnut crust.  

@Doug and Sherri - I know that you have some cooking videos on the website, but have you considered making a cooking DVD or having weekly cooking classes via Skype?  I have attention deficit disorder and have difficultly making anything from a written recipe, eg, when attempting to make jello, I didn't finish reading the back of the box and almost didn't add the 2 cups of cold water after the powder dissolved in the 2 cups of hot water.  Luckily, my stepfather knew how make jello and notified me of my oversight.  I know that video demonstrations are incredibly helpful when I'm cooking, especially if Salena and I are trying to make something together.

I will do my best to stay active in the FTS community from now on.  Thank you for providing great support for all of us!

Alana

[mouseissue]

We'll be here for you, Alana!

[Doug Varrieur]

Cooking classes via Skype......interesting idea Alana. I think if we were to undertake that kind of scheduled schooling technique we would have to arrange some form of tuition. Give me your thoughts, if we designed a program which ran an online Skype class for an hour 3 times per week what would be a fair tuition?

How about other forum members, have you an interest in such an undertaking? If so, please chime in with your thoughts  

[umpa]

I think at your daughters age teaching her to cook is a great idea!! that way you can teach her what is in the food she eats.I love your idea for the skype cooking classes.I like you learn quicker if someone shows me rather than reading something.I will speak to Doug.i am so glad you are back,I have wondered from time to time how your daughter is doing.We can do a low carb smoothie for her just ask umpa.

[LadyPantera]

Sorry for the delayed response.  I was thinking about the idea further and realized that we all live in different time zones and that it may be difficult to coordinate all of the students' schedules to be able to do a live cooking class.  What would work, however, is a membership to a video cooking lesson database that is added to about two times per week with new meals.  After new videos are added, they can be categorized (Breakfast, Snacks, Lunch, Family Meals, Quick Meals, etc) and students can go directly to the type of item that they want to prepare.  You can give people an option to pay monthly or pay for an entire year in advance and receive a discount and the e-Cookbook (incentives).  The students can then vote weekly on which recipes they want to see demonstrated.  You would want to have a fair amount of videos complete before launching, just in case you were unable to prepare new ones due to an emergency.  If you haven't already, I would start a new thread and ask the community what they think.  How many people would be interested, how much they think it would be worth, how often they would want to see new videos added? 

[Doug Varrieur]

Thanks for the thoughts, I'm still intrigued with the live Skype idea...the time zone issue is a problem though. Things to think about