20 Reasons Why Dieting Is F**king Hard When You Have Kids

Motherhood presents many lessons. For example, it turns out that after producing children and gaining weight, ladies develop a mom bod, which is exactly not what any mom expects. A mom bod has hips and dips, bumps and valleys, spider veins and saggy parts. But they also have verve and swagger because who wouldn’t want to strut with confidence and pride after birthing an entire person?!

Getting dressed can feel like trying to dress a beach ball; shirts ride up and pants ride down, and honest to Saint Pete, what are we supposed to do with these new hips? We spend our days chasing our kids, cleaning houses, holding down jobs, and being the glue that holds our families together. Another lesson from the wisdom of motherhood? Everywhere you turn there are distractions and temptations forcing the success of a diet to hinge on a mom’s willingness to turn a desire to slim down into a full-time job.

Why are diets even on our radars?

I get it, I want to be sexy too — or at least some semblance of the kind of sexy I was pre-motherhood. Turns out dieting when you have kids is fucking hard and here is why:

1. Kids basically live on snacks all damn day long.

2. There comes a point when you can only eat so many bananas or apples even though they are virtually perfect food for on-the-go.

3. Stress eating comes in handy to prevent moms from losing their shit.

4. So do evening cocktails.

5. Diets always die a slow death around mid-afternoon, which incidentally is the same time the kids get off the school bus and is right before the witching hour.

6. They said they wanted chicken nuggets for dinner and then refused to touch them. Damn things aren’t going to eat themselves, and really, you don’t want to waste food, right?

7. Salad is not as satisfying as carbs.

8. No matter how many times Goop or Pinterest tell you that kale smoothies are delightful, you know better.

9. Muffin tops aren’t really that unsightly — we tell ourselves when faced with the choice between drive-thru or going home, cooking, bribing everyone to eat dinner, putting up with sass over broccoli, then giving up and wanting to cry because you could have had takeout.

10. Tomorrow is such an easy concept to deceive ourselves into not feeling guilty over eating a brownie — or three.

11. Maxi dresses were invented for a reason, dammit.

12. Jillian Michaels DVDs do work, but you have put up with being yelled at by your TV while your kids yell at you in the background.

13. Running? Hahaha.

14. Cheese sauce made from cauliflower sounds like corporal punishment.

15. Counting calories sounds like math. After helping with homework, we all know that math is an asshole.

16. The last time I checked, you can’t be a MILF without having a mom bod (hello, 18-hour curves).

17. Mom hips are like a built-in shelf for carting babies and toddler around. Why ruin that with a diet?

18. At some point, every mom thinks to herself, Ugh, I’d rather be fat than eat this stupid diet food.

19. “Science” keeps flip-flopping on what is “healthy” and what is “not healthy.” Like, last week when they said red wine was bad for you, but then this week they said red wine help you lose weight. Well, which is it?!

20. It turns out that contrary to popular online belief, most moms don’t GAF about dieting and are quite happy the way they are. Go figure.

For some moms, dieting comes easy, or at least is a thing that they can do without as much stress as the rest of us. And to them I say, more power to you! You women inspire me! But for the rest of us with the loose skin and the sinking self-esteem because of pressure to fit dieting into an already exhausting schedule, I say let it go.

Dieting shouldn’t be the thing that moms stress out over. We already have plenty to worry about. Who cares if muffin tops or saggy asses are a reality of motherhood? Spending our precious time worrying about these things is pointless. I’m putting the damn diet app down, and I’m having a donut. You should join me, I mean, if you want to.