I'm really not a big fan of kids, that's no real secret, but I'm definitely not a fan of parents that don't take responsibility for their kids. And, when that happens, I will and I DO step up and defend the kids, without a doubt, because that's not cool.
I was in the "presence of royalty" today, I was told, as one of Cheonan's wealthiest families entered Hulk's. I'm familiar with the wife, she's the sister of a friend, and I just recently started training her two children. Tonight the father came with them to the club and he congratulated me on the great success of our club. Coming from a very successful business man who not only owns the city's largest wedding hall but also one of my favourite fine dining restaurants, it was a big compliment and I really appreciated the flattery and recognition. However, the price to pay for such flattery was more work for me. In addition to being the head coach of both his son's and daughter's training, I am also responsible for making them a post training meal and, as of tonight, I am also somewhat of a personal shopper for them. I gained credit card purchasing power tonight and already have an order of health food items coming from overseas for them. Apparently I am also responsible for defending the two children too as I was quick to find out when the father started discussing their weight. I really can't and won't get into the details of what was said but it shocked me that he could say such things about his kids to me with them and his wife within listening range. If he could say those things to me, a stranger, than I only wonder what he says to his kids. And on that note, I told Snickers that if we ever had kids and I ever caught him saying such negative things about our kids than I'd seriously round-robin kick him and tell the kids to do the same.
Parents are parents. Their roles and responsibilities range from cleaning snotty noses to setting positive examples for their kids and encouraging them to be the best they can be. I'm pretty sure selecting what food they get to eat and cooking it is also one of their responsibilities too. So when a parent complains about their children being overweight, I can't help but wonder why the heck the parent thinks it's solely the child's fault. Children reflect the parents, not only in the obvious sense like genetics and personalities but also in lifestyles and various habits.
I don't want to speak ill of the father, honestly. I know he is a good man, he loves his children and he was just joking but I think jokes like that he shared with me are hurtful, harmful and not at all encouraging. He surely wants them to become much healthier, it's obvious, but playing the blame game and making jokes about it isn't the way to go about it. He is more to blame for their obesity than they are and that's a hard cold fact that I know he doesn't want to accept. I think he's given up actually and that's sad because his children are amazing. They're absolutely adorable, incredibly intelligent and they have such a positive contagious energy about them. And, despite their obesity, they have such an amazingly high confidence about them that is so much higher than any other child their age that I've met. I know they too so eagerly want to drop the weight. I know they do, the son tells me it everyday. I too want them to lose the weight, so much so that I personally have made the little boy a VIP member here at Hulk's. This means for the next three months he'll be training with me one-to-one five days a week for free. I'll train him, feed him and then send him home with healthy snacks for the next day. He's almost 90kgs and he's only 13 but oh boy is he super dedicated to losing weight. He came last Friday just as we were wrapping up our birthday party for one of my mini assistants and someone offered him a cake. All it took me to do was ask him if he seriously wanted to eat the cake. "You can eat it", I told him, "it is a special occassion but don't eat sweets like this everyday". And on that note, he took only one bite and then licked the cake. We all had a good laugh at that but I was so very proud of him. His piece of cake sat on the juice bar for the entire duration of his stay at Hulk's that day -- just a little over an hour.
I left the parents talking with Snickers while I got busy training with these two mini Hulkies. Their training regime lasts about 40 minutes and then they sit at the juice bar while I prepare them a post training meal. I now give them a few options to pick from. Tonight they wanted protein smoothies so I slipped in some extra spinach into their smoothies for them. When they asked why they couldn't eat extra fruit in their smoothie, I told them it was because it was already too late in the evening. "Fruit has natural sugar in it and because you're going to bed soon, your body won't burn it off before bedtime", I explained. "What does my body do with it then?" asked the little boy. "Your body will store it as fat", I answered. "My dad said I am fat", blurted the little girl. Honestly I seriously could have cried at that moment but instead I reached over the juice bar and held her little hands. She's a 7 year old that almost weighs as much as I do at age 34. "You are NOT fat", I told her. "You HAVE fat. You also have fingernails but you are not fingernails either... and you have eyes, ears, and a mouth but you're not an eye, ear or mouth. Those are just parts of you. You're a beautiful little girl and your father knows that." She smiled and continued drinking her protein shake like that whole conversation just hadn't happened. I, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to hug that little girl and cry.
After they finished their protein smoothies, they got up from the juice bar. I hugged the little girl, the boy told me "Amy Coach I love you" as he blew me a kiss, and then I watched as they all changed into their outdoor shoes and left. I then sat down by the coal heater, feeling so emotionally tested from what had just gone down in the span of an hour and cried.
My parents were always so incredibly supportive of me, still very much are, and I suppose growing up I just assumed everyone's parents were. I now know that I was blessed and blessed more than perhaps I'll even know. Tonight's situation had hit a sensitive spot with me and it was so unexpected. It's not like it hit a past memory that I had buried so deep or anything, it wasn't like that at all. I don't have any negative memories of my parents, nothing remotely even close to that. I think the only thing about my looks that I was ever overly teased about were my eyes and eyebrows. People used to joke and ask if my mailman was Asian but because I was so young I had no idea what the heck that even meant. It wasn't until much later, when I learned what they were implying, was I actually insulted. And as for my eyebrows, they've always been so much darker than the hair on my head. People used to tease me that I colored them with markers or dyed them but my father has black hair and so my black eyebrows were a "birthday gift" he gave me before I was born.
I really can't exactly pin point what or why what I heard today hit me as such but it really stirred up so many emotions within me and for that past hour I felt as if I had just ridden an emotional roller coaster that everyone else thought was fun and amusing but that I felt sick being on and wanted to get off. I'm going to make these kids healthy, you just watch, but don't you dare think for a moment it's because the father has asked me personally to help. I'm not getting paid to transform the boy but he and his sister will be transformed, you just wait. I'm transforming them both for their own sake, because young kids should be doing what kids do -- running around and playing in the park, not talking about calorie counting. Their weight problems have already robbed them a lot of their childhood so it'd be nice help stop the continuation of it. Every kid deserves to be a kid.
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