Hey, I have a potentially rude question to ask you,” my cousin (and one of my closest friends) typed to me in a Facebook message. It was New Year’s Day and we had just celebrated my daughter’s third birthday with a big family meal.

“Are you pregnant?” she typed. She had seen a photo of me that my mother had posted on Facebook. In it, my husband and I are smiling and laughing with our three kids as our daughter blows out the candles on her cake.

Now, I know I had had a rather indulgent Christmas. With my parents visiting (and my father’s affinity for breakfast meats and evening cocktails), I hadn’t been eating as healthily as I normally would. In fact, my mother has been visiting for months to help with our childcare needs. When your parents are visiting, you eat what they eat. No coconut curries with brown rice – it’s meat and two types of veg every single night followed by whatever sweet thing my mother had baked up that day.

Everyone was wondering but I was the only one brave enough to ask

So, yes, I was aware that I had put on a few pounds. Also, in this specific photo, I was wearing a baggy shirt – so I can understand where my cousin was coming from. But it was what she said after I told her that, ‘No, I’m just fat,’ that bothered me the most.

“Oh… awkward!” She typed. “Everyone was wondering but I was the only one brave enough to ask.”

This is exactly the kind of message we don’t need to receive from the women in our lives. I work really hard, I spend quality time with my kids and I try (in vain) to keep my house clean to avoid a complete mental breakdown. My kids are really young. They require all of me when I’m home. My job is really demanding – the business I work for is also young. It requires all of me when I’m there.

What I’m trying to say is this: I’m just so tired.

So, no. I don’t go for evening runs. I don’t want to leave my house after spending two hours of my day commuting to go to a fitness class. I don’t have time to log every meal and to count every calorie.

That doesn’t mean I’m never going to do these things, but right now, with my kids being little and my job security depending on my performance, I don’t have an extra ounce of energy to spare.

The thing is, my cousin is in the same boat. She works, she’s the breadwinner in her family, she has young children and she struggles with her weight. She and I should be supporting each other.

A new you at the expense of your self-esteem

With every new year, you are constantly being bombarded about creating a “new you”. Throwing out the chocolate and booze and making weightloss goals. This is the time of year where gyms and lifestyle businesses make their money; sometimes at the expense of your self-esteem.

To that I say: just no. Not today. Not this year.

I’m going to enjoy myself as best I can. I want to spend quality time with my kids, whether that’s outside enjoying nature, or inside, snuggled on the couch watching their favourite cartoons.

I’m making career goals. I’m determined to make my job a secure one. I love what I do and I want to be successful to ensure I can keep doing it.

Flexitarian diet

I know how to eat healthily and mindfully. My dairy-farmer husband and I follow a flexitarian diet. It consists of eating plant-based foods for most of our meals while indulging in excellent-quality meat, sourced locally from our own cows, our farmer neighbours and friends, or our local butcher, who raises his own animals and has his own abattoir. Because we’re paying more for the meat we consume, we just eat less of it.

We certainly didn’t need the recently-released EAT-Lancet Report to tell us how we should be eating. The scientists claiming that we need to cut out meat and dairy to save the environment have obviously never been to Ireland.

In other parts of the world, industrial, large-scale beef, dairy and chicken farms give off massive carbon emissions. In Latin America, genetically modified soy farms are destroying the rainforest. Clear-cutting the jungle in Sumatra for palm oil is killing off native species and the environment.

Everything in moderation

Everything in moderation, my grandmother always said. I have to agree with that sentiment. Having moved to Ireland from abroad, I’ve noticed so many ways the Irish way of life is “greener” than elsewhere.

There are necessary steps we still need to make as a nation, but our farming methods and raw ingredients are some of the finest in the world.

I suppose the point I’m trying to make is – be kind to yourself.

Don’t put undue pressure on yourself to be a certain size or live a certain way while your kids are small. Don’t let lifestyle brands and online influencers tell you all the things you should be doing. And don’t let cousins fat-shame you. If you focus on the happiness of you and your family, everything else will fall into place.

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