Sandra K. remembers her mother constantly worrying
about her weight, forbidding foods like ice cream in the
house, and telling Sandra to watch what she ate, too, to
“keep from getting fat.” Today Sandra struggles
not to recreate that scenario with her daughter, knowing
that the attitudes and behaviors Sandra learned as a child
have exacerbated, if not caused, her eating and weight struggles
as an adult.
 Fortunately
for her daughter, Sandra is an enlightened parent when it
comes to eating and weight issues. Far too many parents remain
in the clutches of the diet mentality, believing that the
key to successfully achieving healthy weights lies in ignoring
our internal cues and following diet advice instead. Their
anxiety about their own eating leads them to try to manage
their children's eating in the same way.
According to Ellyn Satter, RD, well-known child feeding expert
and author of Secrets
of Feeding a Healthy Family, children can get too
fat from overfeeding
and, in a sense, from underfeeding, too – that is, feeding
children in a way that interferes with their ability to regulate
their own intake. By teaching children they cannot trust their
internal cues to tell them what, when and how much to eat,
we set children up for lifelong struggles with eating and
weight.Just observing a parent's disordered eating behavior
can also set a child up for struggles. It doesn't go
unnoticed when we regularly skip meals, count calories, exercise
excessively or otherwise try to ‘control' our
weight.
Modeling Healthy Eating
 Clearly,
to give our daughters (and sons) the best chance of developing
healthy eating attitudes and behaviors, we need to adopt those
attitudes and behaviors ourselves. Consider these thoughts
to help reframe attitudes about weight and healthy eating
and help your child remain or become a normal eater. Most
of these tips are from Francie Berg's excellent book
Women
Afraid to Eat, with thoughts from the Green Mountain
healthy eating program.
- Eat at least one family meal together daily,
if possible, with the television turned off.
Studies show that meals together as a family enhance the
health and well-being of our children.
- Teach decision-making and problem-solving skills.
Healthy eating, and healthy living in general, involve decision-making
and problem-solving. Work through problems ‘out loud'
so children can learn the process.
- Promote positive self-talk. Read “Changing
Negative Self-Talk” for insight into how
we can talk more positively to ourselves around the issue
of weight and healthy eating.
- Promote communication and sharing of feelings.
Emotional eating is often an attempt to bury feelings that
we would better deal with in the open.
- Develop interests and skills that
lead to success, pleasure and fulfillment without emphasis
on appearance. Sports, not modeling, for example.
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