In life, there are so many things that are hard to do.
I just never, ever thought that the sheer act of eating would be one of them. Being an 80’s baby, diet culture was a part of my childhood, and as a teenager, I remember going on my first diet. It was the Grapefruit Diet. You know, the one where you either eat a grapefruit or pour a glass of grapefruit juice down your throat before/with every meal.
Let’s just all agree or agree to disagree with how disgusting either of those options was.
Being thin was so in. If you were thin, you were doing something right. You received the most compliments, everyone wanted to be your friend, and more importantly, the boys were paying attention.
As a parent, however, my mom never told me that I needed to lose any weight. In fact, I don’t remember anyone telling me that I needed to lose weight. That never matters though, does it? Media messaging and diet culture was enough to set up a raging storm of insufficiency and body image issues that have stayed with me for a very long time.
All the way through motherhood.
With access to social media, I believe that mothers have placed more pressure on themselves from all kinds of angles. ‘Bouncing back’ within a ludicrous amount of time is the norm. If you aren’t breastfeeding, you aren’t doing something right and God forbid you feed your baby food with a spoon vs allowing them to self-feed!
Prior to giving Aria her bottle, I used to measure out how much formula she needed to have. Six ounces seemed perfect. After downing the entire bottle, she would scream bloody murder and I had absolutely no idea why (hello, first year of life). Every time she would finish her bottles, she would scream and it never occurred to me that she wanted more!
Wasn’t 6oz a lot? If I gave her more, would that make her gain too much weight? What is an acceptable weight for a 4-month-old? Is she just using the bottle as a pacifier? Why isn’t she just satisfied with 6oz?
Hello, diet culture. Please take your shoes off prior to entering my mind house.
This may not be your story. And you are probably reading this and judging me a little. But, diet culture is a part of many of our lives today. And the fears and restrictions it brings with us are slowly, but surely, creeping into how you and I are raising our kids.
Here are a few examples from observations I’ve made from others and those I’ve made in my own life of how a dieting mindset gets in the way of our children developing a normal and healthy relationship with food:
- “But you just ate!” – this is a sentence I catch myself saying so many times when Aria asks me for another snack. This is definitely something I’ve said to myself when I’ve either just eaten or a little time has passed since my last meal. Questioning one’s appetite is quite common for those following a diet and that hunger you feel isn’t real and can only lead to overeating. We project our fear of eating too much on our kids. Instead, we should allow them to feel that hunger, and then address that biological need with a meal or snack.
- “That thing has too much sugar” – sugar is a touchy subject. But, bear with me for a second here. I want you to take a moment and think back to the last time you went overboard on your favorite dessert. Like, really overboard. And then visualize the moments leading up to it. I’m just guessing here, but did you tell yourself that you shouldn’t eat it? To refrain from it? To avoid it at all costs? And then BOOM! Before you knew it, you were licking the spoon after wiping the bowl clean? No judgement from me, because I know that feeling ALL too well.
If you were to apply that same theory to your kid, the more and more we say no because something has too much sugar, or too much fat, or whatever it may be, the more we’re setting them up to lose control later (think birthday parties, sleepovers at someone else’s house, or college even!). The loss of control is typically a strong response to restriction. The less we label these foods as “bad” or “not good for you” the less exciting they become, which will help establish a more balanced relationship with these kinds of foods.
3. Food eliminations – this is another tricky one (aren’t they all?). Outside of those with a serious, medically diagnosed allergy, a lot of us believe that eliminating certain foods is what will keep us healthy. Dr. Oz is all up in our grill about avoiding gluten, dairy, soy, corn, etc., and that sets up a whole new set of parameters to start fearing foods, thereby resulting in a disordered relationship. Without knowing for sure whether these eliminations will truly benefit our children, we are setting them up for failure. As they get older, these fears will result in a chronic state of stress when it comes to eating. And that is not good for anyone.
We use dieting to control our weight, size, and shape to deal with our extreme body image issues. This is a precursor to this continually increasing statistic.
Our children live in a very different world than we did when we were kids. The pressures we feel today as mothers is nothing compared to what they face today and what they will in the future. Genetic predispositions, socioeconomic conditions, personality traits, anxiety and depression, to name a few, play a part.
And it is our job, as parents, to mitigate this as much as possible.
It starts with not allowing our very deeply ingrained diet mentality from reaching our children. It starts with educating ourselves that mental health is equally important to physical health and that one affects the other.
Most importantly, we must remind ourselves of all that we’ve put ourselves through when we went from one restriction to another. And that we are about so much more than the food we eat. So much more.
