Expert says children’s innate senses best route to good diet
In a way, we program our kids to be fat.By: Tammy Swift, INFORUM
- Dr. Michelle May
- "Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat"
In a way, we program our kids to be fat.
We don’t mean to. We actually want to teach them to be fit and healthy.
The core issue, says Dr. Michelle May, is that we teach them to doubt their innate intelligence about food. We tell them to eat when they aren’t hungry and to keep eating when they’re full. Even worse, we saddle foods with value judgments. “If you eat this icky-tasting-but-good-for-you broccoli,” we tell them, “you can have this bad-for-you-but-delicious cake.”
Add in factors like our inactive lifestyles and abundant-food culture, and it’s little wonder that childhood obesity rates have doubled for preschoolers and tripled for 6- to 11-year-olds since 1974, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But there’s good news. “Children are born with the most important skill – the instinctive ability to know how much food their body needs. Toddlers in perpetual motion eat only small amounts of food but manage to eat frequently enough to meet their needs,” says May, whose new book, “Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat” (Greenleaf Book Group Press, $24.95) encourages people to break the diet-binge cycle and re-learn their natural hunger signals.
Parents can learn to preserve their child’s innate wisdom about when and how much to eat, May says, while also gently teaching them to make healthful choices about what to eat.
“If we take the responsibility of providing a variety of healthy choices and modeling healthy behavior and showing a healthy attitude about all these foods, they will maintain their own weight accordingly,” May told The Forum recently.
As an example, May points to a female acquaintance who has never struggled with food or weight. The woman told May her parents always kept a filled candy dish around the house. As a child, the woman got so used to the candy dish that she barely noticed it. She would help herself to a piece or two now and then, but only if she was in the mood for it. When other kids came over to play, however, they would clean out the candy dish. Candy was such a special treat to them that they couldn’t control themselves when given unlimited access to it.
In short: When we severely restrict certain foods, we actually make them more powerful. Human nature being what it is, we want what we aren’t supposed to try. And so we never learn to enjoy those foods in a healthy, appropriate way.
May knows this from experience. An overweight child, she struggled with food and her weight throughout her young adult life. “I seemed to have enough control to get through medical school and to practice medicine, yet I didn’t have control over this one area of my life.”
At the same time, May noticed her husband and young children never struggled with food. They ate when they were hungry and stopped when they were full.
When May realized the real answer was a return to intuitive eating, it took her a year “to get my own head straight.” She learned to recognize why she was eating, how to get away from the “good food, bad food” mentality and how to escape the restrictive dieting that set her up for binges and feelings of failure.
As a result, May formed the Am I Hungry? Mindful Eating Program, which forms the basis of her book.
Here, May shares tips on how we can help our own children form healthy, lifelong attitudes about food.
- Pay attention when kids say they’re hungry or full. Children know. They are born with the ability to naturally regulate their food intake to meet their caloric needs.
- Don’t force children to clean their plates or bribe them with dessert for finishing a meal.
- Try not to use food as a reward. Instead, reward desired behavior with praise, extra attention and privileges.
- Don’t use food to comfort kids. Use understanding words and hugs instead.
- Help your child develop interests and skills that increase their success and pleasure so they will be less likely to turn to food for fulfillment.
- Teach your children to deal with their emotions effectively so food won’t serve that purpose for them.
- Don’t impose stringent food rules since this may lead to rebellious eating when your children are out of your control. Many nutrition experts agree that making certain foods forbidden also makes them more enticing. “In my opinion, never letting a kid have a sweet invests those foods with too much significance, which can cause problems later on,” writes Susan L. Johnson, director of the Children’s Eating Laboratory at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center.
- Avoid labeling foods as “good” or “bad.” Instead, teach your kids how to balance eating for nourishment with eating for enjoyment.
- Involve children in shopping, meal planning and preparation. This is a great opportunity to teach them about nutrition – and they’re more likely to try new foods they helped pick.
E Sit down and eat together as a family. Mealtimes should be a pleasant time to reconnect with one another and model healthy eating and conversation.
- Help your child build a lifetime exercise habit by reducing the amount of time your family spends in sedentary activities like TV or video games.
- Plan fun activities that provide everyone with exercise, enjoyment and time together.
- Be a positive, encouraging role model for your family. When your children see you enjoying healthful foods and physical activity, they’re more likely to do the same.
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Readers can reach Forum reporter Tammy Swift at (701) 241-5525
Tags: eat what you love love what you eat, michelle may, life, moms, kids, food, books, authors, obesity
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