I Don’t Want to Pass My Food Issues on to My Kids

Can you relate to Sandra's story?

For as long as she can remember, Sandra's mom has meticulously counted calories and carefully weighed almost everything she eats. 

When her aunts visit her parent's house, the conversation is often centered on who is doing what diet and how it’s going, together celebrating their wins and commiserating over their struggles. 

Their own mother, Sandra's grandma, is a very restrictive eater who frequently comments on family members’ weight and polices everyone's eating.

Sandra's dad also has a fraught relationship with food. Over the years, he’s swung numerous times from eating everything to restricting something, whether it’s fat, carbs or the hours he’s allowed to eat.

In Sandra’s childhood home, food was feared, moralized and demonized. Almost every eating decision was based on how it would impact one's weight.   

At the pubescent age of 11, when it's normal for kids to gain a lot of weight, Sandra's mom took her to her first weight-loss meeting.

Although she felt a little weird being the only kid in the room, she also felt inspired by the success stories the women in the circle shared, especially when everyone cheered and clapped. 

It felt good to be a part of their club and to be doing something to fix her apparently problematic body.

Ending the Legacy
Stepping into that weight-loss clinic as a young girl launched Sandra on the dieting rollercoaster. Since then, she’s tried every diet under the sun. After more than 20 years of yo-yo dieting, she’s hit rock bottom. 

Even though she doesn’t like her body, she can’t stand the thought of going on one more diet. More than anything, she can’t stand the thought of passing her family’s legacy of body shame and dieting on to her kids.

She doesn’t want them to view food as good or bad, feel guilty about their eating, hate their bodies or obsess over their weight.

Many of my clients who are thinking about starting a family or already have kids express their desire to protect their children from our harmful diet culture. 

They don’t want them to suffer the way they and their family members have and thus are deeply motivated by the idea of not handing down their food and body challenges.

This is also true for many of my clients who don’t have children but have kids in their life, whether it’s their nieces, nephews, friends’ kids, students or team players.

I get really excited when my clients share this desire with me because I know the positive ripple effect that can occur when just one person heals their relationship with food and their body and how doing so can help put an end to a family history of disordered eating and anti-fat bias.

What Kind of Role Model?
For my clients with this goal, we spend time exploring what type of role model they want to be when it comes to food and bodies.

We talk about how they can reclaim their ability to eat intuitively while helping the kids in their life maintain their ability to do so.

Then we do the challenging yet rewarding work that’s required to divest from diet culture and build a peaceful relationship with food and their body, one that they’re excited to pass along. 

Josie's Hit Diet Rock Bottom. Have You, Too?

Josie has been dieting for more than 20 years.

At the age of 11, she went on her first diet. She’s been riding the dieting roller coaster ever since.

Over the years, she’s tried dozens of plans and programs, some of them multiple times.

She can easily rattle off the number of calories, points and carbs in hundreds of different foods.

Again and again, she’s felt the euphoria that comes with weight loss—and the shame that accompanies rebound weight gain.

When friends, co-workers and celebrities have raved about their new diet, she’s always jumped on board believing “This might finally be the one!”

Lately, however, she just can’t muster up her usual enthusiasm.

She’ll start a new diet then abandon it after a week or two.

Her decades of yo-yo dieting have left her feeling frustrated, exhausted, depressed and hopeless—and like a huge failure.

Josie's ready to throw her hands up in the air.

She's finally hit diet rock bottom.

Hitting Diet Rock Bottom
Although she’s unhappy with her weight, Josie can’t stand the thought of going on another diet.

She can’t stomach one more Last Supper, one more Monday of starting over, one more list of good and bad foods.

She’s burned out on tracking, counting, measuring and weighing.

She’s sick of letting her bathroom scale dictate her mood, her behavior and how her day unfolds.

So much of her life, she feels, has been wasted obsessing over every bite, feeling guilty about her choices and strategizing how she can make up for her food sins.

Josie’s tired of packing her own food to take to social gatherings and being preoccupied at parties by all the food she’s not allowed to eat but really, really wants.

She’s sad about how many events she’s skipped because she feared falling off the wagon or didn’t like how she looked.

After decades of being told what to eat, Josie doesn’t even know what she likes anymore.

She eats what she thinks she should, which often leaves her feeling unsatisfied and, understandably, scrounging for more food.

Her long list of food rules has sucked all the joy and pleasure out of eating.

The more she deprives herself, the more she finds herself eating in secret and bingeing on all her forbidden foods.

Many foods are banned from her house because she simply doesn’t trust herself with them.

Josie’s tired of denying her cravings, sneaking food, swinging from restricting to bingeing, and feeling out of control and ashamed.

She’s flat out dieted-out.

No matter how tempting the latest diet may sound, she now knows all too well that it will not improve her relationship with food and her body—it will only make it worse.

Yet, she doesn’t know what to do. For most of her life, all she’s known is dieting.

Sound Familiar?
If any of this sounds familiar, you’ve likely hit diet bottom, too.

Please know, you’re not alone.

I’ve heard hundreds of stories like Josie’s over the years.

And while you might feel like you’re stuck and at a dead end, you’re not.

There is another way; it's called Intuitive Eating.

Intuitive Eating isn't a plan or program but rather a set of guideposts that lead you back to the intuitive eater you can into this world as before diet culture disconnected you from your innate wisdom. 

It's about rejecting the diet mentality and trusting your body's inner cues (e.g., hunger, fullness, pleasure, satisfaction) to guide your eating instead of external rules.

By putting the same effort you put into dieting toward getting out of it, you can cultivate a more peaceful, trusting and roller coaster-free relationship with food and your body.

I don't have any magical powers. Neither do my clients. If we can reclaim our ability to eat intuitively, so can you.

Are You a Pseudo-Dieter?

After years of jumping from one diet to the next and being a slave to the scale, Val hit rock-bottom.

Fed up with the weight-loss roller coaster and obsessing over every morsel she ate, she swore off dieting.

Yet, months after joining the anti-diet movement, she still shuns carbs, avoids snacking and seconds, never eats after 6:30 p.m., and runs an extra mile whenever she has dessert.

Val is a pseudo-dieter.

She genuinely believes she’s given up dieting, yet she continues to engage in dieting behaviors.

As a result, she still experiences many of the side effects of dieting, including thinking about food all the time, struggling with intense food cravings, feeling out of control with her “trigger foods” (ice cream and chips), and feeling guilt, shame and anger when she thinks she’s eaten badly.

Deeply Ingrained
As with Val, the diet mentality can be so deeply ingrained—or hidden under the guise of “health," "wellness” or "lifestyle change"—that you may not realize you're actually pseudo-dieting and that your restrictive eating behaviors are making you vulnerable to the physical and psychological damage dieting causes.

Falling into the pseudo-dieting trap is completely understandable given how ubiquitous and seductive our diet and wellness cultures are.

Here are some more examples of pseudo-dieting:

• Eating only “clean” or “whole” foods.

• Limiting carb or fat grams regardless of what you want or what your body needs.

• Determining what you deserve to eat based on what you ate earlier in the day or if you exercised, rather than your hunger level.

• Compensating for eating “bad” foods by doing extra exercise, skipping your next meal, eating less tomorrow, or going on a cleanse.

• Allowing yourself to only eat at certain times of the day despite your hunger level.

• Becoming vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, etc. for the sole purpose of losing weight.

Releasing the Diet Mentality
Just like an official diet program, pseudo-dieting disconnects you from your body inhibiting your ability to hear and honor the messages it’s sending you.

And, as I mentioned earlier, all restrictive eating, no matter how it’s labeled, leaves you vulnerable to the pitfalls of dieting, from binge eating and weight cycling to food preoccupation and social withdrawal.

Escaping the dieting roller coaster and experiencing true food freedom requires fully letting go of your diet mentality and relearning how to nourish your body based on its internal cues versus external rules—that is, eat intuitively.

As pseudo-dieting behaviors can be quite subtle and disentangling from our pervasive diet culture can be very difficult (but not impossible!), it can be helpful to receive support and guidance. I’m here for you if you need me.