Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / How to Talk to Kids About Diets, Weight, and Food with Virginia Sole-Smith

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How to Talk to Kids About Diets, Weight, and Food with Virginia Sole-Smith · Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to parent Data.
0:01
Speaker 2: I heard of Virginia soul Smith's new book, Fat Talk,
0:05
Speaker 2: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture a few months ago,
0:08
Speaker 2: and I was so excited. I immediately insistent on reading
0:11
Speaker 2: it and including something in the newsletter.
0:13
Speaker 1: We recorded this.
0:13
Speaker 2: Interview then, in large part because I was afraid I
0:16
Speaker 2: would miss the chance of having to do it. I'm
0:18
Speaker 2: a big fan of Virginia's She's a journalist, an author,
0:21
Speaker 2: a podcaster, a writer of the excellent subsac newsletter Burnt Toast,
0:25
Speaker 2: and a mom.
0:27
Speaker 1: We do not always agree, but I have tremendous.
0:31
Speaker 2: Respect for her, and I always always learn something when
0:34
Speaker 2: we talk.
0:35
Speaker 1: This conversation feels personal to me.
0:37
Speaker 2: As a child of the nineteen eighties, I have many
0:39
Speaker 2: of these standard eighties hang ups about weight and food.
0:42
Speaker 2: A big parenting fear of mine is passing my food
0:45
Speaker 2: stuff onto my kids. So I'm personally grateful for this
0:47
Speaker 2: book and for this interview, and now onto Virginia. Virginia welcome,
0:55
Speaker 2: Thank you for joining me, Thank you for having me.
0:58
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk today mostly about your new
0:59
Speaker 1: boo book, Fat Talk.
1:00
Speaker 2: I was really excited to get to read the book,
1:03
Speaker 2: and I think that it is an important book with
1:06
Speaker 2: those words capitalized.
1:07
Speaker 1: I also think it's a great read.
1:09
Speaker 2: But there are a lot of books that I enjoy
1:11
Speaker 2: reading which I don't think are important. And I think
1:13
Speaker 2: this book is part of a broader conversation, a hard
1:17
Speaker 2: conversation about how we talk to kids about weight and
1:19
Speaker 2: body image and how we interact with those issues socially,
1:22
Speaker 2: and a bunch of things around that. So before we
1:26
Speaker 2: start the conversation, I actually want to put out in
1:28
Speaker 2: this conversation that I personally find these issues really challenging.
1:32
Speaker 2: And I've talked about this before, probably even with you.
1:35
Speaker 2: I have a lot of stuff about weight and food control,
1:37
Speaker 2: which is part of my personal journey as a child
1:40
Speaker 2: of the nineteen eighties and a teenager of the nineteen
1:42
Speaker 2: nineties who went to a boarding school.
1:44
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that will do it.
1:46
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:46
Speaker 2: And so part of why I think this book is
1:48
Speaker 2: so important is because one of my main parenting goals
1:52
Speaker 2: is not to pass this particular aspect of my stuff
1:55
Speaker 2: onto my kids.
1:56
Speaker 1: And I think I am not alone in that.
1:58
Speaker 2: So that's how how I'm part of how I am
2:01
Speaker 2: coming into this.
2:02
Speaker 4: I think it's how we all show up to it,
2:04
Speaker 4: and one we or another. So, yeah, we're here.
2:07
Speaker 1: We're doing it all right, So get started.
2:09
Speaker 2: I want you to just introduce yourself, Introduce the book,
2:11
Speaker 2: tell us why you wrote it, tell me what you
2:14
Speaker 2: hope people will get out of it.
2:16
Speaker 3: Sure.
2:17
Speaker 4: So, I'm Virginia soul Smith. I am a journalist. I
2:20
Speaker 4: have been doing health journalism for about twenty years. The
2:24
Speaker 4: first dat or so was mostly for women's magazines, which
2:28
Speaker 4: still existed in the early two thousand and you know,
2:32
Speaker 4: I was doing a lot of articles very much from
2:35
Speaker 4: the same place that I think you can relate to
2:38
Speaker 4: of like, obviously thinness is the goal. Obviously finness equals health.
2:42
Speaker 4: Obviously we're always pursuing thinness. And started to really chafe
2:46
Speaker 4: against that framework and ask a lot of questions about
2:49
Speaker 4: what the data really said, and over the last decade
2:54
Speaker 4: have really shifted I would say pretty much a total
2:57
Speaker 4: one to eighty. Really started to recogniz the harm I
3:01
Speaker 4: had caused through a lot of that earlier work, do
3:03
Speaker 4: a lot of unlearning, and what it really comes down
3:06
Speaker 4: to is I started to understand the concept of anti
3:08
Speaker 4: fat bias and how prevalent that is in our culture,
3:11
Speaker 4: particularly how prevalent that is, and a lot of the
3:14
Speaker 4: science getting done on weight and health, and then in
3:17
Speaker 4: the media conversations about that science, and then every other
3:20
Speaker 4: conversation that we have about wealth. So, you know, naming
3:25
Speaker 4: that bias on learning that bias for myself constant work
3:28
Speaker 4: and progress. But the goal of the book is to
3:31
Speaker 4: help parents in particular start to wrestle with this because
3:35
Speaker 4: exactly as you said, we don't want to pass this
3:37
Speaker 4: stuff onto our kids. I think our generation of parents
3:41
Speaker 4: in particular is keenly aware that the nineteen eighties and
3:45
Speaker 4: nineteen nineties and early two thousand's diet culture we grew
3:48
Speaker 4: up in got a lot of things wrong. But I
3:51
Speaker 4: don't think we know yet where to go next. I
3:54
Speaker 4: wanted to try to start to answer those questions. And
3:56
Speaker 4: what I encounter all the time is parents saying zac
4:00
Speaker 4: what you've said. You know, I don't want my kids
4:02
Speaker 4: to worry about their bodies the way I worry about mind.
4:04
Speaker 4: I don't want them to worry about calorie counting, et cetera,
4:06
Speaker 4: et cetera. But I also don't want them to be fat.
4:09
Speaker 4: Yeah not sort of like rock and hard place is
4:12
Speaker 4: a really difficult place to be. And so what fat
4:15
Speaker 4: Talk does is helps parents, start to understand why we
4:18
Speaker 4: have to stop fear mongering around fat so much while
4:21
Speaker 4: a lot of what we understand about weight and health
4:23
Speaker 4: is wrong or at least vastly overstated, and just find
4:26
Speaker 4: a new way through all of these issues.
4:29
Speaker 2: It's really interesting because it's both about the combination of
4:34
Speaker 2: sort of acceptance and changing the frame and thinking about
4:37
Speaker 2: the harm from some of the things that we're doing,
4:39
Speaker 2: and also some of the futility of some of these interventions,
4:44
Speaker 2: which I sort of want to get into, but recognizing
4:47
Speaker 2: that it isn't as if there's a way to achieve
4:52
Speaker 2: this thing that you want, and sure you'll mess people
4:56
Speaker 2: up on the way, but like at least you'll get there.
4:57
Speaker 2: It's like it's even more complicated and fraught and problematic
5:01
Speaker 2: than that, right.
5:02
Speaker 4: You also can't even achieve it no matter how much
5:05
Speaker 4: you screen yourself up along the.
5:06
Speaker 1: Way, exactly.
5:08
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's an interesting piece of this
5:10
Speaker 2: that I actually wanted to dive into. We might as
5:12
Speaker 2: well start there, which is this relationship between dieting and
5:17
Speaker 2: eating disorders, because I mean, that's come up along the
5:20
Speaker 2: last few weeks. I just want to name that we're
5:22
Speaker 2: doing this interview in February, and in the wake of
5:24
Speaker 2: these new AP guidelines about treating childhood obesity, there's been
5:30
Speaker 2: this concern raised that this advice that they're giving, one
5:33
Speaker 2: piece of which is kind of intensive behavioral therapy for
5:37
Speaker 2: all children of all ages, that that may in fact
5:40
Speaker 2: produce eating disorders rather than making things better. And so
5:44
Speaker 2: I don't want to re litigate our feelings, which I
5:46
Speaker 2: think are largely shared on these AP guidelines, but I
5:50
Speaker 2: think in particular it would be great to.
5:52
Speaker 1: Talk a little bit about the data on that relationship.
5:55
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, we have so much good data, you know.
5:58
Speaker 4: I'm thinking of the project data out of University of
6:01
Speaker 4: Minnesota where they've been following something like fifteen thousand teenager
6:06
Speaker 4: girls throughout their teenagers and into adulthood, and they've had
6:09
Speaker 4: various cohorts they've followed, and what we see over and
6:12
Speaker 4: over is that a top predictor of developing a future
6:15
Speaker 4: eating disorder is childhood dieting and childhood experiences of weight
6:20
Speaker 4: based bullying or teasing and shape. So those two things
6:24
Speaker 4: have sort of equal weight in a lot of the data.
6:26
Speaker 4: And this makes sense, right, because what most diets teach
6:30
Speaker 4: you to do, no matter how much we I was
6:33
Speaker 4: going to say sugarcoat it, but of course that's not
6:35
Speaker 4: what the diets are doing.
6:36
Speaker 1: Five.
6:36
Speaker 4: We're fiber coding it. Viber coded. You know how much
6:40
Speaker 4: they spin it as. This is not a diet, This
6:42
Speaker 4: is an intervention. This is about family support. What you
6:46
Speaker 4: know or the language of you know, say a program
6:48
Speaker 4: like NEOM or something, we're teaching you how to eat.
6:51
Speaker 4: We're retraining your brain no matter what language we use.
6:53
Speaker 4: At the end of the day, these programs are always
6:55
Speaker 4: about teaching people to restrict their intake. And when you
6:59
Speaker 4: teach people to restrict some portion of those people are
7:03
Speaker 4: going to have dangerous consequences to that. And now this
7:07
Speaker 4: is not to say everyone who diet ends up with
7:08
Speaker 4: a neating disorder. Of course, it's not that clear cut.
7:12
Speaker 4: There are many other contributing factors to eating disorders, like
7:15
Speaker 4: family history, genetic components, other environmental factors that come into play.
7:20
Speaker 4: So it's always a sort of you know, multifaceted picture.
7:24
Speaker 4: But certainly, if you teach someone the literal behaviors of
7:29
Speaker 4: an eating disorder, you are giving them some tools that
7:32
Speaker 4: if they are susceptible to going into a more dangerous
7:35
Speaker 4: place with those behaviors, you know, you've given them the
7:38
Speaker 4: road map. So and the problem is is like as parents,
7:40
Speaker 4: you don't know, right, You don't know. You might have
7:43
Speaker 4: some guesses based on your own history or your family history,
7:46
Speaker 4: but you don't know for sure whether your kid is
7:48
Speaker 4: going to be able to like breeze through a six
7:50
Speaker 4: month lifestyle intervention and come out no worse aware, or
7:54
Speaker 4: if that's going to be something that's going to set
7:56
Speaker 4: them up for these future issues.
7:57
Speaker 2: I mean, do we have follow up on those beau,
8:00
Speaker 2: because there are you know, when you read these kind
8:01
Speaker 2: of guidelines, there is some randomized data in which they're
8:05
Speaker 2: you know, reporting out on outcomes like weight being the
8:09
Speaker 2: most common one. But do any of those studies have
8:13
Speaker 2: kind of longer term mental health or other behavioral outcomes.
8:18
Speaker 4: They really don't. And it's really interesting for a couple
8:21
Speaker 4: of reasons. Number one, if you put a six year
8:23
Speaker 4: old on one of these interventions, you may and you
8:27
Speaker 4: follow them for a year or two, you may not
8:29
Speaker 4: see the development of a needing disorder that quickly, because
8:31
Speaker 4: for a variety of reasons, these conditions are more likely
8:34
Speaker 4: to onset and adolescents, right, And so then we'd have
8:37
Speaker 4: to have every study on a lifestyle intervention following kids
8:41
Speaker 4: for ten, fifteen, twenty years to see what happened.
8:45
Speaker 1: It's expensive.
8:46
Speaker 3: It is expensive. They're not going to do that.
8:48
Speaker 4: The other thing, though, that's really interesting, is often when
8:51
Speaker 4: they do include some follow up around disordered eating, what
8:55
Speaker 4: they look for are things like binge eating, maybe purging
9:00
Speaker 4: compulsive feelings around food. They look for quote overeating because
9:05
Speaker 4: that's what they expect kids and larger bodies to do.
9:08
Speaker 4: They don't track for disordered symptoms like restriction or you know,
9:14
Speaker 4: like skipping meals like that kind of thing, because they
9:18
Speaker 4: don't think the kids in larger bodies do that. Number
9:20
Speaker 4: one because there's this baked and bias that everyone in
9:22
Speaker 4: a bigger body eats compulsively not true. And number two
9:25
Speaker 4: because that's what their plan taught them to do, right,
9:28
Speaker 4: The plant taught them restriction, So of course they don't
9:32
Speaker 4: track to see if that restriction like they would like
9:34
Speaker 4: the restriction to continue.
9:35
Speaker 3: They write it's a whole framework thing.
9:37
Speaker 4: They wouldn't even consider that a problem point, so they're
9:39
Speaker 4: not like, oh, by the way, did we restrict you
9:41
Speaker 4: when doing eating disorder Like they're not checking for that.
9:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's it does strike me as like
9:46
Speaker 2: quite a significant failure of data, given that some of
9:51
Speaker 2: the arguments behind some of these things are you know,
9:55
Speaker 2: weird other direction of mental health, you know, saying like
9:59
Speaker 2: the reason that we need to intervene so extensively is
10:01
Speaker 2: that is because kids will be made fun of if
10:03
Speaker 2: they're if they're in a larger body. Now that I
10:06
Speaker 2: find that statement appalling in some ways, many ways, all
10:11
Speaker 2: the ways, but it does suggest that this is on
10:13
Speaker 2: the mind of these discussions. And yet it's I mean
10:16
Speaker 2: we almost have to just argue about kind of in theory.
10:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of blaming the victim here, right,
10:21
Speaker 4: there's a lot of like, oh, we see that kids
10:24
Speaker 4: in larger bodies, they have higher rates of depression and anxiety,
10:27
Speaker 4: they're bullied in school. We can fix all that if
10:30
Speaker 4: we just make them thin. And that is literally saying
10:34
Speaker 4: like the bullies are right, give them your lunch money,
10:37
Speaker 4: also your lunch like you you know, like like that,
10:40
Speaker 4: we're just going to reinforce everything you've been told. Your
10:42
Speaker 4: body is the problem, which is obviously devastating for a
10:45
Speaker 4: child to hear and internalize. And it's also like it
10:49
Speaker 4: isn't going to work. Anyone who has gone through periods
10:53
Speaker 4: of diet and can tell you thinness doesn't automatically solve
10:57
Speaker 4: all of these problems. You know, you haven't given these
11:00
Speaker 4: kids resilience tools. You aren't addressing the fact that their
11:02
Speaker 4: school is not addressing this larger issue of weight based bullying,
11:06
Speaker 4: or that it's coming from teachers or coaches or parents,
11:09
Speaker 4: et cetera. You know, you're not doing anything to address
11:11
Speaker 4: those real issues. You're just saying, like, well, if we
11:13
Speaker 4: can just make you less of a target, maybe it'll
11:16
Speaker 4: be fine.
11:17
Speaker 2: It's so interesting because when we look at the literature
11:19
Speaker 2: on bullying and some of the data on bullying, and
11:21
Speaker 2: you ask, like what makes kids resilient to bullying, it
11:24
Speaker 2: is like supportive home environment, right, Like that's the thing
11:26
Speaker 2: that shows up so strongly in the data.
11:28
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
11:29
Speaker 2: And that's just to say, you know, there are things
11:31
Speaker 2: that can make kids be able to better deal with this,
11:36
Speaker 2: and then of course there are interventions that we have
11:38
Speaker 2: at schools that might reduce bullying. No one in that
11:41
Speaker 2: space when we think about other reasons for bullying is
11:44
Speaker 2: like a good solution to bullying is to change into
11:48
Speaker 2: someone who's not going to be bullied you. So your
11:51
Speaker 2: kid came and they said, my schools aren't cool enough
11:53
Speaker 2: and people are making fun of me. Mostly as a parent,
11:56
Speaker 2: our instinct is not to be like, well, let's go
11:58
Speaker 2: shopping because you know, like yeah, in sixth grade, like
12:02
Speaker 2: if you have the awesome blue lemon sweatshirt, like that's
12:05
Speaker 2: not going to fix the problem, right, And it's.
12:08
Speaker 4: Not teaching anybody any other.
12:10
Speaker 3: Useful life skills.
12:10
Speaker 4: I mean, it's the exactly, Yeah, this whole approach is
12:13
Speaker 4: taking like this, she is all that approach to like
12:16
Speaker 4: parenting and public health. Like she's all that and we
12:19
Speaker 4: just like take off her glasses.
12:21
Speaker 2: Thank you for bringing that back to my mind. It's
12:24
Speaker 2: the clerk Ken approach.
12:25
Speaker 3: To bullying and it's not going to work.
12:29
Speaker 2: Okay, So I want to I want to now sort
12:31
Speaker 2: of pivot and actually push you a little bit on
12:33
Speaker 2: some of the pushback I think you're likely to get.
12:36
Speaker 2: So one of the messages of the book, as I
12:38
Speaker 2: see it, is to pitch foods as being neutral. So
12:41
Speaker 2: rather than thinking of there being good foods and bad
12:43
Speaker 2: foods that you know, food is food, it's nutrients, it's
12:46
Speaker 2: something you need, and foods are neutral. But something people
12:50
Speaker 2: ask a lot is, but apples are in fact better
12:53
Speaker 2: than cake, right, And like apples are better than cake,
12:56
Speaker 2: and so I should prefer that my kid eat apples
13:00
Speaker 2: than cake, even if I'm going to be comfortable with
13:02
Speaker 2: cake some of the time.
13:03
Speaker 1: And so, like, what do you say to that?
13:07
Speaker 4: Well, for starters, I say, apples are not better than cake.
13:10
Speaker 4: If you are really hungry and your options for lunch
13:13
Speaker 4: are apples or cake, Like what's going to keep you
13:16
Speaker 4: fuller longer, you know, like a big, delicious piece of cake,
13:19
Speaker 4: maybe with a gloss of milk, maybe not, or like
13:21
Speaker 4: one apple, I don't know, that's not.
13:23
Speaker 3: Going to cut it for me or for my kids.
13:25
Speaker 4: So I think we have this ethos around food that is,
13:31
Speaker 4: fruits and vegetables, especially vegetables are like the holiest possible
13:36
Speaker 4: grail of what you want your kids to eat, and
13:39
Speaker 4: therefore every other food choice they make is like a
13:42
Speaker 4: failure to attain that gold standard. And that is such
13:46
Speaker 4: a problematic way of approaching this because it sets up
13:50
Speaker 4: that restriction we were just talking about. You are implicitly
13:54
Speaker 4: telling your kids if every time they pick cake over apples,
13:57
Speaker 4: some little part of you dies. And I guess why
14:00
Speaker 4: it dies, right, It died for me for a long
14:02
Speaker 4: time too.
14:02
Speaker 3: I get it.
14:03
Speaker 4: But if that is happening your kids, know you don't
14:06
Speaker 4: think that's the right choice. And now you've made cake
14:11
Speaker 4: that much more powerful to them because it's forbidden in
14:14
Speaker 4: some way, and the apples are much less interesting because
14:18
Speaker 4: that's what you want them to have and they have
14:21
Speaker 4: to eat them in order to achieve the cake. And
14:23
Speaker 4: you know, we've got there's great studies on this. The
14:26
Speaker 4: Finish your Soup study by Land Birch is like the classic.
14:29
Speaker 4: You know, half the kids were told like, if you
14:31
Speaker 4: finish your soup, you can get dessert, and the other
14:33
Speaker 4: half were not given that, and they saw that the
14:35
Speaker 4: kids who were told to finish their soup liked the soup,
14:37
Speaker 4: last eight less of it were much more fixated on
14:40
Speaker 4: how do I get to the dessert? So yeah, so
14:43
Speaker 4: that fundamental like aren't apples better? Thing is just like
14:47
Speaker 4: continuing to hold on to that idea, even if you're like,
14:50
Speaker 4: I'm trying so hard to embrace cake, and I think
14:53
Speaker 4: a better approach is to like serve apples and cake
14:59
Speaker 4: together and not make a fuss over which one you're kid.
15:01
Speaker 4: I think it's really hard for people, and a lot
15:04
Speaker 4: of the advice we get around this doesn't make enough
15:06
Speaker 4: space for the fact that it is not that simple
15:09
Speaker 4: to just neutralize food, Like a lot of us have
15:11
Speaker 4: a lot of work we have to do to get.
15:12
Speaker 3: To that place.
15:14
Speaker 4: But I think if you can just fundamentally keep coming
15:17
Speaker 4: back to I don't want my kid to have a
15:19
Speaker 4: fraught relationship with cake, then that you know, that can be.
15:23
Speaker 3: A really helpful motivator.
15:25
Speaker 4: And what you will likely see, and you won't see
15:28
Speaker 4: this with every kid, but what you will see with
15:30
Speaker 4: the many kids is that over time, not immediately, but
15:33
Speaker 4: over time, the fewer restrictions and anxiety you're placing around
15:37
Speaker 4: the quote treat foods, the more they can take or
15:40
Speaker 4: leave those foods. And I want to be really clear,
15:42
Speaker 4: that is actually not the victory.
15:44
Speaker 2: To me.
15:44
Speaker 4: The victory is not like I was helping my five
15:47
Speaker 4: year old packer lunch and she was like, oh, I
15:49
Speaker 4: don't want a treat today, and I wasn't like, yes,
15:51
Speaker 4: we aren't having a treat. I was like, all right,
15:54
Speaker 4: you're not in the mood for the treats. Like obviously,
15:55
Speaker 4: oreos have gotten old. We've had this box of oreos
15:58
Speaker 4: sitting in the pantry for three months, and like we're
16:00
Speaker 4: all over them. No one's eating ureas, and like that's
16:04
Speaker 4: just like interesting to see because I think that feels
16:07
Speaker 4: so foreign to so many people. How could you have
16:09
Speaker 4: a box of oreos in your house and like forget
16:11
Speaker 4: about it. And it's not the victory that we aren't
16:13
Speaker 4: eating the oreos. It's the victory that nobody is stressing
16:16
Speaker 4: about the oreos.
16:17
Speaker 3: We often do.
16:18
Speaker 4: Once we don't have oreos for a while, we eat them,
16:19
Speaker 4: we're very excited, but then we move on and we
16:22
Speaker 4: can eat other foods, and so over time, this approach
16:24
Speaker 4: actually lets kids eat the apples, eat lots of other foods,
16:28
Speaker 4: and enjoy their treats without the stress.
16:30
Speaker 3: I mean.
16:30
Speaker 2: It's interesting because if you look at the literature on
16:35
Speaker 2: picky eating, which is a question I address frequently, one
16:38
Speaker 2: of the things that comes up in various forms repeatedly,
16:41
Speaker 2: over and over is the fact that these kind of
16:44
Speaker 2: if you do this, then you get that approaches are
16:47
Speaker 2: not good for a dressing picky eating. So if you
16:50
Speaker 2: tell people, you know, if you eat your your French fries,
16:52
Speaker 2: then you get a you know, some blueberries. Even that
16:57
Speaker 2: is like just that whole thing of kind of if
16:59
Speaker 2: you do this, then you that is not a way
17:01
Speaker 2: to make people like the first food and make some
17:03
Speaker 2: associate the first food with like oa, this is a
17:05
Speaker 2: this is like a negative food.
17:06
Speaker 1: This is a food that I shouldn't want.
17:07
Speaker 3: This is a hurdle I have to This is a
17:09
Speaker 3: hurdle I have.
17:10
Speaker 1: To get over exactly, and that that, you know.
17:12
Speaker 2: Replacing that with some combination of you know, autonomy, like
17:16
Speaker 2: a supportive prompts like, oh, you might enjoy pizza.
17:19
Speaker 1: It's sauce and cheese.
17:22
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's somebody did write me this
17:24
Speaker 2: morning and say their kid didn't like pizza.
17:25
Speaker 4: It's just like, my kids don't like pizza. It's a
17:28
Speaker 4: great sadness in my life. That's odd and just like
17:32
Speaker 4: hard to plan meals around.
17:35
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, what else do.
17:37
Speaker 3: We do on a Friday night?
17:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it certainly hasn't been restricted to them, so
17:41
Speaker 4: they got to make up their own minds about pizza,
17:43
Speaker 4: you know what I mean?
17:44
Speaker 2: Like yeah, and it's just I mean, it's just sort
17:46
Speaker 2: of interesting to think about that the kind of value
17:49
Speaker 2: of choice in those in those settings and what it
17:52
Speaker 2: opens up for kids in terms of being able to
17:55
Speaker 2: have their own sets of preferences.
17:58
Speaker 4: I mean, that's what we ultimately want, right as a
18:00
Speaker 4: kid who can make their own decisions about this, who
18:03
Speaker 4: aren't overly driven by this like morality of like good
18:08
Speaker 4: and bad and like measuring their worth by a plate
18:11
Speaker 4: of food, right, Like, that's the mindset that I think
18:13
Speaker 4: a lot of us are trying to escape. And so
18:16
Speaker 4: if you don't want to pass that on to your kids,
18:18
Speaker 4: this is a useful way to think about going about it,
18:21
Speaker 4: because when they make whatever choice they make, they choose
18:24
Speaker 4: to have three servings of pasta and ignore their broccoli.
18:26
Speaker 4: They choose to not eat the oreos that you bought
18:29
Speaker 4: in bulk of Costco because they said they loved oreos,
18:31
Speaker 4: And now who's going to eat these oreos in my house?
18:33
Speaker 4: You know, Like, whatever choice they're making, it's maddening. I'm
18:38
Speaker 4: not going to say it's not maddening as someone who
18:40
Speaker 4: has to feed children all the time. But it is
18:43
Speaker 4: also them learning autonomy. It's them learning that they can
18:48
Speaker 4: trust their bodies, that they can listen to themselves first.
18:52
Speaker 4: And if you think too, like just broadly across parenting,
18:55
Speaker 4: like we want that for so many things, right, Like
18:57
Speaker 4: we want kids to, you know, when they get into
19:00
Speaker 4: the teenagers, to deal with pressure to party or have
19:02
Speaker 4: sex or whatever. We want them to start from listening
19:05
Speaker 4: what feels good and safe in my body. That's so fundamental.
19:08
Speaker 4: And if you think of your dinner table as a
19:10
Speaker 4: place to start practicing those skills, it matters so much
19:14
Speaker 4: less whether they eat the apple, Like, it's not about
19:16
Speaker 4: the apple. You're teaching something much bigger.
19:19
Speaker 1: I love that. What about the approach of coursing the food?
19:23
Speaker 2: Not you have to eat the net, but like, first
19:25
Speaker 2: we're going to have these things and then we're gonna
19:27
Speaker 2: have like we're not going to put the dessert on
19:28
Speaker 2: the table while we have the steak on the table.
19:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, I am mixed on that. I think it's so
19:34
Speaker 4: family specific. I think if you are doing that because
19:38
Speaker 4: you really want them to eat the vegetables first, I
19:41
Speaker 4: think your kids know that, and so I think they're smart,
19:44
Speaker 4: and I think no one is fools.
19:46
Speaker 3: They're not Like how unusual that.
19:48
Speaker 4: We are always served bell peppers. It just happens that way,
19:53
Speaker 4: you know. So I would say, if you want to
19:54
Speaker 4: do coursing, like challenge yourself to mix up the coursing.
19:57
Speaker 4: Sometimes there's also some really interesting stuff that happens when
20:01
Speaker 4: you do put dessert on the table right alongside the
20:05
Speaker 4: rest of dinner, Especially for kids who are very fixated
20:09
Speaker 4: on treats, that can be a really good way to
20:11
Speaker 4: start taking that pressure off if they can see that
20:15
Speaker 4: the plate of brownies is there, along with the salad,
20:17
Speaker 4: along with the pasta, along with whatever else I'm going
20:20
Speaker 4: to get it. I don't have to earn it, I
20:21
Speaker 4: don't have to jump through hoops like I have access
20:23
Speaker 4: to it. That can take so much pressure off. Yes,
20:26
Speaker 4: it will mean they will only eat brownies for dinner
20:28
Speaker 4: for a while. No one has ever died of only
20:30
Speaker 4: eating brownies for dinner for a while, So that's something
20:33
Speaker 4: you just have to like sit on yourself while that
20:34
Speaker 4: is happening. And you know Ellen Satdter, who's a feeding
20:38
Speaker 4: therapist and dietician who really did a lot of pioneering
20:40
Speaker 4: work here with division of responsibility. This is an approach
20:43
Speaker 4: she encourages, and she says, you would just put out
20:46
Speaker 4: one portion of dessert along with the other foods. So
20:49
Speaker 4: it doesn't help compete, but it's there and the kids
20:52
Speaker 4: have that and at the same time, if you do that,
20:55
Speaker 4: you also work in several other points during the week
20:58
Speaker 4: where they get more unlimited access to treats. So otherwise
21:01
Speaker 4: you're going to find yourself battling over I want another
21:03
Speaker 4: cookie and you decided it's only one cookie at dinner,
21:06
Speaker 4: and now it's all falling apart. But if it's like
21:08
Speaker 4: we only have one cookie with dinner, or in my
21:10
Speaker 4: house it's like we only have two or three cookies
21:12
Speaker 4: with dinner because one cookie is never enough.
21:14
Speaker 1: They're so small or so small, so small.
21:17
Speaker 4: But you know, when we bake cookies on the weekends
21:19
Speaker 4: and the tray comes out of the oven, everyone needs
21:21
Speaker 4: as much as they want because they're fresh out of
21:23
Speaker 4: the oven and they're delicious, and like, why would I
21:25
Speaker 4: ever count? That's just like a joyous food experience and
21:29
Speaker 4: we get to have what we want and there's no
21:33
Speaker 4: guardrails around that. You let kids start to figure it out,
21:35
Speaker 4: and you get comfortable with the fact that kids can
21:37
Speaker 4: eat a lot of a sweet and like not die.
21:39
Speaker 4: I mean, assuming we're not dealing with a life threatening
21:42
Speaker 4: food allergy, like their stomach can hurt. They can learn
21:45
Speaker 4: from that experience. They can start to decide for themselves.
21:48
Speaker 4: Without you narrating, without you being like your stomach hurts. Huh, yes,
21:52
Speaker 4: I know what happened there, Like, you don't need to
21:54
Speaker 4: get involved. It's between them and their bodies. They can
21:57
Speaker 4: start to figure that out. But I know that can
21:59
Speaker 4: sound so scary to do.
22:00
Speaker 2: It is I will say, you and I had an
22:03
Speaker 2: interaction about Halloween which I want to relate because it
22:07
Speaker 2: was very formative for me.
22:09
Speaker 1: Which is, I know, maybe like two or three years ago.
22:13
Speaker 2: I answered some question on Instagram about like my kids
22:16
Speaker 2: interaction with Halloween, and I said that I only allowed
22:19
Speaker 2: them to have eight pieces of candy, and.
22:21
Speaker 1: You were just like wtf.
22:24
Speaker 2: You were very nice about it, actually, but you were
22:26
Speaker 2: just like I think you wrote me an Instagram message.
22:28
Speaker 1: It was like everily with all capitals, like what's wrong
22:31
Speaker 1: with you? And so I did.
22:32
Speaker 2: I listened to you, and I told them that they
22:35
Speaker 2: could have unlimited candy on Halloween, and actually, in general
22:39
Speaker 2: life lightened up a lot at that time. That was
22:41
Speaker 2: a very big It was a big step step to
22:43
Speaker 2: have onlimited candy. And the first year we did that,
22:47
Speaker 2: they felt pretty sick. Yep, actually like they ate a
22:50
Speaker 2: lot of candy.
22:51
Speaker 3: It was a big deal.
22:52
Speaker 1: And it was a big deal.
22:53
Speaker 3: They were getting to nine pieces.
22:55
Speaker 1: It was a big deal.
22:56
Speaker 2: They ate a lot, and they maybe, like I don't
22:58
Speaker 2: I want to be clear, they didn't eat fifty pieces
23:00
Speaker 2: of candy.
23:00
Speaker 1: They ate like eleven pieces of candy or something.
23:03
Speaker 2: And then in all of the subsequent years they have
23:07
Speaker 2: had a much more adult attitude.
23:09
Speaker 1: I was really converted.
23:10
Speaker 2: It actually, really it both really improved Halloween. Yeah, because
23:15
Speaker 2: you weren't like discussing whether things counted as a piece
23:18
Speaker 2: of candy, which was actually a very complicated discussion, like
23:22
Speaker 2: is a bag of Skittles one piece of candy?
23:27
Speaker 1: Please tell me it was?
23:28
Speaker 3: It was one you weren't counting out in division.
23:30
Speaker 1: It wasn't counting out skittles obviously, yes.
23:32
Speaker 2: But anyways, really it really relaxed Halloween. But it also
23:36
Speaker 2: did it did show me. Yeah, and I think it
23:38
Speaker 2: showed it showed them something. It was like that that
23:40
Speaker 2: was a very important I really appreciate that.
23:42
Speaker 3: Yeah.
23:43
Speaker 4: Oh, I'm so thrilled. I hope I am named on
23:45
Speaker 4: your children's memoirs. Random stranger who liberated their Halloween bags. Yeah,
23:51
Speaker 4: I mean, I think Halloween is such a great example,
23:53
Speaker 4: like parents get so stressed about the sugar.
23:55
Speaker 3: But if you let kids enjoy.
23:57
Speaker 4: They really get like very discerning and they realize which
24:00
Speaker 4: kinds they like, which times they don't like. You know,
24:02
Speaker 4: it's like a whole And especially if you have picky eaters,
24:05
Speaker 4: which I do, I consider Halloween like a victory in
24:08
Speaker 4: it because my kids will try flavors and textures that
24:12
Speaker 4: they wouldn't normally try because they're like caught up in
24:14
Speaker 4: the excitement of Halloween. And that's like a pretty big win.
24:16
Speaker 4: If you have kids who are like I don't usually
24:18
Speaker 4: like mixed textures, and now they're eating a Snickers bar, like,
24:21
Speaker 4: good lord, all mixed.
24:23
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
24:24
Speaker 4: So I think that's just another And this is where like,
24:27
Speaker 4: you know, we easing off the like my goal as
24:30
Speaker 4: a parent is to get my kid eat as many
24:32
Speaker 4: kinds of produce as possible, and just like thinking much
24:35
Speaker 4: more flexibly and broadly about what you want your family's
24:39
Speaker 4: relationship with food to be and what else eating can
24:42
Speaker 4: give your kids, Like it just creates so many more
24:45
Speaker 4: opportunities like this.
24:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it is and it is, like
24:48
Speaker 2: there are a lot of opportunities in this space, particularly
24:50
Speaker 2: when we're talking about family meals to kind of think
24:54
Speaker 2: more deliberately about like how you want to shape the
24:57
Speaker 2: experience as opposed to the specific things about what people
25:01
Speaker 2: are eating. Like it's much more pleasant to come into
25:04
Speaker 2: a meal with a kind of expectation of some like
25:07
Speaker 2: we're going to sit together, we're going to talk, we're
25:08
Speaker 2: gonna whatever, as opposed to coming in with the expectation of,
25:11
Speaker 2: like what needs to happen at this meal is like
25:13
Speaker 2: six pieces of broccoli need to be eaten, and like
25:15
Speaker 2: that's going to be my focus, right, And I think
25:18
Speaker 2: that's you know, we all have to shape those things
25:21
Speaker 2: the way that work for our family. But pulling back
25:25
Speaker 2: on meals as a place to achieve something food wise,
25:29
Speaker 2: assuming that there isn't like a medical reason that that's
25:31
Speaker 2: part of your meal, my guess is, will liberate a
25:34
Speaker 2: lot of people.
25:35
Speaker 4: And I think it's useful to name what's driving the
25:39
Speaker 4: six pieces of broccoli, right, and to name that on
25:43
Speaker 4: some level, And this may or may not be a
25:44
Speaker 4: very conscious thing. You are doing this because you're trying
25:47
Speaker 4: to control your kids' bodies, right, You're trying to prevent fatness,
25:51
Speaker 4: and so understanding that bias is coming up in that
25:54
Speaker 4: way and sort of sitting with that and understanding that
25:58
Speaker 4: controlling your kid's body it's not going to prevent fatness,
26:02
Speaker 4: like body size is determined by so many other factors
26:04
Speaker 4: besides just like whether they eat six pieces of broccoli,
26:07
Speaker 4: like it's not going to move the needle, and that
26:10
Speaker 4: that's setting up such an adversarial relationship with your child's
26:14
Speaker 4: body and you, and like thinking a little again a
26:16
Speaker 4: little more broadly about what are the bigger implications of
26:19
Speaker 4: that and do I really want our relationship going to
26:21
Speaker 4: that place? And is that what I want to model
26:23
Speaker 4: to my kid?
26:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think everyone should read your book.
26:26
Speaker 3: Thank you. I agree they should.
26:28
Speaker 2: Read it, and more than that, they should like discuss
26:30
Speaker 2: it with other people with their partner.
26:32
Speaker 1: But like there should be there should be discussions.
26:34
Speaker 2: If you had to give people like one one general
26:38
Speaker 2: and then one very concrete takeaway, what would they be?
26:42
Speaker 4: I think the general takeaway is to consider how pursuing
26:50
Speaker 4: weight loss, both on a personal level and as a
26:53
Speaker 4: culture right, as we have been doing for the last
26:55
Speaker 4: forty years, and the quote war on childhood obesity we
26:59
Speaker 4: know has failed. We know that on average, kids and
27:02
Speaker 4: adults are bigger today than we were a generation a go,
27:05
Speaker 4: and it is time to really rethink that entire strategy
27:09
Speaker 4: and to deal with the harm that that has cost,
27:12
Speaker 4: and that maybe being at war with body size is
27:16
Speaker 4: not a particularly health promoting certainly not a mental health
27:20
Speaker 4: promoting strategy, and maybe, just like big picture, it is
27:23
Speaker 4: time to really start untangling ourselves from that and then concretely,
27:29
Speaker 4: like something that parents I think can take away. Yeah,
27:33
Speaker 4: this one might be tricky for some folks, but if
27:35
Speaker 4: there is a scale in your house, throw it out.
27:38
Speaker 4: I would say that is one concrete step a lot
27:40
Speaker 4: of people could take that would go a long way
27:43
Speaker 4: towards improving your family's overall relationship with food and bodies.
27:47
Speaker 2: Because you feel like people get wetted to some number
27:50
Speaker 2: as like a measure of whether they are good or not.
27:53
Speaker 4: Yes, and your kids see you getting on the scale,
27:55
Speaker 4: your kids see how you respond to that. And if
27:58
Speaker 4: there's not a scale in your house, like does this
28:00
Speaker 4: come up with doctor's appointments? Like you know, think about
28:02
Speaker 4: what is your equivalent of the scale, Like what is
28:05
Speaker 4: something in your house that is still orienting your family
28:09
Speaker 4: view around food and bodies towards thinness as the ultimate
28:13
Speaker 4: goal and can you get.
28:14
Speaker 3: Rid of that.
28:16
Speaker 1: I'm going to think about that one. We do have
28:18
Speaker 1: a scale in my house.
28:20
Speaker 3: I'm here for your family. We can get rid of it.
28:22
Speaker 1: And now that I've listened to your Halloween advice, I
28:24
Speaker 1: feel like I should.
28:26
Speaker 3: This is the next step.
28:26
Speaker 1: I get a lean in.
28:27
Speaker 2: It's the next step. It's the next step. It is
28:29
Speaker 2: in my Okay, I'm going to think about it.
28:31
Speaker 1: This is wonderful.
28:32
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for doing this, and thank you
28:34
Speaker 2: for writing this book, which, as I said, is just
28:37
Speaker 2: really really important.
28:39
Speaker 3: Thank you.
28:39
Speaker 4: I really appreciate it. I really appreciate you being open
28:42
Speaker 4: to the conversation and yeah, helping bring people to these ideas.
28:49
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
28:51
Speaker 2: If you like what you heard, subscribe to parent Data
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Speaker 2: in your favorite podcast app and rate and review the
28:56
Speaker 2: show in Apple podcasts. You can subscribe to the whole
28:59
Speaker 2: newsletter for free at www dot parent Data dot org.
29:04
Speaker 1: Talk to you soon.