Suggestions on how to balance tough love and self-image/esteem issues

[HealthyForPNG]

Hi all! I am on day 5 of my first Whole30. My mom struggled with her weight most of her life. I started to struggle with mine around 7 or 8. I hit puberty at 10, which didn't help. Mom did her best to help by putting me on Atkins, etc. I clearly remember feeling fat, doing Atkin's at 10 or 11, and have struggled with self-image my whole life.

 

I am now blessed to be the mother of five. My husband and I have both struggled on and off with our weight our whole marriage, and we have definitely not modeled good relationships with food. We have rewarded with food, frequently go out to eat to "celebrate", stress eat, and so forth. My 9 year old has never been tiny, but it is more obvious lately that we need to make real changes for her health. She had a well-visit Monday (ironically the first day of my Whole 30...) and she is 106 lbs. It completely broke my heart to see her tear up at that number, and tell me that she is the heaviest gilr in her class and needs to go on a "diet." Apparentally 9 and 10 year olds discuss their weight at church?! *sigh* It makes it even harder for her that her 7 year old sister is skinny, can wear anything, and run circles around her in activity level.

 

My daughter also has obvious issues of food intolerances. Asthma, toddler eczema, stomach issues when she drinks to much dairy. I know it's not unusual for this to go together, but she also craves dairy, and has a really bad sugar dragon already. Three of my other four children have signs of food intolerances as well.

 

I talked to her about Whole30 going into it and let her know that at home, this is how all of us would be eating, but that when out and about I wasn't going to make her eat that way. She cried just about having to eat like this at home!

 

My struggle right now is that I truly believe she (and all my children!) would benefit from being strictly grain and dairy-free. Maybe the occasional cross-contamination at a restaurant would be okay, but not ice cream and a sandwich. I know that I am the parent, and I can tell her she *has* to eat this way, but how do I tell her that without making her think this is because she is fat? I think that for her, grains and dairy are contributing to her weight problems. I have a sister and cousin with PCOS, and I could easily see my daughter ending up with PCOS if we dont do something.

 

Will it be enough to just eat this way at home? Obviously it will be healthier than not, but will it be enough?

I know I have failed her in so many ways, but how can I go forward from here? How do I help her be healthy without making her feel fatter than she already does? I do NOT think she is fat, and I don't care about an arbitrary number, but I want her to be as healthy as she can be.

 

Any suggestions would be great!

[Bridget]

Hi ! I am a mom of 6, and have 4 of them still living at home. I am gradually working toward getting my two youngest (13 & 10) to adopt more of this lifestyle. Thankfully, they are both very healthy and active, but I do think this will benefit them in the long run. My older kids are totally on board. My main suggestion would be to take baby steps with this,so that it doesn't come across that you are upset about her weight.

As a matter of fact, my older sons went thru a VERY chubby phase at 9/10/11 yeard old. We started a "one carb a day" little challenge for them and it worked amazingly well. (We coupled it with a connection to doing it as a sacrifice for specific people we were praying for). Anyway, they got really into it, and had to choose every day the one carb (I mean bread, or chips,sandwich,cereal, rice or dessert) that they would have , and have all protein & veggies otherwise. Within 3 months, they had each lost a considerable amount of weight, and have never gone back. They still enjoy the occasional treat, but for the most part, have stuck with it.

But baby steps may include having her choose one thing a day, but fill her meals with all the other foods you know to be best.

Another thing that has helped engage the kids- they LOVE to cook, and have gotten really helpful with  making lots of the paleo/Whole30 meals we have come to enjoy.

Maybe if you and she team up to figure out and create recipes that she can help with- let her know she is helping YOU with your program, and the more people that help, the healthier YOU will be. Kids love their moms and I think really want to help her out.

I wish you the best of luck with this. It is so hard to see kids upset about this- and to know that they feel bad about themselves.

Good luck- and give her an extra hug !!!

[Emma]

Weight issues are so hard aren't they - and so hard for kids!   My weight has gone up and down throughout my life and, while I don't think I crave sugars, I do like to eat and eat and eat.  I have lots of food intolerances and allergies and now that I'm older, lots of joint issues.  As well, I seem to always get sick and have a killer time getting over a simple cold.   My kids have inherited my genes and I really want all of us to be healthier.  Luckily my kids are only two and three, but I think the messages are similar:

 

Focus on doing it to be healthy as a family.  If you buy the It Starts With Food book, really internalize the rules for eating which are about only eating foods that are nutritious.  It is a crazy shift and one that would have made me roll my eyes, but if you couple it with wanting yourself and your kids to have healthy bodies 5 or 10 years from now, then it makes sense.   Even goofy things like visualizing what you would each like to be doing 5 years from now sports wise (walking, hiking, rollerblading, playing volleyball) is a nice way to create a future goal of being healthy and fit regardless of weight.

 

Sometimes I want to focus on our weight, but I abstain and focus only on the idea of feeding our body healthy foods and looking at how we react to foods and feel after we eat certain foods.  When we've traveled and eaten fun tasty salty sugary things, we've enjoyed them but made to sure to reflect on how our bodies felt so that we could be reminded how much better we feel eating well.

 

Also, when we started doing Whole30, our kids ate like monstrous fiends - it was rather unbelievable how much they (and I) could pack away, but we ignored that and just put our focus on getting healthy things into our body.  Now, three months later, we are all eating more human sized portions.  

 

The reason for doing Whole30 and really incorporating it into my life WORKS for me and I think it also works for my carb-craving-eat-pancakes-till-I-burst daughter.   I just feel better and healthier and I just don't have the same desire to eat like I did before, nor does my little girl.  

 

This week's New York Times had an article that talks about the carb/craving connection.  http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/27/how-carbs-can-trigger-food-cravings/?ref=health

I think Whole30 is such a nice approach and takes all the focus off of dieting and weight and puts it onto just eating well for your health.

 

The month before we started, we told the kids we wanted to eat healthier and were going to explore some new things.  The day before we started, my husband and I made a big show of cleaning out our kitchen.  I think this was pretty powerful for the kids and made everything seem very legitimate.  We ordered a few cookbooks including one for kids and had the kids make suggestions for the menu.  We also tried to have them help cook (it's exhausting having them in there, but it does seem to up their willingness to try new things). The first week was the scariest.  The second was exhausting.  But after that, things smoothed out.  The kids seem to take pride in us "eating like dinosaurs" and they know we do it for our health.  They also understood we were just doing it as a one month challenge (we didn't go out to eat that month!) and also why we decided to stick with it after the month.  The paleo cupcakes one can make are totally tasty and work well as an appropriate substitute for kids at parties.  It also feels like they don't trigger the sugar dragon the way regular cupcakes do.

 

I wish my family had done something like this when I was a kid.

Wishing you all the best!!!!!

[SpinSpin]

I highly recommend Eat Like  a Dinosaur--it is a kid friendly paleo cookbook--lots of good recipes, with suggestions on how to have the kiddos help. Also has some helps on packing school lunches too, which I think is nice. 

[AmyS]

You're a great mom and you are doing great by all of your children.

 

My suggestion would be to remove the concept of tough love from your vocabulary and actions for the forseeable future.  I get the impression (though I could be wrong, I'm just basing this on one post on the internet after all ) that you believe you are being most honest about yourself when in fact you are beating yourself up.  But if you look at your life and your children you can see that you are a success, and you have a great deal to celebrate.  I'd suggest making easy love your mantra. 

 

Also, just for a bit of perspective, I was close to your daughter's size at her age, and started my period at 10, and I just gotta tell you, none of that meant my mother was a bad mother or had failed me.  And now I'm 46 and darnit if I haven't lived a full, rich life.  Promise.  You have not failed your daughter and she, too, will continue to live a full, rich life.  I was the biggest, tallest kid in the class until I was about 14 or 15, and then it all evened out.  Puberty is its own kind of purgatory, but it passes.  Really.

 

When it comes to food choices for the family, choosing to eat for good health and (ahem) the easiest way to love yourself through food, Whole30 can be a great option.  Some families do choose to do it all together.  Others (like mine) don't, but the kids end up eating healthier just because mama's eating healthier.  In other words, you can choose to do it as a whole family project; or you can do the your-own-oxygen-mask-first strategy and just do it.  Whatever you do, do what makes it easiest to love yourself. 

 

Easy love.  Go for it.  :wub:

 

 

[MrsStick]

As a child who was very carb-obsessed my whole life (until after college, really) although never dealing with my weight much, I feel for your daughter. I really do. I'd stress to her that you are doing this for all of your health, NOT because any of you are fat. This is about being healthy. Make things that you know they'll like that are within the rules (minus, possibly, the paleo-ification rule, since your kids are old enough to really want the foods that they know and love), and go from there. 

 

If the 100% into the Whole 30 approach doesn't work, maybe you can phase things out. Like a reverse reintro. So phase out gluten, then non-gluten grains, then dairy, then sugar. Once you're to compliant, you can start the 30 days. Work on discovering new recipes together that you and they love, and use those when you need to take away a new thing. So that way they get something that they are comfortable with before losing a familiar food. 

[HealthyForPNG]

Thank you all so much for the encouragement and suggestions! You've given me lots to think through as I help not just my oldest, but my 7 year old picky eater who is resisting a lot of this. AmyS, your post made me cry - you nailed it Thank you!

[pjena]

Hi - Do you think your whole family would do a W30 with health as the goal, not weight loss?  Make it a challenge the family is doing together.  Focus on the allergies/sensitivities, not on weight.  Make sure they understand that the only way to tell if they feel better without certain foods is to cut them out completely for a while.  Then, after the 30 days, loosen up outside the house.  They may decide on their own that they don't feel well on dairy/grains/etc and make better choices on their own.  After we did an elimination diet for my son, we did loosen up.  His allergies aren't life-threatening, so I feel like he needs to make choices and live with the consequences, within reason.  For example, he's been having tummy trouble lately, so on Saturday, I would not let him have ice cream when other kids were getting ice cream.  He cried, but I held firm.  Sometimes, I do let him choose ice cream and he gets a tummy ache, but because he was already having some issues, I said no.  It's hard and he gets upset (he's 8), but he also knows that he's allergic to dairy and that I am right when I say he can't have it because he will have a tummy ache.  Your daughter may respond better to you telling her no ice cream when out if she knows that ice cream causes her to suffer from asthma, excema and stomach issues.  She'll remember what it feels like to feel good and even when you're being the bad guy, you will both know why.  If in the process, she loses weight, all the better.  But that won't be the focus.

 

Good luck!!!!

[HealthyForPNG]

Pjena, unfortunately, my daughter already realizes the link between dairy and her health issues, and still chooses to indulge in it as much as I will let her. That scenerio with your son and the ice cream sounds SO familiar! I am going to think about trying to bring the whole family on board for a Whole30, but I think for it to work, my husband will have to come around, and so far he isn't on board. He's already kind of annoyed at this new way of cooking and grocery shopping, even though I don't expect him to follow all the guidelines right now.

[pjena]

I feel for you!  Have you had your daughter tested for food allergies?  A medical diagnosis and drs orders to do the elimination diet go a long way towards stopping any arguments against it.  My husband isn't on board with W30 or anything else, but he never argues with keeping my son away from the things the dr said he's allergic to.  He was even fine eliminating wheat just to see, even though wheat didn't show up as an allergy.  He won't give up ice cream and toast, but he supports my son not having it.  It might be worth getting her tested.  Of course, if she tests negative, that would make it harder because not everyone takes sensitivities seriously. 

 

Is your daughter the oldest?  Would she do the W30 with mom as an experiment / bonding thing?  Even if the whole family won't do it.  I've read posts around here of kids choosing to do it as a challenge - just to see if they can.  Maybe having something special to do with mom would make it not about weight/self esteem/body issues, but about health and mom time.  My son and I bond over not eating dairy.  And kombucha. He's my cute little kombucha assistant.

[Eva626]

@HealthyforPNG: I applaud you for recognizing the need for change in your family's life. First off, I think you should know I don't have kids (yet) but I felt like sharing some idea with you. About 10 months ago I found out that I was lactose intolerant and I was so sad because I loved frozen yogurt. My husband helped me out and we stopped buying any dairy (well he got some milk for his cereal). But maybe you could avoid having any dairy in the house, so your kids don't see it as something that is restricted from only them.

 

Another idea I had was to not keep any sweets or "treats" in the house...if you ever feel the need to get a treat make it a rare thing that you go out to get as a family. So you wouldn't buy sugary cereal, ice cream, cookies, etc. Hopefully out of sight, out of mind will work here. It helps me a lot because my husband is a huge sugar fiend so we don't keep sugary treats in the house. Clearly you would need to get your husband on board with this, but I think it could really help. 

 

Finally, a lot of my great memories with my mom were of us cooking when I was a kid. I really enjoyed trying new recipes together and learning techniques that she used. Maybe you and your daughter can choose recipes together to try once a week or something? Like a cooking school type thing -- but you let her choose what to make.

 

I really do wish you the best of luck. 

[jenna@mymissingfactor]

I'm not a mum, and neither my partner or I are children ( ), but I think everyone can empathise with your daughter's reaction to not getting to eat diary. I certainly remember when I first did a gluten/grains elimination I thought getting rid of bread would be so tough, and I wasn't sure if I could do it. I might not have cried like your daughter did, but there were a few panic-like moments of "oh crap, what have I got myself into, this is insane!". And I felt so unconfident and being able to resist both dairy and wheat at the same time that I only got rid of one (and have just started the dairy elimination with my first Whole30 this month once I felt like I really had a grasp on the other things that you have to get rid of.

 

A reverse-reinto or staggered reduction and introduction of things is a great option (sorry, I forgot whoever said that!). Its taken me over a year to get to the stage of doing a full Whole30, with firstly removing all highly processed things, then fruit juices, etc etc til now doing the full shebang. Along side that there was a swap of adding in more fat (slowly, slowly) so I could adjust, increasing my veggie intake, swapping olive oil for coconut in cooking and so on. I honestly don't think I could've gotten to this stage without the staggering, it makes it so much easier to cope with, both physiologically and mentally. On the Whole9 blog they did a post about food grief after elimination, and this is definitely happening to your daughter, she just perhaps doesn't have the ability to recognise it as easily as an adult does. If you stagger things really slowly, your kids might not even notice what's going on at first - a little more veggies, a mix of coconut cream with diary in stir fry sauce, and slowly swap the ratios.

 

Good luck!

[Carlaccini]

I too can relate to your daughter.  I was 110 at the age of 11.  Riddled with ezcema (over 60% of my body) and multiple fiszures on each of my feet.  I was constantly made fun of and bullied, at home and at school so it was not pleasant. Doctors had no idea what was causing this - the just prescribed a whole bunch of topical creams that didn't help. And suggested that I drink Skim milk instead of whole.  I never liked milk but loved cheese and ice cream. So yeah, I've been in your daughter's shoes too.

 

First of all I so agree with Amy's post above. Easy love is the best way to deal with this.  And be patient and explain the why.  No matter how often it happens.  I would also suggest to take the changes slowly - make less items easily available, slowly.  She will cry and get frustrated but that will last only a little while.  And hug her close if she allows you to.  Make sure her feelings are validated, and let her know that you know how hard this is.  But as soon as she sees the results happening, the confidence should grow.  And she will feel better.

 

I am 37 and although I am still considered overweight by todays standards - I was so thankful when I came across It Starts With food as now I have answers.  It was life changing. 

 

Thank you for being a great mom!