Nourishing Your Inner Kiddo-And The Kiddos You Love
Imagine that you are moving through your day, feeling pretty comfortable when you receive an unexpected visit from someone from your childhood-an old friend, a cousin, your sister, or your mom. When you see who's at the door, you run to the kitchen and quickly put away the package of cookies or push the empty ice cream container underneath the garbage in the bin. As you do this, you feel stressed, maybe even panicked, guilty, and likely even some shame.
What the heck just happened?!
You may not relate to this if you did not grow up with diet/wellness culture in your family. However, if your childhood memories include:
witnessing parents criticizing their own bodies
witnessing parents commenting on other people's bodies
being exposed to "diet/wellness" or weight management plans, programs, or products
being exposed to foods being categorized as "good" or "bad," "healthy" or "junk"
food rules that left you feeling deprived of the foods you wanted
comments about your eating that left you feeling hungry after meals (and shamed), such as "Do you really need that?, or You can't still be hungry, or You can have seconds of the vegetables but not the potatoes."
prioritizing appearance and the perceptions of others over your emotions and experience
placing a high value on fitness and exercise, focusing on body shape and size
associating food choices, activities, or body size with social status or morality
You may have inherited a belief system that contributes to your complicated relationship with food, eating, activity, and your body.
NOTE: disordered eating is multi-factorial and NOT caused by any one thing but likely a combination of biopsychosocial factors. Families do not cause disordered eating but may contribute to disordered belief systems. Likely, the people who cared for you inherited a disordered belief system themselves, right?
Now what?
You are never too old to heal your relationship with food, eating, movement, and your body.
Identifying the beliefs you inherited from family, friends, teachers, coaches, partners, and the culture, especially early in your life, is a powerful part of the process.
The practice of noticing what you tell yourself about your food choices, eating, movement, and body is not easy, and it can be done!
Try this:
See this as a game you can play with yourself. When you notice a particularly judgemental or critical thought, respond with "Who says?!" in a sassy tone (imagining your hand on your hip). Many times you can trace your ideas back to a particular memory. It helps to keep this playful because this is hard, ya'll.
If this sounds helpful, I recommend checking out Virginia Sole-Smith's new book Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture. She does a beautiful job of covering weight stigma and anti-fat bias related to kids and what kids experience at the doctor's office, at the dinner table, in the classroom, in sports, and on social media. You may recognize your own experiences, and an opportunity to be compassionate with yourself. You learned this these beliefs, which means you can unlearn them too.
If you have kiddos in your life, this book is a must-read to help them navigate the diet/wellness mess too. It helps us all heal when we advocate for others.
Sparkles
Podcasts
Virginia Sole-Smith was interviewed on Fresh Air! This 34-minute podcast is an excellent way to get a feel for this conversation and may also be a way to share this message with others (please!).