Dieting in Front of Kids

About a year ago, Ryan started worrying about being "fat". He wouldn't eat certain foods because they'd make him fat, he'd ask if he was fat, and he'd ask whether what we were eating would make him fat. He and his brother began trading insults, calling each other "fat" and "fatty". (They always have some insult word - now it's "baby"). One day, he called me "chubby", and he clearly meant it offensively.

I was concerned because he had transitioned from observation to concern. He has previously noted that people were large, but there was no judgement attached to it. All of a sudden, weight was loaded with judgement, and he was worried about himself. Ryan has never approached anything resembling fat - his weight is smack in the middle for his height and always had been. So I had no idea where all this concern was coming from.


Because I have a natural tendency towards drama, I got really worried as I began to see Ryan's worry about fat turning into teenage bulimia or "manorexia". I thought I had always been very careful to keep my concerns about my weight to myself. But I realized that between TV and normal conversation, my boy had picked up on our national obsession with weight. He had come to believe that one of the worst things you can be is "fat", and he was worried about it.

Dylan is on the opposite side of the fat concern. He was invited to a sleepover at my brother's house. It was a reward for being nice to his cousin for 5 whole days. My brother told him that they were going to go out to dinner, watch movies, and "eat ice cream until they got fat!". On the morning of the sleepover, Dylan told me he didn't want to go. He said he didn't know how to get fat. He was afraid of failing.

One of my goals as a mother is to raise children who have a healthy relationship with food. I want them to enjoy it, but not to obsess about it, binge on it, or drown their feelings with it. I want them to be a normal weight, and to make good food choices most of the time. I want them to eat a variety of foods and be open to eating adventurously. This obsession with fat was definitely something I couldn't let slide.

I need to begin a lifelong conversation with my kids about food, nutrition, fat, and body image. I dealt with Ryan's concerns by telling him that he was not fat, that it's not appropriate to comment on people's weight, and that the food he ate wouldn't make him fat. I told Dylan that he didn't need to eat until he got fat, just to enjoy himself. But it's the beginning of a long conversation about food, about how to make good choices around food.

Nutritionists recommend not dieting in front of your kids, and that you don't put your kids on diets. There are a number of studies that show the long-term hazards of yo-yo dieting. Kids learn much more from what we do than what we say, so by modelling dieting or by teaching them to diet, we may actually be hurting their long-term health.

But the reality is that I need to lose weight. I have eaten myself into 20-30 pounds of excess fat, and it's just going to get worse unless I do something. I've grudgingly committed to the South Beach Diet because it's worked for so many people in my family. For two weeks, I'll eat no sugar, starches, fruit, or processed carbs, then I'll move to a diet that includes fruit and whole grains. Our nanny is currently following Weight Watchers. So the real question is, how do we diet and continue to foster our children's healthy relationships with food?

I don't have answers based on scientific research, but I do have what I believe is a healthy approach to follow. It's based on 3 key concepts: good choices on my part, open communication, and balanced family-style dinners.

First, good choices: I'm choosing a diet that's centered around normal eating, rather than radically restricted eating. My kids aren't going to see me living on nothing but cabbage, eating only grapefruit, or getting all my calories in liquid form. They won't see me consuming vast quantities of bacon, eggs, and cheese. Most importantly, I'm not going to be eating "special" meals separately from them. I'm carefully making choices so that we all eat together, and we eat roughly the same thing. Part of this is setting a good example, but part is laziness: I really only want to make 1 meal per mealtime.

Second, open communication: I am talking to my kids about the fact that I have put on weight by making poor food choices and not getting enough exercise. I'm sharing with them that I don't feel as good or energetic as I used to when I made better choices. I'm telling them that I'm changing the food I eat so that I feel healthier. I'm not dwelling on the scale or the fact that I'm trying to lose weight - I'm just focused on getting healthier. And of course, I'm talking to them about how I'm getting healthier - eating lots more veggies, fewer sweets, and less ice cream. We're using the Cookie Monster song "A Cookie is a Sometime Food" to talk about sweets.

Finally, we're having balanced, family-style dinners. I outlined my general philosophy in a post about overcoming food resistance. Basically, I'm making each meal with food that complies with my plan and food that they'll like. Then I serve it family-style and let each person choose what to eat. Last night, we had burgers, chips, salad, and grilled veggies. I passed on the chips and the buns. The kids ate burgers and chips, but also tried salad. Tonight, we had roasted pork tenderloin, zucchini gratin, tomato salad, steamed rice, and applesauce. I passed on the rice and applesauce, and I was the only one to eat tomato salad. By putting a variety of healthy foods on the table, I have a menu that everyone can live with - happily.

I try to plan the meals so it's not much work to put good meals on the table. It took me only a half-hour per night the last two nights to get 4-dish meals on the table - and I was able to water the garden while I cooked!