Healthy eating is on my mind after a rather long string of delicious meals during our two-week trip to Croatia and the holidays. Plus, there is just something about NOW–as in Tracy Chapman’s song, If Not Now, Then When? I practically cry when I hear that song for the things I am not doing in my life that I know would lead to happiness, connection, and longevity.
With healthy eating, old habits die hard. And I pass those old habits on to those I love who eat with me. If “you are what you eat,” what is the impact I have on my kids after 18+ years of three meals per day. If I want to be alive and healthy with my grandkids at 70 and 80, what am I doing now in service of that? If I want my CHILDREN to be alive and healthy with THEIR grandkids at 70 and 80, what am I doing now in service of THAT? Back to “If Not Now, Then When?”
My colleague Cynthia Gulick, DO, a Portland family practitioner, has seen such an increase in obesity and diabetes that she founded Oregon Medical Weight Loss & Wellness. Her interventions have reversed diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, fatty liver, sleep apnea and depression for many people. She focuses on prevention and especially loves to help families with weight-challenged kids step up to a level of energy, of thriving, that isn’t just surviving. She feels strongly that weight-challenged families need to stop blaming themselves, or their kids, for medical forces that often are a factor but are usually hidden–especially because they CAN be treated effectively.
To help you help your kids on to a healthy lifestyle, I’ve asked Dr. Gulick to share her thoughts with you.
From guest author Dr. Cythnia Gulick
Picture this: You’re hosting a “baseball” birthday party for your nine-year-old. Like a pack of puppies, all the kids have careened outside to the front yard, engrossed with a game. Plates of birthday cake with melting puddles of ice cream lie abandoned for the lure of the outdoors, for the compelling draw of playing together outside in a manic, festive, boyish romp. Except. . . . there’s one, maybe two kids, for whom the lure of play is overridden by what must clearly be compelling, physical, internal cues of hunger.
I’ve raised four kids, and the three boys were teenagers at the same time. In my peripheral vision, I was often aware of how hungry some members of their gang always were. It’s those kids who cycle back through the kitchen foraging for more chips, or more birthday cake, or more soda, even when the birthday games are in full swing.
We’ve all seen this, or something like it. When we think of these children, it’s easier to see that hunger is truly a BIOLOGICALLY loaded internal cue. These kids do not have “weak wills”; they are not lacking in moral fortitude! The whole burden of blame that we tend to lay on ourselves as adults for our weight challenges seems more transparently absurd when we think about it in the context of kids.
Overweight kids are hungry, period. They’re driven by strong internal cues, of which they’re completely unaware, that are both discoverable and modifiable. In fact, many of these kids have high levels of insulin resistance from an unfortunate combination of a genetic predisposition (to diabetes) and a “carboholic” environment, in which not just soda and fast food but fruit juice, fruit products, and packaged food laden with high fructose corn syrup have become so much the norm that we don’t even “see” it as abnormal anymore. (For more information by Dr. Gulick on insulin resistance, check out this additional article, “Helping Overweight Kids: Could the Culprit be Insulin Resistance?”
But What to Do!?
The bottom line is, we need to get kids to eat food that’s good for them. Parents often tell me, with respect to even their smallest children, they just can’t get them to eat vegetables and they can’t stand the amount of whining, pressuring and pestering they get to buy the junk food, fast food, and soda. In response to this, there’s a marvelous story to tell about a study done with pigeons.
Pigeons are quite easily trained to peck an orange circle on the floor of their cage if they’re rewarded with a grain of rice each time they do so. On the other hand, if the researcher stops rewarding them, they continue to peck in expectation of the grain of rice, for approximately 19 more times. After that, they give up. It’s quite predictable. They can and do learn that it’s futile to peck any more: 19 pecks, plus or minus and it’s over.
On the other hand, if that pigeon is given a grain on the 19th peck, then the pigeon will go 90 more times pecking on the orange circle in an attempt to gain the grain again. Intermittent rewards are the most reinforcing. The gambling industry has studied this carefully and makes huge profits off this essential animal behavioral characteristic. Witness the ubiquitous slot machines.
How to apply this to parenting? If you’re going to have SOME candy in your child’s life, make a ritual of it, make it fun, have it be your “special day,” but have it be predictable, foreseeable, anticipatable. The child then learns there is no candy on any other days–just on Halloween or on birthdays, Christmas and Valentine’s, or whatever you decide. Pick your rituals, make your boundaries, and then stick to them. If you stick to your guns, the pecking and whining will exhaust itself much sooner than if you give in intermittently. Relenting occasionally is the worst-case scenario. It leads to parental “death by pecking” from the child’s whining that’s been reinforced occasionally. The child will play you–just like a slot machine.
What If My Child HATES Vegetables!?
With respect to the ubiquitous complaint that children just despise vegetables no matter how they are served, Sarah Fragoso, who wrote the cookbook Everyday Paleo, has a great suggestion: namely that you involve your kids in the game or the craft, the PROJECT of preparing or even picking a vegetable from the market. “When your kids sit on the counter with you, and you give them a job and make them feel important, and don’t focus on the fact that you’re prepping broccoli and chicken—if you have them choose the spices and stir it and make a big fuss over what they’ve accomplished. . . well, it’s amazing what kids will do if you let them help you,” Fragoso says.
Use your imagination with respect to how you can make your vegetable “project” more akin to a craft project that you will build or create together. Once kids are involved with vegetables from the picking of them at the store or off your porch window box, they are much more invested in embracing the outcome of their culinary explorations.
Get Healthy! A Few Tips from Dr. Gulick:
So, what is clear through all my experience and research is this:
- Eat more protein for breakfast. It keeps you satisfied longer. Simple carbs (like most breakfast cereals) stimulate hunger. Hard-boiled eggs can be eaten in the car, too, if necessary.
- Less, or better yet, NO soda or fruit juices. Drink water, water, water! Try zero-low calorie flavored waters. Some even taste like soda!
- Have healthy snacks READY. String cheese, veggies, plain yogurt sweetened with berries and a little honey or Stevia, etc. Try Veggie Cars! (Celery sticks with peanut butter, sliced carrots for wheels and a few raisins for the passengers!) Now there’s an irresistible veggie craft project!
Dr. Kathy, back here with you! Many thanks to Dr. Gulick for her comments. I would like to add one last tip: Exercise, exercise, exercise! There is NO excuse. Start with 10-minute walks, three times a day. Make the walks family time. Do it until it doesn’t feel right NOT to do it. It doesn’t take long. Or get your family hooked on hiking, biking, rafting, skiing, whatever.
Also, if you feel you need a little boost to get started on your path to healthy eating, get empowered with “Personal Power” as outlined in our January emPower Monthly. If you remember from that issue, intention is everything! Set your intention. Commit for 21 days. Then see the change become reality.
Here’s to your healthy family!
Dr. Kathy
P.S. The topic of healthy eating is near and dear to my heart. So much so, that I’m offering a free phone chat to talk more about it. See the details under “Webinars” at www.family-empower.com and join me on February 9th at noon!
Hi! I’m Dr. Kathy. Welcome to my website! Although Family Empowerment Network is formally closed, we want to keep these resources available to you. Our belief is that parents are the most wise and intuitive about what is best for their children. However, parents sometimes need the support of effective, timeless, compassionate parenting information and strategies. On this website you will find our three parenting books on boys, girls, and kids’ social lives and ten years of monthly newsletter articles. In addition, a powerful, under-recognized resource is the support of other parents. Here you will find how to use our books as discussion guides for monthly self-led parenting groups. One last resource: I am still available to give talks and workshops.
