My brother and his wife and son visited us this weekend from Montreal – the first time in a very long time. In preparation for their visit, we swept the patio, and we cleaned the lawn furniture and patio table and chairs. We had purchased a new barbeque and so we christened it on Saturday night and had our first meal outside alfresco. I made a broccoli salad – a very tasty mix of red onion, raisins, sunflower seeds, feta cheese, and a dressing of yoghurt and mayo, with a touch of lemon - oh yeah, and broccoli. My husband roasted asparagus with Parmesan cheese and cooked a flavoured wild rice mix. He seasoned the tenderloin steak and it was, well, tender – and delicious. It was so good that I had a second helping of the salad and an extra little piece of steak. We celebrated my nephew’s birthday, very late, and had store-bought cake and ice cream. And I had two helpings. And I have been chastising myself every since.
But isn’t that normal eating, “… being able to choose food you like and eat it and truly get enough of it – not just stop eating because you think you should,” and sometimes, “… eating more now because they taste so wonderful.” (Satter)
It is so hard to quiet that voice in my head that tells me what I “should” or “should not” eat. “You shouldn’t have a chocolate bar; you are trying to lose weight.” “You shouldn’t eat that, it is full of sugar.” “You should cook spinach and beet greens.” Whose voice is that? And where did it come from?
I would not say these things to my children because I want them to believe that all food is food, some foods are just more nutritious than others. With children they will eat something if they like it, and they won’t eat it if they don’t like it. As parents we choose what food comes into the house, when we eat, and where (in our house, it’s in the kitchen or sitting down at the dining room table). Sometimes we can convince our children to try new things on the menu, but they still get to choose the how much and whether and I can’t force them to. If they are not ready to taste something, they can grow it, prepare it, look at it, smell it, or talk about it. If they are ready to try it, they can always taste it but not swallow it (we have the “paper napkin rule” – please spit it out into a napkin, and not back on your plate!). But if they don’t like it, they are not going to eat it, even if it is "good for them"!
Ironically, I realize there are many foods that my husband or I say we “don’t like” and we’ve never even tried them. If we are going to convince the kids to be more adventurous and “grow-up” with respect to food, then we ought to do the same. We decided we would start going to the market and all of us would try new foods, like fiddleheads, or pomegranate – or cooked spinach and beet greens.
Because I taught our children that we are not short-order cooks and we don’t prepare separate meals for those who don’t like what’s on the menu, they know they can choose from what’s on the table, and decide if and how much they want to eat. One day when I let myself slip into my old ways, trying to convince my daughter to try something, she shot back at me “Mommy, it’s MY body and I decide what goes in it!” And she’s right – I was crossing the line of the division of responsibility. And I realized it is a good philosophy – for when she is a teenager and her friends want her to try some drugs, I want her to be able to say “It’s MY body and I decide what goes in it!” When her high school boyfriend is pressuring her, I will be reassured when she says, “It’s MY body and I decide what goes in it!”
I know that when children and parents struggle over food and feeding, children lose track of their internal regulators and make mistakes in the amount they eat. As Satter suggests, “Children must be allowed to rely on their internal regulation or they will lose the ability to be tuned in, and they will be forced to rely on outside sources of regulation instead.” This is when they are susceptible to those external voices – what their friends say, what the magazines say, what the music videos say, what the diet and fitness industry says. And in the extreme, these struggles can lead to eating disorders, as they did in my case.
According to Ellyn Satter, the secret of feeding a healthy family is to:
1. love good food
2. trust yourself and
3. teach your children to do the same
I am teaching this to my children but I am not setting the example of trusting myself. I have lost track of my internal regulators and I don’t know when I am hungry or when I am full. For now I need to “normalize” my food intake, with the goal of having those signals return, so I can come to trust myself. I need to trust the wisdom of my body to know when it is hungry, to know what I have an appetite for, and to know when I am satisfied. That is the voice I need to tune in to.
The other voice – the one that’s telling me all the “shoulds” – is like a parent’s voice talking to a child in trouble: warning, threatening, and scolding. And sometimes I respond with the voice of the rebellious child – “Oh, Yeah! I am going to eat cookies, and I’m going to eat the whole bag. And you can’t stop me!” (I am good at knowing what this voice might say because I have 7-year-old twins who frequently argue with their parents.) But being rebellious does not mean that my behaviour is a good choice. Instead of talking to myself parent-to-child, I need to talk to myself adult-to-adult – and with love and compassion. I will stop listening to all those negative voices in my head. No more self-sacrificing, or self-flagellating. It’s time to stop “should-ing” all over myself.
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