Should kids’ diets be extremely controlled?!
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I’m still fighting my mom’s incessant ‘well-meaning’ advice of laying off the treats. I treat them as a precious commodity so now that I’m an adult I’m eating it way too often, simply because my brain seems to think “if I don’t quickly eat it, I won’t have access to it later”. I realized having a steady supply of treats together with some more balanced options, stops me from obsessing over the less balanced option, because I can always combine things to make it more satisfying.
Exactly! It’s called food scarcity mentality and you’re absolutely right to be upset about it. Good luck and I hope it gets better
I had this happen too. I realize now when looking at pictures of myself that I wasn’t a fat kid, teenager, or young adult, but dammit my parents made it so hard to believe I was skinny. It got so bad at one point that my parents would spy on me through the window to see if I was sneaking snacks, and they would follow me to the gym and watch me through the window so they could yell at me for not working out the right way when I got home.
The worst part isn’t that you’re struggling with food scarcity mentality or that you can’t have any positive feelings about the gym like you used to; it’s that they don’t even remember that they did those things or see anything wrong with it.
Exactly! I had parents at home doing the scarcity thing and I had a grandmother that would whisper awful things in my ear such as “you’re way too fat” and “you should lose weight”. I wasn’t overweight, not even close. I had a very regular build for an active child. As a teen I was CONVINCED that I was fat. Heck, I could SEE IT in the mirror! (I was at a BMI that was considered right below a normal one, so technically underweight. I was not an athlete, so BMI should have been an okay rough indicator). I only learned about body dysmorphia years after the damage had been done. When I see my pictures from ages 14-22, I often wonder how I managed to see it so so differently in my head.
I can relate. I was forbidden from certain foods as a kid and would get in trouble if I ate them. When I moved to college I lived off of those foods, and I ballooned. Now, I keep those foods out in the open, but I rarely eat them because I allow myself to have them whenever I want as long as I truly have a craving for them. Once I started listening to my body and my cravings, I actually began to lose weight. I crave broccoli now (mostly veggies in general) so I listen to that. I occasionally have a hankering for ice cream or something but not as much as before.
😢
I totally agree, & I am the perfect poster child for what you’re talking about. I was brought up to be slimmer, & I couldn’t ever be slim enough.
Seriously, hate when parents would rather bully their kids, instead of actually parenting them. I can’t imagine making my kid feel like garbage, especially over something simple like snacks.
Most parents lack the education required to know how to deal with these problems in a healthier way. People like Abbey should be providing that education instead of going on a rant shaming them.
My mother was massively restricting with my food and I have a binging problem. My kids have been allowed to have space to learn to self regulate and they have a treat sometimes and stop when they’ve had enough.
Thank you for the slightly ragey sentiment, we need more experts like you explaining why this is horrible for all the reasons 🙌
Can you do more videos aimed at how to teach our children how to have a good relationship with food? Healthy boundaries? Healthy snacks? My kids are 3 and 4 and I’m always worried about if I’m making the right choices for them when it comes to food.
Best thing you can do is have a good relationship with food yourself! Kids pickup on behaviors that are modelled for them.
Make trying new foods fun and adventurous, not stressful.
Want your kids to be active? Be active with them!
You got this mama!
Never talk about dieting around them or refer to foods as good or bad. Try to make their experiences around food healthy, happy, loving, and fun. You got this!
I have a snack bowl in the middle of the kitchen. It has all sorts of fruits, nuts, gummy snacks, and occasionally I throw some chocolates in there. My kids know, if they are hungry between meals they can raid the snack bowl!
Side note, as someone who was ‘lovingly’ called fat my entire childhood, it sticks with you. Funny thing is, I was never fat!
When I was a kid I over ate for anxiety. My sibling under ate for anxiety. Guess which one got real mental health help while the other one was told to just diet. 🤦🏻 Almond mom’s know they are hurting their children when they create fear foods. But they can’t have anyone else in the family to be happy, because that would show how miserable they actually are.
As a kid whose parents threatened to put a padlock on the refrigerator, please stop making your children feel bad about FOOD- something they need to survive. I’m 28 and I feel bad about being hungry EVERY DAY. please do not do this to your kids. Please.
I completely agree, and I’m sorry that you grew up that way. It’s tragic in many ways that the things that hurt us in childhood can take a lifetime to break free from
My mom was an almond mom growing. She dieted, she over exercised, kept “bad” food out of the house, worked for a diet supplement company, etc. She was anorexic. I got an eating disorder.
Amen. And thank you.
Preach it, gal! My anorexic Grandmother and my ex-model Mother watched me like a hawk ….. Comments were dreadful. They started me to the point I would look for odd sweets and biscuits because I was hungry. The whole scenario set me off on a life time off dieting, putting weight on, dieting ….. That strangely enough didn’t disappear until my Mother died.
I really wish my parents had taken the time to teach me healthy relationships with food. My mom constantly talked about my weight and I am still breaking down how to eat properly and love myself.
All of my children are 14 and above. We raised them with no real rules about food. Snacks, drinks, treats were all available 24 hours a day.
I am obese and no one else in my house is. They all eat well, exercise, and live healthy lives. It’s amazing.
I dealt with food scarcity as a child and teen. Also, I was not allowed to open a refrigerator without permission to get items out of it. It still enrages me because I could not know what was in there unless I opened the door.
Haha can you educate french doctors please ?! Thank you ! I was on a diet from the age of 6th and my parents made me see numerous professionals “dietician, endocrinologist, GP…” Which put me under very strict diet + sport …. I never succeeded to be thin. I’m a young adult now only trying to understand that my body is not against me, that it’s not a fight but a matter of healthy life, education, emotional balance, etc. This is just unreal the damages they can do with “non education and judgement”
🙋🏻♀️ I feel this 100%. I love my parents, and I believe they did the best that they could with the information they had. They both have Type II Diabetes, so growing up, their restrictions became my restrictions, and that, coupled with the communication of societal “norms”, led to an unhealthy relationship with food that it’s taken me *years* to recognize and recover from. I’m in my 40s, and I’ve been overweight since childhood. I was 13 when I went on my first diet (Weight Watchers), blessed and joined by my mother. I honestly believe my parents just didn’t know better, but parents today DO know better and should do better.
When I was in ED rehab, the common theme was food and/or body shaming by at least one older family member. I was lucky not to have experienced any of the more overt expressions, but even my relatively innocuous experiences sent a very clear message – especially when I “came out” to my mom about how bad I’d gotten and her initial response was “that’s so great!”
My diet was highly controlled as a child. I developed severe anorexia, and my brother became bulimic. It makes me happy to hear people are becoming aware of how damaging that lifestyle can be for children. Thank you for continuing to push that message forward.
My parents never tried to restrict my general diet and now I eat a comfortable amount of food at meals, love brussels sprouts and broccoli, and eat lettuce as a snack when I am peckish because I enjoy the crunch and find it helps my stomach stay settled. They tried to restrict my access to treats specifically, and now I hoard and covet baked goods. When I was younger, I’d invite friends from households that kept candy and baked goods around over just so they could smuggle in sugar and when given the chance to, I would eat myself sick because it felt precious and like I was ‘wasting an opportunity’ if I didn’t over-indulge. I still feel like I am ‘wasting an opportunity’ when I am presented with sugar and don’t indulge to the point of nausea.
Making something normal feel taboo and shameful and heavily limiting it without good reason just makes it seem more appealing and makes it harder to stop thinking about it! It’s the ‘don’t think about pink elephants’ thing!
I was very lucky to find a dietician for our family that really helped us. I learned about the foods I was buying that I thought were healthy and weren’t. She taught us how to read labels and make good choices. My son loved going and he loved seeing the weight fall off. He’s an adult now and makes choices that fit his life style.