Transcript
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The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Welcome to Raising good humans. I'm Dr. Eliza Pressman and today I'm just here with you alone. We're talking about body image and mealtime and making mealtime as unfrought as possible. And ideally, joyful eating is meant to be a source of connection and joy, but it can also be a source of memories from really bad experiences, body image challenges and ways of feeling or being judged. So that's what we're going over today. So what I want to talk about first is that there's a fundamental of being a human when it comes to, you know, functioning. You need to eat, you need to sleep, you need to move. Those fundamentals are kind of non negotiable and we don't talk about them that much with this podcast because apart from how to get kids and ourselves to do those things, this is typically just an expected part of the deal. But what I want to talk about isn't the, you know, what anybody's eating or how anybody's eating. I want to talk about that. Even though it's a basic human need, it is one of those things that ends up being super fraught. So the first thing that I want us to do is start from a place of balance. If you notice yourself getting into power struggles with your kids around food, just take the opportunity to get yourself grounded enough in what really matters so that it doesn't become a battleground because you cannot control what goes into someone's mouth. But when you try to it really, as we all know, particularly mothers, it's fraught. It's inevitably fraught. So I have this strategy in my book that uses the acronym balance, and I'm going to translate it here so that we can use it for this topic. So here are the steps of balance. Breathe is the first step. You cannot skip this step. Inhale deeply through your nose. Exhale through your mouth. If you skip this step because it seems minor, you're missing so much because this is how we get ourself into a place where we can actually make choices. Are you noticing when you breathe that you can feel where your body is, that you have access to what's going on for you? Then acknowledge that's where the A is. Acknowledge your own baggage. So ask yourself, what does mealtime bring up for me? What was mealtime like when I was growing up? What did I feel about my body? How was food and my body connected? Did anybody make comments to me? Did one of my caregivers make comments about what I was eating how much I was eating, how little I was eating, how did it feel? And just ask yourself, how do you feel about your body right now? Does that impact your enjoyment of mealtime? Do you think about your children's bodies and wonder if that meal that they're having is having an impact on their body and how they feel about their body? So you're gonna ask yourself those questions, and you're gonna answer some of them. You're not gonna be able to answer all of them, but you're gonna recognize it's not unfraught. Having a family meal. There's stuff, and I need to let that go. That's the L Let it go. You can unpack the baggage later on your. But you want to try and let go of the past so that you can be present for your kids. If you've made the decision, which I hope you will, to have mealtime be a source of joy and connection and not fraught, then you want to put the past and the future on the side and just be present in the moment so you can just ground yourself in this experience. Recognize that if you have young children, they need to grow autonomous and understand if they're full or hungry or what's going on for them, how to feed themselves, and that those actually really matter and make the experience better. When you fixate on how many bites they have, you've already lost a little bit. Now, don't be hard on yourself, because that's very natural. We're parents. We want to make sure our children are nourished. But let's not fixate on those details. Let's think of the mealtime as a source of joy and connection, and the minute that you get into a power struggle, you're kind of losing that. If you have older kids, it can be so tempting to want to control, to want to comment. It can be tempting to also be so afraid of controlling and commenting that you're not enjoying yourself. Try to just be there. Assess. So the A in this part of the word balance is for assess. Take stock of this moment. Gauge your own and your child's state of mind. Are they hungry? Are they asserting autonomy? Do they have a physical need that needs to be addressed? Or are you addressing things for them because you're projecting? Make an assessment of what they need. Do they want to share a laugh over a yummy bite? Just notice. That's the n notice. Observe what's going on in your own body? What's going on in your child's body? What are you guys going through what do you need? And then connect. Let your child know verbally or just with your body language that you see them, that you care about their feelings, that this is just a time for joy and connection. And it is not a time to fixate on any of the other details of the mealtime and then engage. So now you're in balance. This, when you get used to it, takes all of one minute, but it helps you start the meal or maybe you have to do this kind of in the middle of a meal if it starts to get fraught and it allows you to choose your response, if your kids are picking up their phone during the meal, or if your kids are ignoring you, or if they're playing, playing with their food, or if they're throwing their food, or if they're rolling their eyes, then you can be in a place where it's not fraught. You're not thinking about how much time you spent cooking or oh my God, if I don't make sure that they eat healthy food, they're gonna grow up into really unhealthy person or any of that stuff. So you're in balance. And now you have an opportunity to make a decision about whatever rules you have for your mealtime and then letting the rest go. This is the place you want to be, the balanced place you want to be when you have a meal with your kids. To alleviate all of the nonsense and just focus.