Fit Me Forever Podcast
Fit Me Forever Podcast
#31 What Are You Feeding Your Kids?
haha, this is obviously episode number #31 NOT #30 as I mentioned in the intro. But, anyway.... Keeping up with our theme from the last few episodes, today we are discussing how your current behaviors are impacting your children and how your current behaviors were impacted by your childhood.
Here's a few points that we cover today:
- What are some traditions that negatively impact you today?
- How does a good habit turn into a bad habit?
- How does your childhood impact who you are today?
Next Steps:
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Send any questions or comments to: jodie@agingstronglife.com
Hi, welcome to the[inaudible] forever podcast, hosted by the Omni fit. We're about all things fitness. We help women get off the Diet roller coaster, define sustainable health, embracing life right where you are on the way to where you're going. Welcome to the podcast. I'm coach Jodie v, a certified nutrition coach who specializes in helping women become physically and mentally strong to regain energy for a life they love. I would like to welcome my cohost Kayla Duncan, owner of the Omni fit and fellow colleague and nutrition coach Taylor blocks. And together we are the Omni fit.
Speaker 2:Hey guys. Welcome back to the fitbit forever podcast. Today we're going to be bringing you episode 30 and we're going to be talking about what are you feeding your kids, um, with all the talk the last couple episodes about habits, how to create healthy habits, how to break bad habits. It just got us talking about and conversating about where are these habits came from. And our conversations lead a lot back to our childhood. So the purpose of this episode today is to get you thinking a little bit about how your current behaviors are impacting your children or people around you if you don't find yourself as a parent right now and how your behaviors now we're impacted by your experiences as a child. So what you guys think about this topic? I find this to be really fascinating. Yeah. I was actually talking to a client just the other day and we were reflecting on the fact of having this certain perspective and intention behind feeding her children in a certain way. And we, we wanted to address the fact that we wanted to have her be more of an intuitive approach and she started to reflect on the fact that she doesn't like to feed her kids when they're not hungry. And so when you don't have to force your children, we kind of backtracked and said, okay, well how does that impact you in our decisions and where does that get lost along the way? Where does that natural intuition of, of hunger and
Speaker 3:um,
Speaker 2:feeding yourself and you're not hungry kind of thing. Where does that have it? Get lost
Speaker 3:along the way.
Speaker 1:That's such a good question. That's heavy. Really heavy. Where does it like. I kind of sometimes. Well I think it depends on. It goes back to the habit cycle, right? It's like when were you fed as a child when you weren't hungry, like or you fed to sue the motions or maybe where your parents too busy and so that was just a way to, to kind of placate you or that sort of thing. So that could set up one cycle or you know, maybe it gets lost. Maybe start eating your emotions after that first breakup as a young teen or something like that. I mean I bet you we all have different places where that that starts to happen and maybe just looking at what are problematic behaviors and kind of digging backwards would be really revealing because truthfully at some point in time, like Kayla, I think about your little guy.
Speaker 2:Like he, he does. He when he's hungry, you sound great, right? Yeah. And when he's not, he is not. We don't want anything to do with that.
Speaker 1:I think about my daughter too. It's like, oh my goodness, she'll clear up a whole plate, like she's never seen anything before. And then she'll go for days and doesn't want anything and I keep trying to force feed her.
Speaker 2:Right. You need to eat, you need to eat. Yeah. That's so fascinating. I guess that's been one of my most favorite things about being a parent is observing how he is experiencing life from his positive affirmations, which I've talked about before. Um, and posted on about social media. I'm all the way to the transition from, you know, introducing pureed foods to solid foods too. Um, there was a period of time where we were, I guess we, we have visitors, I think you guys were here, but we were eating. I'm less than optimal foods, let's say their extra savory a little more often than not, whenever our parents visit might go to our favorite pizza place and whatever. And this kid was just annihilating food. I mean, anything. And a specific situation that comes to mind was a couple mondays ago. We, it's, it's nice weather. So we grilled out some chicken. I've marinated all day. It was so good and this kid loves grilled chicken, so it's not like I'm offering him food. He doesn't like. He's wondering around the kitchen screaming at me, eat, eat, eat, eat. I'm like, yes, daddy's cooking, you know, chicken on the grill about to come in. So it brings it in fresh, you know, I've got it all sliced up. He's ready to eat and just begging, eat, eat, eat. Like pulling my clothes off of me. I sit him in his highchair. I get me either. No, I don't want that. And I was like, okay, well that's what's for dinner. So Ms Dot and I proceed to sit down for dinner and eat our grilled chicken with whatever else. We have four sides and this kid was not having it. He wouldn't want any grilled chicken. Yeah, right. Yeah, yes. Cheese, cheese, Mac and cheese or something. Oh yeah. So legitimately and listeners might think I'm a little crazy, but we're approaching that like as parents, what we want to instill in our children and looking back on our childhood and taking things that we liked and we felt like our parents did really well and all those things. And one of those things is that, um, both of our parents did offer healthy foods, healthy items. I'm Mitchell's family in particular. If you did not eat dinner, you didn't get none of their choice, especially if it wasn't a new food. It's not like they would introduce a new bizarre food and expect you to eat it, but like a normal food. Like I don't want that. Especially as a teenager. Well I was like, well I don't. I mean he is smart. He's almost two and he knows how to manipulate. It is amazing about like if I want this or that. And so we had to be very careful and go, no, when you're hungry you will eat and this is what's for dinner. And so we politely tell him, you know, no, don't throw it in the floor. Let him sit there. This particular night he literally screamed bloody murder for 30 minutes and we went to bed. Well, my little rule was, okay, well he's going to wake up in the morning and you usually get something a little sweeter for breakfast, oatmeal or bananas something and he loves breakfast and he will inhale a banana, like one big old bite. Like shove it all in his mouth. It's disgusting. Well, yeah. I was like, well then you're gonna have to eat a bite of your chicken because at this point I know he hasn't had dinner. Right. So I know he's hungry. I tell you what, that kid would not eat a bite of his chicken. So we had the big fight. Not a big deal. I sent him to school, tell us teacher, like I'm kind of trying this thing. I really, by lunchtime when they have their next meal, he will have not eating from dinner to breakfast and he ate that whole serving of chicken that I sent plus his half a peanut butter sandwich, some fruit. He ate all this food and I really felt like I had a big win. I'll show you, but no, not just that, but just like how this intuition of him and like his Palette is no different than mine. Of course he craves sweet and savory and a little process here and there you can annihilate some ice cream and everything else, but ultimately it's my job as his mom to break that cycle to be like, okay, let's introduce less crap food and more healthy food because our pallets have to have a moment of reprieve, but coming back, we've talked with us coming back from vacation, all those kinds of things like how hard it is just to go back to we want the feeling of what eating healthy feels like, but I mean after you eat pizza and chicken fingers for a few days or you know, over the weekend or whatever. Right. I mean your grilled chicken is not quite as appetizing. That's at least my experience and what clients have shared. What do you guys think about that and how that can impact what we're feeding our kids?
Speaker 1:I think it would be fun just to talk about too, for a minute. Like what I'm in our families of origin and I would encourage our listeners to think about this like what do you feel like your family of origin, um, did really, really well and what do you think maybe kind of set you up for some problematic behaviors? And I just think about my own childhood and one thing I loved is we had three solid meals a day and um, my mom was always like, I am not a short order cook and you're going to get, you're going to eat what I. and that was the bottom line. So in a weird way we didn't have a whole lot of choices or um, you know, argument around it. We either chose to eat it or we did. But the other thing around that is knowing that kind of like you said with Aiden, I'm not going to get the opportunity to eat again in this current structure, um, until lunchtime or dinnertime. So I better, you know, I'm going to either choose to eat here or not. And it was an attitude. Now my mom was a great cook and we had a lot of variety. So that was wonderful, but when it, with that in place as I became a teenager, what became a bit problematic for me is if I didn't like it, well then I had the fast food option. I could go get something somewhere that I wanted and that began, especially with being involved in high school athletics and stuff, you can just set up some behaviors that were not super positive for me. So there was the good and the bad. What about,
Speaker 2:because they're kind of conversating at one point, what our families tended to and what we grew up with. One that I can think of directly is, is definitely the habits that my family had built on. Just nutritious meals. Um, there's obviously some habits where I, I think I told you guys I gather around some ice cream, bring that in my room, but I think that was something I don't have any emotions attached to that. There's nothing that significantly impacted me there. But as far as something that has been engraved into my habits now, and I know that every, everybody has them growing up. We all have some childhood memory or something that's embedded in us from what we have been taught throughout childhood. I'm just meals that are balanced and healthy and have nutrients in them like with vegetables and carbohydrates and protein. Um, and I think that's, that's the biggest thing that we just have to realize with, with that is just knowing where, what has carried over from childhood, I'm good or bad and, and going from that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. I think, um, another question I always ask is, is food with your children are or yourself, do you use that as a reward or a constellation when, when you're not feeling super great or there's an emotional trigger or things like that? Um, uh, how do you, how do you handle those situations with your children if they're inconsolable and meal time, do you just give into that by, um, providing a food or a snack or something in place of the Constellation, you know, maybe because you're too tired to really talk to them or ask them to
Speaker 2:express and in their words, if they're able to, what's really going on? Um, things like that, that we might even do unknowingly that over time set up, you know, problematic behaviors for our children. Um, it's, that's a tough thing, but I think of too is that even even in those little moments where we can choose to take the easy way out, every everything will always force us to be better and be less, less selfish. And so even in that, when it kind of goes against the grain of what's easy, I'm just really pressing into that and helping us to make habits and distill habits that we want for them and not take the easy way out of maybe we have received. And just thinking back about, um, how, what was your experience? You know, a lot of us come from, you know, parents that were working or like jody said, just maybe tired and the discipline side, there's challenging times. And so a challenge for yourself, if you're a listener and you are a parent or if you're just someone in a leadership capacity, maybe you have nieces and nephews or maybe you have friends that you know that maybe this learning this behavior, you can go, oh yeah, you're identifying with that. I'm just kind of thinking about that. And also the summit we didn't mention about one of the things backtalking about our families. One of the things that I really enjoyed about looking back over my childhood was that while, especially when I was younger, I remember the encouragement to finish my plate and finished food and definitely having to complete dinner before I was able to participate in desert if we were having it that night or something like that. But my parents were always allowed me to exercise my own intuition about when I really wasn't hungry. And I remember this distinct argument between my parents about my mom is not a big eater. She's, I mean she's lucky to like eat twice a day. It's crazy her whole life. She's been like this and my dad versus, you know, eats everything. And he was like, no, she needs to finish her food, and I was a teenager or something and my mom said leave her alone like she's going to eat when she's hungry. And he was like, that doesn't make any sense. Like the kid should be hungry, like laughing and I just, this conversation stands out in my mind about how and now talking to him now I'm super, super close to my dad. He was just here for a visit and talking about how funny that is of like looking back and going, yeah, I don't know why I was trying to force you to eat because I mean like you would eat when you're hungry and I would choose healthy foods because they made them available, you know, there was always cut up vegetables in the fridge. I'm jody, you've mentioned a couple times in your son would come home from school. There was like this witching hour. I was very similar. I was not a very happy camper when I was hungry and
Speaker 1:my mom was always great to have some grabbable snacks. Yeah. I think, you know, one of the biggest challenges I have, like I'm just thinking about when I was raising my kids is keeping the refrigerator stocked and the pantry stocked with things that we're going to serve them well and honestly sometimes it's apparent you just get worn down. It's like I can't keep my, my son was a big eater. I mean he's now, he's like six, three, 220 pounds now. I mean he was a big kid like that in high school and just use a baseball player, really active metabolism and I could not keep that kid and you know, happy and it felt like this challenge amount as long as the grocery store two times a week. So if you're a listener and you're hearing this and you got an amen, I like, I totally get it. I mean I totally get it. It's so challenging, but one of the things I know I had to and get my mindset was like whether I felt like it or not, I had to be a grocery shop was a mandatory thing two times a week because if it got to the point where my kids were unhappy because they were scrounging around in the pantry or searching for things that weren't even that healthy for them. I mean that was just, it was a bad situation. One thing in our house was like we'd better never run out of milk. Like my kids were really huge milk drinkers, four gallons a week. Two kids, my husband had was four gallons of milk a week and if we ever ran out, like you would have thought that the house was coming down mayday, mayday. So my kids are not overweight or really great health today. They were fed well, but it was a challenge and I had to put like we had dinner on the table every night. I just, I did that. It sucked. Working full time and trying to think of it took some. It took some planning. Um, but my health habits help them build their habits and was it perfect? No, I mean we had breakfast for dinner, you know, pizza and salad was a regular routine on a Friday night, but for the most part, you know, other times they, they were well fed, it was challenge and it, it took a commitment to do that and do it well.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the things that you mentioned about trying to be creative, um, that's the exact reason why we introduced the cookbook, why we created it while we. These are all recipes that we have built ourselves. Many that jody, I'm sure you cooked your family. Um, so they're, they've been passed by the husbands and the children and um, and Taylor, even you that don't have any experience with children yourself, you've weighed in a lot of insight with clients that you've trained and also just personal experience about behaviors that you have. One of those being designated mealtimes and how we've talked many times within our, um, kind of like our coaching meetings about how having designated mealtimes helps us as adults identify when that feeling of hunger arises. Why am I hungry? Is it a growth spurt, jody? You've mentioned that before, leaning into that when your children are hungry and it's legitimate, um, or is it emotional? Is it stress, is it those things are a lot harder to identify if we're just snacking all day long. So I think it's really great to that. You mentioned how your parents were strict and a Nazi kind of way, but pretty strict about not having additional snacks outside of meal times because it would screw up your appetite. Right? Right. And that's such a natural thing too that we teach our clients right now is if you're grazing all the time, you're not going to really learn your body's natural senses in that kind of derailed a little bit. And I remember speaking with a client and it was so significant just because just teaching or teaching them to, especially as parents to involve their kids and what they're doing and because that's how they're going to learn the most and with involving them and just living the lights that you are called to, um, with all of your healthy habits and including them is so significant in helping them to really learn at a young age.[inaudible] that's a good point about I'm eating the same food as your children or your family. Um, it was funny. This came up whenever you guys were here about jody, how you and Scott, you don't have children at home. So there's oftentimes that you have different dietary preferences. Like you just prefer to eat a different way than he does. Similarly to Mitchell and I. and there's many times that, you know, I'm, I know that aiden has had chicken twice for lunch, so I'm going to make him eggs for dinner versus I might want some chicken. So depending on what your life situation is, a lot of times I'm having discussions with some clients about eating differently. And I think like Taylor, you just highlighted explaining why explaining that it's a preference. It's not a requirement, it's not a diet, mommy isn't eating this way because she is fat and wants to lose weight or those things are really dangerous things to be treading on. And it going not said can leave a lot of room for assumptions. Um, when what you're doing is you're really just choosing something that you desire, especially if like I'm, I like leftovers. Mitchell doesn't prefer them. So if he wants to have something fresh and I might be having something leftover as our children grow up in our home, um, it seems very normal and natural to disarticulate why we're eating what we are for dinner if there's a question, but in case that conversation hasn't come up in your home and you feel burdened by the fact that you might be eating something different or you have the. One of the challenges that bought the cookbook, um, had a comment about, and I'll leave the cookbook link in the show notes, but she had a comment about how, oh my gosh, I didn't have to cook two dinners for dinner tonight. Her husband works long hours, so she serves them by preparing the meal and a lot of times they eat different food, but she was like, I was able to cook the same meal out of a cookbook and maybe add one or two things or take away to modify for their preferences. So being able to have those options, I think it's key.
Speaker 1:It's all in the mindset like so it can be extremely challenging to think that you have to eat very differently than your family. And so the goal is to how do you kind of merge those two things in a way that doesn't cause you to have to cook two meals or just had that little bit of add on or be in the mindset that it's okay that I am eating something different. I'm not feeling deprived because of it. So it's all about how you frame it up. But we're busy ladies, I mean, whether you have children at home or not right now, no matter what way you slice it, there's a lot going on and so simple things which cookbooks a huge help in doing, um, and there's lots of resources out there to help you get healthy meals. Um, and obviously that's what we like to try to encourage for our clients, but we want, we don't want just health for you, we want it for your family. And so looking at what does that look like for my family is so super important.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Women do play a very important role in terms of, um, offering kind of a, a guiding light in the family's health. Being able, whether even if they're not the sole cook or the sole grocery shopper, I'm offering up those ideas and being that leader in that area. I've heard just testimony after testimony of people saying, oh my gosh, my family, this is usually a year later I'm giving feedback about how much better they feel. And it was because mom started with making a healthy decision here and there.
Speaker 1:And then. So on, so forth. We do have a huge role, um, so ladies, we just challenge you today just to think about how your current behaviors are impacting your children and how your behaviors were impacted as a child and think about what happens based on the last couple of podcasts that you want to not only change for yourself individually, but how those changes will impact your family. And again, we want you to be fit forever. We want your families to be forever. So that's it for today's episode. Catch you all next time around.
Speaker 2:Well, there you have it guys. Thank you so much for joining in to another episode of the[inaudible] forever podcast. If you guys have any, please don't hesitate
Speaker 4:to reach out via email@infoattheOmnifit.com. And of course, please connect with us on social media. All of our handles are instagram and facebook are both at the Omni fit and if you like this kind of content, if you like what we're putting out, please rate us on itunes and stitcher. That helps other people find us and it lets us know that we're putting out content that you enjoy. All right. Talk to you guys soon.