Obsessive or setting good a role model?

I went to the grocery store and bought lunch/dinner supplies for the kids for this next upcoming weekend. I will be working nights Friday/Saturday/Sunday so they need to grab their food this weekend so I can sleep during the day. I measure everything out into cups and bags, put it in a plastic container in the fridge. They grab a yogurt/pudding, fruit, a vegetable, and a sandwich or leftovers. I made some egg/bacon wraps with lavash wraps. I was portioning the carrots into a cup and the dip into a cup. my daughter was placing cheese cubes and grapes in a cup and measuring out 1 ounce of cheese and 2 ounces of grapes. The kids were putting cookies and cheeze-its into a sandwich bag. The 6 and 9 year old began arguing over the serving size. The cheese-its serving size are 27 crackers or 30 grams. Well the 6 year old put in 27 crackers and it came to 31 grams. The 9 year old says, "Hey, you need to take one out. That's not a serving size. It should be 30 grams." The 6 year old says, I'm not taking it out because it's 27 crackers." The 12 year old says it doesn't matter. The 9 year old says, "Yes it does matter, every gram counts." He was seriously bent out of shape that it came to 31 grams. He said, "This is UNACCEPTABLE. The serving size should be correct!" I had to laugh because it was so funny. I think he may be picking up some of my tendencies and I don't know if that is a good thing or he's being a bit too obsessive. I have been told I am too obsessive weighing everything.

Obsessive? Absolutely! Not that that is a bad thing though. I would use the opportunity to teach that not everything is absolute and that you can overcome obstacles by simply breaking the cracker in half. There are still 27 pieces in the bag and it will come out as 30 grams.

That's a great idea. I wish I would of thought of that when they were fighting.

While we, the previously SMO/MO, should be somewhat obsessive about food, I'm not sure that this is a healthy food relationship for a child to form. It seems like there should be a happy medium. Awareness without obsession.

Obsessing over food is always bad, for both children and adults. Most typical adults do not obsess over portions, either. Weighing and measuring post-op should be a good habit rather than an obsessive one. This is partially because the reality is that no one gains weight because they ate a gram too much of crackers or apples, but also because the obsessing often belies other things. Not always, for sure! It depends! Part of treating disordered eating relies on being released from the obsessions, in general, both good or bad. What do I mean?

Good habit: "I have to make sure I weigh my portions. Looks like I got a half a cup of grapes down! Adding it to MFP now to keep track of my meals for the nutritionist."

Bad habit: "There is one two many grams of these grapes! How many grams is each grape? Maybe I should cut it into 1/3s to meet the gram requirement?

The later often leads to higher anxiety, and (more rarely) pathological behavior around food. Pathology depends on a lot of crap, though, and more often I only consider it pathological if it interferes with what would be typical or normal functioning.

As for kids vs. adults, child portions are very different from adult healthy portions. In general, the advice is to not restrict children and adolescents' food intakes unless they are already obese or overweight. Conversely, children should not be forced to eat unless they are underweight or malnourished.

This is because most children have a natural sense of satiety and portion control that we lack, actually. This is preserved by avoiding frequent use of hyper-palatable food designed to be addictive and over-consumed - i.e., potato chips, fast food, pop tarts. Having kids "guestimate" is fine, or even weighing is fine, but when they start harping on servings it can be problematic. I wouldn't condemn them for it, but I also wouldn't encourage it, and explain it's really the tracking of food that matters, rather than whether something is gram off or not, because that's actually the real reason we track.

Again, a gram of food doesn't cause people to gain weight any more than an extra grape once a day does. The body is not an idiot, and we evolved without measuring cups and digital scales. Weighing and tracking is important - the minutiae are not, necessarily, depending.

And, don't get me wrong - I weigh everything, however I am a food addict. I have eating pathology severe enough it got me to over 750 pounds. Being aware of portion sizes is really good, however children obsessing and counting food is not. They do not need to measure food down to crackers and grams, though. We do because we are addicts and were to the point we gained weight equal to another human being that we carried on our bones.

I can't emphasize enough, that the best way to educate children about food is to simply give them their portions and talk about healthy habits, feed them actual food versus processed crap, and talk about why we eat apples and not cupcakes. How big the apple is happens to be irrelevent for most human beings - it simply is, both biochemically, and also psychologically. Me, now, I can eat a whole shed load of apples, let me tell you, so they are on the No List. A kid, however, should not have a No List, unless they weigh 300 pounds at 13, in which case it's a matter of life or death for them, rather than childhood curiosity.

Kids are amazing little scientists! They will observe your behaviors and emulate them because you are mom, and mom is the center of the world. That is also how children's brains develop - through copying and modeling. This is usually beneficial, but in some cases it's not. I treated some children with eating disorders, both anorexia and binging, and both are often learned by children from observing adults.

Please understand, I'm not saying your kids have an eating disorder. However, while it is a bit funny for us, imagine them at 15 frantically worrying over every gram in the serving. You have a huge opportunity to teach them to not make the same mistakes that all of us reading this have made.

Amen.

Perfectly said Donna...

Wonderful post Donna, thank you!