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Julie: Hey there, welcome to episode 369 of the Find Your Food Voice podcast. I am Julie Duffy Dillon, registered dietitian and your host. Welcome to our summer. Welcome to our summer mini -sode series, fellow voice finder. There’s no music or editing, just content we are gravitating toward while in the summer chaos and fun. This is part three of the Almond Mom series, and this one in particular is how to not be one. If you are just catching this one and you haven’t listened to the other two, that is fine, but I also think they will have lots of dougats for you, whether you had an almond mom or not.

Julie: But I’m assuming if you had an Almond Mom, you probably are worried about being one too, because your foundation was laid with diet culture. So I have, let’s see here, six, I believe. Yes, I have six ways how to not be an Almond Mom when you had an Almond Mom yourself. And number one, it’s to do your own work. I hope this goes without saying. But so much of what I’ve noticed about people who are raised by parents that were just sucked into the diet trap is what they were really teaching their children was a projection of their own fears. So if you do your own work, which is ongoing, I’m still doing my work on this. We all need to continue to do this work until diet culture is gone, which I don’t know, I’m not holding my breath. It’s gonna be around for a while.

Julie: So keep doing your own work, start it if you haven’t yet. And this will help you to know if you are projecting your own fears onto your children when it comes to food and weight. Number two, many people find a lot of relief with Ellen Satter’s very popular guideline on the division of food responsibility. It is parents choose when and what to eat and the kid chooses how much to eat, if at all.This is something I used for a really long time. And I also realized there were times where it just didn’t fit for me and my family. So number three, it’s okay if this Ellen Satter principle doesn’t work for you. There may be parts of it that do, and there may be times where you need to prioritize other things. And there may be just ways that you’re doing it a little different. That is okay. Number four.

Julie: When your kids ask you about good versus bad foods, and they will, they will, let them know you will only provide them with safe food, like no moldy food, and that we can’t put foods in categories, even though our teachers will try to tell us that we can, just do the homework assignment, whatever, but foods in our family, we don’t categorize as good or bad or healthy versus unhealthy. Don’t be scammed into thinking you can just teach it that way. It’s the same thing. Don’t worry too much though about really hammering this concept in verbally because kids, until they’re probably around 13 or even a little later, are gonna have a really hard time understanding food nuance and how we relate to food and how like foods and moderation is really what it ends up being like.

Julie: Explaining this to someone whose brain hasn’t fully matured yet will just end up being a lot of extra work. And instead, focusing on how you are talking about food and how you are living your own life around food is going to be much more important. While they may not always understand how to think about food in a nuanced way, what will they understand? Well, number five, don’t call a food yuck. Not only does it hurt you, the chef, the chef’s feelings.

Julie: So what will kids actually understand when they’re concrete thinkers? Well, you can teach them how to not be the jerk at the cafeteria table. Teach your kids to not refer to foods as yucky. Now, I’ve had to correct my children many times on this. So what will kids understand when they’re still concrete learners and they can’t quite get the nuance of food and food behavior? Well, you can teach your kids some really important things that will keep them from being the jerk in the cafeteria. Teach your kids to not call a food yucky. Not only does it hurt you, the chef’s feelings, but you don’t want your kids to be the a -hole in the cafeteria making fun of a kid eating their cultural food that may look strange to them or the kid that’s eating shelf stable food, that is all they can afford. This is something that’s really important when we think about the big picture and helping kids to not only have a positive relationship with food themselves, but also to encourage the same with people around them in their community. Along the same lines, number six, teach kids that no one wants to hear how the, here.

Julie: Along those same lines is number six. Teach kids that no one wants to hear how their body looks. This may be hard, but that also includes compliments about weight loss, youthfulness, nice legs, how hot someone is. Be very, very mindful of your own practice on how you talk about bodies. This is gonna be the most important way to teach this concept. This is going to be the way that you’ll teach it, because you may say it with words to not talk about people’s bodies. But if you yourself do this, even when you think they’re not listening, it’s going to really get in the way of teaching kids that certain bodies are more valuable than others and that certain bodies should look that way in order to look good to our eyes. We don’t want to teach our kids this. We want kids to appreciate body diversity. and that they are so much more than how their body looks. That we really want to be mindful of how we are talking about bodies so that our kids will be as well. And it’ll help them to internalize whether their body is for other people’s pleasure or only their own, which we want kids.

Julie: Really honing in on how you talk about bodies, whether you think kids are listening or not, will make the difference between a kid internalizing whether their body is for others people. Really honing it in and being mindful of your own way that you talk about bodies, whether you think kids are listening or not, is going to make the difference between a kid internalizing whether their body is for other people’s pleasure only or for their own. All right, so this wraps up our Almond Mom series. If you are raised by a caregiver who is totally entrenched in diet culture, maybe still is, I hope this helps.

Julie: Again, let me know your thoughts about it. Let me know if it resonated, what I missed, and also what other topics you want to hear us talk about on the Find Your Food Voice podcast this summer and beyond. So thank you for listening. I always appreciate a rating or review. It helps this small, mighty independent podcast to be found by other people. Share the episode if you also feel so inclined. And I appreciate you listening so much. Until next time, take care.