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Ten Ways to Insure Healthy Eating Attitudes
in Yourself and Your Family
Even more central to our health and well being
than what we eat, are our attitudes and beliefs about food
and eating, or how we feel about what we eat. Eating disorders
are, relatively speaking, rare. The misguided attitudes about
food and weight management that lead to eating dysfunction
however, are not. Moreover, the consequences of these attitudes
can be devastating…. rampant dieting, body image concerns,
and disordered eating, all of which can put their victims
at high risk to develop eating disorders, the most lethal
of all the mental health disorders.
Kids learn these attitudes from their parents,
through what parents say and what they do, through role modeling
and imitation. Attitudes and issues are passed down as a legacy
from one generation to the next.
The following are ways that parents can insure
healthy attitudes and a healthy eating lifestyle in their
child:
- Become knowledgeable about what physical fitness and healthy
eating really means.
- Become aware of your own personal attitudes and issues
about food and weight.
- Consistently prepare and serve nutritionally dense meals
to the entire family.
- Sit down with the family as often as you can, and emotionally
connect with loved ones over meals. The dining table is
the best place to discover what they are feeling and thinking
not only about food and weight, but about life in general.
- Turn off the television, particularly at mealtimes and
particularly when the television is in the dining area.
- Model healthy eating behaviors, and spend quality time
with your family. The roots of a child’s healthy body image
lie in feelings of self-acceptance and self-esteem, not
in his or her actual size or shape.
- Remain emotionally involved with your teenager and young
adult. In some respects, they need your input now as much
as they did when they were little. The nature of the parent/child
connection will change throughout the years and life stages…
though the quality and constancy of that connection is for
keeps.
- Think “out loud” in teaching kids to recognize and resolve
problems effectively. In many ways, healthy eating entails
ongoing decision-making, need meeting, and problem solving.
- Teach kids to become accepting of all kinds of individual
differences, in themselves and others.
- Stay physically active, and encourage your family to enjoy
an active lifestyle as well.
By recognizing and addressing attitudes before
they materialize into dysfunctional behaviors, parents can
prevent eating disorders and other conditions capable of compromising
life and life quality. Attitudes are easier to change than
habits once entrenched; minds are easier to change before
they become compromised and corrupted by distorted judgment,
inaccurate perceptions and behavioral compulsions that accompany
malnourishment.
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About the Author:
Psychotherapist Abigail H. Natenshon has specialized
in the treatment of eating disorders with individuals, families,
and groups for the past 31years. She is the author of When
Your Child Has An Eating Disorder, A Step-by-Step Workbook
For Parents And Other Caregivers, Jossey-Bass, 1999. Based
on hundreds of successful outcomes, this book shepherds concerned
parents step-by-step through the processes of eating disorder
recognition, confronting the child, finding the most effective
treatment for patient and family, and evaluating and insuring
a timely recovery. A guide to eating disorder prevention,
this book is useful to parents, health professionals and school
personnel alike in countering the pervasive epidemic of unhealthy
eating and body image concerns, and destructive media and
peer influences. Her work can be reviewed further at www.empoweredparents.com
and www.empoweredkidZ.com.
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