Body language: How do you talk about dieting in front of the kids?
It’s a time of year when many parents are trying to lose weight. But, experts warn, they need to be very, very careful about the language they use — or they risk passing on body hang-ups to their children. Chrissie Russell reports
For about the millionth time in my life, I am on a diet. The healthy eating plan I’m on does not brand itself as a diet — it’s a balanced, longterm approach to fitness and nutrition — but I’m weighing cheese and I’ve not had a biscuit in three months so I’ll be honest, it feels a lot like a diet. This early into the new year, many people will rethink their eating habits, and try to stick to resolutions they may have made to get healthier. I started my efforts months ago.
My family have gotten used to the sight of me eating different meals to them and making sweaty attempts at chest-to-floor burpees in our living room, as I try to shift the excess pounds accumulated during the biscuitdrenched food fest that was Lockdown One.
“How’s it going?” my mam will ask me most weeks, as I regale her with inches lost or stubborn scales, before moving on to other topics. I didn’t really think my attempts to return to my pre-pandemic weight had been that much of a feature of my conversation until my six-year-old turned round to me the other day and said: “Mummy, when you’re allowed to eat sweet things again you really have to try Turkish Delight — it’s great!”
This shocked me to my (now moderately toned) core. One: Turkish Delight is rank, so he’s wrong there, but more importantly — Two: What sort of an example am I setting if my son is already thinking of food in terms of ‘allowed’ and ‘not allowed’?
The studies around diet chat and its impact on kids make for troubling reading. They show that children are more likely to control their weight in unhealthy ways and binge eat if parents talk about weight loss when they’re around. Parents who talk about controlling their weight are also more likely to raise children who are dissatisfied with their bodies.
You might think that surely mam and dad setting a healthy model for exercise and eating can only be a good thing. But it turns out that just how we do this and, more importantly how we talk about it, really matters when it comes to the message our kids pick up.
Dietitian and founder of Eatwell, Sarah Keogh, recommends avoiding all talk of ‘weight’ and ‘diets’ around kids. “I wouldn’t mention it at all,” she says. As a society she believes we have “an obsession with losing weight” particularly at this time in the new year, under gruelling dietary restrictions that few will have the motivation for. “If it’s not going well, then you’re cross and maybe talking about it on the phone with the kids in earshot. If you’re critical of your own body, they will start to become critical of themselves.”
We need, she says, to become more aware of how insidious weight chat is in school, in sport, in popular culture and everyday conversation. “If you meet a friend it might be natural to say, ‘You’ve lost weight!’ — but don’t do it in front of the kids,” urges Keogh. “If you celebrate weight-loss then it sends home the message to them that there is one ‘right’ body shape for boys and one for girls — I don’t think we should talk negatively about body shape in front of children.”
Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist, Dr Colman Noctor, agrees. “You should avoid selfcriticism and being overly harsh on yourself,” he says. “Don’t suggest that one’s weight is the problem and that weight loss is the answer to unhappiness. Focus instead on health, fitness and feeling good over cosmetic appearance, admiring thinness, willpower or fitness diligence.”
Critically, we should avoid demonising certain foods — like the forbidden Turkish Delight. “I hate the idea of ‘you can’t eat sugar, it’s really bad’,” says Sarah. “Eating something sweet is a lovely part of life. There are no ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods, just good and bad habits. You don’t want children feeling guilty or bad for having a bit of chocolate.”
She firmly believes that sweet foods can be reduced and veggies upped in any diet without children even needing to know about it. If they ask, then she recommends saying that less sugar is better for your teeth. Talk about ‘sometimes foods’ — things that are available but you only eat occasionally.
“’Good’ and ‘bad foods’ should be avoided. Good and bad amounts of food should be the focus,” adds Dr Noctor.
It’s a subtle but important difference. Think about the recently released Kids Food Pyramid. Much was made of the fact that children should only be having chocolate once a week, but chocolate is still on the menu — not prohibited.
Parents Rob and Yvonne Cullen lost 13 stone between them over the course of two years. According to Rob, who works for Dublin Chamber, their sons Liam (8) and Tommy (12) would cheer on their weekly losses on the scales. “They had a sense of pride in encouraging us,” says Rob. “Liam wanted to know how much we’d lost and would give us high-fives.”
But he feels it’s important that, whilst the scales recorded the victories, the boys knew the numbers weren’t goals in themselves. “It was always about being healthy and what we would be able to do like run around with them, play football, sit on the floor and build Lego, maybe go on a skiing holiday,” explains Rob. “It was never us saying, ‘We don’t want to be fat’, it was about all the things that we’d be able to do.”
The couple also celebrated ‘non-scale victories’, like being able to shop in different places and always tried to eat as a family with nothing (bar alcohol) eliminated from their diets, only moderated.
“It wasn’t and it isn’t a diet,” adds Rob. “Diets are short-term and don’t work in the longterm. Our goal for wanting to be healthy was always about the boys and being here for them.”
Mum-of-one Kelly Fitzsimons attends a weight-loss clinic, and she’s very conscious of what message she wants her 10-year-old daughter Ella May to take from that decision.
“I grew up listening to how everything needed to be smaller — not that I needed to be smaller — but that all the adults around me wanted to be smaller,” explains Kelly. “Everything was more desirable if it was smaller and that entered my head and never left. When I had my daughter I swore she wouldn’t grow up with that because it has ruled my life, I’ve honestly been dieting since I was 14.”
Her daughter sometimes goes to the weight-loss clinic with her, but “she knows I’m there to get healthier and make sure I can live as long as I can, it’s never based around weight,” explains Kelly. If she’s serving the rest of the family something she’s not eating, she says it’s just because ‘I don’t feel like it’. The word ‘diet’ is banned
from her house. They might sound like small things, but she’s passionate about the fact that it matters.
“Trust me, they’re listening,” she says. “You influence how your child thinks about their body in a number of ways and criticising your body in front of them may seem harmless since it’s not directed at them (and you might not even think they’re listening), but it allows them to internalise horrible comments and in turn make them start to think and feel that way about themselves.”
Dr Noctor agrees: “It’s important to be clear on why you want to lose weight — to be stronger, faster, feel better — but it’s also important not to over-prioritise diets and weight loss in terms of the importance in family culture. You should be able to have a piece of Turkish Delight.”