While it's true that dysfunction varies in degree from one family to the next, nearly all families teach something a little off-kilter to their kids. It's just human nature to parent less than perfectly, and to pass along something irrational. Interestingly, children often take the rule they've been passed even more seriously than their parents do.
Thus you get the teenage girl whose mom, at normal weight, always pestered her to stay thin, now starving herself to achieve acceptance. This mother never meant for her daughter to go so far.
Alternatively, some offspring rebel against the rule, swinging in the opposite, and just as extreme, direction.
The mom who is overly strict about sweets produces a son who indulges his own children in sugary snacks—on demand and in large amounts.
In this way, irrational beliefs are passed along through the generations. Sometimes a rule's carbon copy is passed along; other times the rule's polar opposite is what gets fed to the next generation.
But we don't have to operate in reaction to what we learned. As we're coming up on a season that means holidays and celebration for many people, now is a useful time to examine a few beliefs from childhood. Then you can decide if you'd like to dispute and replace them with something a little more rational.
Below is a list of just a few examples of childhood food rules, beliefs, and self-talk:
It's not good to be a picky eater
When you don't clean your plate, you insult the cook
Wasting food is intolerable
Food is a way of coping with emotions
Clean your plate because there are starving children in Third World Countries
When you eat small portions, you are eating like a bird, and that's bad
Some foods, such as cheese, are bad and full of fat, and should be avoided
Food is a source of trouble in life
Being thin is more important than anything
Being easy to feed is important—it means you're a flexible person
You should always be willing to try a new food
Being thin is awful. You should have meat on your bones
Being fat is awful. You should eat diet foods to slim down
Take what you like but eat what you take
If you don't take extreme measures, you'll get fat
If you eat what you like all the time, you'll get fat
Ask yourself—are any of the above beliefs really true? Do you believe any of them? Take some time to dispute your distorted beliefs, and replace them with something more true. Then repeat them a few times for good measure! Come back to this newsletter later in the week and do it again.
Now read some stories offered anonymously by a few generous Yahoo! Diet Survivors members:
"What got passed on to me was that I was not supposed to enjoy food but that food was ONLY to be used for energy. This meant that it didn't have to taste good or be pleasing in any way... so we (my sister and I) were served food we didn't like and our preferences were unimportant. Therefore, I did not get what my body craved and therefore, I doubt very much that my body got the nutrients and vitamins it needed. Therefore, I overate in order to get enough... at least that's part of the reason, maybe???"
"I was brought up to eat everything on my plate. Even to this day I can't eat brussel sprouts as I was forced to eat them through dry retching as a child.
My whole family is weight obsessed and so I learned to be this way also. My father always commented on thin women being beautiful and always put me down because of my weight so I felt ugly and fat most of my life.
Real women eat like sparrows and real men eat like kings - this is what I was taught."
"My mom passed on to me not to eat too much, to eat
diety and then to sneak food from candy stashes later.
Wonder why I still had stashes up until about 2
months ago. Now, I don't need them; I buy what I want
and place it in the open; no secret eating because the
shame is gone now.
My dad is a normal eater."
"We didn't have the clean the plate rule, thank God.
My mom hated it because her mom did it to her."
"Ugh! Try getting praised for making a 'Happy Plate.' That was the clean plate club in my extended family. To this day I eat my cereal dry because my mom used to make us drink the milk left in the bowl and I couldn't stand the crumbs. What didn't get eaten at dinner was put away for the next day. We were forced to eat all kinds of yucky things. How misguided."
"When I was a child, my father was militant about eating every
bite. I remember one time, we had stew and I left one piece of
onion. (It was slimey if I recall.) I could not get out of that
chair. I finally got creative and asked if i could get some bread. I
put it between 2 pieces of bread and tried to eat it quickly. YUCK!!
I may have gotten sick. But it is very sad. In the end I was eating
bread I was not hungry for just to get rid of this tiny onion
sliver.."
"The clean plate club was definitely top of the list in my home growing up...there are kids starving in other countries, ya know! It didn't matter if it was something I liked or not, it had to go down or sit there until it was gone...or no snack later. Funny how food became both a punishment and a reward. In my teen years, I was constantly reminded that certain food would make me fat. Everything I ate was watched and sometimes questioned 'do you really need that?'...I think that along with punishment and reward, it also became a source of guilt.
I do have good memories of food related traditions that I really did enjoy with my family. Sundays were big breakfasts and large, special late afternoon dinners. Sunday night, after baths, we'd have popcorn or homemade pizza while we watched Disney (the only time we were allowed to eat in the living room). Every summer, there was one trip to the beach for french fries....there was something special about those fries....and sometimes I can still smell them and give thought to making a trip to go get some. Birthdays were chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting."
"[I remember] the time my Dad put a combination lock on the fridge so that I couldn't eat when I wanted to...
my Mom who ate a tiny bowl of plain oatmeal, a tiny glass of milk and exactly two sips of orange juice with her vitamins everyday for breakfast no matter what
... she also ate out of the garbage so that no food was wasted
Such strange behavior that was 'normal' in our house!!!"
"My mother forced me to eat soft-boiled eggs with the longies in
them, and to this day I can't eat eggs... I also had to sit at the
table until
'every speck of food was gone'... it didn't matter if I
gagged, she would just slap me... I would sit there, truly, for hours
because I just couldn't eat, and then I would be punished, sent to
my room for the rest of the night... sometimes my grandfather
rescued me by taking the food away and throwing it outside for
the birds to eat...
My grandmother had a different approach... it was always that
'people are starving in the world', and 'you should appreciate the
food your father works so hard for', and the one that really stuck
with me was 'you have to eat everything to be strong and healthy',
so I would eat like crazy so I could be the strongest and healthiest..."
"I think in most cases..our parents meant well..I can remember my Mom making me eat liver as I gagged and gagged..to this day, I can`t smell it without gagging. From her standpoint, she wanted me to be healthy..
I followed in her footsteps with my first daughter...When I look back, it makes me sick to think of making her sit to eat large amounts of food because I wanted her to be healthy."
"I remember actually throwing up at a birthday party when I was 5 or 6 because I was forced to eat mixed vegetables (and hot dogs...go figure). I knew I didn't like them, I told my friend's mom and my mom that I didn't like them and I was forced to eat them. I'm 36 now and can still remember that day!"
Perhaps some of these anecdotes made you cry or touched a nerve. Choosing from the above lists, or your own story, you can use the ABCDEF method to dispute any belief contained within the stories that you think may be irrational. We will illustrate with one especially subtle example.
"Take what you like but eat what you take." This belief even sounds normal and healthy. But does it make sense? It's predicated on the assumption that one unit of any food will be perfect for your satiety. So one omelette should be eaten in its entirety. One english muffin should be eaten, including the burnt parts.
This belief also assumes that your ability to eyeball your portions is perfectly matched to what you will ultimately need for satiety. Again, this is faulty. Often, it is not easy to tell just what you need. Perhaps you're more hungry than you realize, or perhaps you'll end up wanting three glasses of milk, which means you won't eat as much from your plate as you took.
Perhaps this is a good time to laugh. Laugh at ourselves, laugh at our families of origin, laugh at human behavior. And then...let's move on! Decide for yourself how children should be treated in regard to food, and how you should treat yourself now that you're an adult.
How about a new family rule?
As you ponder this newsletter, you might like to come up with a new philosophy for your own family or for yourself about eating. It doesn't have to be so serious. Modifying our earlier example of "Take what you like but eat what you take," here's a suggestion to get your creative juices flowing. It's more cumbersome than its original form, but it gets the point across:
Take what you like, and eat some of it. Unless of course you don't like it. In which case you don't have to eat any of it and may toss it, and find something else to eat. But do it quietly so you don't hurt the cook's feelings...
What's your new slogan about food? Share it with the Yahoo! Diet Survivors message board. Have fun!
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Last Modified: Wednesday, 06-Feb-2008 07:12:38 PST
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Childhood food rules
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