Transforming Family Food Influences: A Pediatrician’s Insights on Nurturing Healthy Eating and Self-Acceptance

How can the way we talk about food and body image shape our children’s health for a lifetime? In this enlightening episode of Real Food Stories, host Heather Carey sits down with Sheila Carroll, a board-certified pediatrician dedicated to enhancing children’s health through meaningful parental engagement. Sheila’s insights about family food influences reveal the profound impact that parents’ beliefs about dieting and weight can have on their children’s relationship with food. As we navigate the complexities of nutrition and health, it becomes clear that understanding our own food beliefs is crucial in fostering a positive environment for our kids.

Sheila opens up about her family food influences and her personal journey as an overweight child and how her parents’ unconditional acceptance played a pivotal role in shaping her self-worth. This candid discussion encourages parents to confront their fears about their children’s weight and health, urging them to first examine their own beliefs and behaviors surrounding food. Sheila advocates for a transformative shift from weight-focused conversations to a holistic view of health that emphasizes mental well-being and self-acceptance.

Throughout this episode, Heather and Sheila stress the importance of modeling healthy lifestyle choices and creating a nurturing environment filled with support, empathy, and education rather than shame. By sharing practical healthy eating tips and personal food journeys, they empower listeners to rethink their approach to nutrition. As they dive deep into the intricate relationship between family food influences and children’s dietary habits, this episode serves as a powerful reminder of the significant role parents play in shaping their children’s attitudes towards food and body image.

Join us for this heartfelt conversation that not only addresses the myths surrounding weight loss and diet culture but also promotes a sustainable and joyful approach to eating. Discover how to cultivate a nurturing space for your children where mindful eating practices thrive, and learn how to embrace the seven pillars of abundance in your family’s nutrition journey. This episode of Real Food Stories is not just about food; it’s about empowering women, nurturing our children’s health, and fostering a legacy of positivity around eating. Tune in and take the first step towards transforming your family’s relationship with food—because nourishing your body starts at home.

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome back. And if you are just tuning in with me for the very first time, it’s so nice to meet you. And I’m really glad you’re here with me today. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relation to health, weight, and our bodies so you can make peace with what you eat. Today I am talking with Sheila Carroll. Sheila is a board-certified pediatrician who is dedicated to helping children achieve their best health. She does this by working exclusively with parents who are willing to focus on modifying their own behaviors to ultimately improve their child’s health. So I’m really looking forward to this conversation with you today, Sheila, because I truly believe that parents pass down a whole host of food beliefs. to their kids, not only from a cultural standpoint, our traditions, the food we eat, or, you know, the foods that we celebrate with, but also from the perspective of body image and dieting. I mean, I know in my family, this was certainly the case. You were either on a diet, you were taking diet pills, and women were not really allowed to enjoy their food. Women had to sort of be very discriminating with their… what they ate and, you know, and just always watch their weight. So my family was notoriously judgmental of weight, especially if you had some weight to lose, it was seen as a true character defect, I think. So I know you work with kids who have weight to lose, but this really starts with the parents, right? So in my practice, I get calls all the time from women who want me to see their daughters, sometimes their sons, their teenagers, mostly teenagers that they’re asking about for their kids’ weight issues. When I think what I hear them saying in reality is I’ve got my own beliefs about what eating and weight should be and should look like for my daughter. And if she could just have some more willpower, then she could lose the weight. It’s probably how they grew up, right? So again, I know that it really starts with the parents. I think that you probably might agree with that. And it starts with the parents first and the need to really look at their own beliefs around food and weight loss and how to go about that. So tell me more about what you do and how you work with parents and with the kids and why… You have chosen to focus on, I think, the parents first before kids when it comes to weight loss.

Speaker #1
Yes. Well, first, thanks for having me, Heather. Really appreciate it. We have so much in common. And, you know, I hear stories like the ones you just mentioned a lot myself. So I have a couple reasons why I do this. One, I have a personal story, meaning I was an… overweight child, a child with extra weight, I guess is one way to put it. From the time I was 10 years old onward, I think I carried more weight than I really wanted to. And I didn’t know what to do about that. I personally didn’t, my parents, not a single time do I ever remember them commenting about it or my siblings certainly did. But. My parents were great in that respect. It wasn’t a character flaw. It wasn’t anything bad about me as a child. And in the same respect, we didn’t change as a family. We didn’t do anything that kind of helped me or gave me the help I needed as a child. So I was one of five kids. I was probably the child that struggled the most. I have two siblings who never struggled as kids with their weight at all. They could eat. We were all eating the same things. I probably was eating a little bit more than people, other people in my family. But so so what I’m trying to say is, you know, every kid, every child is different in a family, number one. And I think if parents, well, first of all, refraining from I love that my parents didn’t tell me that I needed to change to be better. And that is my starting message with every family that I work with, every parent that I work with. We want to approach this as you are, your child is 100% acceptable and valuable and worthy, just as they are right now, right this second, even if they gain 100 more pounds. still 100% worthy, still valuable. So we’re not trying to change them to make them better, you know, make them more valuable, make them more acceptable. You know, we already, we want to accept them as they are. And oftentimes parents, there’s a lot of work to be done around that. And when you, when you were mentioning, you know, the stories that you were just mentioning, what came to my mind was parents have a lot of fear. We have a lot of fear about when our children, we’ll just talk about weight, for example. When a child tends to be gaining weight, it can strike a lot of fear in a parent. Health fears, okay, I’m concerned about their health. And then social fears, I don’t want them to be bullied. I don’t want them to be singled out. You know, mental health issues surrounding that. So it can be very. fearful and worrisome for parents. And so parents need a way to address the issues and talk about it. Well, first of all, they need to figure it out. They need to get to a place themselves where, okay, this is striking some fear in me. Okay, I need to look at that. And I can do that without my child even being involved. So first of all, let me focus on myself. How am I thinking and feeling about what’s going on with my child? And how do I want to, first of all, decide on purpose, thinking, like, do I even need to talk to my child about this? Because there’s so many things parents can do, especially if you have a younger child. You don’t even ever need to say to your child what you’re changing or what you’re doing. You know, we’re going to eat less candy because… We need to lose weight. Like that’s not a helpful thing at all to say to somebody. You know, you’d want to say something like, oh, I realized like, oh, this sugar, this extra added sugars aren’t that great for my human body and your human body. And we know our human bodies don’t really metabolically, physiologically react well to that sugar. So we’re going to make some changes here. When you get to it. Sorry, keep going. No, that’s okay.

Speaker #0
I was just going to just pause for a second because I wanted to just talk about that fear that parents have. And I’m just wondering, do parents typically come to you wanting to fix their children first and then they realize maybe after working with you a little bit that it starts with them, their beliefs, right? their fears and their judgment on.

Speaker #1
Well,

Speaker #0
being overweight and like what that means in society. And so I know that certainly was the case, I think, with me, you know, with with just me growing up is that my parents just it was just a big strike against you if you had a couple pounds to lose. And even when I was growing up, when I was about 11, was I overweight? No, I probably had a couple. I had maybe a couple of pounds to lose, but I got. That got drilled into my head. You might want to lose a couple pounds because of right. Because of their fear of what it would do for me, you know, and what what what all the detriments of of going through life.

Speaker #1
It might limit, you know, the stigma, the weight stigma, which is is is real. And and we and so while we don’t want to give in to that, you know, and and say you. you need to change because of all this stigma out there. So we become aware of the stigma and at the same, at the same time, reject that. And at the same time, understand that, you know, depending on the situation, we, what I, what I try to get parents to focus on is the health, the overall health of your child. Cause really wait. It, if. If you happen to be carrying extra weight, 100%, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are unhealthy. That is, we all know that, right? Just because you have a couple extra pounds or you’re carrying extra weight, you can be perfectly metabolically healthy. You can run all the lab tests and do all the things. However, what we also know is that over time, continuing to be that way, especially if you’re a child, you know, if you’re a child who’s 15, Hopefully you have 70, 80 more years going on in your life. We have to understand how the human body works. In the food system that we’re currently living in, our human bodies weren’t designed to be handling this kind of highly processed, so much added sugars. We weren’t designed to be sitting so much. We weren’t designed to be. on our screens. We weren’t designed to not be sleeping like, you know, like we, like we do here in the U S and all, you know, most places in the world. So, you know, I think I like, I a hundred percent help parents shift it from weight and appearance and valuableness and get, help them get away from the fear and help them understand. why we we’re talking about health we’re talking about overall health and mental health and honestly the best thing for a child’s mental health is having a parent that fully accepts them and and that they that the parent that the child doesn’t need to change at all ever for the parent to to love them completely for who they are right now

Speaker #0
Yeah, I definitely have some parents who I think with, you know, they’re, they’re just trying to help, right? They’re just trying to do, you know, well, but they but they’re, but they’re the way they speak to their kids, or the way that they say, like, well, I have two other kids at home, they don’t have a weight problem, they can eat whatever they want. But,

Speaker #1
but that’s incorrect. The truth is, they really shouldn’t be eating, eating all the all the things,

Speaker #0
right?

Speaker #1
Yeah. Metabolically speaking, you know, and, you know, from a health perspective, nobody on this planet should be drinking Coca-Cola. You know, no one there’s so. And that’s a very, very common misconception. I think that parents, our community has that. We have my son’s playing Little League right now and we have a snack shack and we’re selling our kids soda and we’re in Sour Patch Kids. And, you know, the boys go to the all the kids, the girls play softball. They’re all going there every day. And so it’s just a very, very common, even if you common misconception that if you look thin or you don’t seem to carry, you don’t seem to be carrying extra weight, you can eat whatever you want. And that’s a recipe for disaster too, because now we’re seeing more and more and more people developing metabolic problems in their early adulthood.

Speaker #0
Absolutely. And I think that there’s a big intuitive eating movement and health at every size and just back off, like, let me eat what I want to eat. And does extra weight really mean that I’m going to have problems in my future? I think there’s enough evidence. I think you and I probably both know that there is a plethora of evidence saying that carrying extra weight will contribute in the long run to these lifestyle. diseases, right? Heart issues, diabetes.

Speaker #1
Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s more like a signal that your body’s not tolerating what you’re eating. So it’s, it’s really like a message. Your, your extra weight or my extra weight is a message to me that what I’m eating, how much I’m moving, how much I’m sleeping. It’s not, my body’s not handling it very well. So it’s not that the weight itself like would directly cause heart problems, but they’re all linked. It’s all inextricably linked together. And now more and more data is coming out showing, you know, metabolic health is so important for mental health and for prevention of Alzheimer’s disease. And it’s just whole body inflammation. I mean, it is. It’s so fascinating and so, what’s the right word? Like liberating, honestly, in a way, because if we know this now, oh, we can start helping our kids understand. what they can do to stay as healthy as possible. So I love so much of like, I wish the intuitive eating. I love intuitive eating. There’s so many, I’m with a caveat, you know, if intuitive eating would just add in and choose 90% of the time, choose whole real unprocessed foods. And then I’d like a hundred percent on board with that, with that plan. But if, you know, My understanding of intuitive eating is they’re like, well, if you if your body’s telling you to eat Oreos, go ahead and eat Oreos. You need that. I just I think that the problem with that is what’s what’s telling you to eat Oreos is your very ancient brain who is trying to keep you alive by storing as many calories and as much fat as possible. And in today’s world. Your brain is going to be suggesting you should eat that. You should eat that. You should eat that because it wants the dopamine hit. It wants that whole cascade of feeling good in the moment. But we’re bumping into so many problems with that.

Speaker #0
Yeah, there’s right. The ultra processed foods, right? Just give you that hit of, you know, such deep satisfaction and let me come back for more. So I. I guess when kids are raised eating a lot of that stuff and then suddenly, but they’re having weight problems and they can’t, I feel like there’s this fine line sometimes between the parents shaming them. I mean, I’m just curious how you address this. Parents might say to them like, well, you can’t eat this stuff now. And then them feeling like, well, but I love it. I mean, this is my ultra processed foods that my brain loves. And They’re really, they’re young kids, you know, it’s hard for them to look into the future and see their, you know, their, oh yeah, when I’m 50, I might be having a heart attack. So I better, you know, eat healthy now at 10 years old.

Speaker #1
So they just can’t do that. You know, I have an 11 year old son. And so his concept of the future is about 10 minutes from now. Like he can’t, and that’s normal. And the reason why Thank you. The reason why kids can’t make these changes on their own and why the parents have to get involved for this to be a success is that the kids’ prefrontal cortex, the most mature, the thinking part of your brain, the most evolved part of our brain, the CEO of your life is what your prefrontal cortex is. It makes a plan. It’s able to follow the plan. It understands the pros and the cons. That part of our brain is not developed until we’re 25, fully developed until you’re 25, 26 years old. So asking a 10 year old or even a 15 year old to make healthy choices all the time when there’s other options available, which are more gratifying in the moment. We have to understand as parents why they’re making those choices. Of course they want to be healthy. Of course. Kids, all kids want to be healthy. And no one is going around, you know, eating Sour Patch Kids saying, you know, I’m psyched to not be healthy. I’m hoping I’m, you know, messing up my metabolic health. They’re just not. So, you know, so any kind of shaming or like, why do you eat that? You shouldn’t have eaten that. That’s not a helpful approach at all. And so these are the skill sets the parents need to learn is to zip it, as my mother would say. You know, I see my son choosing foods that I would wish he wouldn’t choose. OK, that’s fine. But what so now my job is to not shame him, not even comment on that. And at the same time, maybe not right in the moment, but at the same time ongoing. find ways to provide him education. You know, oh, the reason you really like those foods, or the reason we like, you know, you like those foods, it’s see how it’s affecting your brain. We teach them that these foods are designed on purpose in a, in a lab or in a manufacturing company. When I said they’re not designed for your health, they’re designed to make money for the company that’s making them. And so there’s, you know, there’s, but, and also, so your kids need to understand their physiology, what’s actually going on in their body. And also. The world that we’re living in, the marketing to kids and the, you know, why they want to eat them. And parents need to do that, too. And then as parents, what we can do is control what we can control and understand the milieu that our kids are living in and, you know, remain connected to them. And I use this term supportive, which is like. What we really want to be doing is supporting them, showing them a lot of empathy and and also just a lot of compassion, but also confidence. Like, I know you’re going to I know you’re going to learn this and I know you’re going to learn, you know, to be healthy.

Speaker #0
Do you feel like you are spending your most of your time just seeing the parents or do you see the kids also? It really starts with the parents. But what if the parents have? What if they have work to do with themselves?

Speaker #1
This is the thing. I mean, the truth is, well, in my opinion, all of us parents have work to do, period. You know, to be the best person, you know, to be the best person that we want to be, to be the parent that our child needs us to be for them. And so I’m a huge proponent of, you know, parent. parenting coaching and parents learning how to, how can I change myself to help my child? I remember when I was working full time, more than full time, for a long time, I had a very busy job at a hospital. And I remember a nanny that I was going to hire, she said, well, what’s your parenting style? And you And my response to her was, well, I, this was even prenatal. I was, I was, I only had, I think I took 12 weeks off and then I was going to go back. So I was hiring someone to help me when my son Theo was a newborn because I had to be in the hospital for 12 hours, blah,

Speaker #0
And

Speaker #1
I remember saying to her, well, I don’t have a parenting style. I need to wait to see what he’s like, what his temperament is like, and then I’m going to bend myself. then I’m going to change myself to be what he needs me to be. And I think we can, we, we parents can do that, not to bend over backwards and give them, you know, it’s, it’s not that, it’s not a it’s, I don’t mean it in that way, but there are kids need their parents full support and full love and full acceptance. And so I do think parents can, there’s always work to be done for how we think about things, react to things. And it’s just, it’s so powerful when you realize like the influence you have over your child. And it’s kind of never neutral. You know, it can be, it’s positive or negative at times. And, and no one’s, no one’s. perfect, obviously, and nobody expects anybody to be perfect, but there’s certainly, there’s certainly things that we know kids thrive better under, you know.

Speaker #0
Well, let’s go back to that, just the like traditional medical approach, because I think that there’s a lot of parents who really have no idea.

Speaker #1
Well, this is to eat. I mean,

Speaker #0
they’re as confused about what to eat. I mean, because I, I see these women, you know, so, I mean, there is so much confusion in the world about. exactly how to eat. So parents didn’t come with like a degree in nutrition, right? So what, and they could be,

Speaker #1
medical doctors don’t agree on what,

Speaker #0
exactly. I mean, medical doctors have, I mean, you have a, right. You’re like at an advantage, I guess, you know, because most doctors really don’t come with a nutrition degree or an education.

Speaker #1
And we did next to nothing in medical school about it.

Speaker #0
Exactly. So I, but I think that some parents want to defer to the pediatrician and let me, let me have, let me have the pediatrician talk to my daughter about this. And like, so it’s not coming from me. And then the pediatrician does like what my daughter’s pediatrician did and kind of lectures her and shames her a little bit. And you got to lose this weight and we got to get this off you and just eat less and exercise more. I mean, I remember my daughter, I almost killed the pediatrician because I just, but. Unfortunately,

Speaker #1
that is not an uncommon story. Myself included, even when I was 10, I remember going to our pediatrician with my mom and he said, you got to get her to stop eating. That’s what he said. I was like, stop eating? yeah and he sent me home with a um pamphlet of the calories of every food I distinctly remember this pamphlet because I studied it. I was supposed to eat 1200 calories a day. So here I am 10 years old. I’m like, oh, I’m hungry. Okay. I know crazy, but that, that was the medical approach. And that honestly, in a lot of, so it just depends on the doctor you happen to have. So a couple of things, you know, what’s their own interest level in nutrition? I think a lot of doctors who have never struggled with their own weight don’t understand. It hasn’t been a problem for them. They don’t, you know, just eat less, move more, eat less. That old strategy, well, you know, that doesn’t work. And whatever that person happens to be doing is working for them, apparently, at least on a weight standpoint. It might not be metabolically. It might not be working that right for them internally. You would never know until you tried to figure that out through labs and such. But it’s it’s but the medical approach is bring your doctor, bring your bring your child to the doctor. I used to have follow up weight follow ups for people and they would bring their little eight year old child to me. And then the end really who I needed to be talking to were the parents. I didn’t even need that little child there. And I wish he didn’t even come. And I wish he didn’t step on the scale and we tracking that, you know, but but that’s that’s the current medical approach. It has to do with reimbursement. It has to do with getting paid for it. You can’t bill for, you know, the reimbursement for just talking to a parent is lower to non-existent. So the child needs to be there. But I think this is why we’re failing. It’s, and also it’s. When I try to talk to an eight-year-old child about making better food choices, I mean, I might as well be, I don’t know. I just felt like banging, bang head here, you know, like poor little guy, you know, you know, eat the rainbow. He’s like, what? Yeah.

Speaker #0
You might as well be talking to the wall because they, right. Because they’re in the very much in the moment. They’re like, we like Oreos.

Speaker #1
I just felt like I was wasting my time, number one. But also more importantly, I was like, I. need to tread so carefully here because I don’t want to harm this little eight-year-old boy or girl or child in any way, you know? And, and the same thing, talking to parents, you have to be very careful. You don’t want to harm them and say, it’s not shaming. It’s not anything. It’s, it’s meeting somebody where they are and understanding where they are, what’s going on and how can we potentially change things to improve the health of the whole family, really?

Speaker #0
Right. So this sounds like this is very much a lifestyle approach versus that traditional medical approach. So tell me a little bit more about how you decided to shift your focus, because it sounds like you were very much in the traditional medical world.

Speaker #1
I was for 20. Yeah. For 23 years I was, um, Yeah, clinical pediatrician, seeing patients. I’ve had some great jobs working in hospitals, taking care of babies, going to the deliveries and things like that. And then when a couple of things happened, well, my son was getting older, so he needed me in different ways. I wanted to be home more. And I took a regular nine to five clinic. Well, it wasn’t nine to five, but it was, you know, more of a. in the office kind of job. So I wasn’t running around in the emergency room or anything like that. And I started to see what was what patients, what was really going on with families and their struggle to have these healthy habits. Healthy habits are like so boring to talk about. Nobody wants healthy habits. You know what I mean? It’s like so painful. I wish there was a more exciting way to talk about it. I know.

Speaker #0
I agree with you. And people are like, oh, I know.

Speaker #1
You can just literally see people zoning out, you know. But what I tried to educate people was like. how these healthy habits you know healthy habits so sleep nutrition movement or exercise and then emotional regulation skills feeling your feelings like these four pillars of health

Speaker #0
are what create, are what’s going to open that door for your child to have a wonderful childhood and really be free, you know. And because kids today are struggling with so much, yes, weight problems. I think the pre-pandemic data was suggesting, you know, one in five kids is really struggling with their weight. And it’s probably even higher now, to tell you the truth, given everything that’s been going on. But anxiety, depression, oh, geez, bullying. I mean, all the things that kids are struggling with. Healthy lifestyle, getting enough sleep, getting off your phone, getting more movement in your day. It’s just going to improve every aspect of your child’s life. And as a parent, It’s hard. It’s hard to be always feeling like you are swimming upstream and get off your phone, you know, get outside, eat this, you know, here, I’m cooking this, you know. And so it’s just a lot of work for parents. It’s just effort, but it’s so worth it. So back to answering the question, I was seeing… What people really need, what these kids really need are parents who are living this lifestyle themselves, who are modeling this behavior themselves, who are the parents who are getting some exercise themselves, the parents who are prioritizing sleep, the parents who understand their own emotions and who have stress management skills and can teach those to their kids. So I transitioned. And at the same time, I came into coaching. I hired a coach myself. And I became introduced to coaching as what I had never heard of it before a few years ago. And it was so powerful. And I honestly, I felt changed and transformed. It’s just the mindset part of things. And so because, you know, as a doctor, I’m used to telling people like, oh, you’re sick. Take this medication. Do this. Do this. Oh, you’re you’re struggling with weight. OK, eat this. Don’t eat that. Move, you know, exercise like this. Don’t, you know.

Speaker #1
Right. This happens and do this. Would that happen?

Speaker #0
Exactly.

Speaker #1
You’re sick with this. Take this. Right.

Speaker #0
Right. But the problem is where… How do we help people go from like knowing what to do to actually being able to do it? That’s, that’s the gap. I had that gap myself. I still have it sometimes, you know, this is what we’re always working on. And okay, I know I want to, you know, cook home meal, cook, cook at home three times a week for my child, you know, for my family. Okay, now how am I actually going to get myself to actually do that? And through coaching, that’s what I learned how to do that. And then I learned how to, so you learn how to set goals. It’s very future forward looking. Okay, how am I going to do this? And then figure it out by understanding like the thoughts, create your feelings and your feelings drive your actions. Your actions give you your results. So if you don’t like your current results in your life, you can circle it back to the. thoughts and feelings you’re having.

Speaker #1
Yeah.

Speaker #0
And so as opposed to like traditional diets, which are like, eat this, don’t eat that, limit your calories, you know, coaching helped me understand the thoughts and the feelings I was having that were driving me to eat what I eat, what I was choosing to eat or not eat,

Speaker #1
you know.

Speaker #0
So I was seeing in medicine, like, oh, I’m not I felt like I wasn’t helping anybody, honestly. And at the same time, I saw this world opening up in coaching. Like, this is what people need. And medicine is just not there yet. We don’t have the time. Doctors aren’t compensated for that. They’re like, the hospitals don’t want that. The hospital systems, they just want you to turn through the patients and give them this drug, give them that drug, move on, keep going. And people don’t have the time.

Speaker #1
Yeah, no, I always say to. to my clients too. I’m like, because they, a lot of people come in and they’re disappointed in their doctors and their doctors aren’t telling them what to do with food. And, and they’re not telling them how to eat. And I said, that’s not their specialty. Doctors are not specialized in food. That’s why you come to a nutritionist or a coach or, you know, or you go elsewhere. They can’t be specialists in everything. You know, so you go to doctors for certain things.

Speaker #0
One person, there’s no blanket statement. What works for one person is not going to work for another person. You know, somebody going low carb, that might be great for one person, but it’s not great for everybody. Somebody else might not feel good on that. on that way of eating. So that’s the whole thing. It’s, it’s like a big science experiment, you have to figure out what’s a way of eating and living, honestly, what’s a way that works for me gives me the results I want, and I feel good. So that combination just keeps you doing it. You know,

Speaker #1
yeah, parents have so much to contend with, too. I mean, first of all, they’re, you know, we’re talking about mindset and, and. doing this, but a lot of my clients, at least myself included, were raised on and off diets, right? That’s how they know how to lose weight. Follow someone else’s plan. You lose 20 pounds. It’s unsustainable. You go off of it, right? You drift off of it. You gain the 20 pounds back. And that’s just your life. You’re losing and gaining like 20, 25 pounds, like your whole life. So that’s… I think one big thing that parents have to contend with is that belief system in how you lose weight and eat healthy. And that’s to follow someone else’s rules rather than your own inner knowing or your own…

Speaker #0
Your innate…

Speaker #1
Yes, and your intuition. I think also parents have… Parents are busy, right? 100%. I mean, they’re working. you know,

Speaker #0
and I feel my life is hectic sometimes.

Speaker #1
Yeah. I mean, you know, they’re working a job and then, and then you want them to go home and make dinner for them. And, you know, and then, I mean, and then I think the final thing that I had thought of was just to contend with the, the relentless messaging from social media that kids get. So, which I think can set up just resistance on both parts, right, from the kids and from the parents. just maybe starting from the kid part, what if, you know, you’re, you’re working with the parents and they, and the, and their child just is resistant to changing, you know, like just totally resistant, or they’re seeing something on social media or they’re seeing, you know, like how can the parents, how do they help them with that resistance?

Speaker #0
The first thing, and this is so common, people say, you know, I have clients, my, my child doesn’t want to talk about it. doesn’t want to change, isn’t willing to do anything. I think they have a problem, but they don’t even think they have a problem, you know? And I, and my approach to that is they don’t have a problem. You have the problem right now as the parent, you, you know, you have the problem, two things, you know, first of all, in the immediate, in the immediate moment, your child is not in danger, you know? Yes, moving down the line like we said previously, you probably don’t want your child to keep gaining 10, 15 pounds a year. That’s not a healthy, sustainable way to live. But right now, what your child needs from you is acceptance of them as they are. And at the same time, we do this with so many other things. We do this with alcohol for our teenagers. We do this with drugs. we smoking, vaping, we educate them and we set some boundaries and we stay connected. We want to stay connected to them. Now, it’s hard to see your child coming home with what you might consider unhealthy food choices, but where the opportunity is for the parent. again, is to, first of all, do the work yourself so that you understand what’s going on with your child, why they’re eating that, why they’re choosing that. They might not even know. And so as a parent, you might never understand why your child keeps doing that because your child might not be able to quite figure that out themselves. But you can still help them by accepting them, at the same time educating them as to… you know, in a calm moment, okay, I’m concerned about, I was reading this thing, and it’s telling me that, you know, foods with added sugars are causing damage to our livers and our organs, you know, whatever way you figure out to mention it to your child. If they say, I don’t want to talk about that, then okay, we have to respect that in a way and at the same time say, well, it’s my job as your parent. I really feel so strongly about this. I feel it’s my job as your mom to share with you what I know about health and what I… because part of my job is to keep you as happy and healthy as possible. If you don’t want to talk about that right now, okay, let’s figure out a time when we can talk about that because it’s so important to me that I just need to share this information with you. And then as the parent, fully accepting your child, staying connected to them, and managing your own mind when you’re seeing them do things you wish they didn’t do is a lot of work. you know, and then also being that example yourself, you walking the walk, so to speak, and you don’t have to be perfect. And it doesn’t mean your house has to be spot, you know, clean, clean of all added sugars and processed foods. But you really have to be living that way yourself. Because what you’re trying to instill in your child is that they are a healthy person and health is valuable and and it takes effort to maintain our health.

Speaker #1
So that’s a really good point. I just want, I’m sorry to interject, because I think, I mean, do you feel like sometimes that parents are scared to bring up these topics with their kids? Because if they bring it up with their kids, then they’re going to have to look at their own stuff. And that includes, I think not only just food, but alcohol,

Speaker #0
you know,

Speaker #1
how can you tell your, your, your 16 year old to not drink and go out and drink when you’re at home. drinking a bottle of wine a night, you know, or how can you tell your kids like you can’t eat Oreos and drink soda when you’re out, you know, doing some unhealthy like food habits too. So do you feel like there’s, there’s some kind of anxiety and fear maybe from the parents too, because it’s like, Oh, if they, if I tell my child, he’s got to change that I’m going to have to start looking at myself.

Speaker #0
And a lot of people are unwilling. to do that, unwilling to even acknowledge that, unwilling to look at that. And, you know, that’s part of our problem here. That’s part of the problem we’re facing. This is why, you know, parents, it is a shift. If you wanna, if you have a child struggling, it’s even, even things with anxiety and depression. If you have a child struggling with those things, there are things you can do yourself to help your child. But It’s you have to be willing to do the work yourself. I think the bottom line is, you know, you have to be a little you have to be willing to swim upstream a little bit. You have to be willing to be weird and be the person who, you know, brings the vegetable tray to the soccer match instead of the brownies or the cookies. And, you know, and it takes effort for sure. As a pediatrician, every single. kid I saw, they just love and worship their parents. I mean, it’s just so beautiful, right? And so with that, as parents, this is where our power comes from. This is where what we could step into that power and really help them and model the behavior we want them to see. Right. That takes some willingness for introspection and work on ourselves. And so many parents are already doing that work. It’s not that nobody’s doing that, of course. But yeah, so our kids.

Speaker #1
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like, right, I’m sure that you have success stories and clients and parents doing that. But there is this certain uphill battle to, because it’s not like just, you’re just not focusing on the kids, but you got to get through the gatekeepers. first, right? That’s the parents. So I mean, that so it can be a challenge. I mean, I know on my end, it’s a huge challenge, you know,

Speaker #0
sometimes you break through a little bit, and you feel that win, you know, and you feel better. And you see, oh, my child’s doing better. Then you’re like, oh, my gosh, this is then it gives you a little bit of momentum. It gives you a little bit of confidence to keep going. So, you know, the hard part is. getting started right you know that whole a body in motion tends to stay a body in rest stays at rest and a body stays in motion so getting started and what i say to parents is there’s nothing too small that you could do you know so if you are a family that drinks soda okay you might not be ready to completely cut that out but you could cut it in half and you and then next you could even cut that in half you know what I mean so And taking small steps and at the same time, really keeping an eagle eye out to like tie how you feel and how your body feels physically, mentally, emotionally with these, you know, changes that you’re making. Like, oh, I notice when I don’t drink soda, I feel more energetic or I just feel better or my child sleeps better, you know. And so, and then focusing on. the benefits instead of what you’re missing or how hard it’s going to be. We’ve talked about how, you know, how challenging it can be. And I think that’s important to do too, because I think it’s totally unrealistic to tell people, make these changes, give up flour, give up sugar, you know, it’s not that easy at first. However, it’s completely doable. And so many people have done that. And so many families have done that. And so many, so many, many, many people have changed. It’s not impossible.

Speaker #1
So yeah, it’s I mean, there’s so there’s so much that goes into healthy eating and have healthy habits and, and making it a lifestyle and making it a lifetime of habits. But it sounds like Sheila that you are so passionate about what you do and

Speaker #0
I love the idea that you know you start with the parents first how can people find you and work with you um the easiest way is my website so okay I will link that in the show notes too so no one has to worry about it sure if they have a specific question I’m also on Instagram um I have very mixed feelings about using social media but I know lots of people do and it’s a way to you know it’s a way to be in contact with people. But yeah, at Sheila Carol MD. Okay,

Speaker #1
I will link that all in the show notes. But you have a program that you work with parents?

Speaker #0
Yeah, I’m coaching individual parents right now. One on one coaching is what I’m doing right now. In the future, I might have a group program. I think that’s so powerful as as as for support and for learning. But right now what I’m doing is one-on-one and individually meeting with people and helping you know what because every family is so different it’s every mom it’s every person is different every child is different and so we really get focused time to dial in on what goals do you have for yourself as the parent what goals do you have for your child and you know let’s work on making those happen yeah phila thank you so much we

Speaker #1
Had so much to talk about. I know. You need to come back sometime soon so we could like finish our conversation. We would like a lot to a lot to share with each other and a lot in common. So thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Speaker #0
And thank you so much for having me.

Speaker #1
Sure. And as always, if you loved this podcast, please consider gifting me with a. five-star review. It is so helpful for me to get the word out on real eating, our real bodies, and real food stories. Thank you so much and have a great week. Bye for now.