Family Ties to Eating

by Gay Riley, MS, RD, CCN
NetNutritionist.com

Are your family ties to food keeping you from reaching your weight loss goals? Childhood obesity is on the rise. Is it learned? Have we created a toxic environment that promotes obesity? What role do our emotions play? How about one's family life?

Consider what research data has shown:

·        Home life directly affects weight and food habits during youth and throughout life.

·        The increasing prevalence of obesity and overweight in children emphasizes the importance of environmental factors.

·        Parents or guardians can control the foods and how much children eat.

·        Children with overweight parents have a higher risk of becoming overweight.

·        Children tend to develop the food likes of their parents.

·        Children that are overweight by school age have a high risk of becoming overweight adults.

·        Children of obese families are more likely to eat emotionally, eat in the absence of hunger, eat faster and respond to external food cues.

·        Parents who were overweight when they were children have a higher risk of having overweight children.

·        People use their eyes to count calories, not their stomachs.

·        When people eat from large containers they tend to eat more.

·        People that watch more television tend to eat more fast food.

Who we are and the foods we eat are significantly shaped by the people we grew up with and the experiences of our childhood. Family influence is a powerful influence on development of adult food habits, that much is clear. Consider the following story and try to determine what has a larger impact, genetics or environment.

 Beth’s Story

Beth was an only child and lived with her overweight mother and father. Most of the food was good old southern cooking served family style in large china bowls from the table. Beth’s father sat at the head of the table and served all the plates. Beth was taught to eat all of the food on her plate and there were never any leftovers. The television in the kitchen was always on while her mother was preparing food and during meals.. A can of bacon grease was kept in a coffee can next to the stove for frying and seasoning. Friday nights the family would go out to eat at the local diner for chips, hot cheese dip, and enchiladas, which Beth would wash down with a couple of regular sodas. Every Saturday morning they would have fresh donuts and Sunday mornings they would go to Beth’s grandma’s house for eggs, sausage, bacon, biscuits and gravy.  Beth’s father died of a heart attack when she was eight so her mom went back to work. After school Beth went to her grandmother’s house where they would play cards and eat freshly baked cookies (but only after Beth finished her homework).  Beth’s mother was always on a diet, money was tight and she never really cooked anymore. They would eat a quick meal or TV dinner and a soft drink. Beth would hear her mother crying late at night and find her eating ice cream and watching television.

Beth struggled with her weight through high school, college, and as an adult. She would deprive herself of food until late afternoon and at 4 pm she would break down for coffee and a chocolate bar. At night she would wake up and want something like ice cream or frozen yogurt. She always had a big soft drink on her desk that she would nurse throughout the day. The smells of fried foods made Beth hungry even if she had just had a meal.  Beth could always do well with her food restriction Monday-Thursday. Friday she would blow it and overeat when she went to happy hour and dinner with her friends.

Beth’s story can give us some ideas about how our own childhood experiences have affected our current eating patterns. The way to change eating behaviors is to understand first where you developed those habits. Once you determine the root causes of those behaviors and how your family life affected them, then you can begin to formulate a strategy for permanent change. Beth's food patterns learned as a child were connected to her adult weight and food habits.

How Does Beth's Story End?

Eventually Beth identified that food restriction was causing her to overeat when she wasn’t hungry. She slowly began to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner to avoid afternoon and late night eating.  This allowed her to get in touch with the appropriate amount of food and a more structured time to eat.  She replaced the soda with water and lemon juice, the chocolate bar for yogurt and nuts, and she convinced her friends to go bowling on Friday nights.  Beth was able to achieve her weight loss goals by getting control over some of her family roots of eating.

Breaking the Ties that Bind You...

Ask yourself some probing questions about the way you eat today…. Are there food habits that are just too uncomfortable to change no matter how hard you try?  When you are around certain people, family, or situations do you eat or drink too much of the wrong foods?  Are there feelings, emotions and moods that drive you to eat or crave foods?  Do you gravitate towards food as a reward or comfort? Are there foods or drinks that you cannot live without?

Food cues can be very subtle or deeply ingrained in our psyche. From the moment we are born we are instantly exposed to smells, tastes, and stimuli that start to shape our way of eating. (4) Were we bottle fed or breast fed?  When and what solid food did we first taste? We learn small things like the comfort and/or reward of a lollipop at the doctor’s office after a shot. There are repetitive daily life influences like our cultural foods, the money that was available for food, smells in the kitchen, control of the household food, how the food was prepared, where the food was served, who served the meals, and the conversations centered around or related to food. All of these factors can be viewed as footprints leading to our present food habits. Did family members diet and restrict their food or your food as a child? Who was overweight in the family, who was the athlete, who was the smart one? These can all play roles in our attitudes and feelings about food.  How did these change as we grew up and entered different phases of life?

Write your own story. Look at the sample chart below and list your family history when you were growing up, the habits you have now as they related to those learned behaviors and a new plan to change. Once you identify the family food ties that bind you will be able to make a break from the past and develop new relationships with food and eating behaviors.