Who Else Wants To Be Successful With Talking To Their Daughter About Dieting
Guys… I L O V E when I resonate with someone. And when I do, I know deep down it is someone that I need to talk to and its someone that you guys need to know about! This is how I felt when I found Gabi Kahn on Instagram. She was saying things like SHE WAS IN MY HEAD; she was spewing the truth that I would say, and I just needed to know more about her. I know a bunch of you have daughters and they are at this age where they are starting to look different and identify with diets and identify with noticing size and clothing and YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO TALK TO THEM ABOUT THIS! That’s why I got Gabi!
Gabi works with moms who are stuck in the diet cycle and helps them create a healthy relationship with food and their body so they can finally be free from the diets and protect their daughters from a lifetime of dieting and body dissatisfaction. Her inspiration for helping moms stems from her own childhood experience with viscous mother-daughter diet cycle. She intimately saw how the influence of diet culture within her family, and especially from a mother-daughter relationship, affects internal worth, food choices, body image and overall self-esteem. Gabi is on a mission to help moms’ feel confident in their body at any shape and size, achieve food freedom and help protect their daughters from a life of dieting, body disapproval and disordered eating.
“Learn to love your body and protect your young daughters from a lifetime of harmful dieting.” – Gabi Kahn
BOOOMMMMMM… Guys this is pure gold right here! There is so much on social media and in the media that it’s much more different for girls these days than when we were younger. They see things more than ever before and feel more pressured to look a certain way. Yes, there were pressures when we were younger too, but also when we were younger it was normal to compliment someone on their body or talk about their body when they saw them (good or bad). It’s so important to be mindful of what we say, how you say it and what our daughters hear us say or see the actions we take as they are always watching!
For Gabi, her issues started at 10 when she was at a doctor’s appointment and they had mentioned to her and her mother about her weight. Her Pediatrician called her out on gaining too much weight and basically instilled fear to get her to lose the weight.. She feared about how to change her body. And this is something that has been passed down for generations in her family, like most of you.
Many of us saw our parents and grandparents struggle with some form of weight insecurities and we saw the idea that when I grow up, I am always going to be on a diet. We instill this idea that as you get older your destiny is your diet and you are unhappy with your body and you constantly have to fix it. Not that you are going to be a lawyer or have a great career separate from your diet and your unhappy relationship with food in their body. THERE IS SO MUCH MORE to life than obsessing over every inch of your body and obsessing over every food you eat! And we H A V E T O make sure that our daughters know this.
The day she knew she had to change…. Gabi has a younger sister who is about 11.5 years younger than her and saw both her and her mom struggle with weight and their bodies. She saw how they looked at themselves in the mirror and how they spoke to themselves. The day Gabi saw her 4-year-old sister look in the mirror and grab her stomach and say that she is fat… Gabi’s world stopped and couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
As a teenager, she knew she was being this unhealthy example for her little sister, and she knew that THIS WAS the vicious mother-daughter diet cycle. And she was going to make sure it ended with her. Gabi did not want her sister to suffer and go through what she had, and she knew that she had to make this change not only for herself but to protect her little sister.
Many times, we don’t see this. We don’t expect our kids to pick up our bad behavior.
A lot of times we don’t see our child looking in the bathroom and see us on the scale in all of our emotions.
WE CANNOT let them suffer this way and let them be unhappy with food in their body!
We cannot let our kids see us revolve our entire lives negatively around food and NOT experiencing family memories because food is an issue. If you DENY yourself that cake on your child’s birthday, you are denying them the opportunity to have beautiful memories. You take away those memories, you take away those beautiful memories for THEM! You are denying these memories and beautiful experiences that come from enjoying food together! L I V E I N T H E M O M E N T with our kids, enjoy the food and not experience the guilt that you associated with it.
How do I start to make some changes that can show my kids that I am starting to improve my relationship with myself and my food”
There is no mom manual, we have no clue what we are doing and most of all we learn from our own parents. So, first off, don’t blame yourself and don’t let yourself feel guilty. This is the time where you take action and change your behaviors now, so start with your language. Do you notice good vs bad when it comes to food’ When you are speaking out loud or even to yourself, change your mindset from I’m bad for having a sandwich to, I’m really craving a sandwich right now it’s going to nourish me and it sounds filling!
Look at your language while you get ready and while you are in the mirror and STOP grabbing your stomach and hiding in the closet! Get clothes that feel good on your body now, so you aren’t stressed about putting clothes on that aren’t fitting. Take action and say things you are grateful for and what you appreciate about your body instead! It’s about making these small changes in our actions, our language and behaviors that really add up in the end and help ourselves but also protect our children.
What about families with multiple kids and one child has weight issues and the other doesn’t’
We CANNOT control the shape of the body our child is in. It is all due to genetics. And some of you may have a child in a small body and one in a large! The best thing to do is to not comment on it, not shame your child for it and not feed them differently for the child in their smaller body. Just think about, “How can I nourish this child, how can I take care of this child the same way I take care of my other child’”
These are the things that are out of our control. Gabi’s number one goal when she works with clients who have kids in different size bodies, is “How can we treat both kids equally and show them that both of them in their body sizes are appreciated, loved and should be nourished the same way.”
Do things as a family. If you want to make a change, everyone should do it! Are they healthy changes’ Are they a diet trend or is it a way to add more ingredients to your plate and more food groups’ Make sure the goals in your family are aligned with your health goals and what you want for all family members at the end and not a diet plan or fad diet.
Now, if you are trying to improve the relationship with food and your body, then communicate it with your family! Let your family know this journey you are embarking on because you are trying to improve the relationship with food and your body. And these are the changes I want to make as a family to better help yourself and better help us as a whole! Get everyone involved so it’s not mom controlling everything that is going on. Let them have a part in it as well. If we want to eat healthier, you have to define this for your family. What does it mean to you’ Maybe adding more nutrients to your plates or not going on a diet’
Guys, healthy eating isn’t getting rid of food groups!! Getting rid of food groups is UNHEALTHY! Healthy eating is adding more food groups to your plate! Ask yourself daily, how can I add more nutrients to fuel my body to get a really good source of energy’ Look at the big picture, what is actually going on, the bigger picture past the food you just ate.
What if my daughter comes to me and says, “Mommy I am fat, or mommy I think I need to go on a diet.”’ How do we handle those scenarios”
Start with COMMUNICATION. Open-ended questions are key here. What does fat mean to you’ Why are you labelling yourself with these words’ What do you think dieting is going to do for you’ How did we come up with the idea of dieting’ It is really important to understand where all this stems from before we go giving advice because it could have been something like, “I was bullied at school, and somebody called me fat and said, I need to diet.” It also could have been, “I overheard something at my friend’s house, the mom was saying something about weight.” Ask. Better. Questions.
And when it comes to someone else approaching you or your child about your weight, don’t take it to heart. This person could just be projecting their insecurities outward on to other people to make them feel better about him or her. Sometimes the people who make negative comments about our bodies are the most insecure with themselves and it is so important to remember that! And instead of feeling hurt, feel sorry for them that they feel so bad about their bodies they have to make negative comments about my body…
How can we have those conversations about food choices with our kids”
Guys let’s model the changes itself!! If we want our kids to be more active, can we schedule a walk or hike altogether’ Or how can you create meals for the family that has added vegetables for everyone to eat’ It really starts with making the changes as a whole. And don’t make the person feel bad or feel that they are being pointed out because we never want to call out this person! Instead, make changes for the family that will help promote this really healthy lifestyle. Change your habits AS A FAMILY!
Do I have a conversation with my daughter’ To see if its nutrition or about her weight’
When it comes to this, the best thing is to let them come to us. Do not attempt to have a conversation unless she comes to you to talk to you about her body. If you feel any kind of way about your daughter’s body size… dig into yourself and wonder why these feeling are coming up for me’ We make these comments out of love and protection out of love for us. And yes, we may get them from a place of love, but let’s dig deeper and see what is going on with us and preconceived notions about people being a large body size!
We want our kids to come to us to talk about it. But you have to remember that some kids may just be in a larger body and it’s out of our control and where their body is supposed to be! So, at the end of the day, it’s about making healthy changes for our family to make our over health better!!
Health is your physical wellbeing, mental wellbeing and your emotional well-being and it encompasses more than weight loss and “clean eating”. There is so much more to health!! And it’s really all about finding that beautiful balance that doesn’t cause you to stress!!! You can have those fun foods, and don’t restrict them because that is when you binge. And we want to avoid this. So, giving yourself those treats here and there will be better than total restriction in the long run.
At the and of the day, the main goal is how can I communicate with my family to make these healthy changes together’ Show the kids there is balance and that balance is ok! It’s not one size fits all, there is a way to find balance and have fun with it too!
What makes you feel magical’
What makes me feel really magical is seeing people change. And seeing people go from this can never happen to me, I’m stuck here forever because my mom was this way, my grandma was this way, to then being like, I am free, like capital letters, F R E E, I’m free. I’m at peace with myself, I’m at peace with my body. I’m hanging out with my child more without thinking about food 24/7. And I know I’m protecting my child. And when I say that now, I get the chills. Because a lot of people think that this can’t be their reality. But when you get to be on the outside watching this happen, it’s like the most beautiful transformation you could watch. And it’s just, it’s really amazing to me.
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