I was watching “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” — clever, funny and well, off-putting, too! (But perhaps to teach us a very good lesson about overindulgence). My 5-year-old said to me “that town Mayor is getting fat because he eats too much food”… “a lot of the bad stuff, too” – well, yes! The overindulgence is almost sickening to watch even though they are only cartoon characters, really. But watching someone overindulge over and over again, getting plumper and plumper, well…
“I don’t want to be fat,” my daughter cried out. Good. She put 2 and 2 together. Too much food, all the time leads to “FAT”. It’s just a movie. But the point rang out quite clear (truth be told – we actually have not finished the movie so perhaps that is a movie with a solid, good lesson).
My girls eat well (I mean they certainly don’t starve themselves) and they enjoy many of the common delights amongst their peers — pasta, hotdogs, hamburgers, pizza. Yep, I can honestly say I serve these to them, but often I make healthier versions and they don’t eat these all the time. Yet still they can stand to have more veggies. lol! I’m sure most of us could, too! They often surprise me by asking for seconds and thirds. Granted their portions aren’t very large. But I can definitely say they do out-eat my MIL. They have cried when I’ve said “no dessert tonight” or “you’ve already had dessert”. But I think they are getting it. They want to be healthy, and active. They don’t want an upset stomach and they don’t want to be fat. So while they aren’t afraid to eat, and ask for seconds, they don’t mindlessly stuff themselves.
That begs the question. At what point does emotional eating start (in one’s young life)? It is different for each individual. I remember a friend of mine — we were around 6 at the time. Her parents were splitting up, getting divorced. I do remember her eating a lot and a lot of sugar — to the point of adding white sugar to strawberries. She was thin and small framed like me, actually she may have been skinnier. But within a year, she plumped up and was more than just a little chubby, she was full-blown fat. Another gal I knew in grade school went to the same after school day care as I, she was also going through emotional troubles and the same thing happened to her.
I do let my girls eat when they are hungry. If they are bored, I certainly try to assess that before readily giving in to their requests. If it’s after 4 (which is quite close to dinner), I can often twist their arm to play a game, do a puzzle, run around outside. And if it’s been 10 minutes or more, they are fully engaged in an activity and their “hunger” is not an issue, I know it’s probably because they were bored. Heck, even I have a tendency to think about eating when I’m bored. And somethings I give into it. Yep, I’m an emotional eater — and in taking steps to assess boredom (an emotion) in my girls and remedy it up with a game or two, I’m also training myself to take a step away from the refrigerator (out of the kitchen) and occupy my needs with something other than food.
