Raising Healthy Eaters

Lindsay Miller  0:22  
Well, hello, thank you so much for joining me here on the podcast. This is Lindsay Miller and I'm excited to share this conversation with you, Jessica Setnick is a professional in the world of dieticians, and eating disorders. And she has so many great insights on how to help kids develop a healthy relationship with food. I know for many of us as adults, we're navigating our own relationships with food. And sometimes you don't have the brain space to, you know, think through how to approach food with kids in a way that's empowering to them. Jessica's phrasing her like stories and examples. They're really really fantastic for just reframing the way we talk to kids about how they nourish themselves. This episode that you're about to listen to is sponsored by the essential calendar, which is a fun family calendar that lets everyone see the whole summer at a glance. So as you're making plans for vacations, planning pool days, or friend activities, you can just jot it all down and everyone can see the whole summer just at one glance. You can find it at www dot essential calendar.com. Now on to the episode. 

Welcome to The Stress Nanny podcast. I'm your host Lindsay Miller and I'm delighted that you're here to make your life a little less stressful. I am so excited to introduce my guests today, Jessica Setnick. Jessica is known by eating disorder professionals worldwide for bringing a new vision of eating disorder care to the field. Through her training workshop, eating disorders bootcamp and hundreds of conference and community presentations, Jessica has spread her message to 1000s of healthcare professionals, educators, college students and others. Combining authenticity, two decades of expertise and her unique ability to translate complicated topics into practical tools. Jessica connects with audiences on a deep level, whether from a podium or across cyberspace like we're doing today. Jessica, thank you so much for joining me, it is an honor to have you here.

Jessica Setnick  2:19  
Oh, this is great. I'm absolutely happy to be here. I love talking about these topics. I felt like there's so much misinformation I really appreciate the opportunity.

Lindsay Miller  2:28  
Yeah, and let's get into that. Because as we were talking before, we mentioned how sometimes this is a topic that can be a little taboo, or parents feel nervous to bring it up, or they don't understand or it just feels a little bit unknown and scary sometimes. And so help us know, to get started, what do we need to understand about eating disorders?

Jessica Setnick  2:48  
Sure. Well, the first thing is, I prefer to use different terminology, I feel like when we say eating disorders, we end up with an image in our mind, a very specific person, or people what they look like what they eat or don't eat. And it's hard, then to relate that back to what we're going through in our own lives. So I prefer the terminology dysfunctional eating behavior, because to me, everyone who eats has eating behavior, right. And it then becomes just a matter of whether your eating is moving you towards your goals, or moving you away from your goals. And so when eating is not supportive to your life or to your goals, that's when I would call it dysfunctional eating. And the truth is that different behaviors can be supportive or dysfunctional, to different people are even the same person at the same time. So, you know, two people might be having a turkey sandwich for lunch. And one person might be saying this turkey sandwich is delicious. And I'm eating it because I love it. And I'm, you know, going to take a walk this afternoon. And the other person might be saying, Oh, I can only eat this turkey sandwich, because I'm not really going to be doing very much this afternoon, I'm only going to be taking a walk. So I probably should have something with not very many calories in it. And so the same exact behavior can be functional or dysfunctional, depending on who's doing it what their motives are. So I think it opens up the conversation a lot more than using the terms eating disorders, I think that sort of shuts us down and like you said, can sound sort of scary. Now granted, there are individuals who have eating disorders. And when dysfunctional eating rises to that level of really threatening someone's life, it's really important to get care and treatment. But it's also important that individuals who are struggling with their eating, even if they're not to that level, have this functionality that they know that they can get help to. So dysfunctional eating behaviors is the way we can talk about it today. And I think that will help people feel less threatened by it.

Lindsay Miller  4:41  
Yes, I love that. And I'm a big fan of reframing things. So I really appreciate the the shift that happens when we use that different terminology because it really does change the way we view it and help us go into this idea of this function. The way that I understand this function and the way I learned about it in school. is getting in the way of normal function like that dysfunction is, like you said, not not moving you towards your goals, like it's moving you away from your goals or it's functional behavior moves you towards your goals. Is that how you define it?

Jessica Setnick  5:13  
Absolutely. And the dilemma, of course, with dysfunctional eating behaviors is that we all do things for smart reasons. So my background is in anthropology and the way I think about eating behaviors is sort of similar to the way things are passed on through, you know, human behavior, but basically through generations is the things that work get passed on. And so the question then becomes, why are we still doing things that don't work. And some of those reasons are because they work for our parents or grandparents or our caregivers. And so we keep doing them because of that, even though they're no longer working for us. So you can have something dysfunctional that you were taught, because it was important for the survival of a previous generation. And then you can also be doing dysfunctional behaviors, because they were important to your survival or to your growth or to your safety at a younger age. And it's very interesting how people tend to tell me, Oh, this that happened so long ago, it's not affecting me anymore. But I believe that the longer it goes, something happened, actually, the more it's affecting you, because the younger you are, when it happened, the more of your life has sort of been constructed around it, the fewer coping skills you had when it happened, the more immature not you being immature, but the more immature your reasoning skills were to explain why something was happening to you. So there are so many reasons why we perpetuate behaviors that are no longer serving us. But that doesn't mean they didn't serve us at a certain time. So even dysfunctional behaviors may have made their start as very functional behaviors.

Lindsay Miller  6:46  
Yes. Oh, I'm so glad you made that distinction. And I'm loving this conversation already. Because I think that when we bring that perspective to it, like you're saying functional versus dysfunctional, like is this moving me toward my goals or not? There can be so much clarity around like, like you said, those conversations, like I used to do it this way. And it doesn't seem like it's wrong to do it that way. But maybe it's not the way that I want to do it now. And there's just a vision that can come in, right when we're like stewing in some of these choices around how to nourish ourselves.

Jessica Setnick  7:18  
Well, sure. And the non sort of technical way of saying it would just be supportive, right? So is, let's say, drinking this chocolate milkshake supportive to where I need to go with my day versus is this chocolate milkshake, not supportive? And if it's not supportive, then what is it supporting? Is it supporting an emotional need? Is it something else that food can't necessarily fill? And so it can give you the insight to look more deeply instead of saying, Gosh, I'm off. I'm such a failure for drinking this chocolate milkshake, right? And so that's why I say, you know, it's a very flexible terminology. Because to say some things good and bad. chocolate milkshake is good or chocolate milkshake is bad. That's something that in theory shouldn't be able to change. Right? It should be bad all the time, like eating rusty nails. That's bad. Don't do that. That's always bad, right? But it Tremblant milkshake is much more morally neutral than that. And so to take the good and bad away and say, you know, for example, on an evening when it's 98 degrees outside in Dallas, and I'm sitting outside getting ready to watch fireworks on the Fourth of July, a chocolate milkshake might be perfect. It might be very supportive to what I needed that moment. Someone else who's lactose intolerant might say, Oh, no chocolate milkshake is not supportive, do what I need right now. Right? So when we use that kind of terminology, it takes away the good and bad and the judgments and instead opens it up to looking at the bigger environment that that food is taking place in?

Lindsay Miller  8:48  
Yes. I can't even tell you how much I love that. Yes, that freezing mean, yes. All day long to it. Because I think, especially when it comes to kids, I mean, kids are getting so many messages around food, right? And sometimes as parents, like we're in a swirl of messaging also, like, we're not sure. Is this like, what's going on right now? Should I be worried what you know, how is this going to turn out in five years? What should I be doing? And I think that that what you just said, gives people kind of the empowerment that they need to just make a discernment in that moment, like make a judgment, call this and supportive. That's where mindfulness comes into, you know, what I'm so passionate about sharing with families is this idea of like being intentional in the moment. And like you said, giving yourself the space to just take a quick assessment, like, is this supportive, not supportive? Okay, I'm not gonna worry about it anymore. You just go with it, you know?

Jessica Setnick  9:42  
And I think you're opening up the idea of there's a difference between nutrition decisions and parenting decisions, and I really encourage people to keep those separate. So I'm thinking of a friend who called me once that you know, when we leave church every Sunday there's always a table of doughnuts. At, and my daughter will say, I want a donut. And I'll say, No, we're going home. You can have an apple when we get home. And I suggested that she just changed her wording and say, Nope, we're not having donuts today. We're headed home. And so that it's not about the trade between a donut and an apple. It's more just simply the idea that we're not having doughnuts right now. And that's a parenting decision. And I felt like we we try to give kids nutrition information that is really age inappropriate, that they really don't have the skills to deal with. And so again, saying we're going home, we're not having a donut, we're having an apple can have two effects, it can either have that child feel like doughnuts are bad. And if I ever eat a doughnut, I'm bad. Or it can give the child the impression that doughnuts are amazing. But I can only eat them in secret because Mommy doesn't like it when I eat donuts. And so we're sending messages, the messages that kids interpret are absolutely a match for their developmental skills, the messages we give are not necessarily the messages that are received.

Lindsay Miller  11:03  
That's such a good point. Thank you for sharing that. And it's really insightful, too. I'd never thought about it like that. Separating parenting decisions from nutrition decisions and, and bringing in, like you said, a lot of clarity. And instead of trying to teach in that moment and share like a nutrition lesson about apples and doughnuts, and thinking that it landed in, like you said in a way that it probably didn't land in the way you intended it to just letting it be like, Nope, we're not doing this. And then then let it go. What would be some other examples of that when you would when you would hear someone giving like a parenting and nutrition message in the same in the same moment? Oh,

Jessica Setnick  11:41  
well, you know, there's this experiment that I think a lot of people misguidedly do. And they are sort of pouring sugar into a glass to show how much sugar is in a soda. If you did that with a child. They're just like, cool, right? Instead of right? Yeah. Okay, that's awesome. Yeah, another example would be you have to eat everything on your plate, right? Most kids think well, why? And the answer I always got was there's children starving in China, which I think you could put any country in the blank and someone has, right their children starving in Mexico. The sad thing is, you didn't have to go to China to find starving children. There were probably too hungry children across the street. But that was the message that we got. And any child of any age, you know, probably like me like you like all of us, we think, Well, how does me eating this food help a starving child in China? Right. And so our parents are giving us this message that's intended to say, not everyone has food, you should appreciate the food that you have. But that's not the message we get the message we get is this, this doesn't even make any sense. And so we're not actually learning a lesson about appreciation or about, you know, abundance versus scarcity. We're actually just getting confused. Yeah,

Lindsay Miller  13:04  
yeah. Those are great examples. And it, it makes sense to that, again, the brevity of the message leads to clarity. Like if we're Yeah, if we're waxing eloquent about something, it's probably a good sign. Right?

Jessica Setnick  13:19  
Right. So the real answer is, the reason I think you should consider eating everything on your plate is because we won't have another eating opportunity again, for a few hours, we're going on a hike, and all we'll have is water bottles and protein bars. So seems wise to eat as much as you can, right now, that's an actual explanation. And of course, if a child does get hungry on the hike, it would be less appropriate to say, I told you, you should have eat more later. And instead to say something like, well, here's a protein bar and water, this is all we have. And, you know, here we go. Let's handle it. Right, as opposed to shaming or blaming, which just makes everyone feel bad and no one wants to be around you anymore, which is not ideal. I do think that parents sometimes feel like no one can ever be upset around me. So it's just a free for all like, it's these are the options. Either I can upset my child, or they can do whatever they want. And then I'm unhappy. And I think that's where, you know, being the adult in the situation means evaluating whether something is really about feelings at all, or whether it's just sort of hurting our ego and that to me as a stepmom coming in, at age five and six to my stepkids I had a teenage stepdaughter, also, but she was pretty established as an eater at that point, the five and six year old, were very, very selective. And so my ego was hurt as a dietitian, having kids that only ate you know, a certain handful of items. And I just I had to really have this I don't know a talk let's say it was all in my mind, but a conversation with myself which was, that's my jam. That's my ego. And so I want to protect These kids from feeling any shame about their eating, there will always be something that they like to eat on the table, I'm not going to eat it, my husband's not going to eat it, there'll be other food for us. But they will always know that they will get fed, they will be safe. And when we went to Thanksgiving dinner, and I brought a box of Velveeta cheese, the shell to make on the stove. For those kids. I took on whatever comments anyone else had. So if someone said, Why can't your kids just eat what's on the table? I would say, well, they don't. So that's why I'm making Cheesy shells. Would you like some? Right? Instead of making it about? You know, yeah, no, it's so annoying. It's not annoying. They're just being kids. And this is how it's going to be. And if these are the things they eat, I want to make sure that those things are always always always available so that they feel safe, and ultimately can branch out any things that aren't in their safe foods. But the only way to feel safe, or feel safe being experimental, is to know that you're safe, and that you don't have to try anything. So it's really complicated, because we get our egos involved in our embarrassment. And not only that, as a step parent, I was able to tell myself what I call the big lie, which is that if I had been in the picture, from the very beginning, these kids would eat everything, right, which is a total lie, right? But it sort of gave me permission to be okay with it. If you have raised your kids since birth, and they are selective eaters, it can be a blow to your ego, right? That Have I done something wrong that has made these kids picky? And the truth is, I think that being picky about what goes inside your body is a really important facet of body autonomy. Right. But it can feel like you know, basically a blow to our own ego, that you know, and we have to separate that we're the adults, so we have to be the ones to separate that out. Yeah.

Lindsay Miller  16:57  
Oh my gosh, so much wisdom in there. I just Yeah, I want to pull apart a few things because not pull apart. But just like revert go back to a few things because there was yes, so much wisdom. So I love the first thing you said about like having them feel safe at the table. And how you know if we're looking at like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, or from like an anthropological perspective, having enough food is a basic human need and having food that will nourish your body, right? Like, it's just the basic human need. And being able to power your body is really an instinct. And so how trusting kids and trusting bodies to have that instinct in place, and to just work with it. It I think it frees up so much headspace, right, because like what you just described was removing morality from any of those moments, right? Like it wasn't a good or a bad thing that they were eating the shells, it was that they felt safe at the table because there was food that would nourish their body. I love that, like I can't even totally

Jessica Setnick  17:59  
agree. And you reminded me of something that used to happen when I was a kid, where my parents would give me an apple, and I would eat in a ring. I didn't really like touching like my mouth touching the core. So I would eat a ring all the way around the middle, and then give it back and say I was done. And this happened enough times that it became a thing right where my parents are like you did it again. And as an adult, I look back and think, No, you did it again. Stop giving me an apple. I'm a little kid, I'm not gonna eat the whole apple. If you don't want to deal with whatever's left when I eat the amount I'm hungry for then give me half an apple or give me a slice or give me a smaller apple. Right? And I remember hearing that. Oh, you did it again. Yeah. Why are you Why did you expect me to be different? I'm the same kid. I was last week when I ate a ring around that.

Lindsay Miller  18:54  
Yes, yes. Yes. Well, and again, this, you talked about body autonomy, which I we could have a whole another entire episode about the ways we disconnect kids from their bodies, and how we like try to Mind Over and power over and all of the things to create the disconnect. And I don't think we do it intentionally. It's just kind of like, either reactive or it's ego based, or it's a pattern that we inherited, and we just keep flowing with it. But giving kids the choice at a young age. And while I get that it can be so frustrating and maddening. And like you talked about just like, oh my gosh, I didn't even know what to feed this child. It's also a precursor to like body autonomy as a tween, right body autonomy as a teen as an adult. And those are the times like yeah, I want you to feel like I mean, in our house. The phrase is you're the boss of your body. So like you are the boss of what goes in it. You're the boss of what you do with it. Like I have some tools, ideas that can support you help you create some healthy parameters here but like you are the boss and so giving If I'm giving kind of the, and it's not even permission, because they already have it, it's just like us thinking that we we have control or we have, you know, we have some sort of I think it

Jessica Setnick  20:11  
scares, I think it scares a lot of parents because it sounds like what you're just letting them do whatever they want. And I want to say that No, I don't agree with just letting people do whatever they want. And there again, you have the difference between nutrition decisions and parenting decisions. So, you know, a parenting decision would be no, we don't have food in your room, because we don't want ants. A parenting decision would be, you know, here's a shelf that you can reach in the refrigerator. And if you don't want what we're having for dinner, you can get something off that shelf, right? A parenting decision is what foods I bring home from the grocery store. But I feel like once the foods are home, it's fair game in the house, right? It's not fair to say No, daddy can eat chips before dinner, but you can't eat chips before dinner. That's right. So those are the kinds of things that I feel like, you know, it's reassuring for parents to know that the idea of giving kids autonomy over what they put in their body is not the same as having a free for all. It's not the same as eating candy at every meal, right? It's really about giving kids the safety to make their appropriate choices. And hopefully the same kid that says, No, I won't eat those brussel sprouts, because I don't like the way they taste is the same kid that later says, No, I won't do drugs just because everyone else is and no, I won't have unprotected sex with you, right? The same kid that will have some good boundaries. So we should maybe not try so hard to break down our kids boundaries when it comes to eating. Because that's the first way that we are teaching them that that no means no.

Lindsay Miller  21:41  
Yes. Oh, yes. Yes, yes. Because it and like you said, when they're little, they have so few choices. I mean, so few, right? Like we dictate a lot of their day, and they don't have they can't drive cars, they can't go you know, they just they can't do a lot of things on their own. So I mean, in my perspective, the more choices we give them when they're little and the more we let them own those choices, the more we prepare them for the myriad choices that they're going to be making later on. During those years. The choices like the consequences of those choices are a little bit more far reaching, right. Like,

Jessica Setnick  22:16  
like, here's a perfect example. A lot of us when we were growing up, if we wanted something to eat before dinner, the message was dinners in an hour will eat them. What would be different if someone had instead said to Okay, well, dinners in an hour. So what do you think you could eat right now that will tide you for an hour? Half an Apple have a turkey sandwich? And what would it have been like if whatever you ate at that time resulted in you not being hungry for dinner? And someone would have said okay, well just sit here at the table with us and participate in the conversation because we love you being here. And then the next time you came and said I'm hungry for dinner, and it was an hour or I'm hungry, and it was an hour till dinner? That same person said to you, okay, well, do you remember what you had last time? Whatever you had, it was it was a little too much, I think because you weren't hungry for dinner. So what do you think would be a good option for you to have now that you will also be hungry for dinner in an hour? Right? So instead of saying ignore that feeling that you have it's exactly what you said, it's trying to determine the consequences of your actions. And I do think that there are so many things we have to say no to kids about No, you can't play in the street. No, you can't go to school with no pants on. There's so many knows that we have to say that the opportunity for them to experiment. And if we can say yes, and it is a safe experiment for them. I think that we should take as many opportunities as we can for that. Yeah. Yeah. But again, I think people are hearing me say that kids just run the show. And they can just do whatever they want, whenever they want. But that's not what I said.

Lindsay Miller  23:48  
Yeah, no, it's not well, and I'm, I mean, I'm in the camp of letting kids make more choices, you know, than me deciding. And I also have one kid, so it's a little bit easier for me because I can adapt based on the choices that she makes, you know, but the other day, my sister and I were having a conversation and she was remembering a time when my daughter who was I guess three at the time, was my sister was visiting and she came downstairs one day and she saw my daughter sitting in front of the like sitting on the couch with a bowl of ice cream watching her little show word world. And I wasn't there. My husband wasn't there. She just had her little bowl of ice cream, the first thing in the morning, and we were talking I was like well, she those moments were so few and far between, you know, and for some kids I get it, you might say like have ice cream whenever you want and they would be having ice cream 24/7 But her personality was such that like, she would be satiated after just a little bit or she would you know want ice cream randomly a few times like before dinner, and I didn't ever want to send the message that like dessert is what you get after you eat the other stuff. And so I'd be like, okay, yeah, you want to have a scoop of ice cream we're going to be eating in a minute. Let's you know just like you said Make it good. so that, you know, you're still nourished by these other things as well. But anyway, so it was just funny because my sister said, well, and actually, if you think about it, like eating ice cream first thing in the morning might be the best way to do it. Because you have all day to use those calories, like it's a little caloric load right at the beginning of the day, and then you can use it. But the thing that was interesting was just like laughing about it, in hindsight, because I feel like as a young parent, at that time, I could have been like, oh, my gosh, like, what is she's gonna, you know, I could have spiraled in a lot of ways about it. And now seeing her, you know, nine years later, like, she's still she's the kid who will like order ice cream, eat half of it, and then leave the rest, or, you know, she just doesn't, she doesn't crave it, because her satiate is her own business, you know what I mean? Like, and she has her own relationship with her body and the food. And, and I'm not saying if kids eat ice cream all the time, it's because they weren't allowed to eat it. I'm just saying that, I think that we can have a lot of fear I'm agreeing with you. When I say I think we can have a lot of fear about what it looks like to let kids make choices without kind of trusting some of their like instincts around food. And like you were saying about the texture and the flavors and what, what they know about what say she eats them for a certain amount of time, all those things are such important pieces of knowledge to have when it comes to knowing how to like use your body for the rest of your life, right?

Jessica Setnick  26:20  
Well, I'm glad you said for the rest of your life. Because that's, that's the key to me is we have such a small window of opportunity at the beginning of a child's life, to really give them the skills they need for the rest of their life. And if if shame is one of the main messages that they get about eating, then they carry that through all of their life. And I think that a lot of us as adults are still sifting through those messages that we had when we were younger. And it is, it's like I said, it's really tempting to say those things happened so long ago. They're not affecting me anymore, but I think it's quite the opposite. Yeah, and not only they're affecting us, but we may be accidentally passing them on to our kids. Yeah, very things that we didn't like when they were done to us.

Lindsay Miller  27:03  
Yeah, yeah. Well, I really appreciate the phrasing that you use. Because again, like when you said about dinner, like, oh, the last time you had this, and it seemed to be a little bit more than what you needed right before dinner. Like there's no judgment in that, right? It's just a neutral. And mindfulness allows us to do that, right? Like having meditation in part of our life, having a mindful outlook and mindful conversations allows us to process the emotion, we feel like, maybe that's a message that we got differently, you know, and we're like, Okay, I'm trying to make a conscious effort not to pass this along. So I'm going to say it and word it differently in this moment for my child, but it takes that little bit of discernment to know, right, like, Oh, this is emotion coming up for me, or this is a knee jerk reaction, or this is a response that I got, I'm going to process that myself real quick. And then say to my child, something that is supportive to their body autonomy, their goals, their growth and development, and and really remove Yeah, any kind of shame or, or judgment from, from the conversation. It's a really powerful idea. Well, what so talk to us about how dysfunctional eating behaviors develop? Is it like the shame that we kind of carry through and it exacerbates and kind of builds or what, how do we get there.

Jessica Setnick  28:17  
So there's really four major paths, there's probably millions of different paths for all the millions of different people that experience dysfunctional eating behaviors, but four major categories. So the first one is biological. So whether that is something like a concussion, or an illness that affects someone's actual appetite and ability to nourish themselves, whether that's depression or anxiety, there are lots of medical, psychiatric, different issues, hypothyroidism, all kinds of different things that affect our ability to nourish ourselves well. And sometimes those become habits that that persist after the original issue is there or is resolved. And sometimes the original issue never gets noticed, because it's just treated as bad eating behavior. And so we never looked beneath to see what was really causing it. And we keep trying to treat it with a diet or something like that without ever recognizing, oh, that was a hormonal imbalance, or Oh, that was something medical or something, psychological, psychiatric, etc. So those biological basis basis of those behaviors is one category. Another category is addiction related. There's a lot of chemical processes that happen when someone has an addiction. And we tend to not remember that food is a mood altering chemical. And so and it's the first one that most of us have access to. So if someone is using another substance or another behavior to help moderate their brain chemistry, then they stop they attempt to get into recovery from that substance. Sometimes food can take its place. Sometimes it's it goes the other way to someone else. And who maybe is trying to lose weight might get addicted to a substance that helps curb their appetite. There's lots of interrelationships between addictions to other things. And then food, dysfunctional behaviors. The third category is stress and trauma related. So when a traumatic event happens, or ongoing stress happens, that can affect someone's ability to nourish themselves, ability to sense their hunger and fullness cues. If it is some terrible event that happens, it's unrelated to food, it can still affect the way you eat. If it's a terrible event that does affect your food, or that is related to food, it can be even harder to untangle. I'm thinking of someone who may be had experience of food insecurity and there wasn't enough food, someone who, you know, there recycles, let's say, with food stamps, or something like that, where sometimes there was food. And sometimes there wasn't where there was a chaotic caregiving situation, maybe even foster care, things like that, where there's there's chaos surrounding the food where it doesn't seem like any one stressful, triggering traumatic event, but just the entire way someone grew up with their food is really stressful and chaotic, that can be really hard to detangle as an adult, it's certainly possible and can be done. But again, we have to recognize where it came from. And then the fourth category is really the environmental and learned behavior. And that's, I think, what you were talking about when you were referring to kind of the way that we have sort of gotten messages from either the world media, from consumer culture, messages about bodies, messages about different individual foods, messages about when to eat. And that can also include things like weigh ins for certain sports, that would include that and environmental and learn behavior. And so sometimes it's a mash up of all four parts of different ones. But at its root, in order to make change sustainable, we've got to figure out what the original root is. Because otherwise, if you're just looking at the symptoms, it's sort of like if three different people are coughing, you can't just assume that all three of those people need the same treatment. And that I think, is what we do sometimes, you know, if someone feels like, oh, well, I overeat, so therefore, I should go on a diet, well, you really have to identify what what is the genesis of the overeating. Otherwise, any diet will work for a little while and then fail for the rest of the time. If you haven't really figured out oh, this comes from, you know, that time when I was in Hurricane Katrina, and I sat on my roof for three days, and didn't know if anyone was coming to get me and didn't have any food. If you haven't identified that and healed whatever original thing that is, then any kind of intervention is is not really getting at the real solution. Yeah,

Lindsay Miller  32:49  
thank you. That's really insightful. To see it in those three pathways. And then just circling back, what is the point at which like, if the parent if a parent is listening, and they're like, Yeah, I feel like, I'm my child, I'm seeing some things in my child or myself even where the it's not supportive, what's the point at which they reach out for help, you know, that you recommend that they reach out for help and try to get,

Jessica Setnick  33:14  
I would say, as soon as you notice it, because sometimes all it takes is another pair of eyes to look at the situation and make some suggestions. The first person I would suggest contacting is an eating disorder dietician, even if you don't think what you're seeing in your child, or what you're experiencing raises to the level of an eating disorder, an eating disorder, dietitian is the person that's going to be able to separate out for you. Here's what's nutrition related. And here's what's not, here's what you might want to take to a therapist. And here's what I can advise you on from a nutrition standpoint, whether your child even goes to that appointment or not. If it's about your child, it might just be information that you want to get, or if it's for yourself, obviously, and the dietitian will be a good person to know, is this something that we want to meet a few times about? Or is it something we want to plan to meet on an ongoing basis, I think that's the the way to get help is to just make a call to an eating disorder dietitian, I'm happy to help someone find someone if they if they need someone in their area. I also think that there are some books that are really good to kind of, if you're not quite ready to talk to someone else about it, the two that I would recommend, one is intuitive eating and that is for adults. And it talks about sort of how to go about looking at your eating and looking at the the pieces of the puzzle, not as specifically as what I was describing. But it's a great book to say, here's what we're the soup that we're all swimming in. And here are some ways to sort of start looking at what is going on with your eating. And then the other book that I think of is really anything by Ellen Sattar but she writes a book called Secrets of beating a happy family and she's a child feeding expert. And I think that the way that she writes about child feeding is really informative for even an adult Who is looking back on their own eating and saying, Oh yeah, the way I was raised with food was not like this. It's good to see the comparison. I did, I wrote a workbook called Food fairy tales. And the subtitle is rewrite the stories. You tell yourself about food and eating and eat happily ever after. And so that's a deep dive, intuitive eating and Ellen Sattar writing about child feeding our concepts. The food fairy tales workbook is really about you going back in your history, and you know, with guidance, making a timeline of your life, and what are the impactful events that happened? And how are those affecting still to this day you're eating and your body image and things like that. So that would be an option. But I want to also offer those other two books as options if someone is looking for guidance, but it's not quite ready to do the deep dive on their own. But I would say ideally, talking with a dietitian, because again, the other person's eyes always see something that we can't see for ourselves. But if that's intimidating, what might they see in me, right? If you're carrying a lot of shame about your eating, or your child's eating and thinking, what might they see in me, and I'm not sure I'm ready to talk about that with another person than one of those books, that might be a good place to start. Because you can always take notes, as you're reading the book, put sticky notes on the pages, etc. And then when it's time to go talk to to an individual, an actual person to say, here's some of the things I wanted to bring that really made sense to me. Yeah,

Lindsay Miller  36:36  
yeah, those are fantastic suggestions. Thank you all. And what I'm hearing from you, too, is like, it's never too late to adjust your relationship with food.

Jessica Setnick  36:44  
No, never ever. I had a patient who was 85 years old, went and was referred to me by someone who had identified that she had an eating disorder when she was not able to lose weight, she was told by her surgeon, she had double need a double knee replacement, she was told by the surgeon that they would not operate and till she had lost weight. And yet she was actually gaining weight. And so we you know, in talking through that, come to find out this is a person who wasn't even mobile. So she was binge eating. And the question, of course, was, how is that even happening? Well, she had a housekeeper that came in, and she the housekeeper would buy her binge food. And so that's someone that's really making a big effort to binge eat right at the point where you're asking an employee to go by you've injured. And so talking through it, talking through it, talking through it, she remembered as early as five years old, being in a play, where another young person had to pick her up and she remembered thinking, I wonder if I'm too heavy to be lifted up, she really carried a lot of shame about being a larger personal, larger body. So I thought, Okay, well, maybe that's what where we're going with this, talked about it talked about it come to find out, she was deathly afraid of going under anesthesia. She had read that individuals who are older are at risk, and she was worried she would go under anesthesia and not wake up. So she was actually self sabotaging, ever having to have this surgery, by making sure that she didn't lose the weight. But she didn't consciously realize that we had to really kind of sift and sift and sift to figure out what was going on before we could get to that point. And once I realized it was really easy to as an outside person, it was easy to say, Hey, this is something to tell your surgeon. Look, is there any way that we could a do the surgery without me needing to lose weight because I'm in a little bit of a cycle here where the the more you tell me I have to lose weight to have the surgery, the more I end up gaining weight? And secondly, what about the anesthesia, I'm terrified that I won't wake up, I need to hear more about that I need some more education about what the risks really are. And through that process, this person didn't actually need to lose weight because another piece of the puzzle was she kept saying if I could just get the knee surgery, then I would be able to walk more and then maybe I would lose weight right? So it's just a horrible cycle. And once we had it straightened out, she was able to get the surgery, she no longer subconsciously needed the binge eating I mean, just solved a lot of problems. And that's at 85 years old. So no, it is never ever too late because whatever amount of life you have left you are entitled to live it without dysfunctional eating, if that's something that you want to try. Yeah,

Lindsay Miller  39:48  
I love that. This is so great. I just got I feel like I have 14 more questions. So maybe we'll have to record another episode. You have space for it another day. Because there's so many things I would love to ask you about. But before we close on this, and I'll just ask you one more, when we're talking about kids, and we kind of touched on this a little bit, this idea of picky eaters and kids being really in our house, we call it discerning, you're really discerning about what you put in your body. Can you stop an eating disorder? Like, can you can you help kids who maybe like, what is the parenting role in supporting optimal nutrition for kids in a way that, you know, gives them the best chance possible?

Jessica Setnick  40:29  
So, I will say the caveat, no, I don't think we can stop every eating disorder, I think there are eating disorders that are either biologically based, or caused by things that we don't even understand yet, whether that's something in a DNA mutation, whether that's something caused by a virus, there are situations, we are not going to be able to control eating disorders. So it's important to make sure your kid gets care, if you're worried about them, you're not gonna be able to make it out of them, you're not gonna be able to talk to them, right. So I just need to make sure I said that before I then say what I'm going to say next, which is that I think that in most cases, we may not be able to make a child's eating better, and you can't see my finger quotes on this podcast look better according to what we want, we can make their eating worse. So in other words, we can take a selective or picky or discerning eater and make them even more selective, picky or discerning by ruining some of the things that they do like to eat by forcing them to eat those things, or by having an unpleasant mealtime environment. And I'm thinking of a little boy that I saw when I was a new dietitian, he was about five years old, and I was called him by the social worker, because the parents said that he only ate five foods. And when I came in, I asked for the list of five foods. And it was far more than five foods, he ate quite a lot of foods. And I said, I don't think I understand what's going on here. This, you're telling me all these foods that child eats, but I hear you saying he's very picky. And it turned out they were really, really worried that he was going to turn into a picky eater. So they were stressing that every day at dinner, he had to try something new. And so the real issue, from my point of view was that every day around two o'clock, this child would start saying to his parents, what am I gonna have to eat at dinner tonight? What am I going to have to eat at dinner tonight? What am I gonna have to eat at dinnertime? The issue was anxiety that was being created, it wasn't being a picky eater. They just saw it differently. And so my suggestion was really just, I want your child to hear me say to you, and for you to agree with me that you won't force him to eat anything else. And the parents said, if that's what you recommend, that's what we'll do, which by the way, is a great restaurant. So when you're a dietician, you love to hear that they were very concerned about it. But they said, well, we'll try anything. And I got a call from the mother, I never needed to see them again, because the mother called a few days later and said, You're not going to believe it. We were at the store. And my son looked at some popsicles and said, Could I try those and so I bought them. And he tried one, and he didn't like it. But he's never actually volunteered to try something before, because of that anxiety. And so that's the kind of thing where I felt like, it's a great example of how we can make things worse. If if your child is going to be a selective eater for the rest of their life, let's make them a selective eater who doesn't have shame about it, a selective eater who has nice table manners, a selective eater who knows how to order in a restaurant, let's focus on those things. They may end up working their way out of being a selective eater, but at least we're preserving the things that they do feel comfortable eating, we're preserving their body autonomy. We're keeping them from feeling shame about their food. That to me is the key to the whole operation. So yes, a lot of kids grow out of being picky selective, discerning eaters, some don't. I think I'm still pretty picky. My sister in law served me dinner last night. And you know, what was the first time I'd had actual spaghetti noodles in years, because here we have thin spaghetti or angel hair. I don't know what the difference is. It's the same pasta, but for me, the texture of actual spaghetti. I don't like it, but I ate it. And then she served brownies made with protein powder. And I'm not gonna lie, I spit mine out into my napkin, very politely. I write, but there was no way and I'm a texture person. And I absolutely I wouldn't have known it was protein powder. I just would have known that this was not Duncan Hines, fudge brownie. Okay, something about these brownies. And that's why I stick up for all kids who don't want cauliflower in their brownies. Because a kid who doesn't notice cauliflower is in their brownies, right? But an already selective Eater is going to be the very kid that will probably flower in their brownies, and now they're not eating brownies, and now you've eliminated a food that they already you know they would have at least eat didn't, and you're also eroding the trust? Because you tried to sneak cauliflower into their brownie. So absolutely, I think what we as adults have to do is kind of rein in our own instincts to want to change our kids and instead be as much as we can, accepting of the small person that they are and help them grow into an autonomous, independent adult person. It's just so ironic that we want them to be autonomous, independent adults. And yet we try to do everything we can to make them do what we want, which is the opposite of independent and autonomous.

Lindsay Miller  45:34  
Yeah, no, it's such a good point. And I appreciate you sharing that story. I think there's so much to be said for communication in those moments. And like you're saying, really filtering our reaction. I know, in our house, my daughter's entering like her tween and teen years. And so we have some hormonal shifts going on, which has, like, made some different eating patterns at the same time, where she's having some tendencies toward vegetarian eating. And so we're trying to like put all that in the mix. And I know, there have been a couple of conversations where we've had to just like, I'm feeling a little frustrated sometimes as the mom because I'm like, I actually don't know what to feed you. Like, I don't know. And so me having to in those moments, like, just take a deep breath and be like, it's you can eat whatever you want, you know, like I'm not, I'm not going to cast any moral judgment on your eating patterns or habits. But I do need to know, as the person who buys groceries in our house, what would be you know, a nourishing plan that's very

Jessica Setnick  46:31  
age appropriate to ask a teenager to go on the internet and find some vegetarian recipes that you might like to try. And I'd also like your help in the kitchen, cooking that right? You can't go to McDonald's and just take the meat patty out of that burger, because you might just remove the most nutritious piece of the whole meal. Right? So yeah, yeah, so but I'm old enough to start expressing I want to try to eat vegetarian. And they're also probably old enough to do those other things. Yeah, and be a healthy vegetarian. Or you could say, we need to go meet with a professional who can help me to help you who can help you understand what you need to do and how to help me cook it. Right. Or however you decide to divide the responsibility. Yeah,

Lindsay Miller  47:10  
yeah. No, I love that. And we've had so it's been good to have some different conversations around, like, what are some of our staple meals that work for everyone in our family? What are some of you know, and I have, I have my own supportive nutrition practices, as a person with an autoimmune condition. And so I have some different, you know, different things that I need. And so it's just that I think having the communication in a way that doesn't bring in all the emotion or any frustration or you know, angst or whatever. And and I think that you've done such a great job of illustrating how to have those conversations today. And I'm grateful for all the wisdom that you've shared before we close can I ask you three questions that I asked? Sure. Yes. What's your favorite food?

Jessica Setnick  47:50  
My favorite food is different on different days. Lately, it has been an English muffin with peanut butter and jelly. But that's sort of a food jag I'm on and my next favorite food will be something different next week. Probably.

Lindsay Miller  48:04  
Love it. What's your favorite way to relax?

Jessica Setnick  48:07  
My favorite free way to relax is watching TV with my husband. My favorite expensive way to relax is a fancy facial and a spa.

Lindsay Miller  48:16  
That's great. And a funny story from childhood.

Jessica Setnick  48:20  
Oh my gosh, there's so so many. But the one that comes to mind is that I had an uncle Eva and my dad was also named ame. And when I was little, I would call my dad a but I think a lot of kids go through that phase. And when my brother was going to be born, for some reason that sort of triggered my parents to decide it was time to call my dad daddy and not age anymore. And so I knew I wasn't supposed to call my dad a bus was to call him daddy went to visit Uncle ape. And as we left, I said, Bye, uncle daddy. It just sort of crystallizes to me how concrete children can be right? And now you don't have the discernment yet. I just knew I wasn't supposed to call somebody a hey, apply to everybody. Right?

Lindsay Miller  49:09  
That's funny. Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. Jessica, this has been so insightful. Thank you for sharing your time and all of your wisdom with us. Tell us where we can find more about your work.

Jessica Setnick  49:21  
Sure. So to find more about me, all of my my work in general, or even to invite me to come speak at your event is Jessica set. nick.com If you're a professional, and you're interested in my training on eating disorders, that's eating disorders boot camp.com. And if you are an individual who wants to look at your own eating food, fairy tales, and look back in life, then that would be food fairy tales.com And I'll make sure all those links are in your show notes.

Lindsay Miller  49:55  
Okay, great. Well, thank you again, this has been such a wonderful conversation and I'm so grateful you're sharing this message and that you're training professionals so that we can all shift the way that we view interact with and support people that we love and our own our own selves when it comes to nourishment. 

Jessica Setnick  50:14  
Thanks for having me. 

Lindsay Miller  50:17  
I would love to hear your take on this episode. And also, if there any questions you have or things you'd like to hear, Jessica talked about more. I feel like I had a million questions for her that, yes, that I wanted to get her take on. One of the things that I really took away from this idea of calling and repeating behavior, because we all have different eating behaviors, and they just depend on our goals. And so when we can kind of remove some of the stigma around eating, it helps us just get a little more clarity. And we can be more mindful and present about what's actually going on. And whether this eating behavior is serving me and helping me get to my goals or whether it's not. Yeah, I would love to hear what your favorite takeaway was. If you haven't yet, on cast, would you please leave a review? I would really appreciate it. I read all of them. And I'm so grateful that you're here and hope this episode served, please share it with anyone who would benefit from Jessica's knowledge. I hope you have a wonderful day and thanks again for being here. Until next time!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai