How parents can help their kids thrive at any size
Today's podcast is about health and happiness at every stage of our children’s development, no matter what their size, and how we as parents can help our kids build healthy habits. To guide us through the challenges is leading pediatric nutritionist and registered dietician, Jill Castle, MS, RDN. A mom of four with over 30 years of professional experience, Jill has dedicated her career to helping families raise confident, well-nourished kids.A good read on nourishing your childJill’s latest book is Kids thrive at every size: how to nourish your big, small, or in-between child for a lifetime of health and happiness. In it, Jill offers a whole-child approach on raising healthy kids no matter their size or stage of growth.Jill firmly believes that feeding kids isn't just about what's on their plate. It's about creating a positive, flexible approach that supports their overall development, inspiring us all to think differently about health and wellbeing in children. The challenge: keeping kids interested in a healthy lifestyleWe live in a world where parents struggle with their children’s lack of interest in healthy foods. Kathleen asks Jill how she would handle a client with a child whom the growth curve says is overweight, and the child has bad eating habits. They discuss how to get those children back on track. Jill discusses her systematic approach to working with families and helping them encourage their children, offer them more nutritious foods, and set up their home environment so that it's more structured and predictable. She notes that children respond really well to having a routine with food. Jill explains what it means to build structure around meals and snacks, and what to do when their children are constantly hungry and asking for food. She offers a strategy to set up meals and snacks from a timing perspective, from a nutrient perspective, adding foods that we know are more satiating to both meals and snacks. The trick is to get our kids to feel full when they're done eating and don’t need to ask for more food in between meals. She emphasizes the two foods kids will never gain weight eating, and how to make those foods more appealing.Why we should give kids sweets and treatsKathleen asks whether we shouldn't have anything in the house then that's not filling the healthy needs of a child; ie, sweets and treats. Jill surprises us with her answer, saying that it’s important to have those foods in the house because it neutralizes them a bit and doesn't put them on a pedestal. Putting snacks on a pedestal makes them very enticing to children. Jill explains the unpredictability in children's lives around sweets and treats, encourages families to make them predictable, and shows us how.The eight pillars of wellnessIn a world where children get more anxious about food and depressed about their bodies, Jill recommends a more holistic approach: incorporating habits that optimize health and prevent health conditions. She helps families understand the importance of habits and navigate the obstacles that they will inevitably face, so that they can raise kids who develop healthy habits and can grow up feeling proud about their bodies and healthy in their bodies. The two then discuss the eight pillars of wellness in Jill’s book. The topic of bulliesJill notes that when you look at the research on children who carry extra weight, over 90% of those kids experience some level of stigma, bullying either from their own families, their peers, healthcare providers, or other adults in their lives, bullying is very prevalent in their lives. She shares that one reason she wrote her latest book was to open parents' eyes to really help their children feel good about themselves, no matter the type of body they're in. Her book serves as an advocacy for all of us to really be aware and start changing the language that we use about health conditions related to extra weight. Higher risk for developing diabetes or hypertensionBullying aside, there are absolutely health concerns associated with carrying too much weight. Jill and Kathleen discuss how to manage that very sensitive topic. To do this, Jill differentiates body functioning from size.She looks at the conditions that go with carrying excess body weight: hypertension, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, gastroesophageal reflux disease. She is careful not to assume a child has a health concern just because the child is larger. She focuses instead on getting to a healthier place, if necessary, with movement, nutritional intake, and sleep, to help the body function better.She concludes that families are not getting nutrition education at an early stage. Kids are often well down the road with some of these habits that are not health supporting before the issues are noticed and addressed. We need to be much more proactive in terms of prevention, education, lifestyle behaviors, good nutrition, etc.Weight loss medications for kidsGLP1 medications for children, such as Ozempic and Wegovy, are being used in children who have significant metabolic dysfunction; for example, pre-diabetes. The decision to use one of these medications is a very personal decision between families and their medical team. When that decision is made, the medical team will ask a family to participate in what they call intensive health behavior and lifestyle treatment: health habits and nutrition optimization, physical movement, optimizing sleep: the eight pillars of wellness. We still don't know long-term effects of these medications on growing bodies. And ideally, we don't want kids to be on these medications for their life. We want them to, you know, learn health behaviors and learn how to eat well and move their bodies and get to a healthy place where their body is functioning optimally without these medications. Jill’s answer is always to have a conversation with your healthcare provider.Her job is to help families with these lifestyle behaviors, to motivate them and keep them accountable for lifestyle behaviors that we know from the evidence are effective at building physical health and emotional well being in children.Parents have the power to influence their childrenJill concludes that resources are available to support parents in helping their families build healthy, happy bodies. She encourages parents to not succumb to social pressures that dictate children need to look a certain way or to do nothing. There's a positive, nurturing way to protect your child's emotional well being and help their physical health.
Visit our website, Nutrition4Kids.com, for lots of information, articles and videos to help you promote well being for your family. We hope you’ll join us, give our podcast a favorable rating, tell your friends about what Nutrition4Kids has to offer, and share on social media.
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