How to Raise Food-Positive Kids with Ginny Jones

food seem kind of scary. So I've never been brave enough to try it, and I'll be honest, I'm a little nervous to try it. Now. Have you had enough snacky suspense? Are you ready for the reveal? Today? I'll be eating marmite. Yep. It's basically yeast tract and whether or not it is delicious has been hotly debated for decades. But today's guest loves it, so I'm following her instructions for how to eat it as a first timer. So

I buttered the toast. You know, I was very generous with the butter, as always, maybe even a little more generous than usual. And then I opened up the jar and it was sort of like caramel. So my brain started to create like Dulca Delechia fantasy as I was like, brain, that's not what's happening. Oh my gosh, did you smell it? I smelt it. Yes, yeah, yeah, So you're prepared for it not to taste like caramel? Correct, All right, yes,

I prepared for it. Not today's like caramel. From Transmitter Media. This is Rebel Eaters Club. I'm your host, Virgie Tovar, and my partner in Marmite is parenting coach Jenny Jones. Ginny were with parents whose children show science of disordered eating and helps families learn to live without diet culture. I'm really excited to hear all about how to raise kids with a positive relationship to food. But first snack time. So, um, you have a toast in your hand, right, I'm ready.

I'm ready, Okay, okay, three? Two? What m M salty? Very salty? Yeah M. I'll be honest, I did not expect the consistency. It's kind of like almost like caramel. I thought it was going to be sort of grainy, like I don't know, but it's caramelly. Okay, Jenny, tell me about the snack. Why why is this the snack that you chose. Well, my parents moved to the US when I was a baby from Zimbabwe, and so I grew up with a lot of British traditions and foods

just because that's what they grew up with. So what I've heard is that marmite is the kind of thing that most people will only like if they were fed it when they were a baby. But it's a very specific sort of taste. And interestingly, my brothers don't eat marmite, but for me, it's kind of the ultimate comfort food because it is like the thing that my mom would

give me when we were sick. I would get toast with marmite, and so it's got this, like, you know, very emotional caring feeling for me, and I still love it to this day. And yeah, I always have a jar in my pantry. Yes, yes, absolutely, I'm curious if

you can talk about your relationship to food growing up. Yeah, I grew up in a house where you know, it was like we in the pursuit of health because we had a we have genetic heart issues, so there was like, you know, no salt and no fat, and like all of these you know, worries, constant worries about eating and food and weight. And that was done with the best intentions, but the impact on me in particular was devastating. I'm not one of those people whoever has memories of feeling

comfortable in my body. So yeah, so there was no time when I felt as if my body was okay. There was no time when I felt as if it was safe to eat. I was often you know, sneaking food, hiding food, trying to seek, you know, a way to fill myself up. And then I would say my eating disorder really started around ten. My first form of an eating disorder was probably when I became a vegetarian as an attempt, by the way to be healthy and avoid these dreaded heart problems that i'd heard about that I

didn't understand at age ten. But you know, I was going to avoid that but at all costs. I can really I can relate to that. I mean, I had a phase of vegetarianism. It was almost like, as a protective thing. I started to develop a disgust around certain kinds of food that I associated with keeping me fat and therefore keeping me abused. What popped out at the end of that was sort of vegetarianism, which is just fascinating and like really strange and interesting that you also

had that experience. But I'm like, I'm curious, in so, you're ten years old, are these messages coming from inside your home outside your home both? And then what role does way discrimination play in any of this? So I think the food, the food and weight were both issues

for me at home. I was a chubbier kid. I was a larger than a lot of the kids in my class, and because we had all these food fears going on at my house and frankly weight fears, the messages, I would say the hardest messages were coming at home for me, because home is where you should ideally feel safe and then you can navigate the outside world from a place of greater safety if you at least feel

secure when you're at home. And then, of course, you know, the issue in my family is genetically high cholesterol, and you know it was diagnosed I had I had high cholesterol at like age twelve, and the response to that was then, okay, well we better take her blood every six months, just to confirm, like, but she still really does have high cholesterol. At age twelve, it was this like it was this confirmation that not only was my body like my weight was wrong, it's my fault and

I better stop eating these things. You know, Vegetarianism is a you know, oh, I'll be healthier, I'll have less cholesterol. Because that was the time when like, you know, don't eat eggs if you know it causes high cholesterol. So this cholesterol thing, I mean, it was a big deal for me. It was a big part of how my eating disorder began. And the irony to me now is that that's genetic, Like, this is not something that's in my control. But my mind kept saying, you can, you

can fix this if you're good enough. If you're good enough, then you won't have this terrible fate. Yeah, I mean absolutely, And I think there is this sense of stigma around that, you know, like there's some kind of personal deficiency or failure. I mean, I'm wondering if you can sort of talk about the evolution of your eating disorder over time. Yeah, I mean I think it started pretty classically with kind of a restract picked and binge when I was very young.

So when I would go to a party, if there were very like like if there was a box of donuts, which I never had access to, I would, you know, eat way more donuts than felt physically comfortable. I was being restricted from lots of very delicious foods, so when I encountered them, I would binge eat them. And then yeah, I went into like, oh my god, Okay, I have to control myself. And then by the age of fifteen, I was deep in an eating disorder. I developed blimia,

and then I would go into cycles. I would go into a couple of years of anorexia followed by a couple of years of very active blimia and not you know, extended up until I was forty, and then I luckily was able to get into recovery and and start healing. M I mean, that's that's really powerful. I mean, I'm I'm curious if you can lay out sort of what started the recovery process and then if there were these milestones for you. Yeah, I can tell you a few

of the milestones. So I had I had some pretty severe panic attacks, and my panic attacks happened in public. I would basically pass out in public, which is a symptom of a very overloaded nervous system. And that was the milestone that got me into therapy because I was in therapy for about five years before I got went into recovery. You know, I got into healing with a simple question from my therapist, and I had assumed my eating disorder, my bulimia in particular, was just a disgusting habit.

I thought it was just I'm disgusting. I was ashamed of it. What transformed my life was her saying, what if it's a way for you to take care of yourself? And my immediate reaction, just so you know, it was like, no way, that's weird, and you're like, you know, quit going to her because I was like, oh God, what's wrong with you? But that is actually what recovery meant for me, was saying, what if this is how I'm

taking care of myself? And if it is, if I just suspend my judgment and say this is me trying to take care of myself. Am I now willing to take care of myself in a different way? Holy shit, Jenny? Like that? It's just that's extraordinary. I mean, I just like I feel like I've had that that similar moment in therapy where it's like where my therapist asks, did you need that to survive? Did it save your life?

You know? I think and to go back to the sort of that literal way that children see the world, I mean, I think sometimes, for example, I've realized that it's I've worked through. I'm working through my anxiety and all of its different manifestations, including the my historic you know, food restriction and and those kinds of things. Um, I

just keep reminding myself. I'm like, at some point I believed that without this, I was going to die, like as a kid, right, And maybe those weren't the actual like physical stakes, like maybe no one was ever going to you know, actually kill me. But I think the emotional self, right, Like what is wait stigma besides the suppression and really the the killing of someone's spirit, you know.

And I think that sense of like heightened heightened stakes, that's where that feeling comes from, right, Like, I feel like that's so powerful because like did it help you? Did it help you survive? Do you, like, do you deep down believe that it got you through something? Because typically our behaviors that maybe we realize later in life are self harming or that hurt like hurt us like you know, spiritually or physically or whatever, that at some

point these things kept us safe. And I think that's such an important thing that never gets discussed exactly. And and this goes back to that compassion, like learning to have compassion for myself, coming back to that, that self that developed the eating disorder, that developed all these coping strategies that you know, I no longer want and no

longer use. But they were come by honestly, they were they were They were there for a reason, if I recall correctly, A big part of your beginning to sort of become aware, even aware that you had an eating disorder and that it was something that needed to be addressed your that becoming a parent was a big part of that. Yeah, it was. And I didn't go into

recovery until my child was ten. But luckily, because I did all this research and because I knew that I didn't want to pass it along, I did a pretty good job kind of hiding my disordered eating and I definitely never restricted my child's food or I had good bad language around food. So I am I am glad that even in my disorder, I was able to not do some of the mistakes that we that we make

as parents with food. So, you know, eating disorders. I think of them as like our mental health is like a layer cake, or some people think of an iceberg, But I like a layer cake me too. So you know, there are all these layers that lead up to an eating disorder. I think for me, at least, it was the top layer. It was the behavioral expression of my deeply upset nervous system. I was living in a constant state of threat emotionally and not anxiety. That is what

I saw in my child. Okay, I'm curious. You said you started ed recovery when your child was ten. Is that right? Yeah, Yeah, that's right. Have you thought about the fact that, like, ten was when you sort of recognize that you started. I mean, do you think I think there's something there? Do you think there's something there? I do? I do I think that? Um? Well, first of all, ten is a pretty uh you know, pivotal age.

It's it's the beginning of the transition from childhood to adolescence, right, So you do start seeing things in your in your child at about ten mental health wise. But yeah, it's not lost on me. I did have a traumatic event at age ten as well, so that was also probably a probably a trigger for me. What I knew in my bones, what I knew for sure is that I had to figure my stuff out that my kid, any behavior that I saw in them, I had to look

at myself first. I had to look in the mirror first. Yes, okay, So what were the big lessons you learned as a parent while you were on this journey toward recovery. I think the biggest lesson is that my emotional regulation impacts my kid's emotional regulation and therefore their entire life. So when you're emotionally regulated, you feel in your body and in your thoughts fairly calm. You can connect with other people, you're curious, interested, and you're engaged. There are all these

wonderful things that happen when we're emotionally regulated. When we're disregulated, our nervous system is in a fight, flight, freeze, or completely disconnected state, and so our heart is usually racing. You may start sweating. If you're deactivated, you might pass out. So they're basically you're not safe, secure, connected, or curious. You are fighting, fleeing, um freezing, or just completely shutting

down and withdrawing. If I'm emotionally disregulated, it's going to be hard for my child to eat, It's going to be hard for my child to feel relaxed. Yeah, I mean I I'm thinking about what you said. You know, your emotional state created an ecosystem for your child and for your family. And I'm wondering, right like in this journey, I think a lot of times when I think about parents or people who really want to help create a safe environment around food for kids, they might not even

start out thinking I actually need to heal myself. I need to tend to whatever wounds or anxiety, etc. That are that are mine, and it sort of inadvertently ends up becoming a path of reparenting. And I'm wondering if that was true for you five. Yes, um so, what we what we've learned through neuroscience is that chill n't don't aren't born with emotional regulation. What they do is

they coregulate with primarily their primary caregiver. Let's just say that, so the person who's primarily in charge of their care, who's feeding them. That is how they start learning self regulation. And self regulation is a process of coregulation over those first let's just say twenty years of brain development, and there are multiple ways we can coregulate. We can coregulate towards emotional regulation, which is the pathway to our child

learning self regulation. But if we can't self regulate ourselves, we can't help our children go to a regulated place. So what happens is we get activated or we get disconnected. Our child is now coregulating and that so that's why most of my effort in parenting comes from where am I coming from? Am I coming from a regulated state right now? And if I'm not, probably not a great time for me to be actively parenting. At what point

did you start to consider becoming a parenting coach? So I've been a business coach for sixteen years before I went into recovery, so I was kind of doing a lot of coaching and consulting already at this my career. And then I saw this huge need and I and I saw how frustrated and scared parents were by eating disorders. Having an eating disorder in the house was incredibly disregulating, It was incredibly stressful, and I did not feel like parents were being held and supported in a way that

could help them hold and support their children. Yeah, I mean right, Like, we've got this messaging from our culture that the personal responsibility and the things that we can do as individuals to promote health are massively overblown, and I think it creates an environment where, you know, disordered

eating can really flourish. Unfortunately. Yeah, I mean that's that's exactly what I see and I hear every day almost is you know, we were told you have to give your kid, you know, lots of milk when they're kids are right, they won't have strong bones, or you have to avoid fat or now it's you know, of course all about like don't have carves or gluten free or whatever it is. You know, the parents are really doing

the best they can with the information that's available to them. Unfortunately, most of the information that's available in the mainstream, most

of it is disordered. Most of the advice that we get is to treat our bodies as if they're machine, as if we don't have an emotional system and a cognitive system and thoughts and feelings about our food, and also a genetic predisposition to certain weights and conditions, and of course then all the environmental factors on how our bodies are going to grow and what our ultimate health and I put that in air quotes, what our health

is going to be like? And food is such a tiny, tiny portion of that, yes, but it's something that parents feel like they can control. And I think a lot of times when we're facing anxiety, we're just trying to control for uncertainty, and food is one way that we think, Okay, well I want my kid to be healthy, and I can do this, and it's like all I'm trying to do is the right thing. Yes, But unfortunately a lot

of times we're not doing the right thing. And you know That's what I'm here, like trying to do is to help parents become educated about what is true health. How do we raise health each And I mean that from a mind and body and soul perspective, rather than do I give them this many vegetables and this many glasses of milk. So when a parent comes to you for help, what's the first thing that you look at

or that you work on with them? How they feel about the eating disorder, what they think it is, why they think it's there. Because I believe eating disorders have something to tell us. And when we can listen, then we can heal. Oh wow, Jinny literally can feel in my body like just being transformed by talking to you. It's incredible. So when a kid starts to reject food or binge or hide food, or show signs of, you know, manipulating food in some way, like, what does that tell us?

What that tells me is that the child is most likely dealing with emotional dysregulation and they're trying to cope with it by either eating, not eating, eating differently. Whatever they're doing, food is becoming a way to cope. So when it comes to food and body image, parents can often have this way of triggering us so easily and quickly without maybe meaning to. I'm wondering how can they learn to avoid that or maybe even have the opposite effect on their kids. So the first step I think

is parents to recognize that weight stigma exists. Many many parents will have stigmatizing thoughts about people in larger bodies, including their kids. When they see that little roll of chub, a lot of parents will respond with fear. And what I want is for people to just know that and it's okay, Like you can respond with fear, please just notice it, Like, let's just start with that, and let's start owning that, and now we can start to see

how it's impact our parenting. And then the next thing is to not like demonize or um, let's see opposite of that food, you know, either make food good or bad. You know, food is food is not our salvation and it's not gonna you know, it's not going to kill us.

Like it's just food. We have to truly embrace all food and be okay with trusting our kids hunger and fullness and you know, satiety and enjoyment of food and appetite and all those urges and they're you know, just a part of how we are and it's okay, We're going to be all right. You know, food doesn't have

to be the scary thing. Yes, I mean I'm curious, like when when a parent or a person is taking those first steps towards transforming how they think about or talk about food, what are some guidelines or thoughts or to bring into meal time. I don't want to I I mean, I don't want to say rules because I don't love

that idea. But like, you know, is there an environment do you have a recipe let's say for an environment where food can feel less charged during meal time and beyond well, I like everything that I do, it comes back to how does the parent feel about their own body and about food, And for me, I was able to separate that even when I had my own disordered relationship with my body and with food, I was able to separate my feelings about myself from my child's experience.

So you don't have to be like perfectly healed in your own food and body experience to not pass it on to your child. You just sort of like realize, like, I do not want to teach my child that there's anything wrong with their body or the food is something that needs to be controlled and that the body needs to be oppressed. I will not do that to my child. So I think if you start with that philosophy and yeah, ideally then you don't want to oppress yourself. I think

that's a really good place to start. But if you can't start there, if you can just start with I don't want my child's body to be oppressed by food and fat fears, start there. I think for a lot of people, they think, Okay, as long as my kid is sort of within a certain range, then I can do this or if I'm within a certain range tonight.

But if we're not, then those rules don't apply. I mean, do you experience that resistance or that reluctance, and what do you say to that if you do, well, my emotional reaction to that is like, all bodies are good bodies. Let's not judge the body. But sometimes that's that's not enough. And so then luckily we have well, we have a lot of science that shows actually a direct correlation between parents who try to control their kids food and children

who grow up to be in larger bodies. In other words, controlling your kid's food and trying to control roll your child's weight actually creates weight gain in your child. So if you are actually concerned, I mean really just scientifically, if you were like, but no, I just I don't want my child to gain unnecessary weight, well, then definitely don't die at them like that, I can say scientifically, if that is your fear, then don't control their food,

Honor their body, honor their appetite. Teach them to really pay attention to how they feel and give them that safety, and the body will find its way. Yeah, I mean, I think that's that's what always strikes me about this conversation is like, whether you're coming at this from sort of a radical wanting to change, a healing perspective, a feminist perspective, a body positive perspective, or you're just kind of a fat phobe. No matter what, the answer is

the same. That's what so staggering about this, you know, Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we're talking about weight stigma, the negative attitudes towards higher weight children and adults. Can weight stigma alone lead to disordered eating or does there have to be an underlying other sort of emotional or something else going on. Well, I have an opinion about this, I will say. I will say it's an opinion, right, So, like, yes, my belief is that weight stigma exists without a doubt in

our culture. But if I'm raising a child who feels truly safe and as if they belong in their body in my home, and they are held and they are supported, and their body is fine with me, truly truly fine, I trust their body, I don't think weight stigma has as much impact on a person who's raised in that environment. It doesn't mean wait stigma doesn't exist. It doesn't mean

it's not painful. And I don't mean to discount the experience of living in a larger body in this world, But if I'm coming from this place of massive safety, like, it's not going to impact me as much because I know I'm okay, I'm already okay. I love that. Yeah. I wonder if you could share one tool that you'd give to parents who are listening, who are trying to help their kids build a positive relationship to food, what

would it be. I think it would be an attitude of honoring the body, not prioritizing the brain all the time, really honoring that our bodies are constantly communicating with us, and as long as we try to overcome that communication with our cognitive abilities, we're missing so much depth and richness in everything our body has to say, from what do I actually like to eat? How much do I want to eat? We need to honor the fact that we are not just prefrontal cortexes. We are bodies, and

they are rich and they're beautiful. Yeah. And I think for people, whether or not they're parents or they're helping to raise kids, I think that there's all the lessons that you've shared and all the insights you've shared can really go towards you know, reparenting ourselves, bringing those same lessons to our own tables, whether we have kids or not.

You know that we can honor our bodies, that we can think about you know what, it's what we need to create safety, that we can intuit, these things that

we can trust ourselves. These are all lessons that ultimately help our inner child, which is I mean, I think, like I feel like I've taken away from talking to you so many things, but among them, right, is like that the disordered eater or the restrict or the dieter or the person you know that we that we maybe have become, is one hundred percent about that inner child you know, is about that child who didn't feel safe? Yeah,

it is? And how you know It's interesting because there are a lot of people who follow me on Instagram who are not parents. They are using my posts, I mean in a good, in the best way to reparent themselves to feel as if there is this parent or because I'm a female, this mother who will hold and love their body, who will hold and love who they are in their fullness, in their in their massiveness, right like we are massive people. We have these whole worlds

inside of us and and that is actually incredibly healing. Dinny, this was well, thank you so much for being on Rebel Eaters Club. So welcome. I was glad to be here. I'm thrilled to talk to you. Wow. I love Jenny's idea that feeling safe in our own bodies is the key to having a positive relationship with food. Talking with Jenny reminded me that eating presents an opportunity for reparenting ourselves, like becoming the parent today that maybe we needed as

kids for ourselves. How do you want to reparent yourself at meal time? If you have thoughts on this question or the conversation you just heard, or even if you just want to say hi, reach out DM me on social media at Virgie Toobar, DM the producers at Transmitter Pods, or shoot us a message at Rebel Eaters Club at gmail dot com. See you now, Sweep. Rubbel Eaters Club is brought to you by Transmitter Media. This episode was

produced by Shows Shpol Events. Sarah Knicks is Transmitters Executive editor. Wilson Sarah is our managing producer, and Greta Cohen is our executive producer And I'm your host. Virgie tobar Rick Kwan is our mixed engineer, and thanks to Taka Yasuzawa, who wrote some of the music we use in the show. If you love Rubbel Eaters Club, tell your friends and share the love by writing a review on your favorite podcast app