S3 E3: How to Raise Food-Positive Kids with Ginny Jones
Parenting coach Ginny Jones talks with Virgie about how parents can learn how to raise food-positive kids — and how we all can heal after growing up in a fatphobic or food-restrictive environment.
Journal with us! In this episode, Ginny teaches us that when we work on healing our food trauma we are reparenting ourselves and healing our inner child. What positive and negative lessons did your child self learn about food? How lessons does your adult self want to teach to your inner child? How can you create opportunities for reparenting yourself around food?
NARRATION: I’m about to taste a food I’ve never tasted before… it’s… a little mysterious… it’s something I’ve heard a lot about…
MUSIC - Call Waiting, Future Joust
In fact.. I lived in New Zealand for a little while and the cousin of this food was one I saw often at the grocery store and actually sort of… avoided?… It wasn’t just that it was unfamiliar… I love eating new food! It was that even my kiwi neighbors - who’d eaten it since they were kids… made fun of how it tasted. It was like a running inside joke that made this 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’s I’ll be eating.. MARMITE! Yup, it's basically yeast extract. And whether or not it is delicious has been hotly debated for decades. But today's guest loooooves it so I’m following her instructions for how to eat it as a first timer....
MUX FADES OUT
Virgie Tovar: 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 dulce de leche fantasies. I was like, “brain, that's not what's happening.”
Ginny Jones: Oh, my gosh. Um, did you smell it?
Virgie Tovar: I smelled it, yes.
Ginny Jones: Yeah. So, you're prepared for it not to taste like caramel. Correct?
Virgie Tovar: Yes, I’m prepared for it not to taste like caramel.
NARRATION: From Transmitter Media, this is Rebel Eaters Club! I'm your host Virgie Tovar. And my partner in marmite is parenting coach Ginny Jones. Ginny works with parents whose children show signs 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!
Virgie Tovar: So, you have a toast in your hand.
Ginny Jones: I'm ready.
Virgie Tovar: Okay. 3, 2, 1… Mm. Salty.
Ginny Jones: Very salty. Yeah.
Virgie Tovar: Hmm. I'll be honest. I did not expect the consistency is kind of like almost like caramel. I thought it was going to be sort of grainy. Like, I don't know, but it's caramel. Okay. Jenny, tell me about the snack. Why, why is this the snack that you chose?
Ginny Jones: 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, most people will only like it 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, very emotional caring feeling for me. And I still love it to this day and I always have a jar in my pantry.
Virgie Tovar: Yes. Yes, absolutely. I'm curious if you can talk about your relationship to food growing up?
Ginny Jones: Yeah. I grew up in a house where, you know, it was like we, in the pursuit of health because we had genetic heart issues, so there was like, you know, no salt and no fat. And like all of these 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 who ever 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 I would say my eating disorder really started around 10. 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 10, but, you know, I was gonna avoid that at all costs.
Virgie Tovar: I can really, I can relate to that. I mean, I had a phase of vegetarianism. It was almost like 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 interestingly, you also had that experience. But I'm like, I'm curious, so you're 10 years old. Are these messages coming from inside your home, outside your home? Both? And then, what role does weight discrimination play in any of this?
Ginny Jones: So I think the food, the food and weight were both issues for me at home. I was a chubbier kid. I was, you know, 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 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 high cholesterol at like age 12 and the response to that was then, okay, well we better take her blood every six months just to confirm like, that she still really does have high cholesterol at age 12. 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, you know, “oh, well I'll be healthier. I'll have less cholesterol.” Cause it was a time when like, you know, don't eat eggs, 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 fix this if you're good enough, if you're good enough, then you won't have this terrible fate.”
Virgie Tovar: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. And I think there is the 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.
Ginny Jones: Yeah. I mean, I think it started pretty classically with kind of a restrict and binge when I was very young. When I would go to a party, like if there was a box of donuts, which I never had access to, you know, I’d 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 15, I was deep in an eating disorder. I developed bulimia and then I would go into cycles. So I'd go into a couple of years of anorexia followed by a couple of years of very active bulimia, and that, you know, extended up until I was 40. And then I luckily was able to get into recovery and start healing.
Virgie Tovar: I mean, that's, that's really powerful. I'm curious if you can lay out sort of what started the recovery process. And then if there were these milestones for you.
Ginny Jones: Yeah, I can tell you a few of the milestones. So, I had some pretty severe panic attacks and my panic attacks happened in, 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. I guess I was in therapy for about five years before I 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, was like, “No way, that's weird!” And I nearly 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?”
Virgie Tovar: Holy shit, Jenny, that's extraordinary. I mean, I feel like I've had that similar moment in therapy where my therapist said, “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 as I've worked through, I'm working through my anxiety and all of its different manifestations, including the, my historic food restriction and, and those kinds of things. 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 weight stigma besides the suppression and really 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, behaviors that maybe we realize later in life are self-harming or that hurt us, spiritually or physically or whatever, at some point these things kept us safe. And I think that's such an important thing that never gets discussed.
Ginny Jones: 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 there for a reason.
Virgie Tovar: So 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, that becoming a parent was a big part of that.
Ginny Jones: Yeah, it was. I didn't go into recovery until my child was 10, 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 had good/bad language around food. So I am glad that even in my disorder, I was able to avoid some of the mistakes 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 love the layer cake.
Virgie Tovar: Me too.
Ginny Jones: 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 that anxiety, that is what I saw in my child.
Virgie Tovar: Okay. I'm curious, you said you started ED recovery when your child was 10. Is that right?
Ginny Jones: Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
Virgie Tovar: Yeah. Have you thought about the fact that like 10 was when you sort of recognized that you started? I mean, do you think, I think there's something there. Do you think there's something there?
Ginny Jones: I do, I do. I think that, well, first of all, 10 is a pretty, you know, pivotal age. It's the beginning of the transition from childhood to adolescence. So you do start seeing things in your child at about 10, mental health wise. But yeah, it's not lost on me. I did have a traumatic event at age 10, as well. So that was also 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.
Virgie Tovar: Yes. Okay. So what were the big lessons you learned as a parent when you, while you were on this journey toward recovery?
Ginny Jones: I think the biggest lesson is that my emotional regulation impacts my kids' 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 dysregulated, 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 you're basically, you're not safe, secure, connected, or curious. You are fighting, fleeing, freezing, or just completely shutting down and withdrawing. If I'm emotionally dysregulated, it's going to be hard for my child to eat. It's going to be herd for my child to feel relaxed.
Virgie Tovar: Yeah. I mean, 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, et cetera, that are mine.” And it, it sort of inadvertently ends up becoming a path of reparenting. And I'm wondering if that was true for you.
Ginny Jones: 500%. Yes. So what we've learned through neuroscience is that children aren't born with emotional regulation. What they do is they co-regulate, primarily with 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 co-regulation over those first, let's just say 20 years of brain development. And there are multiple ways we can co-regulate. We can co-regulate 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.
MUX - I don’t wanna wait
Our child is co-regulating in 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, it’s probably not a great time for me to be actively parenting,
MUX FADES OUT
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Virgie Tovar: At what point did you start to consider becoming a parenting coach?
Ginny Jones: So I've been a business coach for 16 years before I went into recovery. So I was kind of doing a lot of coaching and consulting already. That was my career. And then I saw this huge need and I saw how frustrated and scared parents were by eating disorders, having an eating disorder in the house was incredibly dysregulating. 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 child, their children.
Virgie Tovar: Yeah. I mean, we've got this messaging from our culture that 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.
Ginny Jones: 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 or else they won't have strong bones or you have to avoid fat or now it's all about like don't have carbs 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 machines, 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, there are 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.
Virgie Tovar: Yeah.
Ginny Jones: 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. But unfortunately a lot of times we're not doing the right thing and you know, that's what I'm here trying to do is, is to help parents become educated about what is true health, how do we raise healthy children? And I mean that from a mind and body and soul perspective, um, rather than do I give them this many vegetables and this many glasses of milk.
Virgie Tovar: 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?
Ginny Jones: 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.
Virgie Tovar: Oh, wow. Jenny, literally I 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 and in, in some way, like what does that tell us?
Ginny Jones: 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.
Virgie Tovar: 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.
Ginny Jones: So the first step I think, is for 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, you know, 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 going to impact our parenting. And then the next thing is to not like, demonize, or – what's the opposite of that – food, you know, either make food good or bad you know, food is not our salvation and it's not gonna 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 satiety and enjoyment of food and appetite. All those. And they're just a part of how we are and it's okay. We're going to be alright. You know, it doesn't have to be this scary thing.
Virgie Tovar: Yes. I mean, I'm curious, like 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 to bring into meal time? 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 mealtime and beyond?
Ginny Jones: Well, 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 that 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. Like, I think that's a really good place to start, but if you can't start there, if you could just start with, “I don't want my child's body to be oppressed by food and fat fears,” start there.
Virgie Tovar: You've done an amazing job of kind of really talking about how this philosophy and these tools and these inquiries are really important regardless of the size of the child. 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, but if we're not, then those rules don't apply. I mean, do you experience that resistance or that reluctance and then what do you say to that if you do?
Ginny Jones: Well, my emotional reaction to that is like, all bodies are good bodies. Let's not judge the body, but sometimes 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. And that's controlling for genetics and environment. And lots of other conditions. In other words, controlling your kids' food and trying to control 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 diet 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.
Virgie Tovar: Yeah. I mean, I think 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, healing perspective, a feminist perspective, a body positive perspective, or you're just kind of a fatphobe, no matter what, the answer is the same. That's what's so staggering about this, you know?
Ginny Jones: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Virgie Tovar: So when 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?
Ginny Jones: Well, I have an opinion about this. But I will say, it's an opinion, right? So like, 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 weight 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, it's not going to impact me as much because I know I'm okay. I'm already okay.
Virgie Tovar: I love that. 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?
Ginny Jones: I think it would be an attitude of honoring the body, as in 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 save 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.
Virgie Tovar: Yeah. 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 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. I feel like I've taken away from talking to you so many things, but among them, is like that the disordered eater or the restrictor or the dieter, the person, you know, that we maybe have become, is a hundred percent about that inner child, you know, is about that child who didn't feel safe.
Ginny Jones: Yeah, it is. And you know, it's interesting because there are a lot of people who follow me on Instagram, who are not parents, who are using my posts. I mean, in a good way, in the best way, to repair themselves, to feel as if there is this parent or because I'm 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 that is actually incredibly healing.
Virgie Tovar: Ginny, this was incredible. Thank you so much for being on Rebel Eaters Club.
Ginny Jones: You're welcome. I was glad to be here. I'm thrilled to talk to you.
Narration: Wow! I LOVE Ginny’s idea that feeling safe in our own bodies is the key to having a positive relationship with food.
Talking with Ginny 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 mealtime?
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 - @virgietovar. DM the producers - @TransmitterPods. Or shoot us a message at rebeleatersclub@gmail.com!
CREDITS:
Rebel Eaters Club is brought to you by Transmitter Media.
This episode was produced by Shoshi Shmuluvitz
Sara Nics is Transmitter’s Executive Editor
Wilson Sayre is our Managing Producer
and Gretta Cohn is our Executive Producer
And I’m your host Virgie Tovar!
Rick Kwan is our mix engineer.
And thanks to Taka Yasuzawa, who wrote some of the music we use in the show.
If you love Rebel Eaters Club, tell your friends! And share the love by writing a review on your fave podcast app.
See you next week!