to be bit upset with dsis re food?

[wandafull]

Just had dsis and her family

• her dh and two dc- to stay for bank holiday weekend, plus had another ffriend, her family, same number of kids. So, busy house. Dsis sits me down just before she left and told me as nicely as possible that the food situation was a 'bit weird'. To give a bit of context , I was always overweight as a child and this continued into adulthood- really had to do portion control and had a personal trainer for a while to drop down a size. Anyway, I have two dds and definitely do not want them to be over weight. So, they get good healthy three meals a day but no snacks in between. I don't offer snacks to other kids either, when they are here and don't give them it if they ask. Otherwise my dds get very upset when they are not allowed but others are. So I suppose I'm quite careful with adult portions of food now I've lost the weight- as has dh too- and I don't make piles of food when we have guests. Dsis basically told me that her dc were hungry and grumpy and that she hadn't had enough to eat and that it was weird that I offered so little food! She was nice about it but it's got me really quite worried- I offered guests and kids cereal for breakfast at sevenish, then nothing till lunch at 1 and then nothing till kids tea a 5 and adult dinner at 9Ish. Is that weird?

Aside from the issue with children some adults need to eat loads just to maintain body weight and are then still considered medically underweight. However I would have said something after the 2nd meal, blaming it on health or metabolism or would have had to leave.

OP, snacking isn't wrong. It's sometimes vital for children if they've had a particularly active morning or something. You are running the risk of food being a joyless, measured necessity for your DC. This isn't a balanced and sensible approach, even if you mean well (and I know you do).

I would try very hard to relax the rules for your DC, so they can learn about how much food their bodies need, and how to be sensible about it.

Also, guests should be made to feel welcome. There should be an abundance of nice things to eat and drink, and they should feel comfortable and happy in your home.

And well done to your sis for handling it so sensitively with you!

All the people saying their DC aeat 3 hearty meals a day and no snacks, that's awesome but you are describing big meals, eggs, beans, yoghurt and fruit for breakfast? My DS couldn't eat half of that in one meal and that's how he is. I couldn't and wouldn't make him eat a huge meal so he could stretch between meals.

A friend of mine will serve up a normal M & S quiche between 6 with a green salad. We eat before we go round to hers. V controlling about food.

My four year old eats small amounts, a healthy amount, she stops when she's full. However the amount she eats would not sustain her for that amount of time. I think younger children need snacks. My ten year old could eat three meals a day and no snacks and be fine.
Within in reason I believe they should be allowed to eat until they have had enough. But I always offer a healthy snack mid morning and mid afternoon.

Someone I work with has this attitude to food, she lost a fair bit of weight but became almost obsessively controlling about portion sizes and food in general.

If I had been at your house I would have been raiding the fridge and dd would have been a nightmare, we are both slim build but need regular food!!

Fwiw when I have guests I tend to over feed them!! So we do a cooked breakfast (plus toast and cereal if wanted) there is fruit out and they can help themselves whenever they want.

Lunch about 1pm would be bread, cheeses, ham, salad etc

Around teatime 5pm is I put out dips and aim for dinner (cooked meal and pudding) for everyone by 6.30pm ish

Wine and chocolate comes out in the evening

I guess you live and learn op but food should be fun and enjoyable but also something you want your children to feel relaxed about. Treats in my mind are an important part of life!!

[namechanged]. How can you say that your DS would eat the same for breakfast as mine do in a day. What an odd comment. I said it was an abbreviated list and you can't have any idea of what their food consisted of.

BTW My tallest son is 6'5 so like I said, I must have done something right.

If I want to put weight on very rapidly all I'd need to do is eat my evening meal at 9pm.
If I eat after 7 I have to keep the portion small or it seems to turn into belly fat practically overnight!
My kids (boys 9 and 10) have 2 bowls of cereal with wholemilk, large packed lunch with a couple of sarnies, biscuit, drink and fruit. Cake/crisps/biscuits/crackers etc when home from school and then we eat as a family at 6 and the boys eat almost adult portions plus a pudding which Dp and I don't have.
when we go to mils she serves sort of finger food, never a full meals worth, so I make sure they're full before we go, and we call at mcd's or a chippy on the way home.
would be torture stuck in the middle of nowhere with a host rationing food and my dcs being told they can't have anything in between meals that are far further apart than their tummies are used to.

A piece of fruit is a great healthy in-between meals option but I do think it won't do any harm to offer the odd treat when you've got guests. Don't feel bad op just take on board the comments, thank your sis for her honest advice & move on.

In high school you could always tell the kids who were on restrictive diets or weren't allowed cake/ chocolate or whatever.

They were always greedy as fuck and left overweight.

Also remember sharing a caravan as a child with mums friend + kids, who weren't allowed chocolate. Mum, not knowing had bought some chocolate cupcakes but put them away when she realised. The two kids stole them and gorged all night hiding the packaging under their bed haha!

If you make a big deal over something it becomes a big deal. My brother and I weren't even bothered about the cake.

Isn't the fact they'd be upset if other kids got snack a huge big massive red flashing light to you?!

I'm sorry, I've read the first page of comments and can't believe how tame the posters are being. You have seriously skewed views on healthy eating and diet and are impressing these onto your children.

Its not right at all.

here you seemed to be posting what your DC ate in a day which is what my very active DC eat for a meal< shrug>

Oh your DS has grown LOL

No way i would last from 1-9 without anything to eat, i understand thought i like to eat a lot of veg and very little meat, so have to remember to double the amount of meat i buy per person when having guests as not everyone agrees on 4oz of meat a day per person.

Wow. You starved your guests. Sorry it happened.
I would also give my children some snacks in between. Some fruit or carrot sticks - it's healthy and filling enough to last till the next meal.

It is very rude to portion control guests on their total intake of food.
As in, fair enough to have five people eating and only make five pieces of meat, one each, for overall budget reasons - but they should still get to control the amounts of potatoes/veg they put with that (or whatever your meal is).
It is also extremely rude if you were restricting their intake below a normal level rather than stopping them massively overeating - eg: even if you only eat 1500 calories a day because you are watching your weight and have got used to that, it is still very unreasonable to provide fewer than 2000 calories per day to another adult woman who is not used to it or choosing that for herself, as then she will be hungry for no reason.

NameChange my son hasn't grown. If you read my posts properly then you will see that in my first post I said my DS's were over 6'3 - which they are, one is 6'3 and my 'tallest DS is 6'5'. It's not that complicated. If you are going to try and belittle people it might be best to read their posts properly.

Your comments about my kids diets are weird. I'm not sure why you would make them when you can't possibly know what they eat.

I don't see a problem with not getting kids into the habit of grazing all day long. But small meals with lengthy gaps in between is not fair. Healthy snacks at certain times eg mid morning or when they get in from school, and before they go to bed is not unhealthy or encouraging bad eating habits.

I wouldn't have a problem with feeding the children separately when having visitors for the weekend. That way the adults get to relax and chat together and have a few glasses of wine, while the children get to enjoy having a noisy meal together.

OP. It must be very hard to read so many PPs saying the same thing as your sister and not what you wanted to hear.

I was only allowed very occasional sweets as a child and, as many others, craved sweets and sugar. When I went on holidays with my aunt, I'd try and spend all of my pocket money on sweets whereas my cousin, who was always allowed treats, hardly ate any.

It's the quality of the calories that have a massive impact on weight gain and loss. My DH is a large man with a very unhealthy relationship with food and over the years, his portion sizes rubbed off on me. Added to my own childhood experience and unhealthy snacking meant that I put on a lot of weight over the years - at my heaviest (at Christmas) I was 3 stone heavier than my wedding weight and 5 stone heavier than my university days weight. I went to slimming world in January and got my 2 stone award tonight (stealth boast lol). I eat massive portions, snack whenever I am hungry but I am still losing weight because I am making healthy choices. My children (10 and 7) are so proud of me and together we have made a lifestyle change. I am finding Slimming World is not a fad diet but a new way of life. Your children can eat more and have a healthy relationship with food. Quality of the calories, not quanity. xxx

I do think it's a bit strange OP that no one said anything before the very end of the weekend.

If I had been your DSis, and with children wailing and whinging (probably fairly obviously with hunger from what you've said), I would have been quite open with you and just asked for some food for the DC.

I do think that, as a nation, we have a culture of grazing between meals that is not always necessary. But it sounds as if you are so utterly zealous about keeping the calories down that you made your guests miserable. I'm sure you'll learn from that.

But please, please get some advice from a paediatric dietician and possibly a psychologist about feeding your own girls and the messages you are giving them. It's not about the snacking thing as such - not all DC's need or want to snack, and from other posters' responses it's clear that some children can eat big enough meals to sustain them without any need for snacks. That's not really the issue that jumps out at me. You are clearly worried about your DDs becoming 'plump' and 'overweight' as you mention it several times. They will almost certainly have picked up this vibe from you. They get upset if other children are offered snacks and they're not. You obviously restrict them quite severely, and your eldest is only 6? Please get some proper advice. You have quite possibly already sowed the seeds for future disordered eating (either bingeing or starving) in them. You risk inflicting further damage on them by the level of rigidity and paranoia that you are exerting over food. Please do something to change that before it's too late.

I'm also surprised that nobody mentioned the food issue to you during the weekend. Was there not any discussion of meals and food before the guests descended though? All those guests to feed is no easy task and if I was having a large get together at somebody elses house for a whole weekend I would have been offering to bring food/prepare some of the meals. Especially after the first day when it became apparent that we had very different needs and expectations in terms of food...

wandafull it sounds like you've done a good job on feeling better yourself, re: weight, so good work there.

However, to be honest i do have to agree with the others. It's not enough food, and you're setting up your kids to find self-worth in restricting their food intake to a degree that isn't healthy. You would be better off letting them eat more and insisting that they get an hour's running round per day (if they don't already) - and letting yourself eat more and getting 30 minutes' vigourous exercise per week. In your position (and given the possibility - I realise this may be impossible for all sorts of reasons) I'd add in snacks of fruit and veg and possibly toast, between meals, and a half-hour trip to the park every day to kick a ball around before or after school.

My mother was brought up with this kind of restriction of food in the house, with parents constantly harping on about the Depression, and has always had an incredibly unhealthy relationship with food, which she has passed on to my sister and my niece. My sister has an eating disorder (among many other issues). My niece will probably have an eating disorder soon if things go on the way they are. Everything is about being "good" by restricting food, and constantly running oneself down over body image.

I used to steal food because my mother was so restrictive. I had absolutely no self-regulation at events with free food, until I was in my mid-30s and realised I definitely needed to change my habits. I still absolutely crave sugary and fatty food, and if it's in the house I find it very difficult not to just eat it. These days I live in a different country from my family, eat healthily, do exercise, and honestly wouldn't really care if I weighed more than my mother and sister combined (I'd probably only be mildly overweight if I did). But every time I visit them, I am constantly criticized for what I eat, for the fact i'm not beautiful and underweight like my sister, etc., etc. and I return to the mentality of stealing food, buying food when I'm out of sight so that I can eat as little as I'm supposed to in front of mother and sister.

Crap. sorry - 30 minutes' vigourous exercise FIVE TIMES A WEEK. Not 30 minutes a week!

I have a friend whose dc's have a very restricted diet, whenever they go to a party with a spread of food they literally sit at the table and gorge themselves.
Children, with guidance, will learn to self monitor their eating.

I have a friend who is super slim because she barely eats
Her kids are typical slim energetic kids and can eat whatever
Her husband has shrunk in size scarily
When we go there I'm jealous of the kids snacks, the food is lovely but small in volume,,, we now meet at a pub it's easier for all involved
I'm a size 10 btw so not huge!