Breaking Down Sugar Myths: A Healthier Approach to Children and Sweets

Are you feeling spooked by the avalanche of Halloween treats your child is about to encounter? As a dietitian and a mom, I understand your apprehensions. However, it's time to unmask the myths and fears around sweets. This week, we're starting a mini-series that's going to help parents like you build a healthy, guilt-free relationship between your child and sweets. We'll start by examining the fears around sugar and why it's crucial not to create a hierarchy of food. We'll also delve into the science behind sugar metabolism and the harmful pressures you may be under about your kids' consumption of sweets.

What if you - and your children - could enjoy Halloween without the guilt or worry about sugar? It's possible, and I'm going to show you how. We'll be pulling apart the simplistic and false messaging around sugar that only serves to fuel fear. We'll question why we often allow our children to have multiple serves of vegetables, but not sweets, and why such invisible hierarchies can disrupt your child's intuitive eating abilities. We'll also discuss the biochemistry of sugar and how our bodies metabolize it from various sources, including fruits, grains, dairy, and sweets.

Lastly, we're going to confront the larger health picture and the fear-mongering tactics often used to sell products. We'll debunk the myth that eating sweets directly causes diseases like diabetes and look at the real dangers of restricting sugar for our children. I want you to feel empowered to guide your children in cultivating a healthy, positive, and guilt-free relationship with sweets. Let's embark on this journey together and create a Halloween season that's both fun and free from food stress. Don't miss out on this enlightening exploration.

Show Links: 

• [FREE WORKSHOP]: "Rewrite the Script on Halloween Sweets to Help Your Kids Self-Regulate Sugar!"
• [FREE GUIDE]: "5 Reasons Your Child's Obsessed With Sugar and How to Resolve It"
• [Blog Post]: "5 Myths About Sugar and Kids: Sugar and Diabetes Myth Vs Fact"
• [Blog Post]: "Sugar Addiction Myth: Is My Child Addicted to Sugar?"

Questions about today's episode or do you have topic requests for future episodes? Please send your feedback via email to hello@crystalkarges.com or connect with Crystal on Instagram.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hey there, mama, you're listening to the Lift the Shame podcast. I'm your host, crystal, mama of Five and your family's intuitive eating dietitian, here to help you cut through the diet culture clutter so you can enjoy freedom with food as a family. I'm on a mission to help you end the generational legacy of diet culture in your home so you can experience motherhood free from food guilt and body shame. Listen in weekly for guidance on how you can ditch diet culture, heal your relationship with food in your body and confidently raise intuitive eaters. Let's dive in and lift the shame together. Hey, mama, welcome back to the show. I'm so glad that you're here and we are embarking on a new little mini-series here on the show, and that is because Halloween is on the horizon, which means a higher influx of sweets and treats and all the things, and I know for many parents, this can bring up a lot of angst and stress, and so I am hoping to just give you some more resources and support during this month so that you feel more empowered and confident in how you're helping your children learn how to have a healthy relationship with sweets, because this is an important part of raising an intuitive eater.

Speaker 1: 1:15

And you might be wondering why sweets? Why talk about sweets? A big issue that I see is that there is so much fear mongering around sweets and sugar and kids, and it can really make for a lot of confusion when it comes to how to approach this or navigate this with our children, and I think that conflicting information combined with maybe your own history around food or your own experiences with sweets and sugar, can make for sometimes a challenging combination in terms of understanding. How do I talk to my kids, how do I support them? And I know, at the end of the day, that you just want your children to be able to self-regulate all foods and to enjoy things and move on and not feel like sweets are something that they're preoccupied with or that they're hyper-focused on or obsessed with, and so I am hopeful that, just through the different conversations that we have around sweets, that you can feel empowered with some of those strategies that you can implement in your own home, no matter what your relationship with sweets has looked like. And, just on a more personal note, I am super passionate about helping parents like yourself diffuse any of the tension or stress that you might be feeling when it comes to sweets or watching your children eat sweets or feeling confused about how do I approach this. Do I keep them in the home? Do I not keep them in the home?

Speaker 1: 2:38

I know it can be really tough and it can be difficult to focus on connecting and building a trusting feeding relationship with our children when we're constantly under the stress of the lies and confusion about sweets. And I know for myself from my own personal experience and my history with my eating disorder that sweets were a big part of that or not having access to sweets definitely was a trigger for a more chaotic relationship with sweets. And growing up I remember I have distinct memories of sneaking sweets that were hidden in different parts of the house or feeling out of control or obsessive around sweets at birthday parties or holidays like Halloween, when sweets were in abundance, and that chaotic cycle of almost learning to binge on sweets when they were available became a big part of my eating disorder. And on the other side of that, learning how to allow myself permission and access to the foods that I actually loved and enjoyed was such an important experience to shape how I approach this today with my own kids and with families that I work with that diffusing the fear mongering around it and being able to incorporate it into your home in a more seamless way can really help prevent the chaos from developing, but, more importantly, to help your children have a long-term healthy relationship with food and I know that is your goal and that does need to include sweets as part of that picture, and this idea is so counter cultural from everything that we're hearing today and all the messages that are being promoted to us as parents about what it means to raise a healthy kid.

Speaker 1: 4:18

Essentially, what we're being told is that we shouldn't be giving our kids sweets no sweets before two or three. I mean all these different rules, or so many different rules out there when it comes to approaching sweets, and it can be easy to think that we are doing right by our kids by not letting them have access to these foods, but in reality, we live in a world where all these foods exist and we want our children to be able to learn how to regulate what feels best in their bodies, and in order to do that, we need to be including sweets as part of this equation, and we're going to be talking more in the upcoming weeks just in terms of strategies, and especially for Halloween, if this is traditionally a holiday that just brings a lot of inks to you. I will be definitely giving you some strategies and scripts and things that can hopefully help you make this a little bit easier, but I just want you to examine and just step back and look at the big picture and just to ask yourself why does this feel stressful to you? If it does, if you are worried about your child's sugar intake, if you are feeling stressed about it, if watching your child eat sweets brings up things within your own self, these are important clues to examine and you know, here on the show we're all about examining our own reactions and our own triggers and understanding the things that are coming up for us, because these are big clues in terms of the things that we may have needed ourselves or didn't have growing up, and so it can be hard or challenging to be able to emulate or model some of these things to our children when we never experienced it for ourselves. Sometimes we have a strong reaction to our children around certain foods, like sweets, because it is an alarm in our brain from trauma we may have experienced ourselves growing up, especially around food. So if sweets were restricted or used as stipulation or as a means of control. This can be challenging to navigate with your own child because of your own history with it, and certainly there is just the backdrop of misinformation that can be very anxiety-provoking and overwhelming Like we are saturated with so much misinformation when it comes to approaching sweets and sugar with our kids, and I'm hoping that today we can clear up some of that, just to help clear up that clutter for you so that you can focus on these candy-settered holidays as something that is a means of connecting with your child and making meaningful memories, not something that is hindered by stress or power struggles or these types of things that can make it harder for your child to build a positive relationship with food.

Speaker 1: 6:51

So today I wanted to start just by talking about some of the common myths that I hear frequently being circulated about kids and sugar, and as I was just preparing for today's show, I had such a long list of myths I mean, there's so much misinformation out there it was really hard to narrow it down for today's episode. So if there are certain things that you hear and you're wondering like, hey, is this true or are there some facts behind this that can help clear this up for me? Or is there some science-based evidence that can help me feel a little more confident in how we're approaching this? Feel free to reach out and let me know. Unfortunately, I won't be able to cover the many different myths that are out there circulating around kids and sugar. I'm only going to be able to cover three today, but I'd love to just open that door and extend that invitation to you. What's on your mind? Feel free to connect with me and let me know so I can help you understand the truth behind some of these myths. So let's jump in and get started.

Speaker 1: 7:47

One of the first myths that I wanted to address is just this idea that sugar is toxic, and this is something that creates so much confusion for parents. And when we hear these messages, I mean, what parent wants to give their child something that is portrayed as toxic? Of course not right. You want the best for your child. You have your child's best interest in mind. So when we hear these ideas or we hear sugar being portrayed in the sense of it's toxic, it's poison, it's hurting your child's body and their brain function, that can make it very challenging to feel okay about allowing your child to have these foods or buying them or incorporating them in your home, and for good reason. Again, it's our job as parents to keep our kids alive and well and thriving, and we would never want to present something to our children that we're hearing portrayed as poison to their bodies.

Speaker 1: 8:42

So this is the first one that I wanted to start with, because I think it can be such a root of so much fear mongering, and when we are approaching how we feed our children from a place of fear or anxiety, we have to understand that that is having an impact on how they feel about food and how they feel about their own bodies, and this is something that I see come up a lot with parents and their interactions with children. When it comes to feeding or allowing sweets, it's like, okay, I'm not going to say anything, I'm going to let my child eat this or that or have that cookie or eat that cupcake. But maybe when your child gets on the second or third or fourth cookie or is unwrapping that fifth piece of candy from their Halloween stash, you might find yourself feel uneasy or feeling uncomfortable or starting to project some of that distress onto your child. And we want to be aware of that because our children are so attuned to our emotional state and that is affecting how they feel about those foods and their bodies and also forming a narrative in their minds about those foods, whether it be sweets, or their ability to eat those foods or how we feel about them eating those foods. So it's a big picture thing of what's happening here and it really comes back to you again, this idea of what do we believe about sweets.

Speaker 1: 9:57

Why are we okay with our children having several helpings of vegetables, let's say, but not with having multiple servings of sweets? This is an important question to ask and reflect on, because it shows how we treat different foods differently and how we may have ingrained rules around certain foods over others. And this hierarchy it may be invisible, it may not be something that you're verbally stating to your child, but a hierarchy in terms of different ways that we approach food does create dissonance in our child's minds, where they may start to pick up on this idea that some foods are permitted more than others and that can start to create confusing messages for them. So, before we even get into this myth about sugar being toxic, I just want to present some of those reflection questions to you and, of course, always from a place of love and compassion, especially for yourself, as you're reflecting on some of these things, because when we have awareness about how we're coming into the feeding relationship that we have with our children, it can be very eye-opening as to what we want to work on or how we want to approach things differently in order to better support our children in learning to trust their bodies and not develop these embedded rules about food that are dictating how they eat or what they should eat, because, remember, food rules are external things that can potentially disconnect them from their internal, intuitive eating abilities. So, with all that said, let's go back to this idea that sugar is toxic.

Speaker 1: 11:32

One thing that I think can be super helpful in this particular situation is to go back to the very basics about our body and the biochemical nature of the nutrients that our body needs in order to function and live optimally. So sugar is a very interesting word because I think sometimes people are using that word to refer to certain types of foods, but we have to remember that our body's basic unit of energy is actually glucose, which is sugar, and our bodies are well equipped to metabolize and utilize sugar from various different forms, and we want to remember that our body is utilizing sugar from many different types of foods too. So things like fruit and grains and dairy and sweets, or things like cookies or ice cream candy. Our body is able to utilize the sugar molecules ingested in these foods and break it down to the simplest component that our body uses, the preferred source of energy, which is glucose. The interesting thing here that I always think is so easily forgotten when we're hearing these messages like sugar is poison, sugar is toxic is that when glucose hits our bloodstream after the whole digestive process I know we're kind of going into a little biology lesson here, but once that glucose is hitting our bloodstream, our body doesn't know if these glucose molecules are coming from, let's say, an apple versus, let's say, a cookie.

Speaker 1: 13:11

And no, I am not saying that those two foods are nutritionally equal, but essentially they are breaking down into the same macronutrient, the carbohydrates that are in both of those foods. The apple and the cookie are essentially going to break down into the simplest unit of energy, which is glucose, and once it goes through the digestive process, it's going to be carried through the bloodstream and delivered to the various parts of our body so that we can function. This is important to remember because there are not superior forms of glucose Because, again, once the glucose is hitting our bloodstream, it's all the same and wherever it came from and again, it's not to say that an apple is nutritionally equal to a cookie there's going to be different things in both of those foods. However, our body is fully capable of utilizing the nutrients from both of those foods, including the carbohydrates that break down into glucose, which is essentially sugar. Our bodies need glucose as our primary source of energy and fuel. When we go back to the basics of biology and how our bodies function, it can really help normalize these foods and really validate this idea that all foods are good and that all foods can help our body in some shape or form and really the best guide of what we need as ourselves or our children. And this is such a beautiful thing to witness in our kids when they're able to regularly and eat a variety of different things.

Speaker 1: 14:45

And going back to my example with the apple and the cookie some of the basic foundations of nutrition and how our body utilizes nutrients from food the sugar that comes from an apple is not superior to sugar that comes from cookies or any other sweets. Biochemically they are the same. Glucose is the same. It's the same molecule when it's broken down into its simplest form. There's not a difference in the chemical composition of this basic unit of energy, no matter where it comes from. Your body is capable of breaking it down. Your children's bodies are capable of breaking them down and using the different nutrients that it needs from the foods that you provide.

Speaker 1: 15:24

The danger is when we start to categorize food and create polarizing ideas about food, where we elevate some foods over others, and this now will create emotional imbalance for a child in particular, where, if we elevate sweets on a pedestal by limiting them or only offering them at certain times or under certain stipulations, that is going to make it harder for them to listen to their bodies and eat in a manner that feels conducive to what their bodies need, especially if they feel deprived or restricted in any way with sweets. And that is where it makes it harder for a child to learn how to eat these things intuitively, whereas if we create an emotionally equal playing field for all foods and just present them as emotionally equal, we're not giving power to one over the other. It creates an environment that better supports our children's ability to self-regulate what they need, and sometimes that looks like more carbs or sweets or fruit, whatever it might be, and we will see variances of that over time, and that is normal. And again, I just want to stress here that I'm not somehow trying to say that all foods are nutritionally equal, because all foods offer different things and there's not one particular food that offers everything that our body needs. We get what we need through many different foods.

Speaker 1: 16:48

What I think is important to understand here is that our bodies are capable of utilizing sugar. Not only are they capable, but we need sugar. It's a basic unit of energy that our body needs to function, and our body gets sugar from many different foods, and the key thing here to remember is that there's not superior forms of glucose. So whether your child has an apple or a cookie, your child is fully capable of utilizing the nutrients that come from both of those foods. Those are just the ones I use for sake of an example, but I hope you understand what I mean here.

Speaker 1: 17:21

Another thing that can be helpful to remember is just what is a baby's first food? It's milk, whether breast milk or formula, the primary nutrient is carbohydrates, which breaks down into glucose, and that is what our babies primarily need to grow and thrive and function, and they're not incapable of utilizing those nutrients. And if you think about it too, breast milk and formula are naturally sweeter because we have that predisposition towards sweeter foods. It's what keeps us alive, especially starting out as an infant, and it's so interesting how twisted diet culture has turned these basic foundations of biology and how our bodies work to mean something that's totally not what it is.

Speaker 1: 18:10

And the fear-mongering around sugar and this idea that eating sugar is equivalent to eating rat poison I mean, those ideas are so far from the truth and it can be helpful to remember some of these basic things in order to diffuse some of the fear that you might be holding onto when it comes to sweets in your home. I know this can be a hot topic and there's definitely a lot of nuance, so if you're interested in reading more, I will include in the show notes a couple links for you to blog posts that I've written on this topic, including the topic of is sugar addictive? That's a big topic of discussion as well, so I will include those links for you if you're interested in going through that and reading in more depth and I have a lot of different studies that are linked in the blog post if you're interested in seeing what our scientific literature and data says about this topic too, ok, so the second myth I've wanted to address on today's show is this idea that if you give your kids sweets or allow them to have sweets, then you don't care about their health. This can be such a tough one because it feels like a personal attack and sometimes we just can't help but internalize what other people say or think about the way that we parent our children, and it's very clear that many of these approaches to feeding kids and supporting them and having a good relationship with food and raising intuitive eaters is a very counter cultural. I know I've already alluded to that, but this can be really hard because often the way that we feed our kids or how our children eats often feels like a direct reflection of us as parents. And I know this to be true because I've often heard it from so many moms that I've worked with or parents that I've worked with who tell me I just feel like such a failure because all my kid wants to eat our sweets, or they're only eating the cookie from their dinner and nothing else, and I feel like a horrible parent. I feel like I'm doing wrong by my child. And these beliefs and this narrative often stem from this myth that allowing our children to have sweets is wrong and that we don't care about our children and we don't care about their health. And it implies this kind of lazy, careless approach to how we feed and care for our children. And this is such a damaging message on so many levels again, because it often feels like a personal attack on parents or the people who are taking care of children. So that is why I wanted to bring it up and nip it in the bud.

Speaker 1: 20:42

And just a little personal story I will never forget with my oldest daughter. When she was about to, we had taken her to a birthday party and it was one of her earlier experiences of having birthday cake. She definitely had birthday cake at her first birthday and, I'm sure, at other times, but I remember that this particular time that we went to this birthday party was one of the times that she started to have more awareness about the other foods that were available, including the birthday cake, and I just remember that she took a big interest in the birthday cake, like it was like a whole new experience for her, even though she had had it before. That increased awareness made it a whole new experience. And I remember we gave her a full size slice of cake and she ate the whole thing and wanted more, saying I want more, more, more. And that is when I started to realize that those embedded rules or how my own history and experiences with food and sweets were kind of creeping in and I remember feeling anxious. But I also remember just feeling a little bit self conscious, like there were so many other parents around, family members, people who comment all the time, and I just remember feeling like all these eyes were on me as my kid is sitting here in her chair screaming for more cake and against everything in my body. I gave her another full slice of cake. I just told myself in that moment I need to trust my daughter and sure enough, I gave her another slice. She took one big bite and then she was like I'm done and she wanted to peace out, ran away from the table, was back into playing with other kids and it was just so interesting for me in that moment.

Speaker 1: 22:23

But I definitely got some unsolicited advice and feedback from the people around me who were like, wow, that sure is a lot of sugar to give a two year old? Or aren't you supposed to wait until they're a little bit older, until you give them sugar? And just those comments that we get. I know I'm not unique in this situation. I know you probably have experienced the same thing where people have commented on your child's body or how your child eats.

Speaker 1: 22:48

And again, this idea that giving our kids sweets is a negative reflection of us as a parent is so damaging and so harmful. And we receive it from people around us. We receive it from providers. Oftentimes, if you're going in and taking your child into a well check, that's one of the questions that they'll ask are you giving your child a lot of sweets? Are you making sure to keep their sugar and takedown? So what does that imply? It implies that it's a bad thing and that if you're not carefully monitoring and micromanaging every morsel that goes into their mouth, then you must be a bad parent. And I just want to speak truth into your life today Because, again, nothing could be so further from the truth.

Speaker 1: 23:28

And this is where we need to zoom back and see the big picture here. We have been told this message that we, if we gatekeep what our children eat, then that is what being a good parent is. If we don't let them eat sugar, if we don't let them have sweets, if we keep all the candy out of our home, that is what is being a good parent. That is what keeps your child healthy. But this is a problematic perspective because we will just not always be that gatekeeper in our child's life. We hope that our children will grow up and become independent and be able to make those decisions for themselves.

Speaker 1: 24:06

When we're not there, or when your child goes to school, or maybe it goes to a birthday party or goes to a friend's house, and all of a sudden they might start to become obsessive about all the foods that are out there that they realize that they haven't been getting access to in our own homes. And I have seen some of the direct consequences of this mentality where we can just control everything that our kids eat. Oftentimes that is a trigger for preoccupation with sweets and obsessiveness with sweets, and it can create much more damaging issues down the road than literally anything our kids can eat. And that is what I think is important to remember that sweets and access to sweets are part of our children building a healthy relationship with food and being healthy overall. Sweets need to be part of the equation. They need to be able to have experiences and opportunities to learn how to self-regulate. And you being intentional about incorporating that makes you an amazing parent. You are a wonderful parent because you care so much. You care about the longevity of your child's health, their mental well-being and their overall relationship with food. And I'm telling you that having a child who's obsessive about sweets or who's so preoccupied with having sweets that they literally cannot focus on anything else is not a sign of health or wellness.

Speaker 1: 25:30

The other thing here to understand and we see this supported by literature is that children are in better health when they have regular and consistent access to sweets versus intermittent access. So intermittent means just every once in a while, and the reason for that is because when a child has consistent access to sweets, they're better able to self-regulate, they're less likely to binge, they're less likely to overeat, versus a child who only has intermittent access. It's hard for them to trust that sweets are a regular part of their lives and that creates that feast or famine type of mentality where they feel like I have to eat sweets, and as much of it as I can, whenever the opportunity strikes, because I don't know when I'm going to have it again. So that's something to consider too that a child's intake of sugar over their lifetime is actually going to be probably less when they have that regular access to it, versus the intermittent, or every once in a while, or only on certain days, or once a week or whatever that might look like. So that's something that we want to consider too when we're thinking about the big picture of our child's health. But I don't want you for one second to feel like a bad parent or like a failure because you have sweets in your home or you have processed foods or you're sending cookies in your child's lunch. This is part of helping them have a positive relationship with food and being able to listen to and trust their bodies and not allowing sweets to have power over them, and that is an incredible thing, and I just want to encourage you to continue on because it ultimately will be helpful in creating those long-term healthy outcomes for them physically, mentally and emotionally. Okay, I am going to run through our last myth here as concisely as I can, because there's so much to say about all of these.

Speaker 1: 27:17

But the last myth I wanted to address for today's show is this idea that allowing our kids to eat sweets is what causes disease or makes them more susceptible to disease, particularly things like diabetes, and this is a thing that is commonly circulated, where, if your child eats too much sugar, they may become diabetic. The danger about this is that it makes food the sole culprit of disease, which we know is not the case. There are so many multitude of factors that influence disease states, and food is a very, very small part of that. One of the most influencing determinants of disease is actually genetics and stress, and these are things that we don't talk about because it's so much easier to blame food and that is a huge Money-maker for the multi-billion dollar industry that diet culture is. It's so much easier to sell that idea to consumers than to talk about the impact of stress on our lives, or genetics, or Understanding our environment or family history. These are all things that have the majority of influence in our Lives, especially when it comes to risk of disease. So, yeah, this is a really interesting topic to explore and talk about, because sugar is often blamed as the culprit of most diseases and ailments today, which, of course, makes it out to be like poison in the body right.

Speaker 1: 28:50

Go back to myth number one, and Health professionals and policy makers have been sounding the alarm on children and diabetes, while conveniently ignoring the damaging effects of fear mongering around sugar or restricting sugar. I wanted to read to you an excerpt from the book body Respect what conventional health books get wrong, leave out and just plain fail to understand about weight. And it goes on to say that a child is 242 times more likely to have an eating disorder than type 2 Diabetes. Get which of these gets more media attention and Consider this. It is not a coincidence that eating disorders are so high in a climate of fat fear mongering. End quote. So, wow, super powerful, right.

Speaker 1: 29:38

And it really puts it into perspective and this is something that I often talk to my clients about when we're looking at the big picture, stress itself is such a higher risk factor for disease and if you are feeling stressed while you're eating or about what you're eating, the stress of that is Actually more harmful for your body than literally anything you could eat. And the same goes for our kids and sweets and the effect on their body If they're feeling stressed or anxious because we're projecting that onto them or there's a lot of food rules going on or Micromanaging them and there's power struggles over it. The stress that they're feeling about having those foods is more harmful for their overall health then literally eating sweets, and we cannot overstate the impact of Restricting sweets and how that often is a trigger for disordered eating in our children. And it's so easy to gloss over these things and just blame food as the problem for all our diseases.

Speaker 1: 30:39

Another thing that I often hear in this realm as well has to do with sugar consumption and Neurodiversity in kids, and I've heard this said in many different forms and ways and it just makes my blood boil a little bit. But people saying that letting your kids eat sugar causes ADHD or causes autism and, oh my word, that is not true. We have to remember that Neurodivergence, like ADHD or autism, is a neuro developmental condition, often present from birth, and so Blaming food or what we're feeding our kids or what our kids are eating as the culprit for how their brain functions is wrong and creates Stigma around neurodivergent families and their children, and we don't want to perpetuate that. That just creates more fear, mongering around food and more stress, which is again the biggest culprit for disease states in our present day. Always a lot more to say right and again, these are very nuanced topics, so I will make sure to include the links to some blog posts for you if you're interested in taking a deeper dive as well as Seeing what some of the scientific literature today has to say about some of these topics as well. So that will be linked for you.

Speaker 1: 31:57

If you have any questions, I would love to answer those for you. Or if you would like me to address any of these in more detail, or if you have a Sugar-related topic requests that you would like me to cover on the podcast, I would love to hear from you. So please don't hesitate to reach out. Connect with me through email. Hello at crystal cargiscom. That will be in the show notes for you as well.

Speaker 1: 32:19

Thank you so much for Hanging out with me and listening to this and tuning into this conversation. I know it can be heated and controversial topic to address, but I'm grateful that you're willing to dive into these with me and we're all about lifting the shame here so that you can enjoy More freedom with food as a family. So thank you, and I can't wait to see you next week as we continue this mini sugar series. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the lift the shame podcast. For more tips and guidance on your mother her journey. Come connect with me on Instagram at crystal cargis. Until next week, mama, I'll be cheering you on. Bye for now.