17: Are Kids Healthy At Any Size with Jill Castle, RDN

If you've ever been worried about your child's weight, this is an episode you won't want to miss! Jill Castle, long-time childhood nutrition expert and founder of The Nourished Child and author of Kids Thrive at Every Size, joins Sarah on Managing Mealtime Madness. 

Together, Sarah and Jill explore:

• Why traditional approaches to weight and BMI in children often miss the mark
• How parents and caregivers can shift the focus from weight to well-being
• The role of nutrition, growth patterns, and genetics in body diversity
• How to build positive food and body relationships at home
• Practical, non-stigmatizing ways to support kids of all sizes
• How shame and pressure around food can impact kids

Whether you’re navigating your child’s growth concerns or just want to raise confident, healthy eaters, this episode offers a compassionate and evidence-based roadmap for parents.

Learn more about Jill!

Jill's Website | Jill's Instagram | Jill's Book - Kids Thrive at Every Size

Transcript

Sarah Schlichter (00:08.95)
Welcome to the Managing Mealtime Madness podcast, your go-to resource for making family meals less stressful. I'm Sarah Schlichter, a registered dietitian and mom of three, here to help you simplify meal time from the mental stress and prep work to gathering around the table. No matter what family looks like for you, sharing meals has real benefits. Whether you're squeezing in a workout, rushing to soccer practice, or tackling the never-ending dishes, I've got you covered.

Join us for practical nutrition tips, time-saving mom hacks, and fun, easy meal ideas to make feeding your family more enjoyable. Let's get going. Jill is the author of the book, Kids Thrive at Every Size, and one of the nation's premier childhood nutrition experts. Known for her ability to blend current research and common sense, Jill believes that children can thrive at any size. With her paradigm-shifting whole-child approach, she inspires patients,

Bill Cass...

Sarah Schlichter (01:04.472)
healthcare professionals, and organizations that serve children and families to think differently about young people's health and well-being. A sought-after speaker, advisor, and media contributor, Jill has inspired a wide range of audiences with her up-to-date practical insights on childhood nutrition. She serves as an expert reviewer for Parents.com and has been featured as a guest expert in many outlets like CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times,

Forbes, Newsweek, and Time. She's the founder and CEO of The Nourish Child, a nutrition education website and podcast for parents. Jill is also the author of several books, which we'll make sure to include in the show notes, including her most recent one, Kids Thrive at Any Size. She's the mother of four adult-ish children and lives in Massachusetts with her husband. Let's welcome Jill to the podcast, and I think this is a great one for parents, especially those who

are concerned with underweight, overweight children and how weight plays into health or doesn't. So let's welcome Jill and let's get to learning. Hey there, Jill. Welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

Well, thanks for having me, Sarah. It's lovely to be here with you today.

Yes, thank you for coming on. I have had the pleasure of seeing Jill the last four years, maybe? Yeah. At a conference that we go to and I call you a friend and a colleague now. You have been so helpful in giving with your fabulous knowledge. So I'm excited to hear some of that today.

Jill Castle (02:37.9)
Likewise, I consider you a friend and colleague too. So it's great to be here and to support your show and have this awesome conversation.

Yeah, well, I, of course, know all about you, but why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about your background, who you are, and then we'll kind of get into the meat and potatoes of our show.

Okay, sounds great. I am a pediatric dietician. I became one in 1991, so I'm 34 years in the field. I'm a mom of four. My kids are grown and flown. My youngest one is 23, my oldest one is 28. And I started my career in clinical nutrition as a pediatric dietician working in hospitals for the first eight years. And then I

had my first baby and decided to stay at home. And we subsequently had four kids in five years. So it was sort of pregnant or nursing, pregnant and not unlike probably what you've gone through, Sarah, but I stayed at home with the kids. And at that point, I was unsure whether I was gonna come back into the field of nutrition.

So I was home for almost 10 years with my four babies and I had decided I'm either going to purchase an antique shop and be an antique dealer. I tried to collect them, but I didn't end up doing that. I decided that I would start a private practice. That felt like the most flexible way I could get back into the field, stay working with children and families.

Sarah Schlichter (04:05.346)
Didn't know that about you.

Jill Castle (04:22.946)
and start a business. I had this little entrepreneurial thing in my head that I wanted to have my own business. My father had his own business. So I started a private practice. We lived in Nashville at the time. And I did that there for four and a half years before we got transferred to Connecticut. But during the time I was in private practice, I started a blog. I started to speak.

got my first book deal to write Fearless Feeding with my co-author Mary Ann Jacobson. And the ball just started rolling and I ever since have been in some way, or form working directly with families in private practice, maintaining an online business, which includes my website, The Nourish Child, the podcast, YouTube, dabble in social media. I'm not as quite as.

have the expertise that you do, Sarah, in social media. And I do quite a bit of speaking. And so I still do all of those things, kind of juggle all those aspects of business, but always centered around, you know, children, nutrition, from infancy through adolescence.

I love that. And I think it's great that you have so many subsets or so many ways to reach the audience through your book and your blog and your podcast and speaking. It's fabulous. So it sounds like you have always been a pediatric nutrition. You're always into the childhood. So take us back to your childhood. What was food like in your house growing up?

Yeah, that's a great question. I was a member of the Clean Plate Club. And so my parents were both of, they weren't first generation German, but they came from families that had a German background. So I would say the parenting style I was raised with was a bit more controlling. You don't leave the table till you finish your plate. But I also had a mother who loved to cook.

Jill Castle (06:18.126)
and spent a lot of time preparing home-cooked meals and trying new recipes. And so there was a sense of we all loved to eat, we all loved food. I was the oldest of four kids, we were all athletes, and we were all hungry when we came to the table. The dynamic was who's gonna get the seat with the most food? And so my siblings and I would oftentimes jockey around the table

know, spaghetti on the plate, which was the largest portion. That's where I'm sitting tonight. We didn't have assigned seats. My mother and father did, but we didn't. But you know, food was, I grew up in the Midwest. You started the show saying meat and potatoes. That's what I was raised on. My dad had a garden in the backyard. We were definitely, you know, the treat meal was a steak, a baked potato, and a wilted salad. That was the birthday meal. So food was central to our lives.

But we also had a lot of routines. Dinner was at six every night, breakfast in the morning, lunch, not a lot of snacking, not a lot of sweets and treats. My dad would make breakfast on Sunday morning after church and my mom would buy one can of frozen orange juice for the week. And they reconstituted it in a pitcher on Sunday morning and it was gone. Any package of cookies was.

gone in a day or two. And my mother never went back out and got more. If the weekly food was gone, it was gone. If the treats were gone, they were gone. And we didn't see any more until the next week when she went back to the grocery store. So that was sort of the heart and soul of how I grew up. And then we all take, I love talking about sort of feeding and childhood food experiences, but we all bring that to the table as parents ourselves. And we have these moments.

Sometimes we have these moments and sometimes we're never really making the connection. But I had the moment when my oldest was nine and we were sitting around the table and my husband and I were like, you need to have a bite of this and you need to try that. And we were really trying to govern what everybody was eating at the table. And I had that moment where I was like, wow, this is really starting to feel like something I don't want to be doing with my own kids.

Jill Castle (08:39.598)
And that led me into, know, how can I be parenting food without constantly hovering and directing and telling and nagging? And that led me into, you know, family style meals and diplomatic feeding and learning more about controlling feeding and really self reflecting and saying, yeah, that was a really big part of how I grew up.

making that conscious decision that I didn't want to parent my own children that way around food.

I think you bring up such a great point that we do all bring in these experiences and what we know at the time, how we grew up and how our parents did it. And of course, a lot of us grew up in the clean plate club and I truly believe many parents were doing the best they could at the time and that's what they thought they had to do. But it does seem like the narrative has changed, is changing when it comes to feeding kids. And to your point, maybe there's less pressure.

Some parents are trying more to institute this giving kids autonomy. And it sounds like your diplomatic feeding, your family meals, like you were sort of changing things up. So what can you talk to us about what changes you made and maybe did it make a difference? Did you notice anything different? And did that kind of take the trajectory in your next career path?

Yeah, I I would say the change, the major change I made was I stopped plating food on my children's plates and I started to go for a family style meal. We were consistent with it every night. And I'll never forget my second child after doing it for like five days in a row, my second child was like, are we always gonna have a smorgasbord for dinner, mom?

Jill Castle (10:33.582)
And she was like six or seven. And I was like, yes, she's like, this is the best. And the kids loved So many choices. So many choices. And I get to be in charge. sometimes I think families hear about family style and they think it's a free for all.

and they think that it's the kids get to choose whatever they want to eat. And that's not the case. The parents are setting the menu. The parents are determining what the meal components are. And the parents are, or caretakers are preparing those components and putting them out on the table. But the children get to pass the food around the table. They learn manners. They're passing, they're helping themselves if they choose not to.

serve themselves a certain item, they're at least seeing it, they're touching it, they're smelling it, they get the exposure that we want kids to have to a variety of different foods. But the autonomy piece is that they get to decide of all of these foods on the table, which ones am I going to choose? Which ones am I not going to eat? Which ones am I going to just have a little taste of? Because that was also allowed in my family. You don't have to eat what's here.

but this is what we're having for dinner. And if you choose not to eat, that's fine. You'll wait till the next meal. And that worked with my kids. Now, I understand that some kids that might not work with, but for my children, that worked very well. And I also was very conscious of putting things out on the table that were sort of our standard meal items. A gallon of milk, a bowl of fruit. I used to make bread every day.

I had a bread maker and I used to make whole wheat bread. So I put the loaf of whole wheat bread out there with butter and those were always on the table. And so even though we might've changed up the vegetables, the protein, the starches, those three items were always on the table. So there was always something for my kids to eat if they did not like anything else. And I was okay if they had bread, milk and fruit. I was fine with that because I knew they'd make it to the next meal. And so that was the first thing.

Jill Castle (12:46.358)
that I did that I think had a really radical change. I work with families currently in private practice and that's one of the first things I have them do with their own families. And it doesn't matter what, you know, they're presenting with as a family, whether it's picky eating or a child in a larger body, they want to eat healthier. We eventually, if not right off the bat, we eventually get to the family meal.

because the autonomy piece is so important. And not only is that autonomy piece important, when children have autonomy, they learn more about themselves, their own appetite, and that's the key to self-regulation.

Yes, and I think so much of what you described falls under the division of responsibility, which I just did an episode on that a few weeks back. So the audience hopefully is familiar with that. And I think this idea can be scary for parents and tying this into our topic today, a little bit about, what if my kids eat too much or what if they don't eat? I don't feel comfortable with them not eating and skipping a meal. And I think, again, this comes back to maybe

the way we grew up or some of our narratives that we're telling ourselves, pressuring our kids and of course, out of love, wanting the best for them. But what do you see when it comes to parents and maybe worrying about their kids weight? Is being underweight, being overweight, how do you think that affects some of the feeding dynamics?

I think it affects it a lot. And I see this over and over in my private clients. And we know that there's research that backs this up. If you have a child who's growing in a smaller body who might be picky, you are more likely to be pushy with food. That's what the research tells us. Because you want that child to eat. You want to feel good about yourself as a parent who's feeding that child. We also know that

Jill Castle (14:48.896)
when children are growing in larger bodies, parents tend to be restrictive. They tend to be more controlling around food. Again, this is proven out in the scientific literature, but I see it in practice. And even when a parent doesn't believe that they're being restrictive or they're being too pushy, at the end of the day, I say this to my clients all the time, it doesn't matter what you think.

is happening. What matters is how that child is perceiving the situation and children and their behavior can tell you a lot about what's going on at the table. So for example, I have a family that I've worked with in the past who their young child, kindergartner, was throwing massive tantrums every time she would come to the table. That's not enough. I don't like that food. And just having a meltdown every single time

And you have to peel the onion a little bit. But when we did peel the onion, there was a lot of restriction going on and a lot of confusing feeding going on in the family. There was the one parent who was, no, you can't have ice cream. You can't have this stuff because the child was growing up a little bit larger at the time. And then you had the other parent who was pushing or

giving these foods as reward or as a spontaneous, let's go get ice cream, while the other was saying, no, that's not good for the child, that's not healthy. And so the child is caught in this complete confusing situation and was really feeling quite restricted. Even though the family was like, we have plenty of food, we cook meals every night, we're on time with all of.

All of our meals, like, were doing a good job, and they were doing a good job, but the child felt restricted and confused. And so, again, you can do everything right, but if you're not looking at the child response, that tells you a lot about how feeding is going in the home.

Sarah Schlichter (16:58.988)
And I think that's the thing that maybe parents were not aware of that, or we're just not sure where to begin with that. So how can we start to tune into our children with also the long-term, because I know there's consequences when we are putting that pressure around the child and their food. What have you seen in the research and writing your book and dealing with families? What are some things parents are doing wrong or what are some things parents can do differently?

as they approach these situations.

So I think that when parents feed with structure, like routines and rhythm in the day, and it's not just with food, sleep, movement, screens, all of these things that kids are doing day in and day out, if there's any kind of looseness around that that can cause a child to feel insecure and become unpredictable in their behaviors. And so one of the things I like to see

all parents do is have a day kind of mapped out with some structure around it, some routines. You have routines for the timing of breakfast where it's happening, you know, every day. When that's predictable, kids feel secure about that. This goes for snacks too. And what I'm finding is that when parents don't have rhythms and routines with snacks, kids get hungrier, kids get more nervous about food, kids might go looking for food, they might sneak food.

or help themselves in the kitchen when they don't know that there's a routine and a rhythm with food during the day or with snacks. In terms of what are parents doing wrong, I really feel like parents aren't the blame. They're not to be blamed. I think that parents are just governing and trying to do the best they can in a world where they're not prepared for feeding their kids and they're not

Jill Castle (18:55.666)
necessarily traditionally or formally educated. They might be getting their education on social media, which has its benefits, but it also has its challenges, right? There's a lot of nuance with feeding kids. And you can have children with different temperaments and different stages of child development, and you can be a different person. You can be a different parent to each of your children based on who you are at that time. And so there's so much nuance that, yes, we have

principles around feeding and nutrition, but at the end of the day parents really I like parents to be really curious about who their child is. Who is your child around food? Are they fixated on food? Are they excited? Are they more responsive to food? Or are they could care less about food? Do they fill up fast? Do they pass a lot of foods that other kids like?

So being really curious about who your child is, are they easygoing? Are they feisty? There's a lot of things about children that help us understand them, particularly around food. So that is, I wouldn't say it's something that parents do wrong, but I do find that we forget the child in the equation sometimes. As adults who are parenting kids, a lot of times we're just focused on the food.

and we're focused on trying to be a good parent. And we lose sight of the actual child we're feeding.

I think it's just turn into one of those checklist things, right? I have to have dinner made, after this we have to do baths and maybe some homework or we have to head to the next activity. And it can be hard as a parent to fully be present and recognize all this. But what you're saying is your child will give you clues. Are they constantly hungry? Are they clearing their plate? Maybe they need more food. Maybe they...

Sarah Schlichter (20:55.052)
aren't having enough at a snack or maybe they're not even eating a snack. It sounds like cluing into those clues can help you adapt as a parent and like you said, you have that structure, but you're also able to give the child what he or she needs.

Yeah, I think the structure and the routines and the rhythms allow you as a parent to be able to tune into what's going on with your child a little bit better. We know that research on chaotic homes, homes where like it's chaos, right? There's no structure. There's no routines, you know, moving from one thing to the next and just trying to survive. Those homes, according to the research, you know, kids from those homes engage in more screen time.

may get less sleep, may not move as much. And so there is this thinking, and I think we'll see more of this emerging, that calm homes with structure and routines really help children thrive in all areas, not just in food and in eating.

I do see some of that on social media, some of the slower, the homesteading and all of that. And I think there is, you know, something to romanticize about that. But I also think, you know, with the pressure that we put on ourselves or that we just have in this day and age, sometimes it can be really hard to make the house less chaotic. I'm even thinking about myself if, you know, I'm working out of the house and I get home or pick up the kids from school and nothing's prepped.

and we have soccer practice in an hour, what are we going to do? It's a little loud, it's a little chaotic, but to your point, I mean, it sounds like having some snacks on hand or having the time that we sit down and eat the snack before the activity together is something helpful.

Jill Castle (22:45.964)
Yeah, and I think it's a saving grace for the parents too, right? Structure helps the kids, but it helps the parents too. And, you know, I say this from a place of, I was a working mom with four kids, so I had to drive them to school every day. had to have, they had no lunch at school. I had to pack their lunches every single day. I don't even know how I did it, Sarah. I really don't when I look back at it, I'm like, I don't know how I did it, but I was getting up and.

you know, pulling the bread that cooked overnight out of the bread maker, slicing it, making toast, making sandwiches, sticking something in the crock pot for dinner that night, because I was going and having a 10-hour workday in the office with other families. And, you know, there were times when I didn't have childcare after school, and I'd have to run and pick them up at 3 o'clock and bring them home. it was just, yes, it was chaos. And kids who were playing sports, it took a lot of forethought.

And I encourage my families to do this too. And this is what I help them a lot with is just what are your routines? Let's build the routines. Because when you're building routines, you're building habits. And habits are good, positive lifestyle habits are the things that keep your child healthy. They're things that grow a healthy child. And they also have the potential and the power to build a happy child, one who is calm and secure.

and feels loved and attended to. And so if it doesn't come across, I'm a huge fan of routines and rhythms in the house for both the parents or caretakers and the children.

touch more on this habits that you mentioned. And this was something you brought up earlier, talking about just the way we talk about food. You know, maybe one parent is like, that's not healthy. We don't need that in the house. How does that play into our children? Weight, even their cognition, how they think about food, their behaviors as parents, the way we talk about food, how does that impact kids?

Jill Castle (24:55.232)
It impacts children quite a bit. know, children, especially young children are, you know, learning about food. And if you think about their cognitive development, young children are very concrete thinkers. They don't understand nuance. Something is good or it is bad. They don't understand the in-between. And so when we say this is healthy and this is unhealthy,

Young children take that quite literally. Then they go out into the world and if their peers are like, ooh, you know, that's bad for you. Why are you eating that? What can happen is children can internalize this sense of them not being good, them not being okay. When you talk about school-age children, their developmental stage, their social-emotional development is all about being

normal, being okay. And when we deliver messages about food, about eating, about bodies that are binary messages, this, you're either healthy or you're unhealthy. Food is either whole and good or it's bad and toxic. When we talk that way with young children, they can start to internalize a sense of shame.

They can build this, I'm not okay because I like that unhealthy food. I'm not okay because I'm picky. I'm not okay because my body's too big. And when they start to feel they're not okay, it can internalize shame. And the unfortunate thing is that internalized shame can be very difficult to reverse.

And it's connected to body dissatisfaction. It's connected to the development of eating disorders. And so how we talk about food, I believe needs to be very neutral when it comes to children at all ages, really. But what really is, I think, valuable for parents is to understand that really young children, like toddlers, they're building their language. That's their developmental task, to build language.

Jill Castle (27:16.13)
So we don't have to talk about healthy or unhealthy. We talk about broccoli is green and crunchy and it's in this muffin or it's in this casserole. Peppers are red and round and smooth and they're crispy when they're raw and they're softer. So we're building language so that they can internalize a sense of words and vocabulary so that they can speak. They can use their language. As kids get older,

Preschoolers the the task is engagement with with the world around them So engaging with food either, you know tearing the lettuce helping prepare Dinner making their own snack from the foods that you've put out on the table these are ways that we can be proactive about food and developing those positive attitudes about food, but when we're sensitive to what the developmental tasks are for children we

have a better chance of getting it right and not causing harm.

As a parent, we try to speak about food neutrally in our house, but it can be challenging for these exterior environments, for example, school and even daycares. Now, my first grader came home. One day, a classmate was saying, that's not healthy, too much sugar, XYZ, which I'm sure they heard at home or maybe they heard from another classmate. So I said to my seven-year-old, said, does it taste good? Great. Do you like it?

Does it give you energy? Great. That's all we need to do. We don't need to look at any numbers. We don't need to worry about any of that. We just want to eat what we like, get energy, go on to the next thing. And I think as parents, we need more examples of that. Talking about food neutrally, enticing curiosity, having kids help with the mundane tasks. I mean, even we made muffins on Sunday and we were shredding carrots to put in them. So the kids are seeing that.

Sarah Schlichter (29:16.372)
Even if they're not ready to try it yet, they know carrots can go in muffins or I can eat them raw.

Right. You're building knowledge. We get so many messages as parents from social media, we think that we need to give those messages to our kids. you know, children don't understand the fact that this is high in sugar and, my gosh, maybe later down the road you're going to have diabetes. That goes way over their head. They have no clue. And it is only scary. It's something that's scary to them when they don't understand. And so keeping food, yes, neutral.

And I think if you're a parent out there listening and you're trying to say, well, what does that mean? Because there really are foods that are not healthy for my kid. And there really are foods that are very healthy for my kid. I think that as a parent, you need to think about the full range and spectrum of food and understand that context really matters, right? If you're having cookies and milk, the context of that is enjoyable.

fun, engaging, and also nutritious. Because when you add something healthy or something nutritious to cookies, you're creating a context whereby you're now not on either end of the spectrum. You're moving into the middle. That's the nuance. That's the context that I think parents can really lean into because nothing is either one or the other.

There's a spectrum of possibilities. And so to build food neutrality, you do need to lean into this idea that what are the possibilities for this food? What are the possibilities here? Can we add fruit? Can we add milk? Can we just enjoy it by itself because the rest of the day has been great or whatever? So there's nuance and context there that I think we need to lean into.

Sarah Schlichter (31:14.956)
I love that. And I also love the fact that sometimes we can just enjoy a snack because it tastes good or it's a celebration or it's nostalgic. And even the milk and cookies, maybe that's an afternoon favorite and it's something that kids look forward to and you sit down and you do it together. And there can be so many benefits to that. But if we're approaching it from, well, we can only have this.

once every month and it's only when you do well in school I think that comes across differently to a child.

it comes across restrictive, which we were talking about earlier, but oftentimes children interpret that as being restrictive. Even when parents think, you know, they're setting up like a really good like boundaries around sweets we get every weekend, we get sweets every weekend, that can be great for some kids and that's all they need. But other kids, again, if you experience your child having

fixation on sweets, overindulgence when sweets are available, you might have to sit back and say, is this only, sweets only on the weekend, is this really working for my child? Because I'm seeing some other behaviors that might suggest that we might need to either increase the frequency or be more flexible with the timing. There's just, again, the nuance and the context matter.

What would you say to the parent to, because I think I imagine this happens a lot and maybe it's some projection on them and their weight or how their childhood was, what would you say to the parent to, well, I only offer it because my child's already in the overweight BMI category or, you know, the pediatrician said we need to be limiting this. You know, you have your book, Kids Thrive at Every Size. So tell us a little bit about.

Sarah Schlichter (33:10.658)
the relationship between weight and health and why maybe as parents this is something we need to work less to control.

Yeah, I feel like I have this conversation a lot with the families that I work with because most families, when they get to the point where they've hired me, they're quite concerned about their child's health. And the health concerns tend to center around the size of their child. And yes, they may have been told that their child is growing too fast or growing too large, and they need to get on top of that.

What I say to families often is that health doesn't have a size. We cannot assume that if your child is in a larger body that they are unhealthy, nor can we assume that if you have a child in a lean, smaller body that they are healthy, right? Health is metabolic functioning. It's physical functioning. It's psychological functioning. So, you know, I'm always encouraging families to focus on

functionality. Can your child move? Can they play the sports they want to play? Are there metabolic parameters? Their blood pressure, their cholesterol, their hemoglobin A1c if that's being measured, their liver function tests, are those normal? Is the metabolism and the metabolic function of your child's body in a good place? Are they psychologically functioning well?

Is their self-esteem good? Do they have friends? Do they want to go out and engage with the world? If all of those things are in the right place, then the size of a child's body to me is less worrisome. And what we do is we break down all the habits and we see where families are. What are the habits of sleep? What are the habits of movement? What are the habits of food choice? What are the habits of eating? What are the habits of parent feeding?

Jill Castle (35:14.882)
What are the habits of the family in general? What are the attitudes and beliefs and behaviors of the family, which I call family culture? What are the habits of screen use? And we break all of those down and we get those into a really good place. When we have those good lifestyle habits in place, the body shape and size usually figures itself out.

it gets to where it's gonna be. genetically, children's body shape and size is 40 to 70 % genetic. We have studies of identical twins who are raised apart and 70 % of their size is attributed to their genetics. So that tells you environment does have an impact, but genes are pretty strong determinants of size.

So at the end of the day, I'm often saying to my families, know, we're working on good habits and keeping our eye on functionality. So if we see that metabolic function has gotten off, we're working to correct that. We're working to correct high blood pressure. I'm not working to correct your child's weight. I'm working to improve their functionality, if that makes sense.

That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and I think a lot of us still think weight is health and even pediatrician, we're hearing this language and I think this comes into body image a lot too. And I'm wondering from your perspective, what role do schools and pediatricians play in shaping body image? Is there things you wish they did differently or we could cultivate differently from in our own house?

Yeah, I mean, when it comes to pediatricians, I think a lot of them are making the move towards holistic health functionality as opposed to a certain weight or percentile on the growth chart. But there are still, you know, pediatrician practices, medical practices that are weighing children in public out in the hallway are, you know, making comments about

Jill Castle (37:34.048)
you know, losing weight or things of that nature to and in front of children. I always encourage parents, you know, this is a private conversation between adults. It's not a conversation for little ears to hear. And you can be empowered to say that you don't want your child measured height or weight. You don't have to have that done every single time you go to the pediatrician's office.

I personally like to have height and weight just because I like to see how kids are tracking. And to me, that is the number one role of a growth chart, just to be able to make sure children are tracking not only their weight, but in their height too. Because we do, unfortunately, have children with growth hormone deficiency. We have kids who falter in their height.

because of their eating habits. And so it's, again, an adult conversation. What I wish in a pediatrician office was that a child would just step on a tile on the floor and there would be a scale underneath and nobody would know that they were getting weighed. One of the ways that offices can do and parents can ask is to weigh my child backwards.

And that's how I used to in private practice. I always weighed kids backwards because I was also doing their height on the stadium meter. And so we didn't talk about the weight. I could catch the weight at the same time I was doing the height and it was for me to know and that was it. So that's one area. I think in schools, you know, there's a lot that schools can do around education in terms of all the lifestyle habits like pro-activity.

education about, you know, the benefits of moving your body and the benefits of a good night's sleep and the benefits of, you know, nutritious foods in the diet. Sort of a positive take on all the things that you can add and do in your life to have a healthy body as opposed to oftentimes now it's these foods are bad for you and you shouldn't eat them.

Jill Castle (39:51.092)
And this is a scary thing that's going to happen to you if you eat bad or you don't exercise or you, you know, it's just like a fearful approach and negative lens on so much of this stuff. The other thing is just, you know, I don't think we need to be doing BMIs in school for kids. don't see any upside. And if you look at the research, there's no upside on it. It causes more psychological harm than it does motivate children or their families to change.

anything.

Yeah, just hearing everything you're saying, to me it's just this reminder that words matter, our words matter and the way we use them at home matter, the context, the words we're using to describe meals and even if it sounds benign or feels benign to us, for kids, like you said, they're black and white thinkers and they can internalize some of that. So I think it's a great reminder for us as parents and caregivers, we

are the primary environment where kids are going to hear about food. To a less than extent, we can't control the school environment, but what they hear at home, we can control the way we talk about food. And it sounds like beyond weight, mean, what we're feeding kids, we're establishing hopefully lifelong habits. We're hopefully forming a positive relationship to sitting down at the table and

trying new foods and moving our bodies because it feels good rather than doing those because we have to or to be healthy or, you know, fill in the blank.

Jill Castle (41:28.738)
Yeah, in the book I go through, you know, so many of these things. Movement, for example, movement has been used, physical activity has been used as a tool for weight loss for a long time in adults and in kids. And we're missing the boat. You know, kids, we don't want kids to grow up thinking I have to move in order to be smaller. We want kids to grow up like moving my body is a ton of fun.

I get to be with my friends, I get to try new activities. This is a blast. That's the goal.

Agreed. That's great. So what else can parents find inside your book? How can they get it? And then tell us how parents can reach out to you if they want more information, listen to your podcast, all of that.

So in the book, I outline this paradigm called whole child healthy, which really equally focuses on physical health and emotional wellbeing and how important that is in today's world that we can't just be siloed into raising a healthy kid means a kid who is slim, trim and fit. There's much more to that. So in order to do that, I created eight pillars of wellness. And so they are eight habits.

areas, positive lifestyle habits that have research behind why they are a positive lifestyle habit and the actual impact they have on physical health and well-being. And then I help parents understand the obstacles that they will face as they're raising their children and trying to cultivate each of these eight habit areas.

Jill Castle (43:09.174)
And then I go through how to get started with building each of these habits and given the obstacles and some focus areas that families can go on under each of these eight pillars of wellness. So the book is, know, Kids Thrive at Every Size, How to Nourish Your Big, Small, or In-Between Child for a Lifetime of Health and Happiness. Can be found anywhere. Books are sold. And you can find me in two places.

thenurrishchild.com, which is my parent website of, you know, tons of free articles about nutrition and feeding kids and some paid products, more deep dives into particular conditions that you you might want to learn more about. And then you can find me for my professional services over on jillcastle.com, private practice, speaking, all that good stuff, consulting.

Thank you so much for your time, Jill. You are a wealth of knowledge. And I know we only scratched the surface today, but I love how you broke your book down into pillars and there's actionable parts for parents to look under each pillar. I think that's gonna be so helpful. And thank you so much for your time.

Yeah, thank you for having me on, Sarah. I appreciate it.

That's it for today's show. I hope this episode helps you think about feeding your family and makes it a little bit easier. Please, please take a minute to rate the show on your podcast app or listener of choice. It really, really helps. And until then, I'll talk to you next time.