Nourishing Your Child’s Future: Habits That Shape a Lifetime

In this insightful episode of ABC's Parenting Adult Children podcast, host James Moffitt welcomes Jessica Setnick, a renowned dietitian and educator, to explore practical strategies for fostering healthy eating habits at home. Discover how parents can positively influence their children's relationship with food by addressing learned behaviors and promoting a balanced diet. Jessica shares her expertise on the importance of variety, the role of self-care in nutrition, and how to create a supportive environment that encourages healthy choices. Tune in to learn how small changes can lead to lasting impacts on family dynamics and well-being.

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Transcript

James Moffitt (00:01.657)
Hello and welcome to ABC's Parenting Adult Children podcast. My name is James Moffitt and I will be your host. Today we have Jessica Setnick, is that correct? Okay, Jessica, thanks for being on the podcast with me today. How are you doing?

Jessica Setnick (00:11.544)
Yes.

Jessica Setnick (00:17.166)
Delighted to be here.

James Moffitt (00:18.479)
Good. So do me a favor and introduce yourself to listening audience.

Jessica Setnick (00:25.71)
I'm Jessica Setnick. I'm trained as a dietitian. I now work as a speaker coach and an educator talking to the community and health professionals about how to help individuals with eating disorders and prevent eating disorders and related problems.

James Moffitt (00:43.915)
Awesome, that's great. So I'm gonna read something off your profile. We can just jump off from there. says Jessica Sutton can offer insightful strategies for understanding food dynamics within families. The episode could focus on how parents can positively influence their adult children's relationship with food by addressing learned behaviors and fostering healthier habits. So one of the recurring themes on our podcast is self-care.

Jessica Setnick (00:48.409)
sure.

James Moffitt (01:13.153)
And parents are, they spend so much time, energy and money in raising children. And obviously one of the things that they have to do or should want to do is to feed their children and feed themselves. And part of self care is to examine the diet, you know, what we're eating and how it's affecting us, right? Our mental health, our physical health, our spiritual health, our emotional health. And so I have had several nutritional

strategists, coaches, whatever label they have on themselves, but people that are very knowledgeable when it comes to nutrition and having a healthy diet. So tell me about your journey and how you got involved in this.

Jessica Setnick (02:04.75)
Sure. Well, first, let me say that it's not meant to be a ruse, but when we talk about adult or parents of adult children wanting to be good role models, it's really about changing ourselves. And that's harder actually than changing our kids because it's so easy to try to do as I say, not as I do, but actually changing our own behaviors is really the hard one. So I'm really

I feel like our mental mindsets really mesh on this. How did I get to where I got? Well, that's a long story, starts way back a couple generations ago, all the way where all of our eating habits start, but I'll jump forward until the point where I was in college and had no direction at all and ended up as an anthropology major. And if you don't know what anthropology is, and I didn't before I was one,

before I was an anthropology major. It's just a study of humans, human development, human culture, human behavior. And that's what's so fascinating to me. So then when I became a dietitian, I really brought all of that study of human behavior and study of human culture with me and into the nutrition world. The thing that was challenging for me is that in the nutrition world, it was really a lot of facts and science and milligrams of things.

And the only place where it was really kosher to talk about the psychology of eating and why people make the choices they make and how you feel after you eat and why you eliminate foods and the way we sort of mentally think about foods. All of that was really only in the eating disorders area. Now that's changed a bit over the past 25 to 30 years since I've been in the field. But eating disorders became my specialty area because I love talking about that.

big picture, like you said, the emotional health, the spiritual health, all of those aspects that weren't necessarily included in all of the conversations about nutrition. And so 25 years into my career, now I've become a leader and a pioneer in talking about those things in every area of nutrition, especially child feeding and raising kids and families.

James Moffitt (04:13.965)
I got you. That's wonderful. So, how do childhood eating experiences shape adult food behavior?

Jessica Setnick (04:24.75)
my gosh, they are the foundation. So the way that we're fed when we're infants really molds our self-esteem. People don't think about it very much. You think of self-esteem as something that is very much a verbal thing, something that you know about yourself, but it actually starts even when we're infants, when you're being held by someone, when you're being fed. If that person is cheerful and smiling and making goo goo gaga sounds and

playing with you and feeding you appropriately and paying attention to your cues and feeding you the right amount, you learn without words, I'm good, I make people smile, this is very pre-verbal, but it's a very positive feeling that we get. And if the person who's feeding you or unfortunately neglecting you is not there or is not present mentally, if they are, let's say,

using a substance, if they are depressed or anxious, then that influences the way we feel while we're being fed. We feel like I make people unhappy. We don't realize that that person is bringing in their own outside experiences because we don't know that we're a separate person. All we know is we are essentially making someone else unhappy. We are not good enough. We are not doing the job of keeping that person happy. So it's like as an infant, we're looking into a broken mirror, but not knowing the mirror is broken.

it feels like we are broken. And so those earliest childhood experiences can really have a long lasting impact. Then you add in, once we start being able to feed ourselves, eat off a plate, use silverware, those kinds of things, we immediately have the messages given to us of you haven't eaten enough, you need to eat more, you're eating too much. And those actual food messages influence not just our self-esteem, of course, but our ability to regulate and listen to our hunger cues, our fullness cues.

our feelings in general, our internal feelings, our external feelings. And so those things are carried on throughout our life. And people often say to me, it it happened so long ago, that's not still affecting me. And my response is, I would encourage you to think about that differently. The younger you were when it happened, the longer ago that it happened, that means the more of your life was affected by it, the younger you were.

Jessica Setnick (06:36.364)
When it happened, the fewer resources and discernment you had to understand why it was happening, the more simple the narrative that you told yourself about why it was happening, and the more of your life that is sort of crafted around that narrative. So the younger we are when something happens, actually the more it's affecting us, rather than thinking it fades away because it was so long ago.

James Moffitt (06:58.019)
I got you. Well, you just unpacked a whole bunch of stuff there.

Jessica Setnick (07:02.158)
Yeah. What would you like to talk about next?

James Moffitt (07:06.991)
Okay, we'll go to question two. What steps can parents take to support healthy eating habits at home?

Jessica Setnick (07:09.56)
Okay.

Jessica Setnick (07:15.15)
So the number one thing is what you bring into the home, right? If you are bringing in things that are nutritious and a wide variety of things, and you are role modeling eating at appropriate times, then you are doing the right stuff. Now, granted, there are different definitions, I suppose, of nutritious. To me, most foods have something nutritious about them. So I'm not saying your food choices have to be sterile, right?

They don't have to be completely unprocessed foods. I'm not talking about eating nuts and seeds and berries all the time. But the variety of foods and the ability to look at food as nourishment, as molecules, rather than things that make someone good or bad or naughty, it's the way we talk about foods that has at least as much of an impact as the foods we bring into our homes.

James Moffitt (08:10.863)
Right, okay, because one of my questions to you was going to define the food groups and what you, I'll just say I'm diabetic. And so at some point in my life when I finally came to grips with the fact that I was diabetic, I worked at a hospital here locally and they provided free support to all their employees that were diabetics and included insulin and included a whole bunch of stuff, all my supplies.

Well, in order to be on that program, I had to go listen to a food counselor, diabetic nurse, RN, whatever they were called. I forget what their labels were. But anyway, we sat in there for four hours and they talked about how big the plate needs to be, portion control, the four food groups, the fact you should only eat enough.

food like the size of your fist, you know, because your stomach is only so small or only so large and that you need to eat slowly and chew your food and enjoy it and give your brain time enough to get the signals from your stomach that you're no longer hungry. In other words, quit horsing your food down, you know, eating fast. That was one of my problems. So anyway, I had to learn a lot about, you know, I had to unprogram my brain or...

or actually reprogram my brain to understand what was what good food is and why I should eat it and why I shouldn't eat a lot of junk and a lot of processed foods and like you know the people the experts say that you want to shop on the outside of the grocery stores where the fruits and vegetables and meat is and you don't want to shop in the middle of the store where the sugary cereals and starches and

Jessica Setnick (09:54.606)
Hmm?

James Moffitt (10:01.647)
in processed foods like hamburger helper and all those other things that are in a box, you meals in a box. And it's like you said, you know, we're not, we're not beating up people for eating hamburger helper or eating some processed foods, but, maybe, you know, we can educate ourselves as to why it's bad and maybe limit ourselves to how much of that we consume. So maybe you want to continue to talk a little bit about that.

Jessica Setnick (10:27.79)
Sure. So I think of it as a spectrum. And I think a lot of what we do as far as eating and the things that we choose and the things that we make is based on our own childhood and growing up experiences. Because if you think about the fact that there are about 30,000 different foods in the average grocery store and we each tend to pick the same 30 foods over and over again, thinking about the foods that we eat as junk or poison or

James Moffitt (10:50.137)
Right.

Jessica Setnick (10:54.616)
toxic, which I know there's a lot of language about that going around lately, really doesn't help anybody. But instead thinking about what is something that I wanted to try and I've never tried. Or I mean, with the internet, it's really kind of amazing. On your phone right there, you can take a picture of something and find out what it is. You can look at a fruit or vegetable in the grocery store and find 1,000 recipes. It could even be overwhelming, too many recipes that you can make with that. And so the, you know,

I think that things where the delivery services can be helpful, but for some people that's economically completely out of reach. But just looking at the grocery store and saying, I want to try one new thing this week and buying, let's say, an avocado and making something with it. Those are the kind of things that over time can really make a big difference. And I think focusing on the positive rather than focusing on the negative is always helpful because when we are feeling shame, it pretty much shuts down our brain power.

our creativity and so instead of thinking, I can't believe I'm buying those blank blank blanks again, think about, okay, I am buying those blank blank blanks again because that's comfortable to me. So maybe I'll balance that out with something that's not as comfortable to me, something that I've never tried before.

James Moffitt (12:10.627)
Right. So how can food issues affect adult children and family dynamics?

Jessica Setnick (12:19.174)
my gosh, are you kidding? Think about anyone who talks about going home for the holidays, right? Going home for Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter's coming up, Passover. The idea that you're gonna go home to your family of origin at a meal time is so distressing for a lot of people because we know that we're going to have comments about our food, our bodies, what we're eating, what we brought, our family members. my gosh, it can be really fraught. And some people...

refuse to go back home to their family of origin because they don't want to hear those things and at the same time they don't know how to set boundaries or they set boundaries and no one has adhered to them. So I feel like this is the time of year when you're talking about a big family event that's surrounded or centered, sorry, on food. We really need to talk about how to focus on the things that we are really.

wanting to celebrate at an event like that rather than the things that can derail it and maybe even having that conversation in advance. Listen, I heard this podcast and it said that people get really uncomfortable when I comment on their food and eating. So I've decided I'm really going to try not to, but I may mess up. So if I accidentally comment on what you're eating at Easter, will you do me a favor and just say, I love you instead of getting frustrated because

I'll probably be frustrated with myself as well.

Jessica Setnick (13:47.5)
Are you still there, James?

Jessica Setnick (13:56.386)
Are you still, are you there?

James Moffitt (13:58.841)
I'm here, but you locked up for about two minutes.

Jessica Setnick (14:01.366)
Okay, I'm not sure where I lost you then. Shall I start again?

James Moffitt (14:10.169)
So the question is, how can food issues affect adult children and family dynamics? Let's just start from there.

Jessica Setnick (14:19.342)
Gotcha. Okay, well, food issues and family dynamics go hand in hand at times like this when you're thinking about Easter coming up, Christmas, Thanksgiving, lots of adult children talk about how stressful it is to go home to their family of origin at a big celebratory meal time.

And it's because nobody likes to feel like they're being watched or looked at. It's really important that we, if we want to have a positive family meal, that we think about what are the things that derailed us in the past? And so if in your family, there tend to be discussions about food and eating and body sizes and weight loss and weight gain, it might be worth it to have a conversation or an email chain with your family members and choose on purpose not to have those conversations. So for example,

for a parent to say, to reach out to their adult children and say, listen, I heard this podcast and they said that you should not talk about your adult child's food and eating at a meal time. So I'm gonna try not to do that. I'm gonna try to focus on how happy I am to see you and how wonderful it is to be together. But if I make a mistake, as I probably will, and accidentally comment on your food or your eating, please will you just say, I love you mom or I love you dad instead of.

getting upset because I'll probably be upset with myself too and I know habits are hard to change but I'd really like to make it a meal where we can feel celebratory and united rather than talking about these topics that tend to get heated or hurt people's feelings.

James Moffitt (15:50.703)
Right. And we have Easter coming up and so that's a big, family time where people of faith celebrate Easter and Easter egg hunts and people get together, you know, after church and all of that stuff. there are people that have, you know, I'm sure families have people that have food allergies. You know, there are certain things they're allergic to, certain things that they should not eat because they're allergic to it. And hopefully,

Jessica Setnick (15:55.514)
yeah.

Jessica Setnick (16:17.528)
Hmm?

James Moffitt (16:18.499)
Hopefully families are already aware of those food allergies. So they're not going to cook something that's going to have something that could be detrimental to somebody's health.

Jessica Setnick (16:27.448)
Well, but you never know because sometimes in families they say, you know, they poo poo that like, you know, she's allergic to everything. She can eat that if she wanted to. You know, sometimes there is a lack of respect for people's boundaries. I hate to say that, but it does happen.

James Moffitt (16:37.454)
Right.

James Moffitt (16:43.085)
Right. Well, you know, if somebody has a peanut allergy or if they're allergic to Lord knows what, you know, it could cause a severe allergic reaction. You're to wind up calling an ambulance, you know, right in the middle of meal. And so, you know, if somebody has a food allergy, then, you know, it would be a good idea to, to steer away from those foods, at least for that person. Other people can possibly eat that stuff, but

Jessica Setnick (16:52.718)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

James Moffitt (17:10.339)
The other person that can't eat it, they're going to have to choose another dish, know, another selection from the available entrees that are there, right, or whatever.

Jessica Setnick (17:20.366)
Well, of course, as a dietitian, can't help but think about cross-contamination and the serving pieces and that kind of thing. So if there's someone that has a severe allergy like that, it would make sense for them to contact the host in advance and let them know so that everyone can really be prepared. Yeah, absolutely, especially if it's a life-threatening thing. Now, there's also things that are maybe special diet type of stuff that someone may prefer but isn't necessarily an allergy.

James Moffitt (17:24.591)
Trig, trig.

James Moffitt (17:40.548)
you

James Moffitt (17:44.623)
Sure.

Jessica Setnick (17:48.801)
And that's something to have as a conversation too, if you feel like you can accommodate that. But also, hopefully, it would be OK if someone brings their own food. That's a tough thing in some families too, though. It's like, so you don't want my food. You have to bring your own food. People can get very offended about things related to food. And that's why I think it's worth it to have a conversation in advance before the meal time so that the meal time can really be friction free, let's say.

James Moffitt (17:58.329)
Sure.

James Moffitt (18:16.079)
There you go. That's a good idea. Communications is key.

Jessica Setnick (18:19.566)
I

James Moffitt (18:20.781)
Right. How do you identify and transform harmful eating patterns?

Jessica Setnick (18:26.818)
Well, I assume you mean for yourself because it's really hard to change someone else's eating, but for yourself, acknowledging where it came from and that it's not your fault. It may be something that you do or have done for a long time, but we develop eating patterns, even though they may ultimately be harmful, we develop them in the first place because they were somehow helpful. They either protected us or helped us make sense of things. So for example,

someone who eats everything on their plate, they were either told you have to eat everything on your plate to be a good kid, or they were told I paid for that food, you have to eat all of it, or they might have been raised in a food insecure situation where they weren't sure that there would be more food later, or all these different kinds of reasons that people eat all the food on their plate, and it's not so easy to just all of a sudden turn around and say, okay, I'm not gonna eat all the food on my plate, because people then feel guilty about it. People feel guilty about wasting food or throwing away food.

So you really have to think about what you're trying to accomplish and come up with a strategy for it. So instead of just white-knuckling it, maybe an option would be to put less food on the plate in the first place. Or if you're eating out somewhere, to maybe ask for a to-go container and put some of the food in the to-go container before even starting the meal, sharing something with someone else. Or maybe even just trying to leave one bite over on the plate. But all these different small ways to make a change

We're always trying to turn over a new leaf. We're always trying to start new New Year's resolutions, right, and change everything. But really, true change is very slow, and because we have to be able to isolate the variable and figure out how it's making us feel. If I've been cleaning my plate my whole life, my husband's family calls it a happy plate. If I've been making a happy plate my whole life, and you're telling me suddenly that it's not healthy for me anymore to do that, I'm going to need some practice.

I'm not gonna be able to just stop cleaning my plate immediately. And so if I could start with leaving one bite over on my plate, that might not feel like very much to you, but to me, I will then have to be confronted with the feelings that that brings up. Like, my gosh, I'm leaving a piece of food over on my plate. Am I betraying my dad who grew up in the depression? Am I throwing away food? mean, even one bite of food, I'm throwing it away, but there's children starving in China. That's what I was always told. And I was...

James Moffitt (20:44.175)
Exactly. Yep.

Jessica Setnick (20:46.158)
and I paid for that food and now it's like I'm throwing away money. I'm so wasteful. my gosh, you can have all these different feelings and thoughts and then those are the feelings and thoughts that we need to look at and think about not at a meal time, but where did I get those ideas? Who are the people that shared those ideas with me? So just as an example, I really prefer to eat ice cream out of a carton, which costs let's say $9 for a half gallon versus going and getting

ice cream that costs maybe $2 for a cone or $3 or $4 for cone. So what if I'm going to Italy? There's no gallons of ice cream. There's gelatos. True story. I'm going to Italy and I want to be able to eat gelato and it might cost three euro or four euro or five euro for a cone. I don't know, but I want to be okay with that. Even though I know at home I could get at least a pint for that same amount of money. So if I think about that, where does that idea come from?

When were the first times I experienced wanting ice cream? And if I think back to the messages I got, I can very clearly tell you that when I was a kid, my dad had a store and it was around the corner from a Baskin Robbins. My brother and I would ask for a dollar to go get ice cream at Baskin Robbins. And my dad would say, a dollar for ice cream? When I was a kid, we had to borrow a nickel to go to the doctor. And that did not help.

us learn the value of money. What it did is it made us feel ashamed for wanting ice cream. It made us feel like a burden. All we knew was we asked for ice cream and it took this whole walk down memory lane with dad and suddenly it was like never mind I don't even want it anymore if I have to listen to this story again. I'm sorry I'm such a demanding kid you know and so we have to sort of look at that and say okay well my dad did grow up he was born in 1928.

James Moffitt (22:31.023)
Right.

Jessica Setnick (22:37.09)
He grew up in the depression. There wasn't enough money for ice cream. He probably did have to borrow a nickel to go to the doctor. And so he was coming at it from a different point of view. And as a child, you don't have the ability to say to your parents, hey, dad, enough with this dumb story. Like, I'm just a kid. Kids want ice cream. It's totally normal, right? It's a conversation that you can't have with your dad. So you end up just adopting the same beliefs. Even if you didn't like them, you still adopt them. And so now as an adult, I can go to Italy and I can say, you know what?

My dad would be so happy that I am able to take this trip to Italy and going to Italy without having gelato is not a complete trip to Italy. And so I am going to celebrate this trip to Italy. I'm going to celebrate this gelato. I'm not going to squander it by feeling ashamed of this gelato. I am going to love this gelato. I'm going to enjoy this gelato.

And it's going to be a wonderful part of my trip to Italy and a tribute to my dad that I can now value that ice cream and say, yes, I did have to work for that money. Yeah, I totally get why it was a big deal for him. But at the same time, I don't have to keep living his pain through my guilt over eating ice cream.

James Moffitt (23:46.895)
I got you.

Jessica Setnick (23:48.591)
It's just one example that you can see how it takes a lot of work to overcome this stuff in your mind because you have to recognize it's there and then you have to feel like you can change it without betraying the person who taught it to you. And that to me is the hardest part. If you had someone in your life that you love, especially if they're no longer living and they did things a certain way and you want to change them and do them differently, it can feel like betraying that person. But we have to be able to say, I can separate that.

person and their experience from the way I'm going to do things moving forward because ultimately anything my dad did he was doing out of love. Maybe not everything, but if you had a caring parent, now there are abusive parents who are living out their own pain in really harmful ways and I'm going to exclude them, but if you're parents or if you are a parent who's really parenting out of love, ultimately you really do want your child to be

making their own decisions, even if they're different from the decisions you would make in those situations. And that's a really hard thing for both parent and child to get through. It's called individuation, right? It's a normal stage. But it can feel to the child like betraying the parent. It can feel like to the parent like losing control of their child. But we have to let the child go and know that the child has to make their own decisions. They may end up coming around and deciding they want to do it the way that we always did it.

James Moffitt (24:52.931)
Right. Right.

Jessica Setnick (25:08.93)
But we want them to do it that way because they want to because it's what's best for them, not because they're ashamed or embarrassed or they think they're going to disappoint us. Because that's when you get people like hiding things under the bed and hiding wrappers and things like that. They just they might still do things, but they don't want us parents to know about it. And that's not ideal either.

James Moffitt (25:29.837)
Right. So can you, can you, you know, we're, probably talking to the parents here because the role models, right? And if we want, if we want our, if we want our adult children to eat in a healthy manner, then it's like you said, we, we as parents need to examine ourselves and examine our, our eating habits and what we're eating or what we're not eating or what we shouldn't eat. Can you speak to just general nutrition and how it affects us?

affects our bodies like we're a walking chemistry set, right? And obviously if we eat way too much sugar, you know, especially if you're diabetic, your blood sugar is going to go through the roof, right? We know high blood sugar is bad, right? If we eat too much garbage, know, garbage in, garbage out. So can you speak a little bit more towards the nutritional value of food and how it affects our minds and our spirits and our...

our emotions.

Jessica Setnick (26:31.064)
Sure. So the very most important thing about nutrition is that our bodies do store nutrition, but we need nutrients every few hours. And so waiting too long after you wake up to eat is not good. And waiting too long in between meals is not good. So the number one thing that people could do differently that would help is to start eating within about an hour of waking up and then don't go more than four hours or so without eating. Now, unfortunately, there's this whole wave of

intermittent fasting going around where there is a misconception that says that it's a good idea to go a long time without eating, but it's really not correct at all. That really stresses your body. That stresses the chemistry set. We need fuel every so often so that our body doesn't have to be stressed like that. And you know all about inflammation and how bad that is and eating regularly is one of the key ways.

that we can help, including someone who has diabetes, right? You know that very well, I'm sure, that you have to eat every few hours because otherwise it sends that chemistry set out of whack. The second thing is to stay hydrated. So we need to get in enough fluids. fantastic. And for those who are only listening, James just lifted up his big water bottle. Yes, we need to stay hydrated because every chemical reaction inside our body takes place inside

James Moffitt (27:42.831)
Water.

Jessica Setnick (27:53.899)
an aqueous solution, it's called blood. And so we need to have enough fluid in our bloodstream to clean things out with our urine, et cetera. So eating appropriately space times, drinking enough fluids, and then when we eat, having a balance of the macronutrients. So having a source of grains, a source of proteins, and a source of fats every time we eat so that each time we eat our body is getting

each of the different macronutrients that we need for different things. Now one of the things that is amazing about nutrition and probably why I fell in love with it in the first place is that you put a turkey sandwich in your mouth and somehow that turns into hair and it turns into bones and it turns into everything. Earwax! Like how does that happen? I do not know. You don't need to know. mean granted I do know because I had to learn it in school but from a practical point of view it does not matter. That is a beautiful thing about human bodies.

is that we put the ingredients in and our body puts it where it belongs. And what I think you're referring to when you're talking about concentrated sweets, you use the word sugar, but there's lots of things that fall into that category, is that that is the fuel for our body. That is the best way for us to get energy to walk around, for our heart to beat, for everything to happen, all the movement in our body, our lungs to breathe.

And so it's great, we need those sources of carbohydrates, but if we only have that, if we don't have it balanced with a source of protein, then we don't have what we need to grow. And even if you think you've grown as tall as you'll ever be, we are always growing. Our blood cells are always growing, dying, changing. Our hair is always growing. Our bones, weirdly enough, even though they're not growing taller.

They're always growing and resorbing and growing more bone cells, our muscles, even if they're not getting bigger, everything is turning over in our body. We have to have protein in order to do that. So making sure that you get some source of protein every time you eat as well. And usually your fats will come in with your source of protein. Sometimes if you have a very lean source of protein, you need to have some extra fats as well. But getting in those macronutrients several times a day is really the goal. And then your

Jessica Setnick (30:05.624)
fruits and vegetables to me and your dairy products, that's kind of like glitter sprinkled on top of your food. All kinds of different micronutrients, tiny amounts of things that we get in. The best way to get those in is to eat a variety of food because you could not possibly think about every food you eat and how many nutrients are in each food.

and make sure you get the right amount. It does not work that way. You cannot think, okay, I just had an orange, so that has 60 milligrams of vitamin C. Like you cannot do that for every food you eat all day long. But the good news is you don't have to. If you eat a rainbow of colors of food, then usually you are getting in all of the different glitter colors that you need. In other words, the vitamins and the minerals. So those are my best strategies for you. Eat early when you start, when you wake up.

James Moffitt (30:34.767)
you

Jessica Setnick (30:55.958)
and keep eating throughout the day several times, drink water, eat a variety of your proteins, carbs, and fats, and a variety of colors of things. And I will say one more thing. It is really important to think about what is your internal state. So in other words, it's hard for us sometimes. We're so busy. We're doing so many things. We enjoy eating. It tastes good.

to really think about what are you hungry for, how much are you hungry for? And instead of thinking, well, this is just how much I eat, we need to really think about how much is my body really sort of asking for, I guess is kind of a weird word to say, but because there was a study done and I love this guy, this doctor, Brian Wansink, who did all these studies at the University of Washington, like in the 90s, and all kinds of different things where they tested

how people respond to food. And in one of the tests, they had a bowl of soup and people would come in and they'd say, you can have as much soup as you want. And so people would just start eating the bowl of soup. Well, what they didn't know is under the table, there was a pipe and the pipe was piping in more soup as they ate the soup. And so people would just keep eating soup, eating. It's like in their mind, they were like, I'll eat a bowl of soup, fine. But the soup never went down and they just kept eating, eating, eating. And what we learned from that is that

James Moffitt (32:05.743)
Bye.

James Moffitt (32:17.048)
Yeah.

Jessica Setnick (32:18.09)
we are very externally cued to eat what is in front of us. And that is something that is really harming us. And if instead we can really pick and choose and think what tastes really good to us, how much am I hungry for? When is my next eating opportunity gonna come along? And not getting too hungry before we eat so that we're not famished when we sit down to eat. Those are the things that help us eat an appropriate amount and then walk away.

James Moffitt (32:22.883)
Right.

Jessica Setnick (32:43.042)
come back a few hours later and eat another appropriate amount instead of feeling like we ate too much, now we have to undo it or under eat next time or starve or something else. And then we end up keeping the cycle going of overeating, under eating, overeating, under eating like a pendulum. Instead of just keeping that pendulum just tick talking very gently, eat a little bit, go do something else, eat a little bit more, go do something else. That's really what helps keep that chemistry experiment going.

James Moffitt (33:11.147)
Awesome, very good. So what resources can help parents address eating disorders in their family?

Jessica Setnick (33:19.34)
well, there are a lot of really good organizations and books. If someone is interested, I also have a lot of resources on my website. My website is jessicasetnick.com, but the Alliance for Eating Disorders is an amazing, it's the National Alliance for Eating Disorders. It's an amazing organization out of Florida, and they have tons of guidance for parents if you're worried about your child, your adult child. I will tell you that if you...

have a good relationship with your adult child, having a conversation with them can be really powerful. But you're not trying to get your adult child to admit to having a problem because they may not realize they have a problem. What your goal is if you bring it up to your adult child is really to help them get to see a professional. And that's the goal, is to get them to recognize that there are some situations where the skills you bring to the table really aren't enough and we need to get someone else involved.

Finding a professional is something that the Alliance for Eating Disorders can really help with.

James Moffitt (34:22.411)
awesome. So I'm gonna read this off your profile. says, listeners will learn practical techniques to address inherited food issues, fostering healthier family dynamics, and supporting their adult children's well-being. And that's really good. And so if I were to give you three to five minutes for an elevator speech, what would you say to parents of adult children?

Jessica Setnick (34:29.827)
Okay.

Jessica Setnick (34:50.584)
Sure. I would say that the way that we have learned to eat is from the people who raised us and the way that they learned to eat and learned to teach us is from the people that raised them. So if you really want to understand your own eating habits, look one to two or more generations back, not necessarily biological generations, but think about who raised you and think about the people who raised them. That's really where our eating habits come from. We think they come from our childhood. We think they come from our experiences.

but they come from generations before us. That would be the number one thing if you want to look and see and be aware. The second part is how do you then change it? And so that's really the analysis of what do I want the rest of my life to look like? It's never too late to make changes. And if you have adult children and you feel like you want to change or you've passed on behaviors that maybe have not been the most helpful to them,

having that conversation and saying, wow, I listened to this podcast and I thought about how my grandma didn't have enough to eat and that's why I always feel anxious around food and that's why I always eat everything around me. And I was thinking I might want to try changing that. And I'm curious if you've noticed that about me. And I'm curious if you experienced that. And I just wanted to have a conversation about it. You might be surprised at what you hear. Your adult child may never have noticed that you do that or they may have some insight that you never thought of.

They may also experience that, and you might be willing to try to support each other in working on it together. There are so many things that we can change if we talk about them. The biggest thing that gets in our way is shame. If we are embarrassed of our behaviors, we don't want to let other people see them. We don't want to talk about them with other people. So my last minute of my elevator speech, I would say, if there is anything you're doing with food when you're alone,

That is something that it is time to bring into the light because that is where our eating shame is, is the things that you do when no one else is home, the things that you do when your spouse goes on vacation, the things that you do when you're in your bedroom and nobody's looking, those are the things that we have shame about. And it's not anything that you should feel shameful about. It's just we've learned to feel ashamed. And we can also learn that eating is something we all have in common.

Jessica Setnick (37:10.582)
None of us are perfect. Even as a dietitian, that is not something I strive for. We are trying to blend eating in as one part of a balanced, wonderful life. And if there's anything that is causing stress to you about your eating, I would encourage you to speak with a dietitian, a professional therapist, or even your doctor to try to find out how you can get some individual support.

James Moffitt (37:33.657)
It's wonderful. One thing that we did not talk about that we should not forget is this little thing called exercise. How important is exercise to the eating routine?

Jessica Setnick (37:42.295)
Okay?

Jessica Setnick (37:47.363)
Well, I personally call exercise the X word and I don't like it at all, but I would call it movement and I like to move, whether that's gardening or taking a walk, those things in theory count as exercise, but I don't wanna say that, it's the X word. It's much better to think about moving and jumping and playing with your grandkids and the whole purpose of exercise is so that.

You can have a healthy life, that you can be flexible, you can move, you can have stamina. And if that's the way I think about it, because just like we can have a dysfunctional relationship with food, we can have a dysfunctional relationship with exercise too. We can be perfectionists about it. We can feel like if I'm not gonna run for five miles and I'm not gonna go at all, we can have all these kind of different ideas. Or if so and so is a better swimmer than me, then there's no point in me swimming at all.

And instead, if we can just think about what is enjoyable for us, and for some of us, it's been a long time since we've really kind of befriended our body and thought, what do I like to do? If you love to dance at weddings, I'd love to dance at weddings. Why don't we dance at other times? Why don't we put on music and dance until we're at a wedding? I don't know. But I don't want to take a dance class, because it's not like I want to learn how to dance differently. I just want to turn on music and dance around my own house. And sometimes we think that sounds silly, but

Movement of any kind helps that chemistry experiment in your body work better. It helps all the pieces of your body communicate better and it ultimately makes your body stronger. It doesn't have to be something that is like walking on a treadmill. Unless you love walking on a treadmill, in which case, do it.

James Moffitt (39:28.207)
Well, I think the thing I want to stress here is it's all about balance, right? And, you know, my health journey was two years ago, I weighed 380 pounds and I've taken 80 of those pounds off and I feel so much better. My goal is to get down to 250 and I think in two years from now, I'll absolutely be there. But one of the things I had to learn was that it's 90 % what you put in your mouth.

10 % exercise. know, because some people get into the trap, which I did. I used to go to Planet Fitness five days a week and I'd work out, you know, for an hour and a half, two hours, treadmill, elliptical trainer, lift weights, do all these, go through all the circuit training and all that. And I felt great. And I thought, oh, I'm burning calories. So I can just eat what I want. I can go have a cheeseburger and fries and a soda pop. You know, it'll all work out. No, it didn't work out. And it was the wrong thinking.

that I had, And so, to me, I feel like exercise is key. it's like you said, if you like, know, like my exercise of choice, because of how overweight I was and still am, is walking. Walking is very natural, you know, and I had to, you know, they say you're supposed to walk 10,000 steps a day. Well, I walk about 4,500 to 6,500 steps a day. I don't...

I don't always walk 10,000 steps a day, but I get most of it in and I don't feel guilty about it, but I know that I need to get off the couch or get out of my recliner and move some. And so I feel like, I think there has to be a healthy balance between nutrition and exercise.

Am I not so humble opinion?

James Moffitt (41:21.059)
Like a lobster.

James Moffitt (41:25.249)
Oops.

James Moffitt (41:31.663)
What just happened? I think I lost.

James Moffitt (41:44.719)
Thank

James Moffitt (42:29.197)
Okay, well.