CHILDREN, Young Adults, and OVEREATING - 5 ways to help

One of the biggest reasons people seek support from me is the fear of passing on their habits to their children.  According to statistics, children and young people are using food to cope with mental health issues, more than ever before. In this week's podcast, I talk about 5 ways you can help the young person in your care.

Your next podcast: How do I Stop Self-Criticism?

Citations

Office for Health and Disparities. Public Health Data. Obesity Profile: https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/national-child-measurement-programme

The Guardian. Young people overeating as they battle lockdown anxiety, says UK study: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jul/12/young-people-overeating-as-they-battle-lockdown-anxiety-says-uk-study

Mind: Facts and figures about young people and mental health: https://www.mind.org.uk/about-us/our-strategy/doing-more-for-young-people/facts-and-figures-about-young-people-and-mental-health/

NHS: https://www.england.nhs.uk/2022/03/nhs-treating-record-number-of-young-people-for-eating-disorders/

Transcript

  Today I'm going to talk about young people and children and stress eating. Hi, I'm Shelley Treacher from Underground Confidence.

I help people to understand what triggers them into difficult eating patterns.  And to find a different way to cope. If you're an adult or a young person who wants support with self confidence and managing your comfort eating, you can find a link to my Comfort Eating Recovery Starter Kit in the notes.

The latest data by the UK Parliament Post from 2019 to 2020 reported that at the end of primary school 35 percent of children aged 10 to 11 years were living with overweight or obesity

bear with me while I quote you another statistic. In 2020, YouCope  researchers also found that 28 percent of the 1, 507 young people in their survey with no previous mental health problems said the quality of their relationships had worsened during the pandemic.

Almost half said that they'd used overeating to cope with their moods. But so that was 2020. However, their more recent survey found that not much recovery had been made in the last couple of years.  

The survey also found that young people are more likely to have severe mental health challenges compared to previous generations. People aged 18 to 24 were also shown to have a lower social self. This measured how people perceived that they were able to maintain meaningful relationships.

According to the survey, they were three times more unlikely to get on with family or relatives. They also reported higher rates of family instability and conflict.

It is estimated that in the UK we have 1. 25 million people with some kind of eating disorder. A disproportionate number of those are under 25. According to the Children's Commissioner for England, the number of children and young people starting treatment for eating disorders has more than doubled since 2017.

Eating disorders, whether it's you, whether it's your child, whether it's the young adult that you live with, have an effect on the whole family. And of course have a severe effect on the quality of life of the person who's in that disorder. With one in three UK kids leaving primary school overweight and young adults battling mental health issues, overeating is being widely used as a coping mechanism.

Usually I give you tips on how to cope with your own comfort eating. So of course everything that I've talked to you about can be useful for your child or your adolescent too.

But here are five specific ways that you can help the young adult or child in your care. Number one. It might be something physical or physiological that's causing your child or your young adult in your family to eat more, but it is more likely to be emotional.

So it's a good idea to have the ongoing question and curiosity of what's going on for that person? According to another survey, more than one in five young people who'd experienced some kind of trauma said they didn't feel that their problems were serious enough to reach out for mental health support.

So just as I'm teaching you to speak out about what's important to you, to state your needs, to express how you feel, encourage your child or your young person to do the same.

If they're not used to this they may not take you up on it first of all. That's okay. But if you foster an atmosphere of this being the norm, They will know that this is available to them when they feel able to use it.

And just as I've been teaching you, you're going to want to be as compassionate and interested as possible whenever you hear your child speak about what's going on for them. It may not make sense to you. I'm sure if a teenager told me about their life, I wouldn't understand half of what they were talking about. It's hard to remember what it was like, isn't it? But just as it is for you, listening can be so powerful.   

The second thing I want to encourage you to do is to let go of portion control. Portion control is so likely to be perceived as shaming. And you know this one, don't you? If anyone suggests to you that you should eat a little bit less, how do you feel?

Shame makes us feel worse, and therefore we're more likely to want to comfort eat. But this may be even worse for a child or a teenager. You might remember this yourself. It's so important to fit in, isn't it, when we're young? So this portion control can come with instant, unchallenged, unthought about

feelings of shame. And the worst of this is that they are highly unlikely to stop eating from it, but they might do it in secret after this.

The third thing that I want to encourage you to do is to not make food a bad thing. Just slow down instead. Food is a good thing. We need it to survive. And it can be a pleasure. But binge eating or comfort eating often happens really fast. And I would argue that the pleasure in eating has completely gone by this stage.

So demonstrate eating slower. This might be good for you too. Perhaps as a family, start eating more mindfully around the dinner table. Slow down and enjoy your food by way of showing your child or your young adult that pleasure is really important.  

Number four. Talk about responding to hunger or signs of hunger.

 Start talking about the difference between responding to cues in your body for hunger as opposed to stress, difficulty or emotion. You can actually explain to your child or to the young person in your family that in this culture we rely on external substances and behaviours to feel better. But that we really need to develop our inner resources for reassurance and comfort.

As a Lifetimes Project, you can be teaching your child that there are other ways to manage how you feel that actually are more substantial.

As you're listening to this podcast, I'm guessing that this might be something that you could learn together. The absolute best thing that you can do for your child who overeats is to learn this one for yourself and to pass it on.

Start by explaining that none of us are perfect and that this is what we all do to some extent. We instinctively squash uncomfortable feelings with something else that makes us feel more tolerant of what's going on. And then find other ways for both of you to feel more confident and comfortable in your skin.

This leads me to number five. Get to know what your child, what your young adult, actually enjoys. Practically, you can divert your child or the young adult's attention from food, from overeating, from junk, to other activities that they might enjoy. For example, if your child automatically wants seconds after dinner, try doing something else instead that they might love doing.

As this is also great advice for you too, The ultimate, surely, would be to have fun together. And so, you would also be teaching them that fun is important in life.

But whatever approach you choose, whatever you think is important for your child, you cannot go wrong by getting to know them. Often, quality time spent with you is what a child craves the most. It's certainly what I hear most of the inner children of the adults that I've worked with always wanted.

This goes a long, long way to addressing any underlying confidence issues. It'll teach them directly that they're worth spending time with. That's the thing we all need the most. So perhaps this is a win win for both of you.

One of my best friends is in a constant, ongoing battle to teach her child what addiction is and how to manage how she feels differently to being absorbed in all the things that she's obsessed with.  

She told me that the latest thing is not just watching television and wanting more screen time. But using two screens at once. So she's shopping for the latest bargain for the most amazing thing that she can buy while she's watching television.

That sounds familiar to me. We're all trying to learn what addiction is and the effect that it has on us, and how to live a more engaged, present, meaningful life. So just start talking about that.

Today I spoke about the alarming statistics of childhood obesity in the UK  and the difficulties that young people have had with mental health since the pandemic. Over half of whom have said that they were using food to cope with how they felt.

I gave you 5 ways to help the young people in your care learn how to understand and to cope differently.

First I talked about understanding the root cause. Then I encouraged you not to try and control portion sizes. Saying that this could be shaming. I talked about making food a good, fun thing that you can eat slowly and mindfully, together. Then I encouraged you to talk about responding to hunger rather than stress.

Then I encouraged you to engage in activities that your child loves. To preempt overeating. I also talked about encouraging you to address your own habits together with your child.

One of the things that people say to me is that they're frightened that they'll pass on their habits to their children. Learning to have fun together, to enjoy your food but to enjoy each other's company as well. This might be the secret sauce for both of you.  

Thank you so much for listening to the end today and for bearing with me while I didn't produce a podcast last week. I was intending to, but I had yet another cold. According to something I read in the newspaper, the week before last was the sickest week of the year.

And I felt really smug that I'd managed to escape illness on that week. Only to be struck with it the following week. It's tough being ill. It can bring out your emotions as well. So don't be surprised if you're not feeling your best when you're physically not well.

As one of my wise clients put it... Of course, if you're not feeling physically well, you're not going to feel emotionally well either, because the body and the mind are utterly one.

This is another one of the things that I'm constantly telling you about here. The mind, the body, the emotions reflect each other's state.

So, as with coming out of the pandemic and forgiving ourselves for perhaps not having completed everything that we thought we should have by now, I'm just slipping in a little reminder to be kind to yourself about whatever you're struggling with. This is human, this is normal, and everybody's doing it.  

But if you want help with any of that, you know where to find me.

I've been giving out my comfort eating recovery starter kit. Would you like to receive this? You can email me or you can find the link in the show notes. I've pulled together the best of my resources for this.  

Next week I'm going to start talking about Christmas and as I usually do at this time of year, I'm going to start reading some bedtime stories.

This year I'm trying to find stories from people who I know. So if you've written any nice little tales, that are perhaps a little bit magical. And you want your story to be read out on air, please let me know.

Thank you so much for listening today. This has been Shelley Treacher from Underground Confidence. I'll see you next Thursday.