Hi guys

I just got back from having Breakfast with my BFF. My first time out at a restaurant. We went to Le Peep. I asked for the kids menu and it was pitiful. It was all crap food. Stuff that now that I'm highly aware is awful and I wouldn't want to feed it to my kids. I noticed the same thing at HEB when I was still in the liquids stage... I made the comment to my mother in law how awful everything was so WTF are you supposed to feed kids? juice is horrible..you might as well give a kid a coke since it's about the same. My question is...sleevers with (young) kids... what are yall feeding your kids?

2nd part of my question is... how do we TEACH our kids healthy habits (not following our poorly chosen original footsteps) yet WITHOUT transfering our own.... *thinking for the right term* new mentality towards food into UNHEALTHY weight/image ideas into our kids? I've thought of this often. A lot of my food hang ups before were because of my mom's ever present dieting & exercise & just unhealthy thought towards body. My senior year, at 5 ft 6 I weighed 170 and wore a size 12. I was smokin hot (looking back on it & my senior pic). My mom was always like "big women can look nice too" in that... finger wagging sort of tone. Umm I wasn't big back then?

Anyhow.. I basically am curious how yall are handling all of this with the kiddos. I don't want to do what my mom did to me and raise me with a piss poor idea of body/eating/dieting/etc (especially since kids now seem to be SO touched by it according to articles & such)... but I don't want them to make the poor choices I did. I feel myself growing judgemental of food in general..portions...etc because I feel this awareness now and realize how much of an effing piglet I was before that didn't care about the little white label. I do now... I don't want to lead my kids astray in EITHER direction.. into obesity OR into unhealthy idea of body.

No extreme is good, I know by experience. My mother was obsessed with her diet and weight, and as soon as I was 9 put me on a diet. I am sure that all my issues with weight started then. I have 3 girls 12yrs,10yrs and 16 months, and I try to get them to eat the healthiest diet possible (even when I was fat) with the ocassional treat and trying not to make a big deal about it. The food for kids here in England is also crap, even though now restaurants are adding healthier choices to their kids menus. If there is nothing remotely healthy I get them something from the adult menu to share, and even the baby enjoys healthy "adult" food, like salmon, stir fries, cous cous. I just don't want my girls to go through what I went, and I'm sure all of us with children feel the same!

DisneyAddict, I am very passionate about this topic, why you ask, well I was a closet eater I never allowed my children or for that matter my husband to see what I ate when they went to sleep or when they were not around. Also I never allowed them to see the quantities either if you looked into my pantry or fridge you'd see nuts, whole grains, sugar free this and that, quinoa, veggies...etc. An example yesterday my children came off the trampolin and a big bowl of edaname beans was waiting for them they ate it like some eat skittles. When I was pregnant with my first son I swore I would never ever pass this nasty addiction to them so I did what addicts manage to do, I ate crap while going to work at work after work, late at night. If all we have in the fridge is salad I have taught them we must eat what we have sort of like in third world countries, you eat what is available. I love my children in every way other than with food this is part of the twisted psychology I learned from as a child, where whenever I cried or threw a fit someone stuffed my face. I talk about everything while at the table, "we eat tomatoes because they help fight cancer, "we eat brocolli because of the iron and vitamins", "we eat carrots because it keeps our eyes and skin healthy" stuff like that, if there is one thing in my life I take pride in is that my three boys are the picture of health, meanwhile I have doctors in the family who feed their kids pizza and hot dogs everyday...I do think the earlier the better, once they develop a REAL like or a REAL dislike for something God only knows how tough that can be. If this has not been a habit in your home and life you have to take charge and slowly begin to introduce things at the table, talk about why those things are important in the body get them interested. My kids are not heavy bread eaters, I took a piece of french bread once and put it into a glass of water and showed them how it swells inside and hardly has anything useful. They eat whole grain breads nothing organic cause #1 I think the point is getting them to like the taste first. Everything I eat post- op I offer them a bite, as parents it is our DUTY to show them the high road to health, I am sure as they watch you get healthy they will also pick up a few things. Also, potato chips, cookies, ice cream, these are things that they do get when we go out on the weekend not every weekend but we treat it as the once in a blue moon items so that there is no thinking that it's like eggs and milk gotta have it all the time. But the interesting thing about my kids is they look at the labels and ask each other and myself "mom is this full of fat"? "Is this too much sugar?" I am just sharing with you how my house runs everybody is different and parenting has no manuals but we do the best we can.

I have to say that fruit juice is NO WHERE near as bad as a Coke! If we go out to eat at times my daughter (6 years old) will sometimes have a apple juice or lemonade but usually it's milk. We chose where to eat on what we know they have that will work for all of us. I have always been a super picky eater so it's been hard to find places that I would eat and that also had a good menu for my daughter. We switch it from a burger to chicken for her and she will get fruit or veggies with it, which she prefers! I have learned since having surgery that I don't usually want to order from the children's menu so my daughter and I split something from the regular menu.

My daughter has always LOVED fruit (I hate all fruit!) and she has never been a volume eater. She does like to snack so we talk a lot about what Snacks are good and how it is okay to have a "treat" at times but it's all about how much and how often you eat it. Her father and I are both large people (well I'm becoming not so large anymore!!hehe) so I have ALWAYS worried about her but I have taught her from day one about good/bad foods. I didn't have this education growing up and we lived off of McDonalds and Soda!

Hi guys

I just got back from having breakfast with my BFF. My first time out at a restaurant. We went to Le Peep. I asked for the kids menu and it was pitiful. It was all crap food. Stuff that now that I'm highly aware is awful and I wouldn't want to feed it to my kids. I noticed the same thing at HEB when I was still in the liquids stage... I made the comment to my mother in law how awful everything was so WTF are you supposed to feed kids? juice is horrible..you might as well give a kid a coke since it's about the same. My question is...sleevers with (young) kids... what are yall feeding your kids?

2nd part of my question is... how do we TEACH our kids healthy habits (not following our poorly chosen original footsteps) yet WITHOUT transfering our own.... *thinking for the right term* new mentality towards food into UNHEALTHY weight/image ideas into our kids? I've thought of this often. A lot of my food hang ups before were because of my mom's ever present dieting & exercise & just unhealthy thought towards body. My senior year, at 5 ft 6 I weighed 170 and wore a size 12. I was smokin hot (looking back on it & my senior pic). My mom was always like "big women can look nice too" in that... finger wagging sort of tone. Umm I wasn't big back then?

Anyhow.. I basically am curious how yall are handling all of this with the kiddos. I don't want to do what my mom did to me and raise me with a piss poor idea of body/eating/dieting/etc (especially since kids now seem to be SO touched by it according to articles & such)... but I don't want them to make the poor choices I did. I feel myself growing judgemental of food in general..portions...etc because I feel this awareness now and realize how much of an effing piglet I was before that didn't care about the little white label. I do now... I don't want to lead my kids astray in EITHER direction.. into obesity OR into unhealthy idea of body.

Interesting question -- my youngest son struggles with his weight -- he's always been on the heavy side (he's adopted) -- my other two kids(one biological, one adopted) have relatively normal weight for their sizes -- but my youngest has packed on the pounds whenever junk food is around. So I don't think my bad habits had any direct impact on them -- (I hope not, anyway). But in an effort to make sure it didnt, after my surgery, I swore off soda at home (even diet), I have not bought any pre-packed stuff, no frozen foods (except for veggies and fruit), that kind of thing.

I was recently talking to my hubby and I mentioned that I was grateful for my surgery because I thought I probably would have died at a much younger age -- John, my son, is very sensitive even at 12, and got very emotional and gave me a big hug and said, "I'm so glad you lost weight because now your kids can have you longer." I hugged him back and said that I was glad too, and I hoped he would take good care of himself so that his kids wouldn't worry about him too. I think the message kind of sunk in because he's trying to avoid bad foods and only eat good stuff.

Unfortunately, as we all know too well, it's so easy to give in and go for the easy to prepare, easy to eat foods -- but they are soooo bad for us. I guess the lesson I've learned is to be a conscious eater and not an unconscious eater.

Chilo, I believe you that the food in England isn't great either.. lol I've got a few British recipes that I lovvvee... sticky toffee pudding anyone? LOL I might as well inject the fat straight into my veins Especially someone who has girls, teen girls at that, how do you manage to keep them "sane" as far as their bodies? Is England as bad or getting as bad as America where it's all about "skinny" and young girls are feeling that pressure?

A crappy kids menu at a restaurant I can understand but I'm still appalled at the items in grocery stores. Why is it that now...in 2011... people are so obese (portion sizing aside) compared to say the 50s? Are the basic ingredients in products we buy in the grocery store THAT different now? Also, I don't GET how in the blue hell restaurants can pump so much extra fat & calories into something you can make at home with the same types of ingredients?

Dawn, I was being facetious about the cokes to juice comment. Since having the sleeve, I've always figured splitting an adult entree w/ kiddos is the way to go.

Let me be clear... I don't have any kiddos yet but DH & I are planning on getting our adoption ball rolling VERY soon. We plan on adopting from Korea I'm one of those people who over thinks about things since I've never done this before.

Butterfly, I have a sister who is a doctor as well and is raising her boys vegetarian. There's a lot of problems with that (that I see personally). Those kids are... 11 & 8 or 9 and both have moobs. Little boys shouldn't have moobs.

Julia, have you noticed a change in your youngest's weight since swearing off all those bad items at home?

I worry about what my son eats everyday. He's 18 months old and enjoys a wide variety of food. I think about stuff like this so much though. I grew up in a house that never had fresh fruit or vegetables, but every imaginable fat free item on the market. I was put on Weight Watchers when I was 8... apparently it didn't take haha. I remember that fruit and vegetables were bad things when I was growing up. I don't want that for my son. He sees vegetables on a regular basis and he knows what they are. Sometimes he eats them, sometimes he doesn't. He doesn't get rewarded either way. He doesn't each dessert really unless it's a special occasion. His dessert is usually fruit and he loves it that way. If he doesn't eat all of his veggies I try not to stress about it. Sometimes he'll eat a ton of brussel sprouts and other times he won't touch them (brussel sprouts are my favorite so I make them alot). I don't keep junk food in the house. He knows what french fries are and he LOVES them. And from time to time I'll get him some. All things in moderation. What's most important to me is that he's eating a large variety of fresh foods. I really try to limit processed foods for my whole family, we don't need them. It really helps that my Hubby is health and carb concious. Growing up I wasn't allowed to have chips, Cookies, cakes or anything like that so on the rare occasion they were in the house I ate it all very quickly. If we were having company over and my Mom made a cake, that's what I had the following morning for breakfast. I just wasn't capable of making a rational decision, I was too young. I knew it tasted amazing and it was something that we hardly ever got, I had to consume as much of it as I could before it went away. I don't want that for my Son. My Husband and I both grew up having weight issues. I want better for my kids.

As far as dining out, it can be tricky. Most kids menus have pizza, mac & cheese, cheese burgers and chicken strips, all with fries and soda or milk. I either order a regular entree and share with my son or try to make the best choice for him I can. Some places around here are getting better though. At macaroni Grill you can get broccoli as a side for kids. I'm ok with mac & cheese if he has broccoli with it and milk. Some other places let you mix and match and you can get carrot sticks or oranges on the side instead of fries. I just try to make better choices for him. It's ok for him to have something not as good for him on occasion, but I don't want it to be reward system. Also, if I make good choices for him now he'll be used to having these things when he's older and is making his own choices. All we can do is do our best and set them up with healthy eating guidelines to help them as they get older. When buying things like applesauce, I buy the no sugar added. He LOVES SF pudding, that's a fun and tasty treat for all of us. He's never had soda yet and juice to him is a sippy cup full of Water with a splash of juice in the top. He typically drinks milk and water though. I don't think juice is necessarily a bad thing, it has a lot of sugar, but a lot of other good things for you too. But, as long as he's eating fresh fruits and vegetables I don't see a need for the juice. Milk with meals and water in between has been fine for him and he likes it.

I think dining out and shopping for your kids can be a minefield at times, but it doesn't have to be. Just branch out of the typical "what kids like" mindset. My Son loves greek yogurt and now that's all I buy, and we all eat it. I don't really buy anything special for him because he's a kid. He Snacks on wheat thins and cheese, not anything particular for kids.