What Everyone Ought to Know About Obesity

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What if the common belief that childhood trauma is the primary cause of obesity is only scratching the surface? Join us for an eye opening conversation with obesity researcher Jason Stanley as we uncover the surprising truths about why some children struggle with their weight. Discover how seemingly loving gestures like using food as comfort can lead to unintended consequences. We'll explore the nuanced relationship between emotional eating, environmental influences, and societal factors that contribute to obesity. So if you're raising grandchildren or caring for children with complicated histories, this episode is a must. Listen. Get ready to challenge your assumptions and equip yourself with actionable strategies for fostering healthier relationships with food. Tune in to gain insights that could change the way you approach nutrition and well being in your family.

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Welcome to grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity in this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of. Grandparents raising grandchildren as we navigate the. Complexities of legal, financial, and emotional support. I invite you to join us on. A journey of exploring thoughts, feelings, and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of child rearing for children who have experienced trauma, and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care.

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Well discuss how we can change the course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you.

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Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your experiences are valued, and your journey is honored in the ever. Evolving landscape of health and wellness.

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Few topics garner as much attention and debate as obesity and its underlying causes. Recently, I reached out to Jason Stanley, a respected expert in the field, with a list of questions for what I hoped would be an enlightening interview on the interplay between trauma and obesity. To my surprise, Jason responded with a thoughtful note challenging the notion that trauma could contribute to obesity. Stating that this concept is largely a myth, he asked if, based on my question and possible difference of opinion, that I might want to cancel the interview. On the contrary, I replied. I told him that I appreciated his feedback and expressed my willingness to adapt, emphasizing the importance of my desire to seek current, evidence based insights to better support our grandchildren who face their own struggles in this area. Jason's commitment to understanding obesity is profound and multifaceted. With a background rooted in medical anthropology, he began his research in the late 1970s he began his research in the late 1970s and has since published multiple articles and two books on the subject. Notably, he has conducted numerous clinical trials that have paved the way for innovative approaches to addressing this complex issue.

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In early 2022, Jason embarked on a groundbreaking two plus year clinical trial focusing on neural plasticity to tackle the root causes of chronic emotional eating, a significant contributor to obesity. The results have been nothing short of remarkable, showcasing an 85% success rate compared to the conventional weight loss industry's long term success rate of only 3%. Jason firmly believes in treating the problem rather than merely managing the symptoms. Advocating for a holistic approach that heals the underlying causes of weight gain. As we navigate the challenges presented by modern life and strive to empower future generations, Jason Stanley's work stands as a beacon of hope and insight in the fight against obesity.

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Jason, I think it's interesting that your background is not as a doctor but as a researcher. And I think our listeners would be interested in hearing about what gut you interested in the topic and in the field. Thanks for the question and thanks for having me on. It's real excited to be here. My background is I'm one of those guys that's never going to grow up.

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Evidently. I've had many, many different types of jobs. I'm a social science person. I have a doctorate in religious studies, which has nothing to do with my research in obesity.

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Now I do have a degree. My undergraduate is in anthropology, which is relevant because back in 1979 I was a returning student coming home from the army.

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And I was one of those kids that went right out of high school into the army and then came to college. And I had no ability to do papers, term papers, that kind of stuff. I was just fishy out of water. But I had to do this big term paper. And so I said, I don't know how to do library research. Back in 79 there was no Internet, so I convinced my professor to allow me to go out in the field. Now I was in northern California and the field means California, right? So go out in the field and do an anthropological field research. And she says, sure, that's fine. It's about the methodology, it's not about the location. So I advertised for obese women to talk to me. I wanted their life story. And I was looking at the current thinking. And the thinking then was that people were obese because of the diet and they had come from the farms, either them or their parents, where the farm labor was heavy and the food was heavy and you needed a lot of calories. You moved into the city or the suburbs and you continued that diet. So I went out. I'm a college guy, right?

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And not very sophisticated. And I had my questionnaire and I started asking these women, 54 women wound up talking to me on this thing.

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And the third person that I talked to blew the whole deal right out of the water. She told me with absolutely unequivocal terms that she was a macrobiotic vegetarian and her parents were complete jerks. Oh, boy. When I ask about her father, there was a string. I mean, a string of swearing and cussing and this invictive, it was a horrible, horrible childhood does go back to the stress thing. We're going to get into that later. And so I said, wow, okay. Clearly the diet, isn't it.

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So I followed her thread and turned out that the next couple of ladies I talked to had the same thing, which was high, high, high stress, but more importantly, which has held steady. They had stress relief or safety and security while eating. That's the crux of it. Now, back in 1980, 79 and 1980, when I did this series of field research, the belief was, is that the brain was a brick. Once you come through adolescence, it was solid and you couldn't change it. But I knew that this came out of childhood.

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It was patterned in childhood. And even though at that time I had a few pounds on me, but I wasn't what you would call overweight or even obese later on, by the way, I have been obese a couple of times in my life, so I've lived it, but it just made too much sense. Out of 54 women, 100% met those two requirements, that they had stress in childhood and, and, and they had solace while eating. They felt good, they felt safe, they felt comfortable, they felt accepted. Now, sometimes it came from one parent or the other. Sometimes it came in the form of the one parent schizophrenic mom, for example, pour lighter fluid on the floor, light the floor on fire and scream at the kids. Any of you little blankety blanks come across that line, I'll cut your blankety blank throat when she's in a schizophrenic state.

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But then when times are good, mom's saying, everybody sit at the table, they're eating, this is good times. So it just made too much sense to me to not pursue it. I don't have obesity in my family. It was just an intellectual curiosity that became a quest. I was stuck with it. I did write a book on it in 2000 or published it in 2000, and I came home and did a study on it, you know, clinical study. I got a group of people together, said, hey, we're going to try this stuff out. And it did not work. It just failed. And then in 2007, I published the second book on it. And again I came home. I was living in Asia at the time. Came back, moved home, moved back to the states. My wife and I did and published that second book, got together with the second clinical study using that technique, which was called tapping or emotional freedom technique, and it failed. It absolutely failed. So I've got two books and two clinical trials from 2000 and again in 2007 that did not work.

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So I left it alone, went back to running an international school in Vietnam, and spent a number of years there. Finally, I came home in 2016, back to the States, 2021. I learned about a technique called havening. And if you're not familiar with it, and most people are not, it's only been out since 2013 is when it became public. It operates the same process as EMDR, and a lot of people are not familiar with that, but EMDR is a very well recognized technique that is part of the American Psychiatric Association. I compare the two because they work functionally at the very same level, same process in the brain. Now, I did learn my lesson this time. I did the clinical study before writing the book. You write a couple of books, they're not easy to do. The first book, it's back there on the shelf behind me is 250 pages. The second book was 350 pages.

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All those hours. So I have done two and a half years of clinical research, and I'm just wrapping that up now.

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Now, my original thought was that you had this high stress childhood, and 100% of the women who I worked with did, but let's understand, they were middle aged women responding to me. We use the round number, 1980, and they were raised in the thirties and forties, where everybody sat at the table, the dad went to work, the mom stayed home. It was a different culture than it is today. And obesity from 1980 back was about 10% of the population, steady. It was a steady state.

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Around 1980, it started exploding. And I wasn't even aware, because I was in 1980 at the time. So you didn't see the explosion. The american culture was different than it is today.

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What we've seen since is just to put this to bed is not only now in my research, and I've interviewed over a thousand people, is the aces, a c E s, which is a study on childhood stress. It's about how much stress you have, which are the results. And in the ACES study, which, by the way, started off as a study on obesity, they turned out that, yeah, that was where it started, was in Kaiser Permanetti hospital system, in California. They were looking at, why are people obese? And so it has since grown to a whole thing on childhood, but the original work was on obesity. They found that about 49% of the obese population, in thousands of people, I forget the number, had stress, meaning 51% did not. They had a normal, reasonable childhood. So it's not just me saying this, and in my work dealing with adults, it has become absolutely clear. People with a delightful childhood can be obese. Well, we know that childhood trauma is not a prerequisite for obesity, as is proved by the studies you discussed previously.

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But it can exacerbate already existing circumstances, correct? Absolutely. Absolutely.

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100%? Yes. Generally speaking, there's a trend.

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There's always exceptions. But generally speaking, the people who are the most obese and struggle the most with it. So the person who's 450 pounds, the person who has been obese since late childhood, early adolescence, they come from that combination of love while eating, even Mary. High love, maybe from a grandparent lived in, and high stress from the parent. So it's love while eating, high stress normally, that's the combination that makes it the most powerful for adulthood. Absolutely, yes. And what percentage of those obese people are obese for medical reasons?

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Very few. What percentage would you say that is. When you say medical? Let's take away the part that you have a medical problem because of your obesity. Understand that the question you're asking is you're obese because of a medical issue. Less than 5%, maybe two or 3% at most. That's interesting.

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Yeah, it's very rare. So we can just say, you know, for an easy number, 98% of the obese people in the world are there because of the emotional compulsion to eat. Now, that includes all of what we typically think of as medical problems. My hormones, my genetics, etcetera.

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No, those are propensity, but they're not the root cause. Do they add to the problem? Yes, they do.

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But they're not the root cause of. So a loving and supportive home environment can inadvertently contribute to obesity.

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Absolutely. It can create it? Yes. Yes. It can be the root cause.

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Absolutely. Using food. I can dive into that, but I'll let you ask the question. No. Using food as love and acceptance, which I would say many grandparents are guilty of because we're trying to make up for something. Well, it's in our culture. You go to the pediatrician and you get vaccine shots. And what does the nurse give you on the way out?

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Oh, you're such a good little girl. Here's a lollipop. And so it's everything bad. It's one is reward, which says you're loved and you're okay. You're, you know, you're a delightful person. And it's sugar. Now, I'm not a dietitian, but let's say sugar is a bad thing. And so you're giving the child the message that when you eat, you're acceptable. Come home from a bad day in school, etcetera, and we could dive into school, which is creating more obesity. How can we change emotional patterns of eating as grandparents? As grandparents, the easy thing is, first of all, let's understand what it is. And this is going to sound like I can just feel the grandmothers say, no, I don't want to do this.

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No, you're a mean, mean granddad. I'm not understand, this is tough love, but from a place, from the heart. And that is, first of all, stop giving reward with food. Come on in.

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I'll give you a cupcake, you clean the house, here's a cookie, what have you.

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Stop doing that. That's just the easy one.

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For some people, it's easy. The other thing is, though, make eating time consistent.

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What I mean by that, because it's just easier to control. Make eating time a meal time, and sit down together.

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At least don't have the child eat while they're watching tv or eat while they're gaming or eat while they're on their phone, because all of those things are entertainment. So I'm eating while I'm entertained.

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And that's patterning, that very same pattern. I'm safe, I'm accepted, I'm loved, even though it's not by a person, it's by my technology, my screen time. But I'm all of those things while I'm eating. And that's patterning that for the rest of their life, they will eat a normal meal and go and watch tv at night or watch a movie and binge eat all night long. So it makes that connection. So bring your eating time. And I mean all eating. We don't need to eat all day long. We need to eat every once in a while, whatever your understanding of nutrition is. So two meals, three meals a day, that's plenty. You don't need snacks in the middle, but if there are snacks in the middle, don't allow them to be free time and love time. So let's go back to the meal, introduce some level of positive stress. That's the part that I know, like, I can feel the grandmothers going, no. What do you mean? Well, most of us who grew up, I'm a grandparent, so I'm the same age as your audience. Most of us grew up when we had to have manners at the table. So get your elbows off the table, set up straight, close your mouth while you're eating. Wait, I'm speaking.

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You don't interrupt. You know, kids don't interrupt parents. You know, these kinds of things were the minimum of my generation, and there's a certain stress with that. That's the minimum you might consider as a grandparent. You're thinking, you know, I'm going to be the best parent I can be. As we were speaking off camera, you were talking about how the grandparents who are parenting really want to leave a legacy of positive parenting for these children. So one of the things is, how do I help them in school? How do I help them in all of life? Language drills is another. And these are what happened at school today. What could you do that would have been better? What did you do that you're not happy with? What did you do that you are happy with? Just kind of holding the child accountable for their behavior through the day.

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Now, after dinner, you know, you're away from the table, grab them up and hug them and love them and carry on and let them know how much you really, really enjoy the them. But not while they're eating.

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The message is, I love you fully. Absolutely.

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But while you're eating, there's going to be just little bit of stress, loving stress, but it's going to be stress. So they don't associate. I am a good person while eating. That's what goes on in the brain. And when I say goes on in the brain, let's understand this developmental, and it's in a very, very specific part of the brain called the amygdala, and that's in the limbic system. And I won't go deep into that science, but it's unique. This is where the patterning sets up during childhood, that then we are driven by those patterns throughout the rest of our life. What about the kids? I love that advice, and I'm definitely going to have to change a few things, but it makes absolute sense to me, and that's why I want to talk with people like you. What about the opposite, where I have two children that were deprived of food. They had to get food for themselves. They had to get food from the refrigerator.

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It was cold. They never had greens or vegetables at all until I got them. My granddaughter was five and my grandson was three.

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How can we talk about beyond choices of food, root causes of obesity that can come from the opposite.

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Being starved and then having to change into a normal eating situation or a normal situation in a family where you sit down to dinner. What do you have to say about that?

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That's a great, great question. I've never had it put to me quite that way. So let me answer. There's two questions that come in. One is we see children who've had the opposite, who had stress while eating.

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A young boy who, his father was a monster, and he didn't know if he was going to get hit, slapped, cussed at, or praised when he was sitting at the table. And it was a family where they sat at the table. He had to be there. And that was the only time of the day he had to be there because he could do chores, he could do homework. He was at school. So he's free. Except now as an adult, this guy could not gain weight. He's the kind of person that, when stressed, loses weight. Think of long term stress, like a divorce or a sick parent or a sick child. That's that long term grinding stress.

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Those people lose weight instead of gain weight.

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So you have a child who's kind of facing that the consistency of a safe, reliable environment while they're eating is at their young age is going to be enough. If they are sneaking food, let them know that that is not acceptable.

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Let them know that at the table they can have as much food as they want and that they can eat as long as they're hungry, but make it tied to their hunger. For example, the child will want more food on the plate. This is fear before they finish eating what they have. And there's a fine line here. Let's say you've put three types of foods on the plate. You've got potatoes and vegetables and meat.

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And the child doesn't like potatoes or that's their favorite. Doesn't matter which way it goes, but they don't like the green vegetable that you've given them. So they eat all of their potatoes and eat all of their meat, and they say, can I have some more? You don't have to make them eat the green vegetable or the squash or whatever it is. Go ahead and give them more, but don't give them more potatoes or meat if those are their favorites, until they have finished what they have. So you're training them to know there's always, always, always they can rely on it, that there's enough food and they can have as much as they want while at the dinner table but they don't get to hoard it, they don't get to hide it. Now, if that persists and goes forward, then you've got a patterned trauma, which is the equivalent, even at this age, of PTSD. So you're going to have to deal with that independently of the other part. So I go back to Havening, which we can talk about a little bit here. My work in Havening is unique. I use it as a methodology, but it was designed and developed for trauma and for PTSD or lower level trauma, and it is the most effective. Now, I mentioned EMDr earlier, and EMDR is accepted by the American Psychiatric association. It's got all the bona fides, but it's like comparing a 1960s Chevy to a 2024 mercedes. It does the job. It's transportation, it gets there. It's just clunky and not as efficient and not as effective, but it does the job. Havening is extremely friendly user. User friendly. I'm sorry I said that backwards. User friendly.

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So you. You'll have to look into that for the trauma, the associated trauma. So you may have where the child has been fearful of nothing eating. You have something that's locked in. That's a trauma. Try just giving them support while.

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And don't, don't shy away from having them. Table manners. Don't shy away from the other things. But it's the absolute security of food, which is different than security while eating. I know it's a finite, maybe nuanced difference there, but it is a difference. Security of food is different than acceptance while eating. That makes absolute sense to me, and I would hope so to my listeners. And if it's not clear, listeners, please feel free to write in to have any of these questions clarified.

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I know that jason would be happy to answer them. Tell us a little bit about havening and the work you're doing with it. Havening. We get into the brain here a little bit, so please excuse me as I go off on a little bit of technical stuff in the amygdala. That's the part of the brain and think of as an army sentry at the arm at the front gate and who goes there kind of a thing.

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Well, we have three brains in the brain itself, and it's much, much more complex than that. But basically you have the thinking brain and that's all the cortices. We hear about the frontal cortex, and you'll hear about the emotional brain. That's the limbic system. And then most of us heard about the fight flight part of the response. And, well, that's in this back, back deep part of the brain that's called the reptilian brain. And the limbic system builds the emotions. That's where our emotional memory is. And there's several pieces in that part of the brain. Well, the amygdala is the part that its job is to keep you safe. And it operates at one fourth the speed that your brain does. So these are nanoseconds, but we'll just bring it down. Let's say it takes a second for the brain to process us. It's faster, but let's call it a second. It takes a second for the brain, the thinking brain, to see what it sees and recognize it. But the amygdala sees what it sees and responds to it in one quarter of a second. So you walk around the corner and there's a hose or a rope laying on the ground. Oh, it's just a hose. Well, that part is from the amygdala snake. You know, that's that response. Its job is to have you jump back.

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Its job is to see, hey, there is something dangerous coming here, and you've got to do that. Well, so anything that is dangerous, the amygdala interprets it as, I need to have a response to get away from that danger. It could be the bus coming down the wrong side. It could be the saber toothed tiger. It could be the snake.

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And it turns out that humans have very few things that we bring forward birth, but a large percentage of us are afraid of snakes, creepy, crawly, slithery things, snakes and spiders. So havening addresses that part of the brain. Now, what happens is that when you pattern something, and the patterning that works with trauma or with developmental stuff, and I'm experimental in the developmental side. I'm the only person that's working on this. So let's understand that I'm out on a theoretical limb here, but the other part about the trauma and the brain is well established science. So what happens is, right now, you and I are talking and you're thinking, and your audience is listening to us, and they're thinking. And what's going on in the brain is you have what we call the neuron, and that's throughout the whole brain.

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And so a neuron has a molecule shooting down that nerve. So think of my arm and my hand as a neuron, but we've all seen pictures of these things. So inside there's this molecule going down, and it is being pushed by electricity. So it gets to the end of the neuron and it has to jump across a gap, and that's called the synapse. And when it jumps across, there is no door or window for that to go through. So I'm going to change my view to the hand. And so it's just a smooth surface. And for that molecule to get inside of the new neuron so it can go on down, it has to open up door, well, there is no door. So what the synapse does is it pulls up a portal, think of it as just a little physical portal, and it pulls one up that matches that molecule and then the molecule goes in, it goes on down, and then that portal is released, it physically goes away, either floats off back into the brain or back down inside the neuron. That's the normal. And that's happening over and over and over and over. That same neural pathway gets used over and over for many, many, many different unique thoughts. So let's call that a naive pathway. It's new, it's fresh, it can take anything, except when it becomes patterned, gets locked in. And that's what we have is that little portal, that little window gets weld it in. Now the welding, as it turns out, the really brilliant, geeky brain guys, they know that that gets locked in with little proteins, proteins will get in there and they'll lock that in and it's there for life. It's there, it's just there. Now it can be removed, because if you activate that pathway, you're thinking about that situation, whether it's trauma or in my case, childhood, you're thinking, you bring that up and you're thinking about it, it's on your mind right now. That means you've got energy and molecules going down that highway. It's, I think of that highway is like an older highway, you know, two or four lane highway across the desert. It has to just think of the desert not as your brain, but the desert, and you've got these little washes, water washes. Every few miles there's a wash and there's a little small bridge. You don't even notice it most of the time, you just zoom in across the bridge. Well, that's because those portals are there. You have a highway, it's a pathway in the brain. So what havening does, first of all, you bring the thought up. So the brain is thinking about that pathway is activated. So you're driving down that highway and then it introduces delta wave. Now, EmdR does this by moving the eyes left and right while the head is still. So they have lights that blinken and your eyes will click back and forth.

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And it turns out when you move your eyes laterally back and forth, it creates delta wave in the brain. For your listeners who are not familiar with that, brainwaves come in different waves, and we are right now probably in beta.

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That's our standard kind of normal thing. Go to beta, alpha, and then theta. Theta is where you're asleep or falling asleep. It's the meditation, you know, that's what you're striving for in meditation, that real calm mind. And you go to sleep and you're in theta. But then below that, when you're in deep, deep, deep sleep, not, not your dreaming sleep, but that real deep sleep, and you go into that three or four times a night, that's delta wave, and that's the slowest brain wave. Now, when you go into the extreme high panic, imagine the swimmer who's off in the deep water can't swim, they're in that panic, and that is this really, really, really rapid.

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That's the highest wave. Well, that's the trauma and that's where that encoding happens. So it's where those little things happen. Well, you bring in the delta by either MDR, moving your eyes back and forth, or with havening, which is really cool, you stimulate the skin on the forehead using, you know, just using your fingers, hands, or the skin above the cheekbones, under the eyes, palms of the hands or the sides of the arm, and that creates delta wave. Now that's science, by the way. This is not woo woo. This is science. We know this. It was done in a brain lab at a university, so we know that we stimulate that and it's 90 times more delta wave than normal. When you stimulate the face, it's up to 30 times. When you do the hand or the arm, when you increase that delta in the brain, it brings up salt, some kind of a salt. It dissolves those proteins and the proteins then release the portal and it goes away. Now that's the technical stuff. I'm sorry to go, but it's science. Is what it is important to explain. So relate that to how you can work with eating issues briefly, yes. Now understand that this work that I'm doing is with adults who already have the compulsion to eat. They were raised in that environment that you and I are talking about. They were raised where food was security, and it could simply, could be as naive or as simple as. They always ate in front of the tv. Mom left them food, they were last key kid. Mom left them food, but they ate in front of the tv, every head.

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We know that basically patterns are developed at the age of nine. By the age of nine, yes. So if you have a child in their early teens or preteens that has eating issues, this is a technique that could be used with them. Yes, absolutely, yes, yes. And I've only worked with adults. I've not worked with teenagers, but I'm going to go way, way out on the limb and say, hypothetically, absolutely, yes. Yeah. This is the technique, and it's the only technique. By the time they're age twelve, the brain is done. You know, you go through the operational stuff. What you do here is you start the havening process. You create the delta wave, whether it's the havening or the EmDr eye movement. So you create the delta wave.

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And you do that by saying, remember a time when you were eating and it was fun?

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For example, when you were five years old and you were going to grandma's house for Christmas dinner, tell me that story. And you have the child or the teenager say, oh, yeah, I was seven years old and we were in the car and I was so excited. And you keep focusing on the emotions. Well, how did you feel? How did you feel? So the memory initiates that, but now we're in the feeling place. How do you feel? And I'm sitting next to my favorite aunt and she's holding my hand. Great, how do you feel? So she's telling this emotional, I feel so comfortable. I can always talk to her. So this emotional part is going on. That pathway is all lit up in the brain. And at the same time, you're doing this well, then you're doing the havening. So you're creating delta wave while you're telling the story. So how did you feel? Oh, my aunt was holding my hand and grandpa was saying grace, and everybody around us was quiet. And you could just feel the love. And I felt so secure and loved, and I feel safe. I feel safe. I feel safe. And so even in a good environment, this is a special time right now. You can bring it, dial it back down and say, for the overeater, for the person who was made to clean their plate, that's stress. But they were good when they ate. Okay, so you're already full. You're at the end of the plate, but your mom is going to make you eat, or your dad's going to make you eat the rest of it.

00:36:59.255 --> 00:37:02.768
You don't want to. How do you feel? I feel full. I feel uncomfortable.

00:37:02.903 --> 00:37:10.199
And when I finished, I am a good kid. I feel safe now. I'm good. I'm happy.

00:37:10.820 --> 00:37:56.380
Got it done. I got it done. I ate all that food. So you take whatever the situation is that's unique to that child or was unique to that child. Now you're talking about a teenager and you put them through that, that process, and it's not going to happen in one session, by the way, in my experience, it takes between twelve and 24 sessions. The goal of that process then is to open these new pathways for changing the way in which they feel when they eat. Yes, that's a well phrased thing. The goal is to become. This just says it differently, but to become a natural eater.

00:37:56.960 --> 00:38:33.360
So earlier I said we have people who are stressed, they overeat, they're compulsive overeaters. But you talked about the person who was once dressed as an adult. They lose their appetite, they lose weight. You would work differently with that person than you would with the ovary. Absolutely. Yes. Very, very differently. Yeah. But think about even in today's society, where 30% of the population is normal weight, historically it was 70%, 80, 90%. When stressed, they respond to the stress. They may come home and fight with the spouse, kick the dog and slam doors, but they eat dinner just normally.

00:38:33.940 --> 00:38:52.139
Stress does not impact their eating. They're what we call a normal eater, a natural eater. They eat naturally. They eat until they're full and they go away. Now, we all have social friends. There's always that one person who is just naturally thin, not skinny, but naturally thin.

00:38:52.260 --> 00:38:59.079
And you go out and they leave half the food. They go are. This is so good. Don't you want. No, I'm just full. I just don't want any.

00:38:59.989 --> 00:39:31.659
That's the goal. It's the freedom from the compulsion we're giving them. Freedom from the compulsion to eat past being full or to eat when they're not hungry. The weight loss is a secondary issue. It's the compulsive eating. So when stressed, they don't turn to eating for solace or for comfort. That's the bottom line goal, because then once they lose the weight, it's gone. It doesn't come back.

00:39:32.159 --> 00:39:53.059
Yes. So our goal here is to create natural eaters. That's why a little bit of stress while eating. It's not just all love while you're eating. And the things that we are rewarded for throughout childhood are the things that we will do compulsively. Interesting.

00:39:54.789 --> 00:40:02.085
The information you have on havening is that in a book form at this. Point, there's actually an association.

00:40:02.157 --> 00:40:22.981
Havening.org and there's quite a bit of stuff on YouTube. There's a woman named doctor Kate Truett, T r u I t t, who's exceptionally good and current. She posts on a regular basis. She's a psychologist and brain researcher and a havaner. And she's done a lot of work. She's done a lot of good stuff.

00:40:23.085 --> 00:40:36.653
You can look her stuff up and get a real good understanding of it. I do not suggest that people do it as a diy project. I've got an 85% success rate. Compare that to a 3% success rate with weight loss.

00:40:36.742 --> 00:40:47.610
95% of people who put their money down, weight watchers or psychotherapy, whatever, lose the weight. When I said 3%. Yeah, wait a minute. I know people lost weight. I've lost weight.

00:40:47.789 --> 00:40:57.909
Yes. 95% of people lose the weight, but 97% of those gain it back. Within 18 months, I'm having an 85% success rate.

00:40:58.929 --> 00:41:17.360
People are not struggling because they become the natural leader. So if you have a teenager, that's the process, really, you need to contact me. And I don't mean to be selling myself on this, it's that I'm the researcher in the havening community that's doing work with havening on obesity.

00:41:17.820 --> 00:41:21.364
So. But to research it, check out havening. Absolutely.

00:41:21.492 --> 00:41:35.947
It's online, it's available and I assume, interesting. And I'm looking forward to reading more about it. And we can find your website where. The website is, never gain the weight back.com.

00:41:36.123 --> 00:42:07.559
i'm at the point where I'm now coming out of the research phase and actually working with clients. Fabulous. So just to recap, we talked about stress in childhood and solace while eating can be an instigator for obesity in childhood and to help reduce that issue, to make eating time consistent, don't let kids eat while watching tv or tablets, and to introduce positive stress during mealtime.

00:42:08.880 --> 00:42:11.539
Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

00:42:12.440 --> 00:42:19.539
I do have some questions from listeners that I'd like to ask you if you don't mind answering them.

00:42:20.840 --> 00:43:34.664
Be delighted to. Tracy Lynn Tickle says, if you have the space and time, I like to think that gardening helps children learn a good path to healthy eating. Teaching them how to grow food also helps let them feel like they're part of what's for dinner. What do you think about that? I think it's excellent. Absolutely. It is an excellent thing. When we eat today, food just automatically shows up. We don't know where it comes from and the responsibility it takes to have food. So by having a kid in the garden it shows that one, patience. They have to spend time, plant it, prepare all that. And then there's a discipline that transcends motivation. Motivation lasts for a moment. Discipline lasts for the duration. So you have to go out and pull the weeds, at least you have to go out and water teaches the child that the food on the table is a process. And then it's easy at that point to bring that same kind of parenting to the table. So you bring the thing and show how proud you are of the child. That's the good, that's the love. And now you can honor the food, honor our work by having good manners. So you tie it in. So.

00:43:34.751 --> 00:43:49.936
Absolutely. Also, we haven't talked about diet or hormones or those things. The root cause of obesity is how we raise our children. Not diet, not hormones, not metabolism, but all of those things matter.

00:43:50.047 --> 00:44:12.460
They all count. They're all feedback. I won't go into the science, but just say that, yes, if you can recognize what's on your food and it doesn't come in a box, and if you turn the box over and look at the back and can't pronounce the ingredients, that's not food. That's a food like substance. And so if you're bringing food out of the garden, absolutely.

00:44:12.579 --> 00:44:27.000
You are setting the child up for healthy eating, which is going to take care of that other feedback issue for diet. If you can recognize the food, an apple's an apple, a pop tart, and not so much.

00:44:27.670 --> 00:44:50.050
And just a real quick aside, here on diet, you'll find obesity, even morbid obesity, in all diets. Go to the health food store, you'll see a morbidly obese person go to a vegetarian restaurant. You'll see morbidly obese people go to the greasy spoon, and you'll see morbidly obese people go to fast food.

00:44:50.590 --> 00:45:43.327
And it's the same population, percentage wise, everywhere you go. And this was true back in 1980 as true today. So by teaching your kids to eat out of the garden, you're giving them good health. The other part is about that compulsion to eat. Donna Rose says, I'm also raising four. Second oldest was three years old at the time and came to me with food insecurities. That was nine years ago with consistency and involvement, letting him help cook dinner as close to the same time as possible. And always as a family, if food is eaten, it has to be eaten at the table, as a rule. So a snack time and mealtime draws us all together. Oh, my goodness. Can I have those words and put them in my book, that's perfect. So good on her. Absolutely sharing the responsibility.

00:45:43.503 --> 00:45:46.911
And when we look at that, just break it apart a little bit.

00:45:47.016 --> 00:46:15.849
That responsibility of preparing the food, that adds a little bit of stress. While loved, but a little bit of stress, you're responsible for the meal. Linda Graham says our problem with eating was just the opposite from overeating. He, her grandchild, would never eat. He would actually go three days with no food, only drink water. I took him to the doctor several times. The doctor says he'll eat when he gets hungry.

00:46:15.969 --> 00:46:58.659
He was so skinny that I discovered something that he really liked, hamburgers. So every night he would just eat a plain cheeseburger. No lettuce, nothing. I told the doctor about it. He said, that's fine, but told her, you have to put a piece of lettuce on there. Well, that didn't work at all. She said, seven years later, he's still eating cheeseburgers, but he'll eat spaghetti, too. He'll eat shrimp and steak, and that's pretty much it. He's never sick, though he does have migraines, but his stomach is fine. His blood work comes back fine. So that's what we eat. We will have a vegetable. She's talking about herself and her husband. We'll have a vegetable and a salad for dinner, but he won't eat it. Maybe he'll eat new things someday, she says. What's your response to that?

00:47:00.079 --> 00:47:07.496
Well, the doctor was absolutely right, mostly. Don't worry about it. He will eat when he's hungry, and he will eat just fine.

00:47:07.608 --> 00:47:22.543
Now, this is a bit of an aside, but if you pay attention to what's going on in the world of diethyde, not my area of expertise, but I really stay with it. There's a strong movement, newer, it's only four or five years old, of carnivore.

00:47:22.632 --> 00:47:51.579
When I say carnivore, that doesn't mean the person who has steak on their plate with their veggies. It means the person who eats only meat. There are societies that we know that are carnivore. The Inuit up in Alaska and the Maasai. The maasai in Africa. The maasai are those tall, beautiful, really thin, muscular people. And they live off of their cattle. They eat the milk, the blood and the meat.

00:47:52.079 --> 00:48:02.739
Zero. Veggies, I mean, zero. They have no plants. And the Inuit, even in the spring when they have some berries and stuff, they don't eat them. And they live on seal and whale blubber.

00:48:03.719 --> 00:48:29.079
It's evidently perfectly healthy. And I've seen cases of people who've eaten nothing. Americans, you know, ranchers, that kind of thing, who, men and women who have had just meat for 40 years, and they're very healthy, their blood work is great. So, yeah, first of all, trying to push him to eat something is just going to stress him. The diet seems to be like, it's okay, let him do that.

00:48:29.820 --> 00:48:58.608
There does seem to be some connection with migraines and carbohydrates. So if he's eating a hamburger with the bun or he's eating pizza or the spaghetti even, which is carbohydrates, and I'm tying that to the ketogenic diet, not the carnivore diet. The carnivore diet is ketogenic, but the ketogenic diet is one that really brings a low carb. You're eating vegetables, you're eating all kinds of things, but they're the low carb vegetables above ground.

00:48:58.704 --> 00:49:13.650
So potatoes and non starchy. So you're not eating rice is the non starchy kind of vegetables. Interesting. So you're saying if she keto friendly bun or a pasta that was gluten. Free, according to what I've heard.

00:49:13.690 --> 00:49:42.956
Now, I'm not a nutritionist, I can't really say, but that would make sense. Interesting. Debbie Welling says, I'd love to hear your thoughts on obesity. My grandson turned twelve in May and has been with us almost five and a half years. He will not eat healthy food. Just caught him this year to eat lettuce on a burger or sandwich. Just made the switch last month to sourdough bread. He loves it, but mealtime has been such a war. He's overweight and I worry about him.

00:49:43.108 --> 00:50:12.489
Doctor has not been worried at all. He says from twelve to 15, he'll continue to get taller and it'll equal out. He struggles at sports, so I'm at a loss right now. That's a very nuanced and complex situation. First of all, the bad food, the bad diet. If he's eating junk food, that is a feedback. Absolutely. And the high carbs and the high processed food is a multiple level feedback.

00:50:12.869 --> 00:50:16.717
He's overweight because he is compulsively eating.

00:50:16.893 --> 00:50:45.590
So think of it this way. We see you're at the convenience store, you're pumping your own gas, and somebody walks out at the door and they are a walking toothpick, but they've got a coke in one hand and a bag of chips in the other hand, and you know they're going to eat and drink that as they drive away. So they're a sugar addict. Addiction is different than compulsion. But they're a sugar addict and, and they're eating nothing but processed carbs. Well, but they're skinny. Why? Because they under eat.

00:50:45.670 --> 00:53:21.485
They don't eat a lot. So when somebody eats junk food, it's not the junk food that causes it, it's the compulsion to eat too much. Since the child is now twelve, you're going to need to look forward to doing a havening kind of process to re pattern that part of the brain, the amygdala. Just look for our use, let's say the subconscious brain and it's got to be repatterned. It's too late because that brain is solidly formed. The research done on the brain development is really solid, is old, is well, well known that brains done. So you're dealing with two things. One, you're dealing with junk food and you're dealing with overeating. So don't try to force the overeating. You're not going to win that. You're just going to create stress. And the more stress you create, the more the overeating is the response and it is subconscious, meaning it's not something the child can do deal with the quality of food. Well, unfortunately, you're moving into adolescence and the adolescent brain is the place where the child now, because of all of the development, all the stuff that they did as a kid, now they have to try it out and they naturally must rebel against the parent. That's every parent thinks, pod people, somebody came from outer space, took my beautiful little kid away. But that's just a battle you're going to have to deal with and I'm sorry, at this time you're going to switch your process. You're going to make food or eating a friendlier time, not a stressful time, make food a friendlier time and engage them. Talk to them. Talk to them. But make dinner the place or breakfast the place. You don't have control at school, but make breakfast together if you can sit with them while they eat or you eat together and make it a how's your day? You know what's going on and be genuinely interested in their conversation so they see that while I'm eating I am safe and I don't have stress here. So you've switched because the brain has switched and so now you're going to talk to them and be engaged with them. It's not so much free from any kind of thinking or stress, but it's reliable engagement that will bring down that rebellion. That makes sense. And that's where you introduce good foods. Say, hey, I made your, your favorite. I've got bacon and eggs, or I've got, you know, whatever they like. And, yeah. So that would.

00:53:21.518 --> 00:53:32.255
And try to wean them from the need to rebel and have fast foods. And back to the other lady just very quickly. Her boy loves hamburgers.

00:53:32.407 --> 00:53:39.847
Well, what's fast food but hamburgers make healthy hamburgers and feed them to him, right? Yeah, don't worry about the lettuce.

00:53:39.903 --> 00:53:43.751
Right. Delias Delis.

00:53:43.815 --> 00:54:40.016
I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Says, I'm currently navigating the waters of feeding my 20 month old granddaughter. She came to us courtesy of DSS as failure to thrive plus other medical issues. This is diverse appetite as well as a healthy weight. So I'm hoping I can replicate this many years later. My granddaughter, my husband and I have primary custody, eats everything I offered her. She's not reacted badly to ground nuts, tree nuts, seafood, or shellfish. Her only food issues are cow's milk and rice flour. Both are intolerances not classified as allergies causing diaper rash. We have kept her mostly sugar free, except for a lollipop that she got post shots at the pediatrician at our last visit. Boy, did that. Yeah, did that change her. She was wild on the way home and exhausted when we took her out of the car 30 minutes later.

00:54:40.168 --> 00:55:08.809
Our household eats fresh food cooked from scratch. But it's exhausting to come up with menus that suit everyone all day, every day. I think I can feed her everything we eat, but I'm always on edge that she's going to develop food issues. In addition, I'd like to mention that we don't drink sodas. We only have desserts, rarely. Also, due to an excellent pediatrician, a wonderful nutritionist, and me being the bottle warden, we had her out of failure to thrive in five months time.

00:55:10.429 --> 00:55:43.335
First of all, congratulations. That's amazing. And congratulations to all of the grandparents that are coming in with wisdom and knowledge and understanding and just good old fashioned common sense. That's a story that warms my heart. Doing the right things. If rice and milk are a problem, don't do it. Don't do it. That's okay. You might, if you, for your personal reasons, think, well, you know, milk has things in it that we should give them. Use cultured milk products.

00:55:43.527 --> 00:56:25.480
So yogurt, kefir, you know, kefir to drink yogurt to eat, snack on hard cheese and hard cheese, not soft cheese and the reason for that, those cultured products, the process of making them, the bacteria, the enzymes eat the sugar. The lactose os is being sugar. Fructose, sucrose. You know, ol lactose is a sugar, and so that's what the bacteria eats while it's turning the milk into yogurt or into kefir. So try that. Give it a shot. If it doesn't work, then back away. The child will thrive without milk products and without rice.

00:56:25.980 --> 00:56:33.195
So you're doing everything right. Just add this thing that we've talked about as she's eating. Don't make it the joyful time.

00:56:33.307 --> 00:56:47.918
And your pediatrician. Yeah, good for her. But whoever the nurse was that gave him that lollipop, oops, that's the wrong message. 100%. Alicia Fowler says, I always have a bowl of fresh fruit available instead of sugar based snacks or chips. First of all, that's good.

00:56:47.974 --> 00:57:20.793
That's wise. We know that fruit's much, much better. Understand that the body recognizes sugar as glucose. So whatever the sugar is, it doesn't matter if it's what we call natural sugar or a carbohydrate, which is nothing but a bunch of sugars hooked together. The body breaks down the table sugar, the natural sugar, the honey, the fruit, or carbohydrates or processed carbohydrates. It processes all of that into glucose.

00:57:20.842 --> 00:58:08.436
It's glucose that enters the bloodstream that has your kid bouncing all around. So now, if you can bring it in a natural form, such as fruit, that's great, because it's slowly introduced, because the digestion process brings it in slower. So excellent, wonderful that you don't get the sugar spike, and therefore the insulin spike that is so unhealthy. Again, the body recognizes all sugars the same because turns it into the same thing. Now, as far as the eating process, having fruit is a great idea. You might want to lean towards the less sugary fruits. So go to the green apples, not the ripe banana. Mango is a real high sugary fruit.

00:58:08.588 --> 00:58:19.643
Pineapple has a lot of sugar in it. So kind of think about, is this a real sugary fruit? Because you're clearly looking towards, how do I give my grandchild healthy food?

00:58:19.811 --> 00:58:30.599
Well, you'll find that that whole process of digestion with, let's say, green apple, that's going to go slow. They're not going to get the sugar spikes that you're trying to avoid.

00:58:31.099 --> 00:58:34.827
Do not, do not. Can I say it a third time?

00:58:34.923 --> 00:59:00.594
Do not make a smoothie with that apple. Whether it's a red apple, a green apple or a banana or anything but an avocado. Don't make a smoothie with it, because with apple sauce or banana sauce or whatever is like just going ahead and injecting the sugar right in the vein of it's a thousand percent more. I'm making up a number, but just for impact, it's 1000% more sugar.

00:59:00.722 --> 00:59:15.074
Spiking to eat the applesauce from the same apple, the same batch off the same tree as it is to eat the apple. So you're defeating your purpose by processing that in the blender. So don't make, don't make fruit smoothies.

00:59:15.161 --> 00:59:29.326
Good to know. Michelle Dinallo Rohrabog says, one of mine suffers from food insecurity. At first, he would take away more food than he would eat. So I fixed his plate and let him know he could have seconds.

00:59:29.438 --> 01:00:38.510
Before he's even finished eating, he will ask if he can have more. It's an ongoing thing we're working on. Yeah, we talked about that earlier. Yes. Again, don't make him clean the plate. If he eats the things that he likes the most, then he gets seconds and never say no. Now, this is preteen, so if he's still growing, and that will help your insecurity stuff. Now here there may be trauma, and you may be dealing with a traumatic situation which caused the food's insecurities, and you may need to go into a havening process, and you don't need me for that. If you have a child with food insecurities, you're really dealing with a trauma situation. For that, you can go into havening.org. look for practitioners close to you. Talk to them, read their profiles. It's worldwide organization, so if you're in the states, there's somebody pretty close to you. Most likely, yeah. Tabitha Spears Nichols said the same thing. She's dealing with the same thing. So the therapy and the psychological work that needs to be done behind the food anxiety is what needs to be dealt with.

01:00:39.340 --> 01:00:53.480
Danielle Peck says, as a young mother to my biological children, all I knew was to follow the example my own mother had set when I was a child. Clean your plate. As a result, I have two overweight adult children who have struggled with weight since childhood.

01:00:53.820 --> 01:01:18.969
This time around, I've learned a thing or two, and I pray that it pays off. When our grandkids first came to live with us full time, their eating habits were horrible. There were four things they'd eat. Corn dogs, pizza rolls, chicken nuggets, and sugary cereal. That's it. We now have them eating almost anything with lots of fruits and veggies, whole grains, meats, etcetera. No more over processed junk food.

01:01:19.550 --> 01:01:34.010
They are not made to clean their plates. And when they're full, they're full, and that's fine. They are both at a healthy weight and growing well. They don't get soda, food coloring, or high fructose corn syrup. Their teeth are strong and cavity free.

01:01:35.110 --> 01:01:42.150
Well, on a diet side, again, I'm not the nutritionist, but, oh, my goodness, this is wonderful news that she's doing everything right.

01:01:42.190 --> 01:01:45.329
Yes. On the clean your plate. Yes.

01:01:45.630 --> 01:01:53.141
Just being told you have to clean your plate. There are starving children somewhere in the world. That alone is sufficient. I was raised on that.

01:01:53.166 --> 01:02:40.286
And at the beginning of the conversation, I said I was obese. I've been obese twice, meeting the medical requirement, which is one third above my normal weight under protracted, high stress periods. I got all the way up to obese. Even though I understood it was a compulsion making me eat, I couldn't control it. I got it, but I didn't know what to do about it, and I wound up being obese and then gradually got down to where I was just simply overweight, carrying 30, 40 pounds for decades. So I came from a place where I had to clean my plate. I was a good kid if I did. She's absolutely right. So it sounds like she's doing everything. I would just add the other piece, make sure that the table is not just love, you know, positive love, just positive.

01:02:40.398 --> 01:02:43.806
There's some requirement for the child to be engaged.

01:02:43.958 --> 01:02:47.597
Talk to me. Tell me what's going on. Don't just tell stories. Talk to me.

01:02:47.653 --> 01:02:54.170
And did you do a good job there? What can you do to improve the kind of things that really good parenting does?

01:02:55.719 --> 01:03:10.791
That's wonderful, Jason. This has been such an entertaining interview. I really enjoyed it very much and learned a lot. I'm sure the listeners did as well. So thank you for bringing all of your expertise and research to the table, so to speak.

01:03:10.936 --> 01:03:18.456
Oh, you're so very welcome. Thanks for having me. This was a real treat to get to talk to somebody whose life experience similar to mine.

01:03:18.568 --> 01:03:25.376
We're older. I'm a grandparent, too, and so, yeah, it's been a treat to be here. Thank you. You're welcome. And as you said, we're changing lives.

01:03:25.447 --> 01:03:32.559
Bye. Introducing this to them at a young age. Thank you. Yep, you're welcome.

01:03:33.300 --> 01:03:47.235
I have to add that meeting Jason Stanley was truly inspiring. His insights on obesity and the importance. Of integrating healthy stressors into our mealtime really made me reflect on our family's dinner routines.

01:03:47.387 --> 01:04:01.693
So after our conversation, I felt inspired. To make a change in our home. I decided that before we dive into our digital devices at dinner that each. Of us, my husband included, have to answer three simple questions.

01:04:01.862 --> 01:04:13.210
First, we share what's on our minds with what's your mood right now. Next, we celebrate the good moments of our day with what's something good that happened to you today?

01:04:13.590 --> 01:04:31.429
And lastly, to ignite our imaginations, we. Ask, if you could be any kind. Of superhero today, what would you be? We began implementing these changes this last week, and so far, everyone is having fun with this simple way to express themselves at dinnertime.

01:04:32.010 --> 01:05:09.242
One day I forgot and my five year old grandson said, grandma, grandma, you forgot to ask three questions. I believe that fun and playful changes can have a powerful impact and learning can truly happen at any age. It's a fun and engaging way for our family to connect, reflect, and enjoy our time together, all while fostering healthier habits that could prevent addictive issues like overeating in the future. So here's to making small but meaningful changes together. Thanks so much for joining us today for another episode of grandparents raising grandchildren.

01:05:09.396 --> 01:05:20.489
Nurturing through adversity, I encourage you to share your challenges and your successes with us. Your story is undoubtedly one someone else needs to hear.

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You can submit your stories to the links provided in the podcast information. Your contributions will enrich upcoming conversations, creating a more supportive community in which we can learn and grow together. If you enjoyed this show, please share. It with a friend that needs to hear. And if you love the show and you're listening on a broadcasting platform like Apple or Spotify, just scroll down in your app and please leave us a review. In a world where tens of thousands of children are confined in youth prisons daily, denied the vital education and mental health support they desperately need, many find themselves trapped in in a cycle of reoffending upon release. But there is hope. Join us as we dive into the inspiring journey of Sonny von Cleveland, who spent 18 years behind bars but emerged not as a product of his past, but as a champion for change.

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As the founder and CEO of the Vaughn Cleveland foundation, he is dedicated to breaking the chains of recidivism, offering invaluable resources that empower individuals to reclaim their lives.

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Discover how Sunny's innovative empowerment package is changing lives by providing reformed convicts with essential job skills, fostering forgiveness, and supporting accountability.

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You are not the sum of your mistakes, and your life is not over, sunny boldly proclaims, igniting a message of hope and renewal that resonates deeply within all. Tune in for a compelling conversation that seeks to shed light on the path to redemption and the impact of second chances.

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Join us next week. You won't want to miss it.

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Together we can find strength and hope in the face of adversity. Peace be with you.

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And I pray that you find some time this week to listen to your inner wisdom amongst the noise and the pandemonium of this world.