When your picky teen announces she is heating “healthy”

[Anonymous]

What does that mean?

This is the kid who rejected all “healthy” foods for years. No bread that might have seeds or nuts in it, no vegetables, no fruit.

Just try again with the Whole Foods and see what takes? She just picked white bread off her sandwich (something she would only eat for years) with disdain and chastised me for daring to pollute her body with such garbage.

Lol.

[Anonymous]

Op here. “Eating healthy” obviously. Extra “h” snuck into the headline.

[Anonymous]

Just go with it - great news for positive peer pressure. Get her some good food!

[Anonymous]

Have her make the shopping list. I would love this.

[Anonymous]

OK, so let her make her own sandwich. Or whatever. She's perfectly capable of walking to the kitchen, getting a thing and eating it. I assume there are some acceptably healthy foods there, point the way and let her have at it. Also, tell her that you won't tolerate rudeness.

[Anonymous]

Just be careful - TRUE healthy eating is great. But there are a lot of people who use the term as a cover for an eating disorder. As long as she's eating sufficient nutrients and calories, it sounds like a good thing. But be watchful it doesn't devolve into an obsessive disorder.

[Anonymous]

This sounds like a child with control issues. If you educate her right, and it seems as if you have, she will decide to be controlling in a reasonably healthy direction (food, exercise, lifestyle, whatever).

The risk is that she'll go overboard with anything she tries to control. Monitor that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OK, so let her make her own sandwich. Or whatever. She's perfectly capable of walking to the kitchen, getting a thing and eating it. I assume there are some acceptably healthy foods there, point the way and let her have at it. Also, tell her that you won't tolerate rudeness.

Op here. I was exaggerating. She wasn’t actually rude to me. I just think it’s funny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just be careful - TRUE healthy eating is great. But there are a lot of people who use the term as a cover for an eating disorder. As long as she's eating sufficient nutrients and calories, it sounds like a good thing. But be watchful it doesn't devolve into an obsessive disorder.

I am sensitive to that. Her weight is proportional to her height.

If anything she was disordered before only eating garbage.

[Anonymous]

I did this when I was trying to lose weight and wanted my parents to support it.

[Anonymous]

I would be happy about it. I'd encourage her to show me where she is getting educated on what is healthy and what is not to make sure she's not falling into fad dieting. I'd be happy for the whole house to eat more healthily. I'd encourage her to start cooking some healthy meals for us. I'd be all over this.

[Anonymous]

Please be careful and keep a watchful eye. My D claimed this and it turned into an eating disorder very quickly. She is now in recovery and we had to re-educate her on what her body actually needed for HER to be healthy and its the opposite of what the media and everyone else claims to be healthy. Not saying this is the case with your D, but just make sure she's still all the foods she was eating before, especially the so called unhealthy ones.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like maybe she's made some new friends this school year who are influencing her. Possibly more conscious of their weight, or maybe somebody commented on her junky lunches?

I'd help her find some books that will give her good, solid advice. If you don't know where she's getting her ideas of "healthy," or what her motivation really is, you don't know what kind of dangerous fads she might be picking up. Cutting out over-processed white bread is certainly a good start no matter what her motivation is, but there are lots of over-restrictive eating plans out there that wouldn't be appropriate for a teenage girl.

[Anonymous]

Lucky you... my picky eater was at the ped...

ped: Do you eat fruit and veggies
son: no
ped: why not
son: I thought I just don't like them but i realize they make my throat tingle, is that normal.
ped: no that is an allergy

So it only took me 16 years to find out he is allergic to certain raw fruit... I google it because I didn't even believe it.

So I have been force feeding my kid stuff he is allergic to... and the parenting award goes to....NOT me.

[Anonymous]

Normal for today's teen and today's food culture. All girls are doing it, as long as it doesn't spiral into some eating disorder. My DD did the same, she still eats healthily, a kid that ate white rice and pasta with nothing on for years. DS, 20, eats and cooks his own brown rice, eats Ezekiel's bread, but with Nutella! Anyway, enjoy it, it is a good thing.