99 Tips to Reset the Table

As a parent, orchestrating a healthy family environment around food and eating is never easy. Our children regularly encounter societal messages of what and how to eat to make their bodies thin, trim, slim, buff, strong or otherwise "ideal." Add unhealthy foods and you've got a recipe for disaster. The tips in this book provide parental tools to encourage eating that's healthy and fun, enhancing the pleasure of family life when it comes to food, eating, and body image. Everyone is bombarded with pressures to eat (or not eat) in ways that have nothing to do with simple hunger. And as parents we sometimes feel trapped in an impossible bind: Kids need to eat, but how do we go about feeding them nutritious food in a healthy manner without moving to an all-organic farm? News reports on the perils of obesity in children, coupled with worries about eating disorders and uncertainties about how to avoid body image problems and low self-esteem, seem inescapable. Such issues are uncovered daily in the celebrities our daughters and sons admire as they follow stories on television, in the movies, and in social media. We are coerced by social and cultural forces to adjust our eating in a manner that's inconsistent with our own biology. Instead of eating because it's instinctive--according to a built-in desire designed by nature--we eat to achieve goals that have nothing to do with eating at all. This book is about bringing a voice of balance, trust and joy to your entire life--not just the kitchen or dinning room. You'll learn how to develop a family lifestyle that promotes healthy and nutritious eating, encourages a positive body image, and supports parental responses that are beneficial to the psychological well-being of your children. Like the injections the pediatrician gave your children when they were babies, these tips will help inoculate your children against future challenges with eating, food and body image.