Alison Curtis: 'I'm lucky I've always had a healthy relationship with food'

Alison Curtis wonders how to make sure her daughter enjoys her food and doesn't see it as something to be monitored

Alison Curtis 

Throughout my life I have to say I am fortunate and grateful to have had a healthy relationship with food. I haven’t tried any traditional diets. I have been a vegetarian since I was 14 and pretty much let my appetite and taste dictate what I eat.

I am also very lucky that I do crave foods that are viewed as “good” foods. I don’t crave a lot of sugar but if I do I will have something sweet. In the past few years, one thing I have been continually conscious of is limiting the amount of dairy or cheese I have and looking at the fats I am digesting because I have elevated cholesterol.

I however do not live in a bubble and despite considering myself very balanced in my approach to food, I have gone through periods of feeling not happy with my body or my size. When this happens I first look to becoming more active then I would limit my food intake — not necessarily what I am eating but focussing on the amount.

Since my daughter Joan was little I have tried to make sure she has access to an array of “good” foods on a daily basis. We allow treats and there have definitely been periods where she has probably had too many across a week.

I have also always tried to teach Joan to look at food as something to enjoy. I have stayed away from talking about food as being bad for her or that it is in anyway something to be counted, restricted, or heavily monitored.

Instead, I have tried to explain what superpowers foods can have. We have all told our kids carrots can help you have awesome vision but as she gets older I try to introduce her to information about why say potatoes are good for her and what carbohydrates can do for her energy. I am not going very scientific, because, a) I don’t want to bore her, and, b) I am not a nutritionist.

Similarly, when it comes to us talking about “bad” foods I try to make her understand that in moderation it is all OK but how these foods can impact her body.

I always acknowledge how tasty jellies, chocolate, or sweets can be but at the same time, I really want her to see them as a luxury and not a staple.

I don’t want her to ever approach food as something that needs to be limited. So those days when it seems like our kids are bottomless pits (which they are as they are growing) I make sure there are lots of extras around that will fill her up but in a good way.

I would be lying if I didn’t say that I don’t get frustrated by the fact that at the moment she is more limited in what she likes. Her go-tos for fruit has really shrunk and she has gone off a lot of meats that she once enjoyed.

But I can’t fight her on this or it will just make things worse. I have to keep encouraging her to try new things and make sure I have lots of the “good” things that she does like stocked up in the kitchen.

GOING further with this, I want to make sure that there are times across the week whereby we can enjoy making food together to get her to really learn to see that here is something to enjoy and to take pride in making food. I think this helps build a good relationship with food for children and hopefully put them on a path far away from calorie counting and fad diets.

I can’t predict how Joan will be when she is older all I can do for now is ensure our conversations around food are positive and balanced.