Too Much

My 6-year-old daughter takes after me in many ways. She's passionate. She's easily distracted. She loves to read. She gets lost in the television show she's watching. She loves to talk. And she can't stop thinking about food.

Sophie asks me for a snack about every 5 minutes throughout the day. She asks me for a snack before breakfast. Mere moments after lunch. Before, at and after snack time each afternoon. She's in the kitchen while dinner is being made, asking what she can eat. I get so frustrated! I tell her to go play, go color, go read, go do anything to get her mind off food. But today she said, "I can't! Can you do something else when your tummy wants food?"

I have struggled with food my whole life. I don't eat unhealthy food (for the most part, at least). It's about portion control for me. Healthy food is healthy, but too much healthy food is still too much! Now I'm watching my daughter walk down the same path. She's a kid, so of course she wants the Easter candy in the cupboard. But she's just as happy to eat an apple or a slice of mango. She loves lots of different veggies or a handful of Pirate's Booty. I'm proud that she likes healthy food. It took me well past the age of six to get there myself. I once told her she could eat some carrots and she took the bag and ate every single one. I buy expensive organic snacks and she will down them in one bite and ask for another. On the one had, I'm thrilled that she picks an apple over a hydrogenated fruit snack, but because the food is expensive it's hard for me to give her more. I see the dollar signs floating out of her mouth as she chews!

And because of my own body issues, I'm hyper aware of everything she eats. I don't want her to struggle with food like I do, but I'm worried that the constant battle between her and I is going to lead to just that. I don't want her to be hungry all the time, but I don't want her to overeat either. If she's like me (and I believe that she is) she doesn't know when she's full, so once she starts eating, stopping takes effort. At six she doesn't understand that. For goodness sake, I'm almost 34 and I can barely stop myself once I've started!

So how do I find the balance? How do I make sure she's getting enough, but not too much? I have tried to rationalize it by declaring that she's a kid and kids like to eat, but her brother isn't like that. He almost never asks for a snack and more often than not he doesn't finish what he gets and hands the rest to Sophie. He will eat as much as he wants and stop. He doesn't seem to have food on his mind all the time. Barely ever, for that matter.

I'm also worried about teaching Sophie it's okay to eat every time she's "hungry." I know that she's hungry when she's truly hungry, but she's also hungry when she's bored. Countless times a day I find myself looking in the cupboard, then the refridgerator, then the cupboard again (as if there's something new since I checked 30 seconds prior). I'm starting to see Sophie do the same thing. She'll walk into the kitchen and just stare into the fridge.

Sophie is beautiful, healthy, active and fit. But I was that way as a young kid, too. I'm so fearful that she will hit her teens, puberty, and everything will change. She'll put on the weight, feel badly about herself, rely on food to feel better, and create that horrible cycle. The cycle that I'm still fighting every day. I want her to grow up with a positive body image, something that I have never had, but I'm terrified that in my efforts to help her avoid repeating my mistakes I'm pushing her head first into starting them.