Children and Intermittent Fasting

paperpudding

callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »

being FORCED to? absolutely not. regardless of their age. i typically did not eat breakfast in high school. i simply did not want it. was a normal weight. even as an adult I rarely eat it.

if an older child/teen is using it as a way to help lose weight (and needs to) and is otherwise eating enough then ... okay (so long as school work/ energy levels are not suffering as a result of not eating in the morning)

My insistence on children eating breakfast ( 'Forcing' them if you want, like I forced them to go to school) had nothing to do with weight.

My kids were all active and healthy weight anyway - but more to do with concentration and the link between academic success and breakfast eating.

which I know is multi faceted but still a link worth acting on IMO

4legsRbetterthan2

pancakerunner wrote: »

Do you think parents should let their kids practice IF? I'm not sure where I stand on this tbh.

How old are the kids? What is the goal, are they overweight? You pose a pretty vague question here.

So far (my son is about to turn 4 and at a healthy weight) I just kind of let him follow his own body ques and make sure to guide him towards a balanced diet. I'm ok with treats sometimes for fun, if he is actually hungry he needs to eat a more balanced meal.

He tends to not want to eat first thing in the morning and I don't push it. IME there is just no making a toddler/young kid who isn't hungry eat so it's not worth the battle. (I really feel for parents struggling with underweight kids who won't eat!) Most weekend days he won't eat anything until lunch so it is sort of an 8 hour eating window for him. It's not enforced IF but I don't fight it either.

I'm not sure about using IF research from adults to apply to children. In the medication world they caution against viewing kids and "small adults", for example there are many medications unsafe for kids, it's not as simple as just dosing lower based on their smaller weight, they don't always metabolize things the same way either. I imagine that also applies to diet. Add in the variables of growth spurts and it gets to be a very muddy picture.

ythannah

wunderkindking wrote: »

This gave me flashbacks to being forced to eat breakfast when I was a kid, and how awful it felt and was. I wasn't hungry. It made me nauseated on the bus. It created conflict with my parents where there didn't need to be any.

So basically, I think kids shouldn't be forced to eat. But I also think that kids should not be encouraged to have any real major restrictions in food quantity or timing and it shouldn't be a battleground.

This was me once puberty hit. My parents pushed the issue of eating breakfast only once. It came back up fairly quickly and I ruined a new pair of shoes in the process. I was just glad I was still at home and not puking in front of everyone at school. My parents both worked and my mother sure wasn't interested in losing a day of work to stay home with a sick kid so that was the end of breakfast. I haven't eaten it since. Academically I was a top student, not that anyone cared back in the 70s whether a child ate breakfast or not.

My parents were really lax about lunch too. They were pretty happy once I got to high school because there was a cafeteria so they could just give me money for lunch, buy their own lunches at their work cafeteria, and no one had to pack lunches any more. Naturally I bought the cheapest junk available so I could save my lunch money for more important things.

I don't have children so it's purely a theoretical exercise for me but, because of my own experience, I couldn't see myself insisting that a child ate breakfast if they really didn't want to have any. The only thing I remember being a rule at meals (and one I would probably enforce also) is that a decent portion of vegetables was eaten. I was allowed to dislike (and not eat) food, but I had to at least try it first. I really couldn't see myself exerting much control over a child's preference in eating patterns unless weight was an issue one way or the other.

Speakeasy76

I just learned that our children will probably be the first generation that will not outlive their parents, and that's extremely depressing to me as a parent. Yes, obesity is a problem that is on the rise in all age categories, so I think we do need to take not only our health but our kids' health seriously as well. However, I don't see any reason why IF should be the way to do it. We need to be teaching our kids how to make better choices overall, giving them less junk, to get more active (preferably outside) and learn to listen to their hunger/fullness cues from a young age. I say this as a parent of a 10 and 12-year old, who admittedly has not done a fantastic job, but I'm not done yet.

My 10-year old daughter (a bit heavier) will sometimes not feel like eating when it's breakfast, dinner or whatever. So, she is "fasting." However, if she's not hungry or doesn't feel like eating, I don't force her to. I do tell her that I worry if she doesn't eat before school she may get tired and hungry, but lately she's been eating breakfast. When they're at school, it's not like they can just eat as soon as they get hungry, and I KNOW she gets hangry.