496-Trad Wife, Diet Culture and Kids Generational Trauma with Dr. Whitney Casares

How is tradwife culture connected to diet culture?

Tradwife culture and diet culture are two separate movements that teach women the same lesson: be smaller. Tradwife culture promotes a narrow traditional role in which a woman stays home, serves her husband and does not want more. Diet culture asks her to shrink her body. Both are expressions of the same patriarchal system of power, and both keep women focused on fitting a standard instead of on their own lives.

The link shows up clearly in food. In tradwife content, cooking and controlling food become proof of being a good wife and mother. The meal itself is not the problem. The intention is. Cooking because you enjoy it is very different from cooking because you believe your worth depends on it. Women raised in this culture are often also taught that keeping a partner depends on staying thin, which ties body size directly to a woman’s value.

Both cultures are passed down through families. Mothers who dieted often hand their daughters the same fear of weight gain, sometimes through words and often through looks, habits and the food rules in the home. Puberty is a common flashpoint, because children’s bodies normally grow wider before they grow taller. A parent shaped by diet culture can read normal growth as a problem.

Breaking the pattern starts with parents noticing their own beliefs about bodies, eating the same food as their children, choosing movement for enjoyment rather than punishment, and keeping weight talk out of the home. On It’s Beyond The Food episode 496, pediatrician Dr. Whitney Casares and non-diet nutritionist Stephanie Dodier discuss how this works in real families.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Stephanie: Welcome to It’s Beyond the Food podcast, my sister. I’m your host, Stephanie Dodier, and today we have an interview that is going to talk about a lot of new stuff to our podcast: trad wife, generational trauma, and body image for kids. And to have this conversation, we have Whitney Casares, medical doctor, pediatrician, board-certified pediatrician with the AAP, which we’re gonna talk about, and, uh, author as well.

[00:00:27] Stephanie: And she’s gonna talk to us about her book. So welcome to the podcast, Whitney.

[00:00:30] Whitney Casares: Thank you for having me

[00:00:33] Stephanie: Uh, Whitney is one of the few people who pitched me. I get about 25 pitch a week for my podcast, and she made it through that.

[00:00:41] Whitney Casares: Wife is so lucky.

[00:00:42] Stephanie: I know. It’s because you put the right keyword into the subject line, and one of them is the, the trad wife culture. And I’m so interested to have this conversation, particularly in the context of breaking generational trauma and generational, um, culture around body and weight. But I wanna start at the top.

[00:01:08] Stephanie: For those of you or people listening that have never wor- heard the word trad wife culture, what is your definition of it?

[00:01:16] Whitney Casares: Yeah. L- let me give you a loose definition. I’m sure you wouldn’t find this in the dictionary, but my definition is a culture that promotes women being very traditional. They’re the homemaker. They aren’t working outside of the home. Their, um, job is to raise the children barefoot and then, like, keep on, like, you know, working in the home, um, to not have aspirations outside of that, and also really to kind of serve at the whim of their husband.

[00:01:47] Whitney Casares: And I’m gonna say husband because I feel like tradwife culture is very much about heterosexual normative, uh, relationships. It doesn’t kind of speak to anything that’s beyond, and, and I almost even think of it, this is not what anyone would have as a definition, but I, I think of it as, like, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, like, you know,

[00:02:07] Stephanie: The image we see

[00:02:09] Whitney Casares: this is

[00:02:09] Stephanie: in Instagram, right?

[00:02:10] Whitney Casares: head of a tradwife.

[00:02:14] Stephanie: Where it’s an interesting conversation for you and me, and particularly you as the person to speak about it, is that you were raised in a very traditional, one could say trad wife culture back in the days, conservative environment. So you grew up under the umbrella almost of that culture, and you have a completely different perspective now

[00:02:36] Whitney Casares: absolutely. So I did not grow up in a Little House on the Prairie home. You know, my, my mom had a job. She, she worked outside of the home. But my mom very much and raised us to believe that we… Well, I, my, my… I have a, a, a brother, so d- I’m the only girl in the family. I was the only girl in the family. She raised me to believe that part of my role in life was to find a man, keep a man, and to serve a man, to make sure that I kept him happy, point that on the night before I got married, my mom turned and said to me, “You look so beautiful.” Of course, I had lost a bunch of weight before my wedding in very unhealthy ways that I d- would not recommend to anyone. she goes, “You look so beautiful,” which further just, like, imprinted that in my mind that this was the standard, and then said, “You have to keep looking this way if you want him to stay interested in you, and if you want to keep him.” And that’s part of this kind of Christian culture that’s out there about, like, um, you need to almost, like, be the adulteress that he might go looking for, be the, like, mistress he might go looking for so that he doesn’t need to look outside of the home. But it added to this culture that my mom had already built unwittingly, she didn’t try to, but unwittingly around bodies and kind of control and, and that you had to perform, in terms of your appearance, in a certain way in order to be acceptable. And for sure in my family culture, that meant you should never get fat. You should never be even slightly large if you wanted to be acceptable for your partner, your male partner

[00:04:30] Stephanie: And that was two things. That was y- your mother’s words of wisdom before the wedding, which is an important woman- moment in a woman’s life.

[00:04:39] Whitney Casares: Wisdom in air quotes, right?

[00:04:41] Stephanie: well then, but for her, that was the ultimate wisdom she was partaking with her daughter getting married. Like, that was, for her, evidently was very important, and it set the tone for you to behave in a certain way around your body because of that wisdom.

[00:04:57] Stephanie: So I’m curious, when does the awakening comes in?

[00:05:02] Whitney Casares: Yes. I went on to go to medical school, which, um, again, my parents were totally fine with that. It wasn’t so traditional in my family that I wasn’t supposed to work outside the home. But I went on to go to medical school, and in medical school kind of further reinforced that. You know, they talked about, “Okay, if you, like, eat, uh, you know, 10% more calories or, or keep on…”

[00:05:27] Whitney Casares: Sorry. “If you keep on taking in the same amount of calories, every 10 years you’re going to increase your size, so you better control what you’re eating. Your metabolism gonna, is gonna change, and so you’re the person that’s, that’s responsible for controlling that.” And then I got out of medical school and started being in practice, and then I had my own kids. And after I had my own kids, my body started changing in ways that I could not control any longer. You know, like I gained weight. I, I tried all of the diets. I did all the things to try to control, and it didn’t, it didn’t work. And I also think, you know, my relationship with my husband changed. I was a successful businesswoman.

[00:06:15] Whitney Casares: I started my own business, Modern Mommy Doc, where I was teaching other women how to take care of themselves as they had kids. I had several books that I’d written. I was traveling. I was speaking. And I, I started just being like, “What is this rhetoric around I am supposed to look and appear a certain way in order to keep this man? Are you kidding me right now? I am way more successful and badass with my husband. How dare that be the standard by which I should be judged if he’s gonna stay with me? He should stay with me because I’m amazing, not because of my appearance.” And so I really started to question that for myself.

[00:06:53] Whitney Casares: And then I had my kids, who grew up, two girls. And my daughter, she went through puberty. She started to change, and kind of all these things that were from my past from my mom, it’s like they were still little messages that

[00:07:08] Stephanie: Yep

[00:07:10] Whitney Casares: I had to start really confronting that and saying, like, “What do I want for my own kids, and what are these, like, generational things that have been passed down to me that I don’t even realize are there?” That thing my mom said on my wedding night, of course I remember that. That was front and center in my mind. But there are a lot of other messages and things that she passed down that I wish she hadn’t and that I wanted to be really intentional about not passing down to my daughters.

[00:07:36] Stephanie: And that’s what I find with a lot of my client. It’s their children that triggers the motivation

[00:07:43] Whitney Casares: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:44] Stephanie: to do the, quote, “work” to, like, like clean up their relationship to food and body. So you have a, a very typical story here,

[00:07:52] Whitney Casares: Yes

[00:07:52] Stephanie: that I think needs to be heard more than just me saying it, this is what the thing is.

[00:07:56] Stephanie: But that’s very motivational for women when they start seeing the pattern repeating

[00:08:02] Whitney Casares: Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, for sure. I think, you know, either something happens with your own child, they get bullied for their body, or you notice something in their body as they have a change in puberty. My daughter got fluffier. She got, you know, more curvy in puberty, and that really triggered kind of a fear in me, and I, and I realized, like, I think that was what my mom had.

[00:08:24] Whitney Casares: I think my mom had this fear of me being fat. And so when my daughter reached that same age and that little spark, it just came in my mind. I didn’t invite it in. It just came in. I had to confront that and say, “What is this?” I thought that I was not fat-phobic at all. I thought that I was like health at every size, and yet here I am going, “Oh, please don’t get big.

[00:08:47] Whitney Casares: Oh, please don’t get big,” you know? And so I had to then, yeah, dig a lot deeper than I had at that point to go, “No, know that I can fake it somewhat with my kids, but I don’t want to,” ’cause my kids are smart, and also, I want to live with my kids. I want them to have a mom who’s healthy ’cause I know that a mom that’s healthy is gonna ultimately help them to be healthier too

[00:09:14] Stephanie: Yeah. I, I’m gonna come back to your children’s story in just a minute, but I wanna cross the intersection of trad wife culture and diet culture because to me they’re two… Although they’re two distinct movements, there’s an intersection between them that I want people to clearly understand and see an application of how the two intersect

[00:09:38] Whitney Casares: Yes. Yeah, when started to confront my mind what my mom had said in a real way, I realized, you know, I’m a feminist. I consider myself a strong feminist. I call myself a feminist on my website. I write about it in my books. And really, wife culture is about making women smaller in their whole selves.

[00:10:03] Whitney Casares: It’s about I’m not supposed to work outside of the home because my role is supposed to be just this tiny little thing inside my home. I’m not supposed to be more expansive. I realize, you know, diet culture does the exact same thing. keeps us so that we are so focused on being small that we stay small ’cause we don’t have time to think about anything else. Like, if I think about the amount of time that I have spent in my prior life trying to fit into a certain size jean, um, you know, berating myself for the way that I looked, wishing I was a different size. Like, that brain space, I could’ve been solving world hunger. Like, I could’ve been, like, curing cancer.

[00:10:49] Whitney Casares: But instead, I’m, I’m making myself so tiny, and really, I think that’s the same patriarchy that’s talking. It’s patriarchy when it comes to trad wife culture, and it’s patriarchy that says I have to look a certain way for the male gaze, and in order to do that, I have to blind myself to all these other things that I could be really focusing on that are much more important

[00:11:19] Stephanie: Yeah. I’m gonna put it into another way. It’s, it’s not about… And this is where often when we talk about patriarchy, people, women say, “But it’s not all men.” I’m like, “No, it’s not about men, it’s about the system of power.”

[00:11:32] Whitney Casares: Yes

[00:11:33] Stephanie: And I want you, for people listening, I want you to think of trad wife culture as the problem is not feeding your family and wanting to make nice meal for your family, is the intention or the thought, in my world thought work, like the why you’re doing it.

[00:11:49] Stephanie: Are you doing it just because you wanna make a nice meal? Or you wanna do it because that’s the role you need to fulfill that you’ve been told to do? Am I thinking through this right?

[00:11:59] Whitney Casares: I think that’s absolutely right that, um, I mean, that’s the truth for almost every single thing that we do, right? Like, what’s the intention behind it? And the intention behind trad wife culture for women is like, “Here is this box I’m supposed to fit in. I have to fit in this box, and if I don’t fit in this box, then I’m not a good wife.

[00:12:18] Whitney Casares: I’m not a good mom. So if I don’t create the good meal every single time, I’m not a good wife, I’m not a good mom.” As opposed to, “I found this recipe online. It looks really delicious to me, and I wanna make it for me and for my family because that

[00:12:31] Stephanie: Yes

[00:12:31] Whitney Casares: celebratory, and I think it’ll be amazing for us,” right?

[00:12:34] Whitney Casares: Like, that’s such a different feeling. That’s such a different intention

[00:12:39] Stephanie: And it’s a different outcome

[00:12:41] Whitney Casares: Yes. Oh, completely different outcome. And it, it, one creates resentment, I think, you

[00:12:45] Stephanie: Yes

[00:12:47] Whitney Casares: it or not. Um, like I think most trad wives would say like, “I don’t have any resentment. I love this.” But I, I, I don’t buy that for one second. I think that you’re always resentful if you’re not allowed to be the full expression of who you are

[00:13:00] Stephanie: Yeah. Well, I saw someone, one of my colleague who does a feminist other coaching, she posted something to say, “Guys, take a moment to notice that you don’t see any 50-year-old tradwife.”

[00:13:14] Whitney Casares: Yes

[00:13:15] Stephanie: tradwife we’re seeing in society trying to promote this Christian lifestyle is all 20 to 30 years old.

[00:13:25] Stephanie: Because as women grow wiser and older, they understand the system behind tradwifing, and there’s no 50-year-old tradwife out there proclaiming that this is the way to be. So I just want people to think about that.

[00:13:39] Whitney Casares: that’s true. Although I will say I have

[00:13:41] Stephanie: Yeah

[00:13:42] Whitney Casares: friends from college, because I was still in that

[00:13:46] Stephanie: Yep

[00:13:48] Whitney Casares: actually until I got to medical school. And you know, the thing that broke me out was that I was in medical school and my husband worked at, um, Williams Sonoma, the people next door that worked at Pottery Barn were these like fabulous gay men that were a couple, and they both worked at Pottery Barn. And they invited us to a party at their house, like a Christmas party at their house, and we went, and my husband and I for the very first time go, “Oh, these are normal people.” I mean, can you imagine that? Like,

[00:14:17] Stephanie: I know,

[00:14:17] Whitney Casares: first time that we go, “Oh, these are like normal pe-” Like, “Oh, wow, maybe we need to expand our horizons.”

[00:14:23] Whitney Casares: Anyway, point is, in– And, and then of course now, like I’m, I feel like I’m like a fla- you know, flaming liberal, like completely have gone the opposite side, live in Portland, Oregon, very left. Um, in college, I mean, I had several friends that absolutely subscribed to that in college and that have continued on in that same vein. They stay at home. They cook. They clean. I’m no longer close friends with them because I just can’t… Like, I support them from a distance, but I cannot, uh, I cannot, uh, in like a relationship with them without feeling totally inauthentic. Because

[00:15:03] Stephanie: yeah

[00:15:03] Whitney Casares: not allowed to, you know, in their family system, I’m not a- I would not be allowed to say, “I think this is wrong.”

[00:15:11] Stephanie: And, and you, you grow out of common points too. When you have a career outside of house, you like speak, write books, it, the, the other, the other part, the other group is not wrong, there’s just like so little in common to discuss at a friend gathering, right? There’s just… You gotta search very far deep to find something to talk about because you just don’t have anything in common.

[00:15:33] Stephanie: And it’s not about making them bad, they’re just different life.

[00:15:37] Whitney Casares: exactly

[00:15:38] Stephanie: Um, what’s also very interesting when we talk about tradwife culture, it’s very much in conservative circle, whereby the limited perspective, because your example of Williams-Sonoma is very explicit of what conservative is. You stay in the same circle exposed to the same ideology, so you ne- you never go outside the parameter of what could be different.

[00:16:04] Whitney Casares: Exactly.

[00:16:05] Stephanie: I the correct read on conservative lifestyle?

[00:16:08] Whitney Casares: and you think, “Oh, this is the way that everybody else lives, and if they don’t live this way, then they must be, uh, really wrong.” Um, there’s a book called The Evangalist, uh, Ex-

[00:16:20] Stephanie: Yeah

[00:16:20] Whitney Casares: and, um, uh, have you heard of that book or read that

[00:16:22] Stephanie: I’ve sa- I’ve heard about it from some guests

[00:16:25] Whitney Casares: Oh, that book was amazing.

[00:16:27] Whitney Casares: It was so eye-opening to me. I, I read it and a friend of mine who also grew up in the same culture read it, who, who now is similar to me, has a full career, and, um, and we both were just going like, “Oh my gosh, we thought things were so normal,” and they weren’t. And I- and you’re right. To that point, it’s because you’re living in this small community and you’re not seeing other people kind of for the reality of their lives.

[00:16:53] Stephanie: And also when, and that happens also when we talk about body gen- we’ll talk about generational trauma around body, is often when you live in that mom has dieted, mom has watched her weight the whole time, you come up in that bubble, you think the whole world is like that

[00:17:14] Whitney Casares: Yes. You think everything is like that. I mean, um, mom, bless her heart, like now I have so much compassion for her because, like, how, how terrible to live your life so obsessed with your weight. But we had, um, pictures that she would cut out from magazines, and they were taped to our refrigerator. Um, she had the Special K cereal, and she did the grapefruit diet and all of that.

[00:17:41] Whitney Casares: Like, I know that this didn’t come from a place, the things she told me, from a place of mean or trying to be harsh. It came from a place of love because clearly she had struggled with this her whole life as well

[00:17:57] Stephanie: Yeah. And so let’s talk about generational trauma. I call it, in my world, the generational trauma of dieting, but it’s much broader. It includes body shame. But that layer where your mom did the right thing, like she in her mind was doing the right thing by teaching you how to diet and telling you to be mindful of your weight for your husband, and that passes on from generation to generation, and that’s what we call generational trauma.

[00:18:27] Whitney Casares: Yes

[00:18:28] Stephanie: And that’s what you broke with your daughter

[00:18:30] Whitney Casares: Yes. I mean, um, yeah, I’m really proud of this one story with my, with my kiddo. Uh, we went to the New York, you know, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and she wanted to go. We were on a trip. We were going to see Broadway shows and that type of thing, and she goes, “I wanna go to The Met. There’s one specific statue that I wanna go see.” And, um, and I go, “Okay,” you know. So we go. I’m excited she just wants to go to an art gallery or an art museum. That’s cool, you know? She’s, she was like 12 at the time. And, um, and we go to, um, one particular area, and there is a statue of, um, of the goddess of love, the Greek goddess of love and of beauty. And if you’ve ever been to The Met and you see it, this, this woman has so many curves.

[00:19:16] Whitney Casares: She has rolls. She has curves. And my daughter goes, “Look, Mom, is what the Greeks thought were absolutely beautiful, and this looks exactly like me.” And I thought like, “Oh my gosh, how amazing.” Like it gave me chills. The, the hair is still standing up on, on my arm right now. To have my child who came out of this be at a place where she could say that to me and she knew, first of all, that I wouldn’t answer back like, “No, that’s not beautiful,” you know? And also that she had l- she had taken on this identity for herself of I am beautiful. This is a representat- representation of me, and I am beautiful, and I am a bigger-bodied person. I loved it

[00:20:01] Stephanie: How old is your dau- how old is this… You have two girls, right?

[00:20:04] Whitney Casares: I have two girls. I have a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old. This is the one who’s 13 now, who has

[00:20:08] Stephanie: Okay.

[00:20:08] Whitney Casares: Yeah. So she kinda tells it like it is all the time.

[00:20:12] Stephanie: So take us back because you were talking earlier about the moment where you realized that you had thoughts like, like, “Please don’t gain weight. Please don’t gain weight.” What happened from the moment you realized you have these thoughts to now going to the meth and your daughter being in full acceptance state?

[00:20:29] Stephanie: Like, something must have happened between those two points

[00:20:32] Whitney Casares: absolutely. So, um, okay, so my daughter, she, she started to change. What happens in puberty is that your body grows out before it grows up in almost everyone.

[00:20:44] Stephanie: Oh, so repeat that please

[00:20:46] Whitney Casares: you are in puberty, your body grows wider before it grows taller. This is because your body needs that extra energy in your body in

[00:20:54] Stephanie: Yeah

[00:20:55] Whitney Casares: So this is a very normal thing that happens. However, for those of us that were entrenched in diet culture, it gives us just like the fear of God is in us when this happens with our children, because we go, “Oh no, you’re not a stick figure anymore.” It really is very scary. So that happened with my daughter. And had this thought of fear, but I also had another thought that I am not proud of, but that did flash in my mind of like, I looked at her like almost like, “Ugh, I don’t

[00:21:27] Stephanie: Discuss, yeah

[00:21:28] Whitney Casares: disgust. Like, “I don’t like your body.” And I caught that feeling, I saw it, like, for what it was, and I remembered I was the same age as she was when I first saw my mom look at me that same way and felt so much shame and so much, like, guilt for something that I had nothing to be guilty about, for shame for so- Like, I…

[00:21:55] Whitney Casares: It was just my body changing. My parents put me on a running program when I was 11, you know? And so this was around the same age that this was happening for my daughter. And it was just that realization of we were the same, and that I had an opportunity to be aware this internal programming in a way that my mom was never aware, and that I had a choice to make.

[00:22:19] Whitney Casares: Like, I could either carry it on and have it be the exact same way that it was for my f- my growing up, or I can make a conscious choice to say, “I need things to be different for my kids. I am going to do more work to figure out where are the places where I still hold unconscious bias. Where are the places where I’m still letting diet culture in to our family?

[00:22:44] Whitney Casares: What are the words that maybe I’m saying around my kids that I’m not realizing? Um, what are the places where I need to give myself more compassion? Um, and what are also some of the practices that I need to do consciously in front of my kids?” Like, I need to make a conscious choice that I’m not gonna have different food than my kids.

[00:23:03] Whitney Casares: Like, I’m, I’m gonna have the same food as my kids. I’m gonna make the conscious choice that I am gonna pick movement activities that feel good to me, not that are about punishment. and then I’m gonna talk about those things. I’m gonna go back to therapy, and I’m gonna talk with my own therapist about this.

[00:23:23] Whitney Casares: I actually did some, um… I always mess it up. It’s either EDMR or EMDR. I

[00:23:28] Stephanie: EMDR

[00:23:29] Whitney Casares: exactly. So I al- so I did that around this moment. Around this moment, I had a picture that I brought in to my therapist, and it was the exact same age as my daughter was at that age. And I talked to my little 10-year-old, 11-year-old self and didn’t put her on a running program, and instead told her, “You’re absolutely beautiful the way you are.

[00:23:52] Whitney Casares: Your body is changing exactly how it’s supposed to. Your worth is not dependent on the way you look.” I mean, I just really tried to re-parent myself in that moment so that I could be the better parent for my child, and that’s what

[00:24:05] Stephanie: You obviously did a lot of personal development work, right? Rewriting your belief system. But, and I- this is where I wanna bring your medical expertise out,

[00:24:17] Whitney Casares: Yes

[00:24:19] Stephanie: because not everybody will have the expertise that you have as a pediatrician to understand that children grow wide instead of tall first,

[00:24:31] Whitney Casares: Mm-hmm

[00:24:32] Stephanie: and they will be faced with medical provider people that will tell them, like, “There’s a problem.”

[00:24:39] Whitney Casares: Yes

[00:24:39] Stephanie: is a problem, and we need to do something about it.”

[00:24:43] Whitney Casares: Yes

[00:24:45] Stephanie: is the… Like you said, we grow wider before taller, but is the evidence, the science demonstrating that as well? Or is it just you saying an observation, a clinical observation?

[00:24:57] Whitney Casares: the evidence. This is the evidence. And actually, the eating disorder specialists in medicine

[00:25:02] Stephanie: Yep

[00:25:02] Whitney Casares: Talk about this specifically because it’s one of the things that they use to help families to prevent eating disorders or to combat eating disorders. So this is not just me. The other thing that we’ve done in the medical system is that we’ve made BMI the end-all be-all

[00:25:19] Stephanie: Yes

[00:25:19] Whitney Casares: really should not be.

[00:25:21] Whitney Casares: I’m sure you’ve talked about this on your show before,

[00:25:23] Stephanie: Oh yeah. Uh-huh

[00:25:24] Whitney Casares: you know, is your weight plus your height or, you know, in combination with your height for your gender and then with your age. It was developed based off white men. It does not take into consideration muscle mass. It does not take into consideration ethnicity, and it’s also not the best indicator of health just in general. There are some other measurements, health measurements, that we could be using, like central fat. You know, like, there are things like that that could be used. But also, even that is not the end-all be-all. I mean, you know, it’s really your blood pressure. It’s what’s happening with your mental health. It’s what’s your cardiovascular endurance.

[00:26:03] Whitney Casares: Um, what’s your ability– what’s your strength measurement? What’s your bone density? Um, I always tell people, you know, in medicine, we have made BMI the end-all be-all, but you can have a very skinny person who is completely unhealthy, and you could have a person who is technically overweight or obese who is extremely healthy. I do look as a pediatrician at wide swings that happen quickly in a child either direction. So BMI, that’s the only place that I use it for in my medical practice. And again, I wish I had a better indicator I could use in combination with other things, but I will use it especially when I’m looking for eating disorders. So if I’m– for a child is losing weight really rapidly, especially a child who is full-grown, a teenager who really shouldn’t be, that is something that I’m using as one of my indicators, and I might go on to get labs.

[00:26:57] Stephanie: Okay

[00:26:58] Whitney Casares: but really, uh, what I focus on for families, and I actually created a entire non-weight based guide for families to use with their pediatricians.

[00:27:06] Whitney Casares: It’s free on my website. Anyone can grab

[00:27:08] Stephanie: Okay

[00:27:10] Whitney Casares: Is what are the habits that you have? How are you feeling about your body? H- what’s your relationship with food like? What’s your– what do you guys do as a family for movement? Like, and I also put in there, like, here are some ways you can communicate with your doctor, your child’s doctor, ahead of time about what are your preferences for weighing in the office?

[00:27:28] Whitney Casares: What are the ways you want that person to communicate with you when your child is in the office? Do you wanna hear about, uh, lab stuff, or do you wanna see a growth chart? You know, most parents do not. I do not show people a growth chart in the office with kids present. I might show a parent that if they ask me about it, but generally speaking, I am not focused on growth charts at all, um, because I know that there are other measures of health that matter so much more.

[00:27:52] Whitney Casares: But you– this is something you could download, you could take to your pediatrician. I give it to my own patients Because to me, that’s like an indicator of you’re in a safe place. I wanna have these

[00:28:04] Stephanie: Yeah

[00:28:05] Whitney Casares: and I don’t want it to be around weight

[00:28:08] Stephanie: Okay, there’s so much to unpack. So I am not sure if you know my story, but some of my listener will know I was the 12-year-old. So I…

[00:28:17] Whitney Casares: Mm-hmm

[00:28:18] Stephanie: And for me, for some reason, my memories is some kind of a chart bell curve thing, and I remember vividly being told, like, “She’s now outside the curve. We need to do something.”

[00:28:28] Stephanie: And I, I went to Weight Watcher. So that for me started 25 years of dieting.

[00:28:34] Whitney Casares: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:35] Stephanie: So when I hear parents like you who witness their children probably getting like me, wider before taller, because interestingly enough, I took six inches in a year after that, right? I just stretched.

[00:28:48] Whitney Casares: Yes

[00:28:48] Stephanie: Um, you saved a life because, like, that’s literally…

[00:28:52] Stephanie: I didn’t have a life for 25 years. I was just focused on eating and my body and eating and my body. So good job, parent. You prevented a lot of suffering. Um, but what I’m interested in is that the, this curve thing, if it’s so… If it’s evidence-based, why then do we have parents who do have impose a conversation about the weight and being bigger than they should?

[00:29:24] Stephanie: So it’s not a known fact, or we are intentionally dismissing that in the medical field?

[00:29:33] Whitney Casares: You, why, why do

[00:29:34] Stephanie: Yeah.

[00:29:35] Whitney Casares: why, are

[00:29:35] Stephanie: Why is it still happening if it’s an, an evidence base that children grow wider before taller?

[00:29:42] Whitney Casares: Well, I think what’s happening in the medical field is that people are looking at, okay, we know that people grow wider before they grow taller, but they’re looking at are people crossing percentiles two

[00:29:54] Stephanie: Percentile

[00:29:56] Whitney Casares: Like, what’s happening there? also we have to remember that medicine and the evidence, like it is evidence-based in medicine, but of course, the evidence is always changing, and BMI was like considered– The evidence is changing as we get new information, right?

[00:30:12] Stephanie: Yeah

[00:30:13] Whitney Casares: BMI, 10, 15 years ago, no one questioned BMI at all. So it’s really as we are finding more evidence around like racism, as we’re find-finding more evidence, um, around like, oh,

[00:30:26] Stephanie: stigma

[00:30:27] Whitney Casares: like, oh, weight stigma, oh, around like, um, if we actually shame people about their body, it increases their inflammatory markers.

[00:30:35] Whitney Casares: Oh, if we tell kids to lose weight, it actually makes them gain weight. Like, oh, wow, shocker. All these things that we were saying like, “This is the way to help people be healthy,” we’re finding out more information about we maybe had like this much information, but now we’re getting this much information.

[00:30:51] Whitney Casares: And we’re also saying the risks of trying to make it so that a child is not overweight, we’re now causing like this much more harm. Like, like, okay, sure, it might make it so that their lipid level goes down by two points in the short term. in the long term, you’re gonna make it so that person has severe mental health problems.

[00:31:11] Whitney Casares: You’re gonna make it so that person has even higher inflammatory markers. Like, we have to be more careful because now we understand even more, we’re still learning, this is more nuanced than we thought that it was.

[00:31:24] Stephanie: Okay, so that’s gonna bring me into the point of contention about the AAP, which is your association,

[00:31:30] Whitney Casares: Yeah.

[00:31:32] Stephanie: American Association of Pediatricians. Is that correct? Did I s-

[00:31:35] Whitney Casares: American

[00:31:36] Stephanie: Okay.

[00:31:37] Whitney Casares: Yeah, almost.

[00:31:38] Stephanie: I have a bone to pick with those people. So when we look at the history around guidelines of care for children, if we go back to 2016, the, the policy or the recommendation was not to talk about weight and dieting because we were becoming aware, I’m assuming, of weight stigma and the consequence you’re just explaining.

[00:32:00] Stephanie: And then in 2023, they, the AAP, made a 180 shift where they started to recommend prescription of GLP-1, but also bariatric surgery for children as young as 12 years old. What is up with that?

[00:32:21] Whitney Casares: Okay, so let me

[00:32:22] Stephanie: It’s, disturbly, deeply disturbing to me.

[00:32:25] Whitney Casares: Of course. Yes. No, to me as well. Okay, so let, let me start by saying this. I believe that the American Academy of Pediatrics wants, their hearts, wants what’s best for children. I think that their goal is to have health for children. Um, I mean, they’re doing amazing work on vaccines right now.

[00:32:43] Whitney Casares: I think they do amazing work on safety, like prevention, things like that. Um, there’s a few things in terms of understanding how a policy is made at the AAP that are important to realize. First of all, they get like eighty billion people in a room. They get like the leaders of this, of that, of this, of the other, right?

[00:33:02] Whitney Casares: And they all come together, and they all have to have a consensus on what they’re doing. So you can imagine in that room, there’s lots of people who might have disagreements or whatnot, right? there’s that part. Um, my books that I’ve written with the American Academy of Pediatrics, it is– was the most painful procedure I have ever gone through, was to have– They have every single policy committee actually, like, review your book and say, you know, “Are we okay with what you’re putting out?”

[00:33:27] Whitney Casares: So it’s very, very interesting. And you’ll get people, like for example, in one of my books I put, um, you know, oat milk. You could have oat milk as an alternative if you aren’t into dairy milk. That could be something. And one person wrote back as a reviewer, um, like, “Oh man, this girl’s really drunk the Kool-Aid. She’s all about oat milk.” Like, what? No. Like, you know? Like, so it, it just– What I’m saying is that it’s a bureaucratic process and that there’s probably ego involved and that there’s probably different people who have competing interests that write these policies. I’m not saying that to excuse anything that they’ve written.

[00:34:02] Whitney Casares: I’m just saying that is the way that things

[00:34:04] Stephanie: That’s the politics behind the organization

[00:34:07] Whitney Casares: The organization. Um, that said, what I believe, and I’m not speaking for them as a spokesperson on this, but what I believe is that their goal in doing this was to try to get more resources around dieticians, around psychologists, around labs, around reimbursement for pediatricians, for people who are trying to care for patients, to g- I think that it was a bigger draw, that that’s what they were trying to do.

[00:34:40] Whitney Casares: That’s what I wanna believe that they were trying to do. The reason I think that is because when I look at the breastfeeding policy, that also changed, um, I think in 2022, something like that, where they started saying, “Actually, people should be breastfeeding for two years, not for one year.” For a very long time they said one year, and all of us go, “Are you kidding me right now?

[00:35:03] Whitney Casares: We can’t even get people to breastfeed for six months.” And also, yes, there’s evidence that breast milk is really good, but fed is best. You’re, you’re going the opposite direction of what we all think. Like, there’s no pa- But what I think the policy was trying to do was to get more support for lactation in the hospital, was to make it so hopefully we had more paid parental leave, right?

[00:35:25] Whitney Casares: So I think it was part of this, like, larger movement that they were trying to support. That’s all I can think of because since that policy has come out and they had such backlash,

[00:35:36] Stephanie: Yeah

[00:35:37] Whitney Casares: book, My One-of-a-Kind Body, they were totally fine with publishing a book that was for kids that said, “Your, your health is not determined by your size.” They were totally fine with, uh, creating a book and publishing it, one that’s coming out in, I think, a month, called Your Child Is Not Their Weight. I mean, so, so I have to believe that it is part of this larger resource gathering that they’re trying to do, but I cannot pretend that it did not do harm and that it’s not off base. And if I was a predicting gambling woman, I would say I bet that there are some major changes that come to that policy in a revision, uh, relatively soon. I don’t, I don’t have an

[00:36:21] Stephanie: Yeah

[00:36:21] Whitney Casares: but that would behoove them because it just, it missed the mark. It really did

[00:36:27] Stephanie: Well, it’s just, it just, I mean, it’s mind-blowing to think that a pediatrician could recommend bariatric surgery at a 13-year-old. That’s just like

[00:36:36] Whitney Casares: And

[00:36:36] Stephanie: butchering a body. It’s just

[00:36:38] Whitney Casares: course. And I don’t know any pediatrician who is recommending that. I- it did not change at all the day-to-day of

[00:36:48] Stephanie: Yeah

[00:36:49] Whitney Casares: to patients. However, the risk is that it could for someone who’s not savvy, for someone who’s not paying attention to the nuance, for so- You know, like a policy does carry weight, no pun intended, and so th- the, it’s problematic.

[00:37:02] Whitney Casares: I ag-

[00:37:02] Stephanie: It gives, it c- it carries weight, but it’s also… So one thing that I’m very well aware is that when you withhold fatphobic perspective, when you are, uh, when you have internalized fatphobia and you practice medicine, you will by default thinking you’re doing well in prescribing weight loss, be it an adult, a child.

[00:37:30] Stephanie: You’re, like, for you in your belief system, your view of the world, that’s the right thing to do. So when we put policies in hands of people who have internalized fatphobia, we give them a justification to harm people. That’s the way that I, it’s being, like, that’s the way I see it.

[00:37:52] Whitney Casares: Yes

[00:37:53] Stephanie: we justify not just their personal belief, but saying that’s the right thing to do

[00:37:57] Whitney Casares: Yes. Yeah

[00:37:58] Whitney Casares: Yeah, Absolutely. I, I think it’s problematic. I can’t defend it. Um, and I, and glad that they’re putting out at least consumer books that are opposite that, and my hope is that that then shifts the policy later because, you know, invite me to the policy. I wanna be on the policy committee and say, “What are we doing?”

[00:38:23] Whitney Casares: You know, like, put some people that are o- that are writing these books on the, on the committees to say, “Hey, listen, like, this, this is not gonna fly,” you know, no

[00:38:30] Stephanie: And, this is why when I read your bio, I’m like, “She’s a spokesperson for the AAP, and yet she’s writing a book with the complete opposite viewpoint. How can they reconcile that as an organization?”

[00:38:42] Whitney Casares: Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Um, you know, the, the– what’s been told to me is basically, like, the policy is just meant to be able to support pediatricians in whatever clinical decision-making that they’re making. But to me, I’m like, yeah, but… And resource, you know, giving. But to me, I’m like, yeah, but it’s difficult to, like, have one hand do one thing and the, uh, other hand do the other.

[00:39:05] Stephanie: and you know what it does, right? It leads people to think big pharma, conspiracy theory, right? It- th- money, capitalism. Like, it’s a perfect example to, like, say, “Oh, look at that. That’s capitalism. That’s big pharma,” because they, like, swing completely their belief about things that make money for the industry

[00:39:29] Whitney Casares: No, I agree. It’s a bad look. That’s a real bad look. Yes Yes

[00:39:34] Stephanie: So what do we do with parents or your pediatrician, pediatrician, sorry, my French is coming out when I get angry, um, that are faced with those recommendation? Like, how do we handle that? I mean, bariatric surgery is probably even more extreme. I think they’re gonna be faced with a lot more GLP-1 than bariatric surgery.

[00:39:57] Stephanie: How do we handle that as a parent? And I’m not a parent, so I’m gonna let you take that one completely. But what do you recommend?

[00:40:04] Whitney Casares: I, think that the biggest thing is to work with your individual pediatrician. of all, your pediatrician should never tell you you have to do this for your child. Even something like vaccines, that I believe strongly in and I think are important, people will come to me and they’ll say, you know, “Do I have to do vaccines if I see you as my pediatrician?”

[00:40:27] Whitney Casares: And I say, “I’m never gonna, like, chain you to the door and make you do a vaccine. It’s your child. It’s your life. I- No, and I will still respect you and care for you.” What I ask is that we’re able to have a thoughtful conversation. So I would say have a thoughtful conversation with your pediatrician if they’re bringing this up. Then if you- if your pediatrician and you are completely not in alignment on this, and I’m saying this as a pediatrician who’s had patients sometimes decide that something isn’t in alignment with me, find a new pediatrician. Like, there’s a lot of fish in the sea, and the vast majority of us w- want to make sure that we’re very conservative with your child and that we’re very…

[00:41:09] Whitney Casares: W- and what I mean by that is that we’re very focused on their overall healthy habits and their overall relationship with their body and with food. Um, you know, are there extreme cases where someone has diabetes, severe… You know, like the… Sure, but that would be in combination with an endocrinologist, and honestly, that should be that your pediatrician is recommending you to go see that person to see does that person think that this is a good idea.

[00:41:38] Whitney Casares: So I think the biggest message I always give people is just listen to your own gut and to your own values about what works for you and your family, and find a pediatrician that you feel like you can have an honest, thoughtful conversation with and that isn’t dismissive of you.

[00:41:54] Stephanie: And I think the biggest takeaway from this is the whole concept of grow wider before taller. Like, just that, that, that this is evidence-based.

[00:42:03] Whitney Casares: Yes

[00:42:04] Stephanie: Like, I, I don’t have the study to give you, but this is evidence-based, and it’s a fact of life that that’s what happened. Take that into the conversation

[00:42:13] Whitney Casares: Yes.

[00:42:14] Stephanie: that we can put a pause on the whole need to lose weight and see what happened two years on.

[00:42:19] Stephanie: Like, I know for me, if we had just waited two years, I would’ve grown six inches, and it would’ve not been an issue. I’m 5’11”, like, you

[00:42:26] Whitney Casares: Yeah.

[00:42:26] Stephanie: it would’ve, like, stretched out. So I think that’s a big piece of information from today

[00:42:32] Whitney Casares: Yes, absolutely. Absolument. My h-

[00:42:37] Stephanie: Am

[00:42:38] Whitney Casares: you know, undergrad French is gonna come out.

[00:42:41] Stephanie: And so, and this is something I reemphasize every time I have a health professional here, you own the decision,

[00:42:49] Whitney Casares: Yes,

[00:42:50] Stephanie: not the doctor. No matter how many letters they have after their name, the decision lies in you.

[00:42:58] Whitney Casares: Yes.

[00:42:58] Stephanie: as a parent, until the 18th decision is with you, like they… You have to make the decision. The physician, the doctor, is there to recommend.

[00:43:07] Stephanie: Is that the right

[00:43:08] Whitney Casares: Yes,

[00:43:09] Stephanie: to think about this?

[00:43:11] Whitney Casares: Yes, the, the pediatrician’s there to recommend, they’re there to give you guidance, um, they’re there to give you information you might not have access to otherwise. They’re there to provide you with research studies. If you’re not able to download them, they’re able, you know, they can do that. Um, they’re able to refer you to a specialist. Like, those are things that a pediatrician is meant to do, but they are never meant to strong-arm you or to be your decision-maker for you. Really, it is about you and, and your child and what is, what is it that you want

[00:43:41] Stephanie: Perfect. Talk to us about your book because I think that would be, uh, I, that would be a great place, the next step for people listening to this

[00:43:50] Whitney Casares: um, yeah, my book, the new book is called Raising Body Confident Kids: A Balanced Approach to Breaking the Cycle of Body Shame and Diet Culture, it really starts from the beginning with helping parents and moms in particular to deal with our own stuff. Where is it that we see diet culture cropping up?

[00:44:08] Whitney Casares: Why do we have so much pressure on ourselves to look the same as a celebrity, um, or to even look a certain size? Like, what, what is this coming from? And really helping people to go a bit deeper into, um, what are the hormone changes that happen for moms in particular. What are things that happen in terms of our stress hormones?

[00:44:26] Whitney Casares: You know, I have an autistic kid, so, like, I know that my stress hormones are, have been through the roof probably my entire parenthood journey with her, right? And that impacts metabolism. And then I go into, now, how do we help our kids? What are some practical, balanced ways? You know, there’s a lot of information out there about, like, you should feed your kid this, you should feed your kid that.

[00:44:45] Whitney Casares: This is the movement you should do. This is not. You know, um, screens, how do we approach that? So, what do you do in your own home? Then the next section, the last section is my favorite, and it’s how do we interact with the world? How do we interact with medical doctors, um, who are fat-shaming? How do we interact, um, if your child has an eating disorder, you’re worried about that, what do we do?

[00:45:07] Whitney Casares: Um, what about screens? What about school or coaches or teachers, people, friends, people who might be making comments? And what about our grandparents? What about my mom, who still believes the same things that she did? She’s trying, but she still at her core believes it. How do I equip my kids? How do you equip your kids to be able to still be in a relationship with people if it’s appropriate, this person isn’t completely going over your

[00:45:32] Stephanie: Non

[00:45:32] Whitney Casares: um, but to make sure that you’re protecting yourself and your little ones and setting boundaries?

[00:45:38] Stephanie: Yeah, and that I think as a coach that’s the key thing, how to set boundaries because you don’t wanna… I mean, there’s circumstance where we cut off people, but I don’t think that’s the right approach, is learning to modulate a relationship so it’s healthy for your child and you’re protecting them to the best intention.

[00:45:58] Whitney Casares: Exactly

[00:45:59] Stephanie: find your book. We’ll put the link in the show note, but I’m assuming for people driving and listening we can find it on Amazon,

[00:46:05] Whitney Casares: can find

[00:46:05] Stephanie: Barnes & Noble

[00:46:06] Whitney Casares: and there’s like 30 activities in there for parents and kids, so it guides you through kind of some un- of that untangling. And then the website is raising, um, bodyconfidentkids.com, and that’s where you can find the freebies. So there’s some, like, say this, don’t say that things about, like, body confident kids, but also that, uh, pediatri- pediatric visit guide, which I would say is the most downloaded thing that I have out of everything.

[00:46:34] Stephanie: Perfect. Yeah. Yeah, I did the same thing for adults, and I can have a guide on how to have the conversation in an adult, but I don’t think as a child, I think that would be a great resource for people.

[00:46:45] Whitney Casares: Good. Awesome.

[00:46:47] Stephanie: a pleasure to have you here today.

[00:46:48] Whitney Casares: It was a pleasure to be on. Thank you so much. I appreciate it

[00:46:52] Stephanie: Thank you

[00:46:55] Stephanie: If you’re loving what you’re learning on the podcast, you have to come and check out Confident, my program on body acceptance and the confidence that grows from it. Come to our website to stephaniedodier.com/confident. This way you can take the concept that I teaching you on the podcast further into actual application in your life so you can feel confident, stop worrying about your weight, other people’s opinion, and care for your wellbeing without weight loss.

[00:47:30] Stephanie: Come and join me and other women learning how to reshape your confidence, not your body. I’ll see you there