Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy Earle
Hey, it's Andy from talking to teens, it would mean the world to us. If you could leave us a five star review. reviews on Apple and Spotify help other parents find the show. And that helps us keep the lights on. Thanks for being a listener. And here's the show

your love listening to talking to TV, where we speak with leading experts from a variety of disciplines about the art and science, parenting teenagers. I'm your host, Andy Earle.

Hey, we're here with Juna Grata. And Dr. Edward Phillips, talking about food. What are teens eat can be a very sensitive subject. And it's difficult to always say the right thing. In order to understand what to say to teens about food, we have to understand some of the basics in terms of how metabolism works, and how different aspects of nutrition work in the body. That's why Juna and Edward wrote the book food, we need to talk. And that's what we're talking about today. Juna graduated from Harvard in 2017. With degrees in cognitive neuroscience, and a minor in music. She is a concert pianist and composer. And she created and hosts the health podcast food we need to talk. Dr. Edward Phillips is associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School, and founder of the Institute of lifestyle medicine. He's trained over 25,000 clinicians from 115 different countries. I am so excited to be speaking with Juna and Edward today about food. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Really excited about this. I think there's so much stuff to talk about. You have a book called food, we need to talk. Well. Can you talk to me about that? And how did you kind of get connected and decided to write this write this book about talking to food?

Juna Grata
Yeah, so my name is Yuna. I had honestly no intention of going into a health and fitness related career at first. But when I graduated college, I was basically looking for what job I wanted to do. And I sent an email to a health editor at WBUR, which is Boston's NPR station. And she said I could come in for a meeting. And one of the things on my list of things to talk to her about was basically a podcast. And I was really interested in having a podcast that had science based nutrition exercise information, because I'd spent my whole life kind of basically listening to people online saying what they did to look the way they did. And so I spent a long time like basically following random diets and whatever, trying to be 10 pounds lighter than what I was. And I mentioned to this person at NPR that like there was so much good health information, but for some reason it was so obscured it was so difficult to find. And it's taken me years to find it. So I felt like a public radio station should be providing this science based health information. And so that was Carrie Goldberg, she introduced me to Eddie, who she had previously done a podcast with and I can let him take over this story from heroes, I want to tell the whole story myself.

Edward Phillips
So Andy, thank you for having us the I actually come to this with a deep and decade's long interest in helping people to be healthier. And that's how I became a physician. My area of specialty is physical medicine and rehab, which is a lot more like kind of like exercise focused and I got interested years ago and like, alright, exercise is so great for us. Why isn't everyone doing it? So I have been teaching other doctors about how to talk to their patients about getting healthier. It's sounds really weird to think that medicine these days is really good at fixing broken things. And once you've got diabetes or had your stroke, or broke your leg, or lost your leg, due to diabetes, we're really good at fixing that but avoiding those problems by eating better, sleeping better, having better relationships, sleeping well. Maybe a little meditation thrown in there. You could avert 80% of what we spend our time dealing with. So food we need to talk is the kind of amalgam of union I'm meeting up at WBUR and realizing that wow, this is just such a thorny issue. We have so many conflicting messages, even if you're following the science like unit was talking about, that seems to keep on changing, you know who you're supposed to listen to? How did you find the confidence? How do we just find some peace here? So the foods talking to us, we're talking to the food unit to each other. Welcome to our conversation.

Andy Earle
Well, you talked about some really interesting issues, just in terms of also some of the basics in terms of food in the body and things like I was really interested to learn about what is metabolism? Or how does, how does metabolism work? Because I think it's something that we often just talk about, or a word that we kind of throw around, but to really kind of understand what it is, is is important.

Juna Grata
Yeah, I think that, for me, growing up, metabolism has always used kind of as an excuse to basically say, like, why certain people were thinner than other people was like, Oh, they have a faster metabolism, or why like, men don't struggle as much with their weight as women do, oh, they have a faster metabolism. And so I kind of just like, oh, I guess some people are just doomed with a slow metabolism. And some people are just blessed with a really fast metabolism. So it just seemed like this thing that was almost magical in a sense, and something that we had no control over. And we spend a lot of time in the book, breaking down the science of metabolism and what components make it up, and also what things we have to actually help control our metabolism. So one of the things he talked about most in the book is actually muscle mass, and how muscle is a much more metabolically active tissue than fat. So if you start building muscle, your body will burn a lot more calories throughout the day, even when you're not exercising, just because it's trying to maintain that muscle. So I think that was like one of the best things I learned about metabolism. And then also, I think, a big I want to give away the whole book. But I think a big thing that upsets people is the fact that our metabolism does not actually slow down, especially from age 20 to 60, they've actually shown that metabolic rate basically stays the same throughout all those decades. But as a lot of people can attest, they feel like it's a lot harder to maintain their weight as they get older. And it turns out, that's mostly because the older we get, the less we move around. And we also lose muscle mass because we're not exercising as we age. And so I think knowing those things, actually is really powerful, because then you can be really cognizant as you get older to still go on walks and to still actually do resistance training at the gym to try to maintain some of that muscle mass.

Andy Earle
So so now the teenage years is that when the metabolism is really just going crazy, that's like the fastest, fastest churning time of metabolism. You

Juna Grata
know, interestingly, in that study they did per pound, your metabolism is actually the fastest when you're a baby. And it makes sense, because your body is growing so quickly, that like your metabolic rate is just super, super high, because there's so much cell turnover. But yeah, your metabolism is really high and your teenager, it basically increases up until about like age 20 around there. And then it kind of stays stable from 20 to 60. And then starts to slowly dip down at 60, although not as much as you would think. But it does start to slow down around 60. So

Edward Phillips
another piece to this is the not so hidden agenda, that anyone that cares to listen to unit and ion on podcast or read the book, we want you to be a really good like bullshit detector. And that's a polite way of saying that even have to understand a little bit about metabolism to realize that oh, let's fill in the blank here that combining cayenne pepper or lemon juice and Garcinia Cambogia both syrup and maple syrup, sorry, and you know, burn your fat away and it's just like, oh, no, and here's why. So, you know, this goes back to our bodies are these amazing things. I mean, we're just like metabolism is so elegant like let's let's enjoy it a little bit let's understand that our bodies are doing the best they can we're adaptation machines you know let's let's honor ourselves by understanding it a little bit better. And I'd like to think and like we you know, we hear this from your from my patients and we hear it from listeners that understanding a little bit more than nothing or a lot more than you know if you're starting off with some knowledge about metabolism is so empowering. So now these ads that make no sense you're not even gonna pay attention, let alone spend your money on the on the product

Andy Earle
you also talked about diets in the book and dieting, a decent amount. What's so important to know about that diets work?

Juna Grata
That is the million dollar question. So I grew up always, I don't want to say I was always dieting, but I was always kind of cognizant of how much I was eating. So, because I was never as skinny as my sisters, I always felt like, oh, I have to eat a little bit less to try to like, get as skinny as they were. So when I go to birthday parties, I'd be like, okay, like, I'll have half a piece of cake. Or when we'd be like, after a piano recital, they have pizza, and anybody else have two or three slices, I'd be like, okay, like, I should only have one slice. And so if you just look at the way metabolism works, which is you will lose weight, if you're eating less calories, then you are burning, and you will gain weight. If you're eating more calories in your burning, then cognitively like a diet should work, like all diets do work in the sense that if you are restricting food enough that you are burning more, you will lose weight. The problem is when you look at long term studies of dieting, they have about an 80% failure rate. And that doesn't mean they don't work at first, like everybody will lose weight at first on a diet. But if you look at them three months down the line a year down the line three years down the line, they have gained back the weight 80% of the time, and oftentimes if gained back even more than the weight they lost. So then that begs the question, like what is going on if people are losing weight on diets and diet to do work, and it makes sense with how metabolism works, that diets do work, like what is happening. And it's basically that if you feel very restricted, or you feel like you're eating a lot less, it's not a sustainable way that you're going to be able to live for the rest of your life. So I think people think of diets as a temporary thing, you know, I can do this thing for six weeks, and then I'll be ready for my wedding or I'll be ready for that event, or I'll be ready for the summer. But if you don't continue eating that way, like whatever you're eating your salads, and whatever, for the rest of your life, the weight is going to come back. And there's also a lot of biological mechanisms that your body turns on, as you start restricting food to basically stop you from dying, right, because our bodies are very well adapted to deal with food scarcity, because that's been the most common problem the human body has had in the past, whatever, millions of years. So the idea that I'm going to go on a diet and be able to reach a certain weight, and then stay at that way is like, that is a huge feat to accomplish. And it's something that you should think about very carefully because it so often leads to repercussions later on. And it's something that you'd have to maintain for that sort of life. So whatever changes you're making, you should be certain like, I feel comfortable making this change forever or not like for two months I'm going to suffer through.

Edward Phillips
And just to put a point though, at unit saying, if you if the viewer 200 pounds, and you want it to lose 10% of your body mass, hopefully mostly mostly in fat, and you're down to 180 pounds, congratulations, all diets work. And so as you're saying they don't work. So now you're at 180 pounds, and you want to stay there, you need less food than the 200 pound person that you want to work. And if you begin to again, eat as you did before, as a 200 pound person, meaning enough calories coming in, you will resume that, that reality and become that 200 pound person and and we're also talking about kind of your body's capacity to change but also great effort to maintain where you are. So however, if you wish to go on a diet and you're not feeling overly restricted, and you can maintain it, then there are some people that do well, at that point

Andy Earle
we're talking a lot about weight. How what do you think that in terms of a parent? How concerned should you be about your teenagers weight? Should you be like talking to them about their weight? Or what should you not be focusing on it? Or, you know, how do you think you should sort of think about or, you know, be be dialed into your teenagers weight as a parent.

Juna Grata
So, um, I guess me and Eddie have unique perspectives on this, I would say because I feel like we've been on we represent like the two sides of this issue. So when I was growing up, like I said, I was never overweight, but my parents were always making comments about my weight. So because I was never asking you as my sisters, they would say things like, oh, you know, like, you know, your body is good, except like you have a bit of a stomach like you should exercise or oh, you know, like, Don't you like think you should drink green tea? I've heard it like makes you skinnier or whatever. They would make comments like this. And those comments were so psychologically damaging to me because that was why I started dieting. The first place was because of comments from my family. And then when I got to college, and my parents weren't there anymore to like, supervise what I was doing. I really went off the rails in the sense of like I started eating only 1000 calories a day I tried like running on the treadmill, like for an hour every day, I basically stopped eating fat altogether because I thought fat makes you fat. So it led to eating disorders at the end of the day. And I don't want to say my parents cause eating disorders they didn't. But those comments were something that I took to heart really, really seriously. So I think navigating the topic of weight with your kids is so tricky because it can lead to a lot of body image and self esteem issues. But at the same time, you also want your child to be as healthy as possible. So if someone actually is just eating a lot of like junk food and isn't exercising, and you can tell that it's making them unhealthier than like, there has to be a way to navigate that conversation. But I personally don't think that weight should be the main focus, because I think that often just leads to you feeling bad about your body. But I think Eddie has like a really good perspective on this and how to navigate it.

Edward Phillips
So for a completely different perspective, I'm the dad of three kids that are now in their mid to late 20s. So I I still remember their teenage years. But I'll let me just sort of like maybe just generalize the question a little bit, which is that when you're talking to your kids about any health behavior, well, first of all, a lot of what goes on is nonverbal communication. And what what I mean by that is modeling what you believe at that time, we're gonna get into the details of how that changes, what you believe to be a healthy way to live, is has the greatest impact altogether. So you can start off with young kids that are just like remarkable mimics, and sponges, you know, seeing you know how their parents speak and move and act. Teenagers are pretty damn good at that too. And they're going to model sometimes in the opposite direction, but they will model according to what we're doing. So if you want your kid to exercise, your best message is to be the one that's exercising, and to and to set the example and I love to give the example that maybe not a teenage years, but when the kids were younger, we would use timeouts, which you know, originally was like a little bit of a breather, or you're not behaving well go, you know, go sit down and think about it for five minutes. I used to tie up my tie myself out and go down onto the rowing machine for 10 minutes, as a way of just sort of like, I can't talk to you in the rational way. Give me 10 minutes, and I come up in a full sweat, and barely remember what I was so angry about. That's a little bit extreme. But just the idea of it before you talk to your kids about exercise, do the exercise, it really is confusing, maybe to a teenager to be holding a beer in your hand telling the kids not to drink. And, you know, if you're wanting to tell them to sit down for dinner, sit down for dinner with them. And you know, it'd be great to prepare the food, we can talk about that. But you know, more so just sit down even if you've ordered him, and you're sharing a pizza great, but you know, let's let's sit down together in the midst of all of this, besides being kind of like the model for for them. You also don't want to go too far. One of the mistakes that I think, you know, as we look back and as I wrote the book with Yoona was sort of taking stock of the messages that we gave to our kids. And my wife and I were always interested in nutrition and you know, follow the trends about which vitamin to take and when not to eat fat. Oh, no, no, no, it's okay to eat fat. And let's move from vitamin C to vitamin E. Oh, now we're into vitamin D like, you know, we're guilty of all of that. And of my three kids, one of them our middle child. The message for her during the you know, the Clean Eating ethos was that that became orthorexia. And orthorexia is kind of like straight or clean eating, gone into the a little bit more into the pathological and then for her, it became anorexia. Now, in my effort to apologize to my daughter, you know, kind of a universe talking about did I cause your, your anorexia, you know, she, she cut me some slack and said, Well, you understand that there was a little bit of a natural experiment going on my brother and sister were in the same environment and they don't have an eating disorder. So even your best intention, like we're going to eat well, and we're going to, you know, you know, we're not going to order a pizza, we're going to, we're going to cook we're going to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, even that can, can go too far in the mind of a teenager.

Andy Earle
That's really delicate balance. Yes,

Edward Phillips
that you've just described here. anything in that sticker talking with teens?

Andy Earle
Do you think that that parents should talk about the foods that our teens are eating or what we see them eating or not not really go there or just not not worry about it or talk more generally about sort of healthy eating, but not specifically about kind of the choices we see them making? Or, or how should we navigate that?

Juna Grata
I loved when I've heard people talk about food as fuel. So I think like sometimes like demonizing certain foods, like saying, Oh, you're eating those chips. Again. Those are so bad for you. Those are trash food, whatever. It's like, shirt for some people. Maybe they'll say, oh, yeah, thanks, Mom. Yeah, right up, throws up, like just for me like that would never lead to that. If I heard that, like, Okay, well, screw you, I'm gonna keep eating these, you know what I mean? So that sort of messaging I think just doesn't work with a lot of people. But what I've seen works for a lot of other parents is saying why they eat the foods they eat, like, oh my god, did you know that like kale has the most vitamins and minerals, like there's more vitamins and minerals, and like a few leaves of kale than there is like in an entire, whatever type of thing. And why it's so important to you to fuel yourself. Like if your kids play sports, like one way, I always get my cousin to eat healthy. So I'm like, Oh, if you want to be the best soccer player, you know, like, they always eat the most vegetables, because they need the nutrients for their muscles to work. So kind of tying it to performance or even brain function. If they're really into school, like, your brain is going to work better, your memory is gonna be better if you eat more nutritious foods, I think that is a much more effective motivator than weight. So I think kind of finding a way to focus on incorporating foods instead of cutting foods out, will kind of naturally lead to those foods being cut out. And then also, I think the environment that you foster at home in terms of the food environment is so important. Like, for example, when we first came to America, so I was born in Albania. And there's not really a soda thing in Albania, like people don't really drink soda all the time, the way they do here. And so when we first came to America, and I tried Coca Cola, like me, and my sisters loved it, and was like, Oh, my God. It's delicious. Oh, my God. And I remember like, my mom was getting a breast, but we were like having it like every day. And so then she just stopped buying it. When I was seven, it was just like, out of the house. And we never had soda. So it was only on special occasions. When went to a restaurant, I was like, Oh, I was so excited to go to a restaurant for the Coke, not for the food. Like I was so excited. And to this day, I cannot stand soda, like, up until maybe 1314. It was still a treat for me. And then I just stopped liking it altogether, because I was just having it so infrequently. And so I always grew up in a house where we never had junk food really in the house, it was kind of on special occasions. And it's not like we had dessert every day we didn't have we didn't have super processed snacks all the time, like a lot of time our snacks for fruits and vegetables. And so when I go to friends houses, I'd be like, Oh my god, like you have so many snacks. Well, I'd be so excited. But I'm actually really thankful in retrospect, because it's really shaped the way I eat, it's not really an effort for me to not drink soda because I just never grew up having it. So I think that's a really like undervalued way to help people eat better.

Andy Earle
We're here with unit Juna Grata and Dr. Edward Phillips, talking about food. And we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Edward Phillips
Um, there's two places where the decisions are made about what to eat. The first one is in the supermarket and the second one is at home.

Juna Grata
If all the benefits of exercise could be put into a pill, it would be universally prescribed. But because it requires sweating and and origami out of the house, most people don't do it.

Edward Phillips
Part of what we're talking about is like D demonizing that a word demonized and also understanding that there's a great satiety factor with having enough fat in your food. I remember I'm not a big camper in fact I'm sorry I'll be clear I don't do camping but I know enough when you go out of camping if all you bring is freeze dried fruit foods and there's like essentially no fat there's this yen after you know very short while that you just people just like drink and want to drink down oil. You know, it's probably better to cook with you while they drink it down. Although, you know, do as you as you will. So there's a satiety factor so you want to have and also fat just mix foods in have sort of tastes so much better. So that is not evil. We just thought so for a bunch of years and the NIF hangs on.

Andy Earle
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