Mindless Eating: 2 years old!

I have not posted a blog in a week because we were on vacation and truly wanted to be on vacation and not be tied to doing any "work."

We went to north Georgia for a few days then up to the mountains in western North Carolina. How gorgeous! It was so nice to escape the humidity of Florida for a week!

I had an observation on my vacation that I thought I would share. I have talked in previous blogs about mindless eating and how we multi-task while we are eating. When we are not conscious of what we are eating, we don't fully enjoy it. In addition, we eat more than we realize.

I observed this phenomenon in my little boy who just turned 2 years old. We were in the car a lot for hours on end, so snacking and fast food were part of the trip. Also, because he is 2 and difficult to entertain in a car, we had the DVD player set up for him to watch his favorite Elmo, Clifford, and Thomas the Tank Engine videos.

It was quite amazing that whenever he was glued to the TV, he ate whatever snacks or meals in his carseat without even looking down. He just picked up a piece and put it in his mouth. And he would ask for more. Whenever he was not glued to the TV, he wasn't asking for food or eating as much. Hmmm.....very interesting.

From now on I am going to be very careful about two things. First, how much TV he is watching. He normally doesn't watch much but on this trip he got very spoiled with watching his DVD's and I am afraid it will lead to more asking to watch now that we are home. Second, I am going to only let him snack when he is fully conscious of what he is doing. No food in front of the TV so that he can be very conscious about what and how much he is putting into his mouth.

As a fairly new (2 years) parent, I am still learning these lessons first hand on how to feed children. I just had to share my story because our children learn habits, both good and bad, at a very young age!

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