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This was me for most of my life. But it was cucumbers and pasta with butter (no sauce, no cheese). I took the radical step of my first cheese pizza at 23 while working a long shift at Domino's. At 25, I took a long hike with a good friend. Afterwards, we stopped at a Thai restaurant, I ordered a garden salad. Halfway through, I looked at my friend's chicken basil and thought, "My aversion to new food is purely mental. I can do this." I took a bite of his chicken, it was the first meat I'd tried without it being coerced, I tried not to overthink it and found that I enjoyed it. I ordered the same dish for myself. Within a few months I was eating beef tongue, oysters, roasted ants, you name it. I'm not sure if my parents would have been able to break me out of my pickiness. If I overthought what I was eating, I'd gag, and I think that was the original seed of the issue. That's an unpleasant and embarrassing experience, and I think it happened very early in my life, earlier than I can remember. So I believe I developed an aversion to trying new food, and the overthinking/gagging became a self-reinforcing cycle. What seemed to work for me was the combination of being tired and truly hungry — not just "I want to eat" but "my body desperately needs sustenance" hungry — along with being hours from home and in a place where everything on the menu was foreign to me. I don't know if you can replicate this scenario with your 14 year old, and I don't know if it would have worked for me at 14. Maybe I was just ready for a change in my life. But being malnourished affected me negatively, and I wish I had resolved it at 14 when I was still developing, rather than 25 when it was too late. |
Nutricion during early days is crucial as it allows your brain and organs to develop faster, better.
I know as a parent i shouldnt force food on my kids but i am and i will keep on doing that knowing how big of an impact it will have on their life later on.