Roxy Jacenko cleared out her pantry to help her daughter lose weight

AFTER hubby Oliver raised concerns about their daughter ‘putting on weight’ from jail, the PR juggernaut knew something needed to be done.

IT HAS been a tough 12 months for Roxy Jacenko. After husband Oliver was sent to jail for conspiracy to commit insider trading, the Aussie PR queen was diagnosed with breast cancer and faced months of treatment while playing single mum to children Pixie, six, and Hunter, three.

According to Kidspot there was a lot to adjust to. And while the family was struggling to come to terms with all of the change, Roxy was facing a big issue with daughter Pixie. Something a lot of parents have to deal with in their own lives — fussy eating and sometimes complete meal refusal.

“Pixie has always been a nightmare with her eating since day one — she can literally live on air. That’s no good because how do you develop? How do your bones become strong? They don’t,” she told Kidspot exclusively.

But when husband Oliver was sent to jail, things went from bad to worse for Pixie. The face behind the Pixie’s Bows brand, refused to eat anything remotely healthy to cope with her father not being home.

“When Ollie went to jail, she started eating rice crackers literally every day and that’s all she’d eat. You’d give her lunch and she would say no and grab the rice crackers,” Roxy says.

“She has always liked rice crackers, but because there was no one else there to breathe down on her and say ‘eat your vegetables’ or ‘eat your chicken schnitzel or chops’ so she just wouldn’t do it.”

With her daughter going through enough already, Roxy decided to resist the urge to fight with Pixie over what she could and couldn’t eat.

“She was already a bit upset about [dad not home] so I just let her do and have whatever she wants.”

It wasn’t until Roxy sent a picture of Pixie in a ballet outfit to Oliver in jail that she realised something needed to be done to change their poor eating habits.

“I sent Ollie a picture of her from her ballet concert and he said: ‘What have you been feeding her? She’s putting on weight from what I can see in the pictures you’re sending me!’

The busy mum reveals her eldest was putting on weight because she wasn’t eating the right foods — something she didn’t realise was happening because she was with her children every day and didn’t have the chance to notice any difference.

“She was always lean and it wasn’t that we were worried that she was putting on weight, but the reality is, it’s very hard to lose weight if you keep putting it on when you’re a young child. She runs around like a normal kid but it’s not like she can go to the gym,” she says, adding: “She shouldn’t be putting on weight like that at five years old.”

Roxy admits her husband’s comments hurt.

“I did fight with him over it because I was like: ‘I’m doing my best — how much more can I do? You’re not here and I have both of them and three businesses to run and now you’re breathing down my neck about what she eats or what she doesn’t eat?’ she says.

But she admits it was Oliver’s comments that forced her do something about it.

Roxy went home and cleared out “every piece of junk” from her pantry and then emailed a friend for help. Voicing her concerns led the desperate mum to a woman who helped turn their lives around — Mandy Sacher from Wholesome Child, the Mary Poppins of healthy eating, if you will.

“She basically did a complete overhaul of my pantry. It was interesting because the things she took out, I kept when I did the clean up myself. She got rid of even more — things that you wouldn’t even imagine is high in sugar. Pre-packaged things that say are healthy for kids but really aren’t,” she says.

With her pantry makeover and Oliver out of jail and back at home, things in the Jacenko-Curtis household are running much smoother.

“We make banana bread now and we make this chocolate slice, that isn’t really chocolate, it’s dates and cacao, but Pixie thinks it’s chocolate,” Roxy laughs.

“Our habits have changed but the good thing is she doesn’t realise she’s eating the things she is. We could never get her to eat vegetables but now she eats spaghetti bolognaise with vegetables.

“It’s still a bit of a push, but nothing like it was.”

This article was originally posted on Kidspot and was republished with permission.