Intuitive Eating Challenge BONUS: Raising Intuitive Eaters
This is a topic that I hold near and dear to my heart.
Personally, I can see the disordered eating patterns in my family. My Grandpa strongly believed that life was meant to eat whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. He was a joyful and wonderful man. He was also plagued with many health conditions.
My mother struggled with an eating disorder after the loss of her brother. I had anorexia as a teenager. Since becoming a mother, I am determined to make sure my girls have a healthier relationship with food and body than the generations before them.
Professionally, this is my bread and butter - to recognize disordered eating patterns in one’s life, and to find a way to heal one’s relationship with food and body, so that they can model a healthy relationship with food and body for their own children.
Ways that we can model a healthier relationship with food and body for our kids includes:
Eating meals together at the dinner table with minimal distractions.
Offering a variety of foods at the meal, including protein, fats, carbohydrates, veggies, dessert, etc.
Offering new foods to your kids alongside foods you know they already like.
Remember it can take as many as TWENTY food exposures before a child finally decides they like a food. Stay patient.
When you feel anxious about what your child ate (or didn’t eat) at a meal, remember that nutrition is not defined by one meal or even one day. Look at the whole week, instead, and you will see your child is getting everything they need over time.
Include your children in the meal planning and meal prepping/cooking!
Do not get caught in power struggles over food. Toddlers are learning what they do and don’t have control over, and food is one of those things.
Stay neutral when serving foods, especially new foods. Stay cool, calm, and collected. If you have a response, your child will react to you rather than their own inner signals.
It can be really hard for a parent to let go of control and trust; not just with their child’s food decisions, but in general.
There is so much out of our control in life, especially when we become parents. What humans tend to do when we feel this way is we then grasp for what we can control, and often that is things that are tangible, including food and body.
You also may fear that your children will experience the same pains that you did.
Maybe you were bullied for your body size, and you don’t want that for your kid.
Maybe your parents chastised you for your food choices, and you show your child love through food.
Maybe you have never been able to feel attuned with your inner hunger/fullness cues, and fear your child will be the same.
Please remember what is yours, and what isn’t your child’s.
And it is important to remember that in the United States, a child is 242 times more likely to have an eating disorder than type 2 diabetes.
242 TIMES.
How we approach our child’s relationship with food and body matters. Healing our own relationship with food and body matters. You are not alone. We are in this together.
I also want to give a gentle reminder that this information is simply an introduction to the skill created by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. If you want to learn more, please check out their wonderful book, Intuitive Eating!
Please be gentle with yourself today as you try this principle of Intuitive Eating, and if you are interested in getting my emails filled with reflective questions and ideas for practicing today’s principle, click here and sign up for my newsletter!
