5 Tips on Raising Intuitive Eaters
Children are naturally born intuitive eaters – isn’t that so amazing to think that it is ingrained in us to be intuitive eaters – the world, social norms, emotions and so much more have driven us away from this natural state. But what I love is that we can help our children stay intuitive eaters. We can help them have a healthy relationship with food. Ahh, it just makes me so happy. So here are five key tips and tricks on how to help your children stay intuitive eaters.
1. Don’t keep track of how many “good” and “bad” food they have eaten. One of the ten principles of eating intuitively is to not let food be a moral issue. As you begin to have this ingrained into your own life, it is important to not label foods for your children either. Eating should be enjoyable - whatever you are eating. Food is food.
2. Find other rewards to treat them rather than just food
a. By finding other exciting treats or rewards, you can help your children not create an emotional connection with food. Just like the first tip, food is food. By treating food as if it is something to be earned, we are placing it on a pedal stool and giving it more power than it deserves. Of course, it is fine to celebrate and make memories around food – but every celebration or every scraped knee should not be fixated on ice cream or cake.
3. Don’t try to restrain your child’s eating habits
a. I hear you, I say the same thing – “how can my child always be hungry? They literally just ate” but we need to respect their hunger and listen to them. This is their way of learning their body sensations
4. Compliment your child on who they are, not what they look like
a. It is so important to help a child see that they are NOT what they look like on the outside. They need to know they are valuable no matter what and it should not equate to their looks
5. Give your child a big role in what and how much they eat
a. Let your child have a job of choosing what they would like to eat at dinner a few times per week
b. Also allow your child to go grocery shopping with you – (personal tip – I let my kids choose 3 items each from the store because if I didn’t set a limit I would be broke and have enough food to feed an army.)
c. Offer a variety of choices for snacks – healthy and unhealthy
So there you go -here are 5 simple steps to helping raise an intuitive eater. Remember we were all intuitive eaters once, we have just buried some of our innate knowledge. This is our time to really let our kids shine and learn to live free of diets.
