Children Are Natural, Intuitive Eaters

What is Intuitive Eating?

In super simple terms it is eating what you want when you're hungry and stopping when you're full. This is a skill we're born with but there's loads of noise and influence from diet culture of restrictive diets that may yield results but cause long-term damage to food attitudes and body image. We're all born as intuitive eaters; eating whenever we're hungry and stopping when we're full. We can all learn from this example!

The undoing of that natural instinct can quite easily start in early childhood, it's super tempting to praise a child for finishing the all the food on their plate or asking them to eat until it's all gone but this goes against them eating until their full.

Instead, we can help nurture and encourage their natural intuitive eating by asking them to eat until their tummy is full, NOT until they finish their food. We can encourage them and praise them to eat until their tummy is full.

A good way to practice this and encourage intuitive eating is to share grazing platters/ buffet style meals of different foods together as a family from time to time.

Eating the same meals and snacks together is also a brilliant idea and opportunity to talk about tummy fullness and focusing on talking about what you are enjoying about the meal, rather than praising your child for trying one particular thing e.g. if you child doesn't normally like carrots and eats one, you might be tempted to praise the trying of the carrot but instead saying something like "I can see you're enjoying the carrot, I enjoy it too". This can start conversations and interest into food rather than putting certain foods in positive or negative lights which lay the foundations for positive food relationships as they grow. These foundational relationships are a journey and can be built on over time.

A proud moment for me was when my 3 year old announced "my tummy is full, I really enjoyed that Mumma thank you, I can see you enjoy it too".

What can you do?

You can begin your intuitive eating journey at any stage in your life. If you want to learn more and or discuss, contact a reputable qualified Nutritionist (like myself)

Lizzi Owiredu AKA Nutricoachmumma

Bio & Related Links

Lizzi Owiredu Msc (AKA Nutricoachmumma) is a qualified Nutritionist and Chef and Owner of NutriCoach. She uses an intuitive eating approach which never involves fad diets. She offers a wide variety of services for all ages and health backgrounds including 121 support, guides, recipes, workshops and corporate consultancy. Her clients include people with possible digestive disorders or chronic illness, babies who are weaning, and pre- or postnatal families to discuss eating behaviours. She loves helping people to get free from diet cycles too.

You can read a bit more about intuitive eating here https://nutricoachmumma.wixsite.com/nutrition/post/intuitive-eating-sciencexplained

Downloadable guides and 121 appointments are available now.

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