A Parent's Guide to Intuitive Eating: How to Raise Kids Who Love to Eat Healthy

by Dr. Yami Cazorla-Lancaster

Turn picky eaters into happy, healthy eaters!

Breaking down intuitive eating in a way that’s easy to understand and even easier to implement, this book shows you how to help your children develop a positive relationship with food. It offers a system that builds healthy habits and better mindsets that will last a lifetime. Through the techniques and tips in this book, you’ll discover how to eliminate stress, anxiety and food battles and instead enjoy feeding your confident eater!

Written by a board-certified pediatrician and mom, this book will set your family up for success when it comes to making decisions in the kitchen, grocery store, and restaurant. The actionable advice in A Parent’s Guide to Intuitive Eating will transform healthy eating from a chore into a happy habit!

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

Published September 17, 2019

Reviews

[Greta · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the book contains some good advice, and does advocate HAES, it is supposed to be a book on intuitive eating. The author regularly contradicts herself by discussing the hazards of orthorexia and then promotes orthorexic principles of healthy and unhealthy foods.

A large portion of the book still demonizes food considered to be less healthful, which she calls "play food" instead of junk food and advocates not having processed foods in the house at all because they aren't healthy. She also discusses about how when your teens are able to get food on their own and things like soda and chips make their way into the house, you should discuss with them about limiting them and putting them in a special drawer so they won't be visible and triggering to other people in the house. This is just one example of promoting disordered eating in the book and is very anti- intuitive eating.

Healthy foods are awesome but overly promoting health foods and vegan eating and limiting processed foods and desserts is 100% the opposite of the principles of intuitive eating. There is nothing about "gentle nutrition".

I was hoping for some actual ways of teaching intuitive eating to children. There are 10 principles of IE - they weren't even mentioned and this book barely touches on some and misinterprets others.

After reading this book, I still don't know how to talk to my child about IE other than telling her to "stop when she's full". There is so much more to IE and that's not really all that helpful.

[Celine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really helpful and freeing book on how to raise children with healthy eating habits (and healthy mindsets towards eating)! Dr. Cazorla-Lancaster provides helpful tips and philosophies for parents looking to shepherd their children at each stage of life. Also, what a compassionate book! I haven't read many books for parents (as I am not one myself), but I think all books should be as encouraging and understanding as this one. I wish I would have had such knowledge about food and food choices growing up. But, in any case, it's helpful information to have now as an adult.

[Amanda Rahimian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book with some extremely helpful advice for parents of children any age!!!

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm 100% behind the concept of this book, but the execution was hit or miss for me. I fully recognize that it is because I wanted it to be something different than what it ultimately was.

A loose form of intuitive eating has been my jam before I even knew it was a thing. I've never owned a scale, never gone on a limiting diet, and never ordered a salad on a date because I was afraid my date would think I was a gluttonous cow if I ordered a hamburger. I have been VERY intentional in modeling for my daughters that a woman's body is valuable because it allows her to live a meaningful life, not an enemy you have to punish into shape to please others. I try to do physical activity I enjoy, rather than just putting in time on a treadmill or whatever, and really savor both the healthy and unhealthy foods I eat. I didn't really need the portion of the books that talked about health at every size and body positivity since I'm already there, but I wholeheartedly agree with the author.

I picked this book up because one of my kids has been having a bunch of digestive issues this year, and the doctor's best guess is that, for a variety of reasons, she's lost her ability to tune into her body and understand what it needs to feel healthy. I'm gathering info to try and figure out how to teach her to understand what her specific body needs, without going anywhere near diet culture, because that is a line I will never cross with my daughters. This book seemed like a very safe place to do some research.

The thing that made this book only a partial match for me is that the author is vegan, and she spends a lot of time defending how vegan children can be healthy and thrive. I'm 100% down with that in theory, especially because I have a bunch of vegetarian and vegan friends that have had great health outcomes for themselves and their kids, so I really get why she spent so much time there. Unfortunately, vegetarianism just doesn't work for my daughter's particular body (long boring story), and her health problems started when she became vegetarian a year and a half ago. We've recently switched her off that diet to reset her body, so spending a sizeable chunk of the book talking about how to switch onto it was the wrong fit for us. However, she explains things clearly and succinctly for those who are exploring that angle.

The part that was really helpful for me was the part that talked about creating structures around eating that help your kids have the opportunity to tune into their bodies better. I realized just how often I use food as an incentive or celebration, how the open snacking pantry habit we got on when I was doing the surgery recovery/broken foot era was messing with my kids' ability to eat appropriately-proportioned meals, etc. I also appreciated the sections where she talked about the different reasons our bodies communicate to us that they want food (and how many of them have nothing to do with actual hunger). It also had really easy-to-execute meal ideas - I feel like a lot of books on child nutrition are just not practical for the time demands of real parents, and these were all very realistic.

There were parts I disagreed with, and some bits of advice that contradicted with other parts of the book, but hey, it is a parenting book, and all families are different - there isn't a one-size-fits-all parenting model. I think she was very down-to-earth and encouraging.

I really wish she'd spent more time explaining how you can teach your children to understand what their bodies are telling them about feeling full/hungry, or which foods make their bodies feel better or worse, since I didn't come out of this book with any strategies for that - only ones for removing systems that would complicate her ability to tune in. I feel a ton of anxiety about this, because I don't want to move into some weird territory where it feels like she can please me by choosing not to eat something. So, this book didn't deliver for me on that score. Maybe that skill set is a part of standard intuitive eating that I'm supposed to already know before I read this book? I don't know. But I didn't leave the book with the most important thing I came here for.

All that said, I do think this is a good book. Our situation is just a little unique, so it wasn't quite right for us. Still, I'd recommend it to parents trying to figure out how to teach their kids to have a healthy relationship with food.

[Avital Gr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such an interesting and positive approach to adopt in our relationship with food. The author tells us everything that surrounds children's eating habits and how to let go of the tempting restrictions we often consider as unavoidable or even necessary and instead, be attentive, give our children permission to listen to their bodily cues and educate by example. The author is a pediatrician, not a dietitian but she does seem knowledgeable. She promotes a healthful whole food plant based diet and gives very valuable and evidence-based advice. I just wish there were direct references to studies for her claims.

[Daniell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite being endorsed by the author and founder of Intuitive Eating, this book strays from Intuitive Eating principles. Dr. Yami advocates a plant-based diet and focuses on keeping "healthy" (ie. not junk) food in the house. The sub-title is more accurate as it does seem to focus on the "eat healthy" part. focuses on why you should WANT to get your child to eat healthy and what that means including a discussion of nutrients. Perhaps we just need to make the distinction between Intuitive Eating (the approach with 10 principles created by Tribole and Resch) and intuitive eating as defined by Dr. Yami as "innate ability to listen to ones' hunger and fullness signals".

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised by how much I liked this book. I didn’t expect to but I enjoyed the authors balance of advice and understanding. I do feel like her suggestions for plant based everything are probably not something we will adopt in full but each little bit helps and it validated my feelings about how I feed my kids. I also enjoyed ideas for future ideas for older kids. The author seems a bit more overprotective than me but I loved the advice and reasonability of the book as a whole which is rare in a parenting book.

[Mary Luzader · Rating 4 out of 5]

No more clean plate club for this family. Dr. Yami teaches us the importance of listening to our bodies when in comes to hunger and respecting our kids and helping them do the same, even if that means they don't eat a single bite of the dinner you just spent 3 hours cooking. One of the things I love most about this book is that there is absolutely no shaming by the author. She knows and reminds readers that no one is perfect, everyone will eat unhealthily sometimes, and that's ok.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m going to round up from 3.5. Nothing groundbreaking nutrition-wise, but in her writing style you can tell she’s a mom, and you can tell she’s done the hard work of reversing generational beliefs around food and eating.

[Ning Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love it. Set a great start for me during baby led weaning. Great knowledge on nutrition. It empowered and motivated me to eat right, feed right. I like how it encourages on building a good relationship between baby and food.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

First, i don’t but into the purist idea of intuitive eating. But sometimes, when we are craving nutritious food, our body is telling us something.

This book gave me a few helpful tips and some inspiration to try different things with my kids around the topic.

[Elisabeth Valienne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just... no. Some of it was pretty solid, but at a certain point it transformed into "You need to only feed your kids plant based because that's the only way to be healthy." and it just ultimately goes against the entire idea of intuitive eating. I couldn't finish it.

[Vovka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read _Child of Mine_ instead. This book draws on that greater work, but doesn’t come close to its quality.

[Wren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful! Wish I had this book when my first born was small 🙂

[Annie Lacroix · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unless I missed something, I think I can sum this book up this way: If you want your children to eat healthy foods, serve them healthy foods. (Well then! That’s easy! I wish I had thought of that before!)
And encourage intuitive eating, so no restrictions. Except don’t serve animal products. And almost never any desserts.

[Cassea Leavitt · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book does not embody the tenets of Intuitive Eating.