How to Raise an Intuitive Eater: Raising the next generation with food and body confidence

by Sumner Brooks

Intuitive Eating sources internal information from the body and mind, as opposed to external information. External rules and information are things outside of you. For example: labeling foods as good or bad, “healthy” or “unhealthy,” or restricting certain “off-limits foods” or even pressure to eat from a parent. Intuitive Eating is about looking inward, trusting your body, and having permission to eat.

Intuitive Eating sources internal information from the body and mind, as opposed to external information. External rules and information are things outside of you. For example: labeling foods as good or bad, “healthy” or “unhealthy,” or restricting certain “off-limits foods” or even pressure to eat from a parent. Intuitive Eating is about looking inward, trusting your body, and having permission to eat.

The biggest problem we face with feeding our kids is that early on they are losing touch with their natural, healthy relationship with food and body.

Self-regulation is the backbone of Intuitive Eating. For the most part, humans are born with the ability to self-regulate with food—we are designed to stay in balance and know what and how much to eat. There is a miraculous and intricate system of hormones, nerves, and neurochemicals that create this ability. Control, pressure, and restriction all dilute our children’s ability to hear and trust their body signals.

There is a very instinctual trust with our bodies that we are born with, but many adults don’t know that experience when we speak about it—it’s far too faded to grasp anymore. That trust is easily broken in this culture. It can be broken by many things, all of which are traumatic for our body. One way it can be damaged is related to how we are fed and how our bodies are perceived in the world. When that trust is broken, whether it’s because an early caregiver can’t or won’t feed an infant enough milk or formula, or because a young person repeatedly hears they need to do something to control their size, shape, or appearance—a part of us is lost. That part is the space that genuinely believes we are good for this world, that we have something important to contribute, that we are lovable and worthy of having our needs met, and that the people we need the most to take care of us will meet those needs. When we lose that part, we doubt our worth. This becomes internalized over time until we stop questioning it, and it becomes our own inner critic.

The problem is, praise is one of the first ways we condition kids to eat to please us. When we do this, it teaches them to eat for external reasons, rather than for their natural internal drive to eat because it tastes good and is inherently nourishing.

Generations of food beliefs and rules may have created a habit that you didn’t even realize you had—pressuring your child to eat something because it’s “healthy.” When you’re successful at this, you feel better because you’re “teaching good eating habits” and doing what other parents are doing (or are so desperately trying to do), so it must be the right thing.

In many cases, this looks like dangling the idea of a tasty dessert over your child’s head in order to get them to eat their veggies or their dinner. This completely normalized and common approach sends a loud and clear message: The dessert food is special, you have to earn it, you can’t just have it because you want it. This way you won’t be unhealthy and you can have this “bad for you” thing that is so pleasurable and yummy, but only if you eat other things first even if you don’t have room for it because you’re full from dinner. What happens after repeating this scenario over and over again is that it makes the reward foods very powerful. Similar to the effects of restriction, rewarding with food makes these foods the very foods your kids will prefer and choose when you’re not around. In the short term, they may eat their broccoli in order to get the ice cream. But in the long term, they’ll run the other way from the broccoli unless they truly enjoy it.7 When we use food to change behavior, it detaches food from its primary role, which is to satisfy hunger.

Modeling is one of the primary and most effective ways of teaching kids their food values and about body appreciation.

By the age of four, they can begin to understand that if you talk about eating certain foods as “healthy” it is connected to the goal of “thinner.” So it’s not just dieting for weight loss that can have risks; it’s the extent to which our culture has become overly obsessed with “healthy eating,” which has become synonymous for many people with “weight management.” “Healthy eating” and “weight management” aren’t the same thing.

When it comes to feeding our kids, part of the pressure put on us as parents is to “perfectly” feed them. We are told to do this in order to ensure they are healthy now and in the future. This is the part of the illusion that our diet-centric culture has created. But perfectionism is unnecessary; in fact, it’s hurting us! Perfectionism doesn’t let us be human.

Your body deserves to seek and receive comfort, comforting care, and this never ends.

Let’s look back at your childhood: Do you remember weight talk in your house? Even if you weren’t encouraged to diet or weight wasn’t mentioned, you probably heard the grown-ups talking about their bodies, the diets they went on, or the ways they “needed” to change. Those conversations, those incidences of negative self-talk you likely heard, started to develop your sense of how you should think or feel about food and body. These influences can be so deep and subtle that we might not even recognize how much they impact us today. If you can’t remember any of those incidences, it’s possible your parents modeled really positive relationships with food and body.

Being a role model for our kids is incredibly important. You probably already knew that, but maybe it was harder to notice how much they notice. They notice when we never get into the water at the beach or pool with them. They notice when we grimace over our vegetables. They notice when we put ourselves as absolute last and ignore our own needs. And telling them the ways in which we hope they live their life will never, ever compare to the ways in which they see us living our life.

Psychological reactance theory (PRT) states that when something or someone threatens our freedom to choose how we feel, act, or relate to something, a natural reaction, opposite from the recommended action, feeling, or choice, is provoked, to restore the threatened lost freedom.

Every time your child hears you say Just one when they ask for another dinner roll, they are hearing you say, I can’t let you have as many as you want, because the amount you want is too much and that’s not a decision you can make. They feel both controlled and incompetent, and over time, they begin to believe this as truth. Then when their body wants more bread, or pasta or cookies, they have an internal conflict between what they want to eat to feel satisfied and what their internal narrative is telling them about being able to trust themselves. Over time, the use of even a simple overcontrolling statement like Just one has a profound impact on the child’s self-regulation skills, even when you’re not around. This kind of control can also impact their trust in feeling able to be open and honest with you regarding what they eat. Knowing that you said they could only have one roll and they had more can lead to them feeling like they have done a bad thing and may even fear telling you the truth. This is one way that sneaking and hiding food develops.

choose your response to what happens, instead of reacting out of habit.

The Power of Showing Up.

Using the Triad of Connection, you can perceive, make sense of, and respond to what you see in your child’s behavior. Don’t react to eating behaviors; create some space when you notice your urge to react, and try to understand what could be going on that is leading your child to feel the need to use food to cope or soothe. If you notice they may be eating to soothe or eating for reasons other than hunger, direct your attention to finding out what they need, what the source of their discomfort is, and what you can do to support them, and resist any urge to talk about their eating during a vulnerable time. The eating isn’t a behavior to fix; it’s actually a very understandable human response to an unmet need—we want to check in with our child and really see what it is they’re trying to self-soothe for. If they are open with you about their eating, telling you they’re upset about it, be curious and non-judgmental. Most importantly, don’t collude with diet mentality if they suggest to you they want to try to lose weight or eat healthier. Simply remind them they can eat however feels best for their body, in a way that is satisfying, enjoyable, and energizing. Check in with why they may be feeling compelled to diet or alter the way they are eating, as this can be a response to bullying, stress, or other negative situations too.

Your child has loved your body since the moment they realized it was the one to hug them, rock them, feed them, and respond to their cries. They love you for all of you. They will question and feel confused when they see you not loving your body, or criticizing yourself, and then they will internalize that. If my parent can’t accept their body for how it is, that probably means I shouldn’t accept mine. Especially if I am anything like my parent.

You want that desire to taste a new food to come from their internal motivation.

Here are some neutral ways to say no: Right now, we need to do ____, so let’s come back and have that in a little while. We just finished up breakfast, so this is something we can have later. It’s not snack/mealtime right now—but we’re going to eat soon. Thanks for being patient. I know these both look yummy. You need to pick one to have right now, and next time we’ll have the other one. I understand you’re upset we’re not having that right now—I’m so glad to know you like that and we can be sure to have it more often. We need to save some of that. Can I get you something else? This is what we have available tonight—you don’t have to eat it if you don’t want it.

Your value and worth as a parent don’t rest on how your child eats.

So rather than saying, You don’t need to worry about what other people think of you. Don’t let those comments bring you down, try, I am here for you every second. I know it hurts when we feel rejected or not good enough. Know that you’re always good enough, no matter what you do, or how your body looks. You’re good enough because you’re you.

I know it feels like you need to diet to seek approval or to change your body, and I always want you to come to me with these thoughts because I understand them. But I can’t support you in dieting. I can’t let you try to underfeed your body, because it will likely keep leading you to feel worse, not better, and you deserve to feel better. We live in a world that sometimes wants us to feel unlovable. What do you need right now to feel comfortable in your body? What can I/we do to help you? Above everything else, I want you to know I am here for you and I love you in your body today.

We can learn a lot from the clarity that children enter the world with before they learn to judge themselves and others.