Explore Intuitive Eating: Tips to Incorporate it into Your Child's Diet

Overview

Introduction

Intuitive eating is a simple idea. It indicates you are at ease with all kinds of food. It requires you to stop looking at food as “good” or “bad.” Instead, you listen to your body and eat what feels right for you.

It is a healthy approach that focuses on learning to trust your inner body senses, such as hunger, taste, and fullness to make choices around food that feel good in your body. Many of us don’t realize that we have been practicing intuitive eating most of our lives.

In intuitive eating, you want your diet to get in sync with the wisdom of your body and mind to consume food that gives you a feel-good factor.

Intuitive eating doesn’t distinguish between good or bad food or healthy or unhealthy food. There shouldn’t be any judgment or cultural influence involved with your food selection.

The majority of us are born intuitive eaters. The truth is that intuitive eating is suitable for anybody. A newborn takes to breast-fed or bottle-fed naturally to fulfill the innate hunger.

Infants are normally exposed to solid foods around the age of six months, and the same natural instincts are seen in them. However, with time, certain environmental changes can interfere with the development of a child after the age of two.

This can be attributed to eating out of psychological changes that onset with age, the influence of culture and food advertisements, and eating to stabilize emotions.

Key Pointers

For parents to ensure that their kid continues intuitive eating skills from an early age into adulthood

As a parent, your job is to ensure that your kid consumes healthy food at a fixed time in a particular place at home. This can help the kid to develop a pattern to eat a meal at a particular time in that preferred place. That is all you can do from your end. The choice of whether or not to follow your advice should lie with the kid. If the kid doesn’t want to eat, do not force your child into eating what they don’t want. Pushing them to eat may affect the kid’s hunger cues psychologically.
Do not worry if your kid is over-eating. Being too young, let them develop their hunger and fullness senses by themselves as they grow older.
Do not persuade your child to eat something that he doesn’t relish by offering post-meal treats. This puts unnecessary pressure on the kids to eat or eat without being in sync with their body and mind, merely for the sake of that promised incentive.
Sit alongside your kid during mealtime to make them feel more comfortable and encourage eating. Try to make this into a family time rather than a feeding time. Children are keen observers and just by seeing you eating well, may become more open to finishing their meals too.
Schedule a fixed time for snacks and regular meals. Implement these timings regularly and you will see that your kid will start to finish off his meals more often & will not crave an early snack. It will help him develop a healthy circadian rhythm as well.
Do not ever look down on the physical stature of your kid, especially in case of underweight conditions. It has a lot to do with genetics and being a growing child, much of the calories are consumed towards growth which might become apparent during the teenage years. The only thing that should matter is that your child is active & healthy.
There is no denying that a child needs vital nutrients for healthy growth. If introducing your child to a new food is a problem, try to mix it up with the ones your kid likes. Sit alongside your kid and try to create a pleasant eating environment. If that still doesn’t work out, give it another try as it generally takes some time for a kid to get familiar with the taste and texture of the new food. Make it a point, never to force feed your child as that kind of behavior can become a problem for your little one in later years. The kid may develop adverse eating patterns like binge eating or get stuck with a restricted diet during the young adult years.

Conclusion

The key takeaway from this write-up is that let your child develop a happy and healthy relationship with food.

Do not make too much fuss about a kid’s diet as long as it has essential nutrients and more importantly, try to avoid force-feeding at any cost irrespective of the age of the child as that can have an undesirable impact such as binge eating or issues such as restricted diet during adulthood.

Over time, your child will figure out how to nourish the body with intuitive eating. Following these pointers can help you and your child go on the right track while also creating a sensible and joyful camaraderie within the family.

Citation

https://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheet/how-can-you-help-your-child-practice-intuitive-eating/

https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/blog/what-does-intuitive-eating-mean