CHILDREN ARE NATURAL INTUITIVE EATERS
I've mentioned it before, we're all born as intuitive eaters; eating whenever we're hungry and stopping when we're full.
We can all learn from their 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.
What would work for you? Do you have food conversations with children?
A proud moment for me last night was my 3 year old announcing "my tummy is full, I really enjoyed that Mumma thank you, I can see you enjoy it too"
Have you checked out my NutriCoach guide, packed with more info on intuitive eating, recipes and nutritional info explained, ready to be downloaded now?