Intuitive Eating Parenting Tips: Helping Your Kids With Body Trust

I want all kids everywhere to trust their bodies. This is at the core of my work as an anti-diet Intuitive Eating coach for parents.  

Trusting your kids with food and their bodies is THE way to get your kids to become healthy eaters.

When children embrace food and body trust, they embark on a grand adventure of self-discovery. Every meal can become a joyful treasure hunt of nourishment, and every movement can be a celebration of their body's unique abilities.

Think of food and body trust as a secret potion brewed with love and acceptance. It whispers to children that their bodies are right just as they are, like a cherished storybook with no need for edits or revisions.

Listening to their body cues feels safe.  It’s a safety deep within, and it’s unshakeable because it’s so ingrained within the fabric of their being. 

They know deeply and profoundly that their body’s functioning will not be jostled by external messages.

They’ve given their body permission—on a subconscious level—to be in the world exactly how it is, without changing a thing. Thus, they respect their own authority. They tell themselves that their body is fine and functions well, just the way it is now.  

There is no mental red tape telling them that their body isn’t deserving of being in the world. ‘I am not good enough’  or ‘I can’t do that because the world around me says it’s not possible’ is not part of their thinking at all, ever. 

The problem is that diet and wellness culture eventually convinces children that their bodies need to change. That their bodies are not thin enough, strong enough, healthy enough, or smart enough. 

They hear this from friends, social media, parents, and grandparents. These messages start as insignificant whispers but eventually, over time, may turn louder and block the internal cues that they had come to rely on and listen to without exception from birth.

But fear not!! You hold the magic key to shield your child from this harmful narrative. With my coaching, we peel away the cloak of diet culture and weave a new tapestry of body positivity and resilience into your children’s minds.

Imagine a scenario where your child’s relationship with their body isn’t clouded by doubts or insecurities. No mental tapes playing messages of "not good enough" or "can’t do it." Instead, they embrace their unique selves with a confidence that’s unshaken by societal noise.

This is when it’s time to pause and turn to a professional (like me 😉).

Getting to a place where I could trust my kids with food and their bodies took a while, and there was no way I could have achieved this goal without the help of a coach.

How can you tell if your kids trust their bodies? 

My client was the concerned mom of a 4th grade boy, for whom a love for running and soccer dimmed rapidly that year.

He had been running since he was a toddler; it was his body’s default method of efficiently getting from point A to point B. 

He played soccer in after-school clubs regularly.  And enjoyed it - since preschool.

Until 4th grade, when his interest in running came to a screeching halt. Now, he was at home more and more sedentary.  In front of screens much more than ever.  And he was gaining weight.

Her son appeared dejected.  

Dieting seemed to be the way to go.  If he lost weight, then he would be able to participate again.  The weight was the problem.  His body was the problem.   

It made lots of sense to her to impose new food rules, like drinking lots of water, only eating sweets on the weekend, and limiting carbs. After all, this is what she did to lose weight.

In a framework of compassion and safety, I coached my client to see that her son’s weight gain was not her fault or her son’s fault, that there was nothing to fix, nothing wrong with his body.  

Instead, with my coaching, she began to understand that diet and wellness culture got in the way of her son’s body and food trust.

And, as it turns out, it also contributed to him not wanting to play soccer anymore. The soccer team was competitive in 4th grade, and now his ability to play was being judged on a whole new level.  The more ‘fit’ kids were faster.  They were stronger, and they were deemed better. His body, it seemed, for the first time, was inferior. He internalized this messaging, and he felt that this meant that all of him was inferior.  How could he continue playing soccer?

This awareness alleviated her stress and took the tremendous pressure off her desire to change his body.  

I coached my client in a cognitive behavioral method whereby:

How we think about our body affects how we feel about our body and, thus, how we act.

If we think, ‘my son’s body is too big,’ then we will develop a ton of motivation to shrink it. This is all created by diet culture and wellness culture.

The Solution? Anti-Diet Intuitive Eating For Kids

But the problem is that weight loss doesn’t work.  We have decades of scientific evidence that weight loss doesn’t work for 98% of dieters and is a gateway for eating disorders, especially for kids.

Instead, the response to ‘my son’s body is too big, and I have to get him to lose weight’ is to encourage him to challenge these thoughts and instead get him to believe that his body isn’t a problem to fix.  The problem is diet culture, the systemic oppression that a thin body is the body to pursue. Anti-diet, Intuitive Eating was the solution my client needed to support her son. 

Food and BODY trust came back over time, and he started to run again and play outside more.  And this took time.

I want to make sure your child doesn’t ever get there.  That your child never has to reckon with damaging body trust thoughts.  

Together, we can rewrite the stories our children tell themselves about their bodies. We can replace self-doubt with self-respect and rigid rules with mindful choices.

Let’s embark on this journey of empowerment and growth, ensuring that every child nurtures a positive relationship with their body and food, free from damaging societal pressures.