Intuitive Eating and Meal Planning for Families

Sharing is caring!

Creating a healthy relationship with food is essential for both adults and children. It’s something that I care about and am passionate about both for my family and my clients’. Have you ever wondered if you could combine the principles of intuitive eating with practical meal planning? You can!

Intuitive eating can help families foster positive eating habits and reduce mealtime stress. I know so many people who hate meal time because of the power struggles, “picky” eating, worrying about their kids’ intake and feeling like they’re battling through each meal. 

Here’s how you can integrate intuitive eating into your family meal planning:

Understanding Intuitive Eating

Intuitive eating is an approach that encourages listening to your body’s hunger and fullness cues rather than following strict diets or eating rules. It’s important to do our very best not to encourage diets or eating rules for kids. Instead, we want to help them form a healthy relationship with food, emphasizing the enjoyment of eating, being together as a family and trusting their body’s natural signals.

Key Principles of Intuitive Eating:

• Reject the Diet Mentality: Let go of the idea that you need to follow a specific diet to be healthy.
• Honor Your Hunger: Eat when you are hungry and choose foods that satisfy you.
• Make Peace with Food: Allow yourself to eat all types of food without guilt.
• Challenge the Food Police: Ignore thoughts that categorize food as “good” or “bad.”
• Respect Your Fullness: Pay attention to your body’s signals that you are no longer hungry.
• Discover the Satisfaction Factor: Enjoy your eating experiences and find pleasure in your meals.

Combining Intuitive Eating with Meal Planning

While intuitive eating focuses on listening to your body, meal planning ensures that you have nutritious and enjoyable meals ready for your family. You might think planning your meals doesn’t allow you to be intuitive but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Here’s how to combine both approaches:

Flexible Meal Planning:

• Plan Balanced Meals: Ensure that your meal plans include a variety of foods from all food groups to provide essential nutrients.
• Involve Your Kids: Allow your children to participate in meal planning. Let them choose some meals or snacks, which helps them feel more in control and interested in what they eat. You can also let your kids name the meal (no matter what they name it) making meal time more fun if they’re serving, “red fox spaghetti sauce” for dinner instead of just, “spaghetti sauce.”
  • For very young children, give them a choice between two choices. For example, show them pictures of fruit and ask which one they would like on the menu this week.
• Leave Room for Flexibility: While having a plan is helpful, it’s essential to be flexible. If someone isn’t in the mood for what’s planned or if you think they won’t eat what you’ve made, serve a small amount of it. With that, serve one or two things that you know they love to eat such as a whole wheat dinner roll, yogurt, or unsweetened applesauce.

Mindful Grocery Shopping:

• Create a Loose Structure: Make a grocery list based on your meal plan but be open to swapping items based on what looks fresh or is on sale. This can help avoid rigidity and strict eating patterns/decisions. You can make more structure if needed but also allow flexibility in the seasonings and sauces your family uses.
• Encourage Exploration: Let your kids pick out a new fruit or vegetable either weekly or as able. This can make them more excited about trying new foods. This can also be done with a new snack, frozen or canned produce, type of bean, etc. Any amount of autonomy that they get around food is helpful.

Cooking Together:

• Family Cooking Sessions: Involve your children in the cooking process. This can be a fun bonding activity and teaches them valuable cooking skills. This is probably my favorite thing to teach because as busy parents we’re just that…we’re BUSY! But it’s still important to get them involved in the process. You can set up part of the meal for them to help prepare or maybe you’re just involving them in the smell/taste test.
• Educational Moments: Use cooking as an opportunity to teach your kids about different ingredients, nutrition, and where their food comes from. Avoid phrases like, “this food is good for you and bad for you.” Call food by its name and use your senses to describe it. If they don’t want to taste it, ask if they’ll taste it with their nose/eyes (i.e use their other senses).

Serving Family-Style Meals:

• Encourage Self-Serving: Allow children to serve themselves from shared dishes. This can help them learn to listen to their hunger and fullness cues. As much as you’re able, allow them to also put their own condiments and dressings on their plate. They need to learn, not get yelled at for having too much.
  • However, if you need to make sure there is enough food/condiment for everyone (example ketchup) then you can say something like, “can you serve yourself a quarter size dot of ketchup to make sure there’s enough for everyone today and tomorrow?”
• Avoid Pressure: Don’t force kids (or adults for that matter!) to eat certain foods or clean their plates. Pressuring kids to eat and take bites of all of their food does not allow them to explore food at their own pace. This could also lead them to not listenining / losing the ability to listen to their natural hunger and fullness.
  • Here are a few phrases I say with my kids to encourage play around food that also get them to explore foods in different ways:
    • “Would you like to see who has the crunchiest carrot?”
    • “What could we add to this meal?”
    • “Would you like to smell this sauce with me?”
    • “What colors do you notice on your plate today?”
  • Remember, you decide what food is being served but they are in charge of how much and what they eat. Having a healthy relationship with food and eating a wide variety of foods is a long game, especially with kids.

Creating a Healthy Food Environment

Creating a positive food environment at home supports intuitive eating and helps your kids foster a healthy relationship with food. It creates space for space, joy, reduced pressure, less power struggles, and more relaxation around food.

Tips for a Healthy Food Environment:

• Model Positive Behaviors: Children learn by watching their parents. Show them how to enjoy a variety of foods and listen to your body’s signals. Don’t be afraid to try foods with them and talk about your experiences with food.
• Create a No-Stress Mealtime: Make mealtimes enjoyable and free from conflict. Avoid using food as a reward or punishment. When getting kids TO the table it can be difficult so adding fun novel items can help. Try mini tongs, fun plates, colorful spoons, new tools, serving food differently, etc.
  • If they say, “I don’t want to eat this” you can say, “that’s fine, you don’t have to.” If they get angry about what is on their plate or what’s being served, try saying, “you don’t have to eat this food but this is what’s on the menu today.” My recommendation, again, is to make sure there are one to two foods on the menu at each meal that are familiar and enjoyable to them.
• Stock a Variety of Foods: Keep a range of foods at home, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, nut/seed butters, fats and proteins. Also, include some fun foods to show that all foods can fit into a healthy diet.
  • You can create a play food drawer that houses more of your packaged items/snacks. Instead of calling it, “junk” food call it play food. These foods may not be nutritionally dense as others but they serve a purpose of convenience, fun, and substance.
  • Make sure you’re not hiding food from your kids or telling them that certain foods are not for them. This will only increase their desire for said food and when they eat it, they may ignore their satiety cues due to feeling restricted.
  • Have a variety of ready to grab/make items for them. We always make a trail mix jar out of things like popcorn, nuts, seeds, dried fruit, cereal, etc. They know we can scoop some into a bowl if they’re hungry.
• Dessert: If you choose to serve dessert, I recommend you put it on their plate with their meal. Do not encourage or enforce taking a number of bites or finishing their plate before they’re allowed to have the dessert. Remember, you choose what is served/what’s on the menu.
  • Kids will get exposed to sweets, treats, and all sorts of foods as they grow. I believe it’s healthy to serve them desserts and encourage a healthy relationship with these foods. If they become off limits/banned, their desire for them will increase and you may see their behavior around these “forbidden” foods to shift as well.
  • Do not use dessert as a punishment or reward.
• Novelty drawer/bin: If you have the space I recommend keeping a variety of items in a drawer or bin that kids can access for eating/exploring food. Here are a few things I keep in my novelty bin.
  • Silicone tongs, character spoons/forks, kids chopsticks, etc
  • Fun clips
  • Animal tooth picks
  • Reusable kabob sticks
  • Food books
  • Crinkle cutters
  • Kid safe knives
  • Small cutting boards

Intuitive Eating Affirmations for Families

I am a big believer in the power of affirmations, especially around food. These can be for between you and your partner or taught to your kids at appropriate ages. If you want a couple of ideas for affirmations you can teach yourself and your family in the kitchen, here are a few of my favorite.

• Food is not good or bad
• We can trust our body
• It’s okay to learn about food
• We explore food at our own pace
• We can learn to feel if our belly is full or empty
• We can trust our body’s signals
• We will be present and enjoy our time with family at the table
• We are deserving of overall well being
• Body diversity exists and we embrace it
• We choose to nourish our bodies with a variety of foods that will make us feel our best
• We will not call food junk
• We are grateful for the nourishment that food provides us
• We do not need to rush, we can savor our food and take our time

Addressing “Picky” Eating

What About Picky Eaters:

• Patience is Key: It’s normal for children to be hesitant about trying new foods. Keep offering a variety of foods without pressure. Some days they may touch it, kiss it, lick it, eat it, and go through that cycle again and again.
• Involve Them in Cooking: Kids are more likely to try foods they helped prepare.
• Novelty: As I mentioned above, there’s a ton of ways to bring novelty to meal time. It can be so helpful! Novelty can additionally include cute toothpicks, different colored food, and/or an activity/game like stringing plain Cheerios.
• Avoid labeling: Calling your child picky in front of them may encourage them to continue picky/selective behaviors.
• Avoid assumptions: Assuming your child won’t eat something is not a reason to not serve it. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had this thought before! Try to reframe it in your mind to, “I don’t know if they’ll eat it but I’ll serve a small amount and see what happens”
• Over praising: Just like negative pressure/forcing a child to eat, over celebrating their eating has the potential to encourage selectiveness/seeking reward for eating.

Managing Busy Schedules:

I know that as a parent you’re busy but I’m so glad you’ve taken the time to read this post and I hope you’ve found it helpful so far. You’re doing great! Here are a few other tips that have really helped me continue to encourage intuitive eating and meal planning as a family.

• Prep Ahead: Prepare meals or ingredients in advance to save time during the week. I suggest reading through this meal prep guide for ideas on how you can get started meal prepping. It seems daunting at first but in the end it makes cooking/setting the table MUCH easier and faster.
• Simple Recipes: Choose recipes that are quick and easy to prepare. This is especially true if you’re a beginner in the kitchen. Find a way to make one new meal and keep the ingredients minimal (or to your cooking comfort level) and see how it goes!
  • Don’t feel pressured to cook everything, everyday, It can be helpful to find and make a list of low/no cook meals that you can add to your week as well.
  • Utilize convenience foods such as frozen pizzas, vegetables, pre-mixed salads, etc. Convenience food does not automatically mean low nutrients and they can always be paired up with more.

Final Takeaways

Blending intuitive eating with practical meal planning can help your family enjoy meals together, nourish their bodies through satisfying and tasty nutrition, feel un-pressured to try or finish food items, and build a lifelong healthy relationship with food. You’re going to have days and weeks where it feels really successful and weeks where you feel like you could have, “done better.”

As much as I said not to pressure your kids to eat, remember not to put so much pressure on yourself to do things perfectly. Learn with your family and know that health promoting habits can be gradually changed and grown overtime.

I firmly believe that with a well-thought-out meal plan, families can enjoy delicious, wholesome meals together, fostering not only physical health but also bonding experiences around the dinner table. As a mom, and family and culinary focused dietitian, I strive to empower other families to get in charge of their mealtime routines, making nourishing meals a priority without sacrificing precious time and energy.

If this sounds like something you need help with, join my email list or community page today and get some support on planning balanced and tasty meals.