Transcript: Episode 002 - 3 Tips to Feel Confident with Amount Child Eats

Karla Moreno-Bryce: There are so many things I wish we, and our society, can normalize about growing children. Meaning view certain things in our kids feeding journey as perfectly normal and acceptable. 

Have you ever felt unsure about the amount of food your infant, toddler, or child eats at a particular meal? 

Do you question whether your vegan child eats “too much” or “too little”?

Are you concerned about your vegan child’s weight—whether “too large” or “too thin” and want to do something about it? 

If any of these three questions resonated with you, you’re not alone. Vegan parents like yourself often worry about the amount of food your child eats at a meal. And no matter where in the spectrum of intake your child is at, you’re unsure if this amount is “enough” for them. This often leaves you feeling worried about their overall nutrition and confused about the appropriate amount vegan kids should eat at each stage of growth. 

And I get those feelings. Remember, I’m a parent too that has similar experiences just like you. I know how important it is to you that your vegan child gets the appropriate nutrition and portion sizes to grow strong and healthy on a vegan diet. I know how important it is for you to ensure you’re doing things “right”. 

So, in today’s episode, I want to share with you some strategies on how you can overcome this challenge of not knowing what portion size or amount of food your child should eat at any given time. 

But before I dive into these strategies, I always like to give you a little bit of background so that you can better understand your child’s feeding dynamics. 

A child’s stomach size is small relative to an adult’s. Their tummies are small, about the size of their fist, which means they don’t have a lot of room for food. But the incredible thing about our stomach is that it can expand, which means some kids may be able to hold more volume or more food. But just because their stomach’s are relatively small, doesn’t always mean they will eat small portions of food. And it most definitely doesn’t mean that you as a parent need to regulate how much they should eat. 

Which brings me to the first strategy on how to feel confident with the amount of food your child eats and that’s to observe your child. This is actually one of the most insightful guidelines that you can follow to feel more confident about your child’s food intake. Observing your child isn’t just a one-time thing. It’s something that requires attention over the course of your child’s feeding journey. And the reason for that is because your child is unique, which means they will have a unique appetite. And their appetite is going to change over time. It may change from day to day or from meal to meal. And that is typical for growing children. But, the more you observe your child, the more you get to learn what is considered “normal” for him or her. The more you observe your child’s intake at each meal, the better you’ll know at what their usual intake is for them. When you become aware of what their usual appetite looks like, you’ll feel more confident with the amount of food they eat at a meal or snack. 

The second strategy is to trust your child’s appetite. This is perhaps THE MOST challenging for parents to follow through and accept. It’s challenging for us as parents to be okay with the amount of food our child chooses to eat because to us, it’s sometimes perceived as “too little” or “too much”. But that actually is far from the truth. Children are able to regulate their own appetite from the time they are born. They are born with the ability to know when they’re full and when they’re hungry. Can you remember the time you nursed or bottle fed your newborn? When you’re nursing your infant, they’ll usually fall asleep on your arms when they are full. Or they’ll usually break away on their own from the breast. Unless we actually weigh them before and after nursing, we never truly visually see how much breastmilk they took. Unless of course we are bottle feeding but when we’re nursing or whether we are bottle feeding, we simply accept that they must have had enough because they fell asleep on our arms. We trust them. 

But that trust changes when they begin to start solid foods because now we visually see the amount of food they’re eating. We believe that the amount they ate wasn’t enough or it was too much simply because that’s what we perceive it to be based on our visual observation. And when we experience that, our parent instinct is to react to that—either by saying “take one more bite” or casually stating what you see “I think you’ve had enough”. This instinct leads to us intervening in our child’s feeding abilities simply out of fear. Fear that they won’t meet their nutritional needs. Fear that they will eat too much, eat too many calories and become overweight. Fear that they won’t thrive on a vegan diet. 

But I want you to come back to those first encounters in feeding your newborn—trusting them with the amount of food they have chosen to eat. Because when we intervene in some way or another, when we discount their appetite, we unintentionally break that trust. And when that trust is broken, we send a message to our vegan kids that they shouldn’t listen or rely on their own hunger cues. It impacts their eating habits when they begin to learn to disregard what their own body is telling them and that in itself impacts their relationship with food and the opportunity to thrive on a vegan diet. 

And at the end of the day, who are we to decide how much a child should eat at each particular meal?

And now the third strategy and that is to be a role model for your vegan kids. Now, you’re probably wondering, Karla what does role modeling have to do with the amount our children eat—well, it actually has everything to do with how, what, and how much your child eats. Our vegan children look up to us. They examine everything that we do, say, how we behave, how we react to things. They want to imitate us. And at the same time, they’re learning about their place in the world from us. 

And so, the eating habits that we want them to learn, will come from us. Children absorb everything and they imitate us. And so if we ourselves are having certain issues with how we view food or how we eat, whether consciously or unconsciously, that’s going to translate in our child’s eating habits. I’ll share an example of what I mean by this and how role modeling impacts a child. 

When I was growing up, my mom followed several diets throughout my childhood. And she doesn’t know that I’m talking to you about this but I think it’s going to show you an example of roles modeling. At the time, she was heavier than she is now.  She followed the Atkins diet, she drank those Slim fast protein shakes, and she ate differently than us to intentionally lose weight. Now, my mom is far from following any diets these days, she’s learned to change her lifestyle by simply modifying her food choices. So, for that, I’m very proud of her. 

Now, during my childhood, her following diets was what I was seeing and believed that how and what my mother was eating at the time was the normal thing to do. And so, because of that, I looked at food differently. I didn’t want to eat “a lot” because I didn’t want to go through what my mother was experiencing. I wanted to eat similar foods like her and I wanted to eat just like her. She was my role model when it came to nourishing my body.

And so how you eat, what you eat, how you view food in general, even how you talk about food unintentionally impacts your vegan child’s relationship with food and in turn impacts the amount of food that they eat. It does takes a little awareness to know your own relationship with food but I 100% believe that when you discover how powerful role modeling is in feeding, you’ll feel more confident in the amount your vegan child eats. 

Alright, let’s recap the 3 strategies. The first is to observe your child. When you become familiar with what their usual intake is throughout the day and week, you’ll no longer feel anxious with the amount of food your vegan child eats. You’ll feel more equipped because you understand your child’s eating habits. The second strategy is to trust your vegan child’s appetite at each stage of their growth, whether they are infants, turners 2 years old or 8 years old. When you trust your child, they learn how to listen and regulate their own appetite, helping you feel more confident with the amount they chose to eat at that meal or snack. And then the third strategy is to be a role model for your vegan child. When you set an example for your child, they look up to you and understand their place at the dining table. And the more you master your role at the dining table, the more confident you’ll feel feeding your vegan kids. 

Alright my friends, I hope that with today’s episode you can choose one of these strategies to implement and practice today when you’re feeding your vegan kids. If you need a little more insight to feel confident, grab my FREE Essential Starter Kit at www.vegankidsnutrition.com/starterkit. I’ll leave the link in the show notes as well. In this guide, I walk you through the key nutrients to focus on to support a vegan child’s growth and also share what supplements are needed at each stage of their growth. 

And just as a reminder, your vegan child is unique which means they will have unique appetites. Some kids may eat less and some may eat more—and that’s perfectly okay. I feel that this something that we definitely should normalize for our own perspective as parents but also as a society.  I’ll see you in our next episode. Bye for now.