More Time for Mom

Picky Eating: How to Raise Healthy Eaters Without Driving Yourself Crazy (with Katie Kimball)

• Dr. Amber Curtis • Episode 70

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 55:02

Send us Fan Mail

Feeding kids is expensive, time consuming, and more often than not they don’t want to eat what you worked so hard to make. In this episode, I sit down with Katie Kimball of Raising Healthy Families to get her best advice for making meals and cooking with kids way less stressful. Especially if you’ve got a picky eater, you can’t afford to miss this!

 

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

  • How busy, cash-strapped moms can feed their family in a more healthy and connected way while minimizing stress 
  • Practical ways to end mealtime battles and picky eater problems
  • How to get kids not just involved but LOVING to cook—and to choose healthy, nutritious food over junk “snakes”
  • What to do when you & your spouse disagree about kids’ diet and eating habits
  • Easy things to feed your family, even when you don’t have much brain space, let alone physical energy, to plan ahead
  • And more!

 

AS MENTIONED:

 

FOR SO MUCH MORE:

 

 HOMEWORK:

Reach out to me via email or on Instagram @solutionsforsimplicity and let me know  the biggest tip or takeaway that you learned from Katie's great advice around kids, cooking, healthy eating, and calm living. And don’t forget to share this episode with another mama who needs to hear it.

 

COMING UP NEXT:

Join me back next Tuesday at 5am Eastern to keep unpacking the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy.

Did you know your nervous system secretly shapes your thoughts, emotions, choices, relationships, and life? My 1-hour masterclass, "Finally Understanding Yourself, The Missing Manual for Your Brain and Body," gives you foundational wisdom and practical tools to feel calmer, more connected, and more in control no matter how chaotic things are around you: https://solutionsforsimplicity.thrivecart.com/ns101/

Loving this podcast? Please help it get found by more listeners by taking quick minute to leave a rating & review in Apple Podcasts. Take a screenshot of your text review before you submit it, then email that to help@solutionsforsimplicity.com and I'll send you my powerful Happy Mom Protocol™ (a $297 value) FOR FREE!


CONNECT WITH AMBER: Website | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn 

Ready to finally get to the root of your problems and change your life FOR GOOD? Book your free 60-minute consult to learn more about working 1:1 with Dr. Amber.

We can only live and parent to the extent that our nervous system can handle the stress that comes our way. This is why it's so essential for moms to have the capacity to stay calm and grounded when their kids get dysregulated around food or around whatever it is. And that really is a big ask for a parent's nervous system. I love that everything you've suggested is about keeping the connection between parent and child. When we sever that connection, obviously a lot of really hard and harmful things result. And so the approach you've suggested keeps the parent and the child in their respective lanes It helps the parents be able to educate and guide the child in a loving, connected way. This is incredible. Welcome to More Time for Mom, where overwhelmed moms get science-backed strategies to overcome the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. I'm your host, Dr. Amber Curtis. Ready to make more time for you? Let's dive in. If you have kids, I know food is a pain point, whether it's what to make, how to get your kids to actually eat what you make, wishing your kids were more involved in the meal prep process, or worrying about all the junk your kids are eating. I recently sat down with the amazing Katie Kimball of Raising Healthy Families to pick her brain about all things kids and food, but more importantly, how we hardworking, deeply caring moms can stress a whole lot less about all of this. I can't wait for you to hear our conversation because she drops so many counterintuitive truth bombs, like kids should not get to dictate the menu, but parents need to stop trying to control what goes in your child's mouth. Kids need to learn to listen to their bodies, not their parents. The healthiest dinner table isn't about the food that's served, but about how calm things are. Healthy cooking is way simpler than you think. Convenience food doesn't have to mean unhealthy junk food. And the always needed reminder that there is no one right way to do things. Katie is a former teacher, two-time TEDx speaker, podcaster, writer, and mom of four just like me. Since 2009, she's been helping families stay healthy without going crazy and changing kids' relationship with food. She created the Kids Cook Real Food course, which was recommended by the Wall Street Journal as the best online cooking class for kids. And her book, The Picky Eater Playbook, comes out in early fall 2026. You can catch her on her Healthy Parenting Handbook podcast weekly. And Katie is on a mission to connect families around healthy food, teach every child to cook, and instill those all-important life skills. I will have all Katie's links in the show notes, but definitely stay tuned to the end because you don't want to miss a minute of this super important conversation. Without further ado, here is the interview. Katie, welcome to the More Time for Mom podcast. So thrilled you are here. And I would love to start out by hearing about your journey. What got you into this and what is the mission that you do for moms? Well, I've been a mom for 21 years. I've been teaching moms online for over 17 years now, which is crazy. It feels like I'm still a rookie. And I started from a place of failure and learning so much, trying to figure out how to feed my kids healthy and feeling inundated under the weight of all the conflicting research. You know, eggs are healthy, eggs are not. Butter is healthy, butter is not. And I was like, wow. And I have the heart of a teacher. I've always been a teacher. That's what my degree, official degree, is in. And so as I'm standing there at the cutting board chopping vegetables, I'm thinking, like, how could I help other moms take a shorter pathway to answer on saving time, saving money, figuring out how to cut through the noise, you know, of what's really important in our mothering and in particularly in the kitchen and with feeding. So that's kind of where I started as an OG blogger, shifted into teaching kids to cook about 10 years ago, because that just really felt, I realized there was a need. So many of our generation were saying, I don't know how to cook. And so it's hard to get healthy. And I thought, oh, my gosh, if we don't know how to cook, we're not teaching our kids. and someone needs to step into that cycle or else our kids will be going, well, I don't know how to cook. It's so hard to eat healthy, right? And it would just never stop. So that's been for the last decade, kind of my new platform is how do we build kids' confidence and kids' skills in the kitchen? And it's been such a beautiful journey working with just thousands of families, getting their kids and teens in the kitchen. And then I think today we get to talk about picky eating too, because that sort of naturally flowed where I wanted to help parents understand, like, how do we feed our kids? How do we help them build a good relationship with food? Not just like get the peas past the lips at one meal, but how can they become friends with peas for life? And how do we get out of their way to let them do that? I think everyone can understand why I couldn't wait to have you on the podcast, because this is such a pain point for moms. There are so many levels to this, and I will just share my own gut-wrenching journey with kids and food. Namely, I never intended to be a working mom, but that has been my path. And so time is always in short supply, coupled with the fact that I was and I'm still trying to recover from being such a type A perfectionist people pleaser who bought into this idea. I now know it's a false belief, but I really bought into this idea that there was one right way to do everything, including how to feed my kids so that I could ensure they had great brain development and that they would just grow up feeling good in their bodies and about their bodies. But it turned into so much pressure on myself, especially because my kids ended up having several dietary sensitivities. I know I'm jumping ahead. We're going to parse out each of these things. But I had four kids in a relatively short amount of time. And each child essentially got less and less. I had less ability with each subsequent child to cook the way I wanted to and to get them to eat the way I wanted to or to sit down and have family dinners. And there's so much here. So what you are doing is an incredible gift to our world. I would love to first jump in with the busy, overwhelmed mom who just has these ideas about the right way to feed her kids. And she's putting so much pressure on herself. Before we dive into practical tips and how to make healthy meals, how to get your kids involved in cooking, could you just give us any advice and perspective on calming ourselves down about food? You know, there's so many people with so many rules out there. You know, this is good and this is bad and healthy and unhealthy. My youngest, he's 11 now. And when he was about eight, he was in that like the concrete developmental stage where everything needs to be black and white. And he would ask our Google home, like, hey, Google, what's the healthiest food? And I'm like, oh, dude, like. You can't just ask Google that, like, no, not a single word answer, you know. And so that's just like fascinating, because in a way, even though we have these fully formed adult brains, we still sort of want that. We still sort of want someone to just give us a checklist. Oh, yes. But the good news is, I mean, I really think if we can just focus on as many whole foods as possible that are processed in our own home instead of processed in a factory, you're doing great. You know, so even if they are processed foods, if you're reading the ingredients and you have all that stuff in your kitchen, or you could, you're doing great. You know, it's when we have these things that are like, we don't recognize the ingredients, we couldn't possibly make that item at home. Now we're going, okay, is this leaving the definition of food and turning into, you know, a food product, a food-like product that our bodies don't recognize? Should we stress out about it? No, but if we're thinking like, just give your kid an apple, you know what I mean? Like that doesn't take time. We don't have to find a recipe for every day's after-school snack. And I think, you know, something happened just this week, actually, that's a perfect example. So my oldest is 21. He's still living at home because he's getting married next year and he's saving up for a house and it's all beautiful. And so he, as part of living at home, he needs to cook one meal for the family every week. So he's been doing this, you know, for quite a few, actually, since he was 12. He's cooked a lot of meals for a young man. And some of his favorites, one of his favorites is this chicken fried rice, and it's incredibly complicated. You have to cut the chicken, you have to cook the chicken in one pan, and you're cooking the vegetables in another pan, and you have to cook the rice, because he never plans ahead to have leftover rice, which is one of my mom's strategies. If I'm going to make something like chicken fried rice, I'm going to have rice one or two days before as a side for another meal. Anyway, he never plans ahead. And so it's incredibly complicated, but he just loves it, and it's a comfortable recipe for him. So this week he ended up grilling some pork steaks or something they were called. We have like a meat share and I got these pork steaks. I'm like, I don't actually know how to grill this, but he's young and neuroplastic. And he's like, I'll look up a recipe. Great. So he grilled those. We had some new potatoes from the farmer's market. He boiled those up and maybe some like green beans or something. The point is he goes, huh, that didn't even take that long. I was in the kitchen for less than an hour. And I thought, yeah, because that's how just food works. Like you don't need the complicated recipe with 15 ingredients and 27 steps. You know what? Right. He just threw the potatoes in the water. He threw the beans in the pan with some fat and he threw the steaks. I mean, he like seasoned them and threw them on the grill and like. That's just food. It's just real food. And it's once you know a little bit about the art and science of cooking, like he didn't he didn't need any recipes. He just had to look up how long to cook the steaks. And that's awesome. Like, I think we can all take encouragement from that, that it's not about having like this huge recipe repertoire. It's just about taking whole ingredients that have grown in the ground and eating things that have grown in the ground and figuring out how to get them from raw to cooked form. That is amazing. Barbecue sauce, right? And then kids love it. Yes. And you have set him up for success as he's going to go venture out into the real world, right? How wonderful that he's getting married. And I catch myself, you know, having thoughts about gender here because I have four boys and We do want our boys to know that cooking is for everybody. And it's so fun when you make it yourself. I feel like it tastes better, right? I still come back to the guilt that I took on with my first son. had, I guess, the craziness in my brain, but also a little more time to make all of his food from scratch. I wanted to make sure that everything was organic and that I cooked it just so and that I introduced certain things before other things. I really drove myself crazy finding information online that seemed to suggest there was one right way to do everything. And then, as I've had more kids, and it kind of backslid into, okay, now we've got to get the older kid to an activity by a certain time, which means we just need to go through the Wendy's drive-thru and the little guy's eating chicken nuggets or french fries and things like that. I've relaxed, but there is still some guilt there. And these ideas that even one time is going to somehow mess them up. In all your great wisdom, can you help us find a healthy mental balance between what we're eating and doing for our kids and the way we speak to ourselves as moms when it's not quote unquote perfect 100% of the time? One of the phrases I tell my kids often, especially and for us, it's when it comes to like dessert. We're a big ice cream family. I do not read ingredients on the ice cream. Nothing is good is happening there. Right. And and so I tell my kids, you know, your body was created to filter out some junk. True story. That's great to remember. Now, it wasn't created to filter out a magnanimous amount of junk. And so we just do our best, right? We try to eat the good and wholesome foods when we can. And then, you know, if we have lemonade and Little Caesars pizza at a church function, we go, OK, like we know that that's not serving our body. And we just say our body was created to handle that. Sometimes we're not going to eat that three meals a day. You know, but also I think, like, call a snake a snake. In other words, if you're going to have dessert or if you're going to have fast food, you can look at that and go, I know what that is. I know that's dessert. Right. And I know that that Gatorade is drinking my sugar and that and that that should count as like a dessert, quote unquote. And if you know that, then you treat it as such, right? And you treat it as a sometimes food and in moderation. But if you're thinking like, oh, Gatorade is a health food drink. Therefore, like, I'll have two a day and I'm going to be a better athlete. That's a lie. And so I think separating the truth from the lies, calling a snake a snake, and just realizing and teaching our kids that like our bodies are designed to filter out some stuff. You mentioned your kids have some food sensitivities and that's, it's like a tricky situation, but it's also a great conversation, right? So my daughter cannot handle dairy. Her body clearly says no to dairy. And so she's not going to cheat on dairy because she knows it will make her feel terrible. But maybe we cheat on sugar. And I won't say cheat, but like, you know, we're going to have some sugar. Sometimes we're going to have some junk or some fast food. And it's OK because our bodies are designed to filter that out. Obviously, her body is not designed to handle dairy. At least at this point in time, we're always saying, I hope you can heal your gut someday. You know, we hope you can come back to dairy. But It makes for a good conversation, as in, for you, kid, with the sensitivity, whatever you're sensitive to, like it's a hard no. You know, you actually have to have a really strict rule about that. But for other foods that are just like not serving us great, then it's a soft no. It's a different rule set. And we try to eat our apples and our oranges and our watermelons and our strawberries and our broccoli and our peas and our green beans, you know, like all these whole foods. And then we can sprinkle in some junk and that's okay. This is so empowering. Reminds me of the phrase, everything in moderation, including moderation. I just need to repeat that to myself on the regular. How can we help our kids have a really positive attitude towards food and enjoy the wide array of things that they have to eat while then wanting to choose the best possible most nutritious foods themselves when they have a choice? You know, you're doing the right thing for sure with education. And when I talk to parents of picky eaters, and this is threaded throughout my book coming in November, the Picky Eater Playbook, is when you know better, you do better. And so we don't want to look at our past selves and feel shame and guilt that drags us down. And we don't want to look at others or teach our kids to look at others and say, oh, like they're not as good of a person. It's just they don't know. Right. And so when we educate our kids, that's that's I think what we wrap it in is where you're learning a lot about this and you're learning a lot about your body and how foods interact with your body and a lot of other people. You know, you're smarter than most adults now. when it comes to food, kid. A lot of other people don't know this. And that's OK. Our family is different. And I think, for me, I've raised really countercultural kids in a number of areas, not just food. And so it's easy to say, you know, that's just not how our family does it. Because I know what is best for your body, and I'm the adult here, and I'm making the decisions. Your vote has been recorded. It's not a democracy. I eat that line a bunch. One of my favorite sarcastic parental phrases. And so I think if we can help our kids, I really think the greatest gift, one of the greatest gifts when it comes to food that we can give our kids is the ability to listen to their bodies. And again, with your kids with some sensitivities, obviously those were discovered over time, likely realizing, oh, when I eat X, I feel Y and Y is yucky. and terrible. And I think, I mean, I'm a child of the 80s and 90s and I would get stomachaches at dinner and I would just go and lay down in my bed and no one ever said, I wonder what is causing the stomachache? Can we look for any patterns? And my mother was a brilliant woman. It just wasn't, this wasn't the part of the times. And so to be able to say to your child, you know, when you eat the food at the friend's house, how do you feel? How is your energy? How is your self-regulation? Are you, able to control your emotions. And sometimes we look at other kids and we say, okay, like if you're just having the Eggo waffle only for breakfast, what kind of energy is that? Well, it's a quick energy spike and then a dip. And usually in the dip, we start misbehaving. We start losing control of ourselves. And we can't focus at school. And yeah, we're fighting with siblings, all that. Right. So I would say, you know, if you're having the egos, then the conversation is, how do we get protein into our breakfast? And I know you know that. But it's also like it's a pat on the back to say that. My 11 year old just came home yesterday and apparently he had a conversation with a friend. He said, oh, like so. People always say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Is that true? And he's got a little younger friend who says he always skips breakfast. I'm like, so sad. But we had a great conversation about why or why not. Breakfast may or may not for different people be the most important meal of the day and like how breakfast, you know, like trains your brain for what to look for. And there's research that says if you eat, you know, mostly carbohydrates and sugar, that then you're like craving sugar the rest of the day. that is actually pretty important, right? And so just to be able to talk about that balance and how do we eat foods that maybe are fun, but we balance them with protein, fat, and fiber. And that knowledge is so, so very powerful to give our kids. And when it comes to, I mean, I think your question was how do we help our kids build a good relationship with food with all the noise out there and all the clutter. And really part of it is us getting out of the way. when it comes to them encountering food, but definitely using any opportunity possible to say, well, how does your body feel? You know, listen to your body. And so if they're going to a birthday party and they're overindulging on four pieces of cake, it's a teaching moment as opposed to like, oh my gosh, all that poison went in your body. That's very stressful. But, hey kid, like, how you doing? How do you feel? How was your sleep that night? And let's learn what this does to your body so that you can make wise decisions later. And I think, I mean, I think it really works even at young ages when kids aren't, you know, we don't have to wait till they're middle school or high school and they're able to go to health class and take an exam. That's okay. I can, again, I feel like my little guy is just coming up so much, but I remember him saying, oh, there's this kid in my kindergarten class who's so, he can't stop knocking down my water bottle. He can't keep his hands to himself. And he's like, he has a donut every day at morning snack, mom. Like, I think that's probably the problem. And so he's regurgitating, you know, what I said, but what an interesting cause and effect notice for a five-year-old. Oh man, I could go down a rabbit hole there. I look back in awe at the pieces of my life that have given me a lot of background knowledge and perspective. I'd love to know yours too, but my mother was a midwife and a naturopathic doctor and to see a connection between what we all eat, not just kids, but what all of us eat, and how we feel in our bodies, how our nervous system is able to handle our days and our tolerance of stress. I think this is such a critical discussion, especially as so many people, adults and children, are being diagnosed with ADHD. There is such a gut microbiome component to that. There's so much that we could dive into there. Let's circle back to picky eating because I know that when moms have had a long day at work and they have this subconscious belief that they need to get it right with their kids and they go to great lengths to try to feed their kids well and then their kids are picky and don't want to eat what they have made with the precious little time they have and good food costs more, all those things. How can we help both mothers and kids when pickiness is a problem? Yeah, well, first of all, I want to just offer a resource that's a picky eating challenge that I run. It's totally free. So people can pop over to RaisingHealthyFamilies.com more time. from your podcast and sign up for that because that's, it's like a simple action step every single day. So it's sort of stretched out because it's not a one sentence answer. But to distill it down is we really do have to get out of the way. We have to get our relationship with our kids out of the way of their relationship with food in order for it to be built in a healthy way. Because, I mean, None of us are imagining going to college with our child and standing over them and saying, three bites. Is that the broccoli? And you can go get that soft serve over there in the cafeteria, like not happening. So how do we think with a later perspective, right? How do we think with a launching perspective? Even if your kid is five or eight and they're very far from college, you can't even imagine them like going, you know, going off to college or leaving home and getting their first apartment or whatever. But if you're instituting a routine that isn't sustainable for them as adults, then it's just a temporary crutch. And it probably needs to be transformed into something that they can carry with them into adulthood. Okay, so us telling them what to eat is a definite no-no. The division of responsibility, very popular in picky eating, and really what Ellen Satter, who coined the division of responsibility, did is just observe. She just observed what is naturally possible and naturally practical in the parent-child relationship when it comes to food. And she codified that. And I love it. I think it's really important. And what I'm good at then is taking that into the practical, right? The philosophical into the practical. So the philosophical is the parent's job is to provide what is to be eaten. So you choose the contents of the meal. Nobody gets up and goes to get a PB&J. That's not an option. When the food is served, which is very important because sometimes the kitchen needs to be closed. If kids are eating all day, no wonder they're not having an appetite for dinner, right? And where, which is also important because there's so much good research on family dinners. And we know that a shocking percentage of Americans are eating in separate rooms all around their house. And it's like heartbreaking. So where, by the way, the correct answer for where is around the dinner table or around the counter. With as many people who are available as possible in your family, at least one adult and one child counts as a family dinner. But that's it. The parent's responsibility ends after you choose what is served, when it's served, and where it's served. You don't need to worry about what goes in the mouth. Why? Because that's the child's responsibility. The child decides whether they eat and how much, which means there is no such thing as a respectful three bites of broccoli. And just to make that really clear, follow it through with a stubborn child who says no. And if the child continues to say no to the requirement that you need to eat three bites before you leave the table, or worse yet, you need to clear your plate before you leave the table, because there's a lot of negative ramifications to that clean plate club mentality. The only option, if they continue saying no, is that we force feed them, force them to chew and force them to swallow. And that is a little disgusting to hear. I hope everyone's skin is crawling, but civilized human beings would not do that. Which means, go back to the beginning, you absolutely can never require a bite. If you're not willing to force feed your child, which you aren't, therefore you can't. And so that could be huge. That could change your dinner table forever. What you do instead is you can say, I'd like you to put one bite of this food that is maybe new, maybe unfamiliar, maybe the child is like already resistant to it and they're saying, ew, gross, yucky, you know. Say, I'd like you to put one bite on your plate, but you don't have to eat it. Again, in my picky eating book, you can click on the picky eater playbook. You don't have to eat that. It's probably, I should do a search. It's probably in there like 50 times because I want to drill it into parents' heads that that is your magic phrase. Kid, you don't have to eat that, right? You do need to come to the table. You do need to sit and eat with the family. But regardless of what we're talking about, you don't have to eat it. And that is magic because it kills the stress. Right? There's no stress in you don't have to eat that. And it may take some time, like especially if you've had a one-bite rule or a three-bite rule or, you know, all these rules that other people have said are helpful for feeding your children. It will take some time for your child to believe you that you mean it. So you need to make sure you're ready to mean it. You really don't have to eat that. Can I be excused? Sure, that's fine. You know, I'm full, can I be excused? Well, can I have a dessert now? You just told me you were full. We don't want to overfill you. Again, there's like a whole chapter on desserts. That's a whole other thing. I think like put desserts to the side, don't even think about them. But when it comes to the table, you don't have to eat that is the best stress reducer ever. Wow. And this is incredible because it keeps our kids as their own autonomous beings instead of, I mean, we said this is not a democracy, but we don't want it to be a blatant dictatorship either. We want to help cultivate in them that sense of I am in control of at least what I feel in my body or how I handle that. A very constant refrain that I use with my kids is, you're allowed to feel however you feel, but you're not allowed to act this way. And then that transfers over here because I always want them to feel like they have a choice. They don't have to like either of the choices, but ultimately they get to choose from a constrained set of alternatives. Another thing that I'm realizing could apply here is there have been moments where various children are upset or don't want to do something. And I found it really beautiful to speak over them what I would like for them to do. But for instance, one of my children did not want to come with the rest of us to something that we all needed to go to. And so I said, you are an incredible young man. I know you will come and join us in the van. And then I left the room and I went and I got the rest of the kids ready and we're in there. And sure enough, a couple minutes later, my son hemmed and hawed, but he did, he came. And so instead of grabbing him and forcing him and battling him, especially as he's getting older and will soon be bigger than I am physically, I can't do that when they're getting to be teenagers. So I want them to always think through their choices and then see themselves maybe as I see them in the moment, not that they have to do what I want, but that I know how capable and responsible they are, and they're having feelings about it, but they're gonna hopefully calm down and see a bigger picture. So as that applies to food, it seems like you're suggesting the exact same thing, that we create this environment where they feel safe, And this is what is for dinner, but they still get to listen to their bodies. And you're right, we could try and force feed them when they were little. But then I'm remembering trying to feed green beans to one of my sons, and he just spat it in my face. So it's like you really can never force someone to do something. I love that your method helps both the parents and the children feel like they each have some power and some autonomy there. It's so, so, so important. Yeah. And it's keeping the power in the right place. Like I would often call that division of responsibility like staying in your lane. And if either party leaves their lane and enters the other lane, that's when we have problems and things break down. Right. So, yes, the whole picky eater playbook process like has to do with snacks and how we start the meal and the contents of the meal and the words we use and the tone we use. That's a whole thing. But it all breaks down if anyone is leaving their lane. And so I kind of gave an example of the parent leaving their lane. Like if we require the child to eat, that breaks their bodily autonomy and it's not really respectfully possible. But what's interesting is we don't always think about what it looks like when the child leaves their lane. In other words, like, do we let our children dictate what we serve? And a lot of people say no. Well, are you serving mac and cheese because it's the quote only thing they'll eat? Are you serving chicken nuggets on a day when you're having this like mixed up creamy casserole because you know they won't eat the casserole so you serve chicken nuggets? That has suddenly become a democracy. And actually, it's actually a mini dictator saying, I shall only eat mac and cheese. And then the mother serves them mac and cheese. You're actually allowing the child to make a choice that is outside their lane. And that is really dangerous and risky. So the whole short order cooking thing or feeding the kids kid food. My daughter, she works in daycare and she babysits a lot. And she's got a number of families she babysits where the parents eat super healthy. They might have like a HelloFresh box. They have a lot of disposable income. But they have it because they both work, right? They have a HelloFresh box, and the parents eat amazingly healthy, and the kids eat EasyMac and dino chicken nuggets. And it breaks her heart because she's like, where is it going to go? When do the kids ever shift to adult eating? And so it's so interesting to see highly educated human beings who obviously know how to nourish their bodies, and they're just sort of giving up with the kids because it's hard. It is hard, but it's worth it. Oh, we each have this window of tolerance. And I know personally, but I see with my clients that when we are stressed about so many other things in our life, we have that much less capacity for parenting or household battles. And I think that's where we just acquire. We ask to our little ones and say, fine, whatever you're going to eat, because we know if you don't eat, you're going to be a bear, and you're not going to sleep through the night. And so fine, something is better than anything. But you are so right that we as parents need to take our responsibility very seriously to clarify Where do you land on the line of, this is what's for dinner, you may eat it or not, versus better to eat something than nothing? Would you let a child choose to go hungry and not eat? Or do you think that they should at least get to have something to eat instead of go hungry? 100% let a child choose to not eat. And I tell parents to just soothe your soul. Missing one meal is not life-threatening. If not, there are a very, very small percentage of children who actually will miss meal after meal after meal after meal. That's a problem feeder and you need feeding therapy right now. The sooner you get into good quality feeding therapy, the better you can solve the problem. But if you've got a kid who's just digging in his or her heels, maybe they're just tired and they need to go to bed, right? There's so many reasons. why a kiddo might choose to skip a meal, but for most of them, if the parent holds fast to the good routines and environment that you have pre-chosen in advance, because you've heard this podcast, because you've read the book, because you've done the Norfolk Eating Challenge, right? Likely that child will tink up at breakfast. If they miss dinner, that's the pattern you're going to see. And so if you are just consistent in saying this is what is served, it doesn't mean that we are malicious. It doesn't mean we're like, I know my kid hates this casserole and I'm going to serve it with no other options. No, like there should always be options. There should be some raw veggies and dip or there should be a salad or there should be a side bread. And can your kid go to bed with just having one roll? Yep. They can. And ideally, you've had a bite of that horrible creamy casserole on their plate. So they get some exposure and that's a whole other topic. And they've had one roll. Should they have three rolls? No. That's a process. It's one of the rules I teach is finish your first before having second. Totally different than the clean plate club. It doesn't mean you have to eat that horrible creamy casserole. It means that before the modern era, food was finite. We didn't have unlimited amounts of food. And I think when we parent from fear, especially the fear of my kid will go hungry and whatever flows from that, we make poor parenting choices. So I want to encourage people out there not to parent from fear and not to say, oh, like, clearly we have all the dinner rolls in the world. So I'll just keep giving my kid dinner rolls and he or she can have three or four of them and be fine for bedtime. You know, in every history before now, there were probably the number of dinner rolls as people in the family. And so it's not a bad parenting decision. And in fact, I would posit it's a wise parenting decision to say, we have one role for each of us to now and stick to it. And now we're not parenting from fear. Now we're parenting from a very logical, grounded place. Yes, you may have the role, No, you may not have four because we decide what is served and we don't have to serve everything that's in our pantry. All of this echoes what I am on a mission to help moms realize, which is that we can only live and parent to the extent that our nervous system can handle the stress that comes our way. And so this is why it's so essential for moms to know their nervous system and nourish their nervous system and pour into themselves so they have the capacity to stay calm and grounded when their kids get dysregulated around food or around whatever it is. And that really is a big ask for a parent's nervous system. I know that I've wrestled with it. I know all of my clients do. And so again, like nothing is wrong in the moments we get stressed out, but it's all information. It's all data about, Oh, okay. I, if I want to be able to handle this better, I need to take care of myself so that I can hold my ground without getting triggered and without caving, or without needing to go, escape, and scroll for an hour because that confrontation with my child was so intense. We want to work so hard to fill our own proverbial cup that we can always maintain connection with our children. And I love that everything you've suggested is about keeping the connection between parent and child. When we sever that connection, obviously a lot of really hard and harmful things result. And so the approach you've suggested keeps the parent and the child in their respective lanes. It helps the parent be able to educate and guide the child in a loving, connected way. And then it ideally teaches the kid over time that, yeah, I want to eat because it feels better to eat certain things than others, and I feel better when I eat versus when I don't eat at all. This is incredible. So you said your book comes out in November. Is there a pre-order list or some way that people could find out when that gets released? Yep, it's actually available for pre-order right now. It's called the Picky Eater Playbook. And what I've loved the most, Amber, in working with, we've had over 20,000 families, mostly moms, go through the No More Picky Eating Challenge over the last five years. And 85% of them say that the stress is reduced at the table. And that is what makes me stand up and applaud. Because when you predetermine your decisions, and when you use calm language, and when you have a routine that You believe in, you know, you know that you're doing the right thing in setting the routines and your kid can do all the crazy stuff kids do. And you just go, yep, that's their lane. They can do all the crazy and I don't have to enter into a battle. And therefore, the stress at the table is down, the conversation is up, the laughter is up. I got to quote so many moms in my book from the challenge saying, It was lovely. Like, we had the best, nicest, calmest dinner that we've had in years, you know? We actually had conversation. We actually had laughter. And it's so, so beautiful. And you would think, you would think the goal of a challenge called No More Picky Eating Challenge would be to get the kid to eat a food. Now, half to two-thirds of kids actually do try a new food, but it's so funny because that's not even the goal. The goal is to reduce the stress at the table because now all the routines are supercharged and the kids have more of an opportunity to make friends with food for a lifetime and not just for that meal. Big question then. Building on that, any advice for mothers where they love everything you're saying, it makes such sense, they want to do this, and their husband maybe isn't on board or is even resistant and is maybe not modeling for the children these habits that the mom wants to help instill in the kids. How do we navigate the complexity of different parenting styles when it comes to food and potential, not conflict, but just like a mom that really wants to follow your method while knowing that the dad is going to keep doing his own thing or maybe even undermining the mom's attempt here. It's such a tricky situation. I mean, anything with, you know, two people trying to do the same task is always going to have some potential friction. And I tell this story in my book of Kristen, who, like, forgot to tell her husband that she was trying something new. And he started, like, telling the kids they had to eat stuff. And she's trying to, like, train him at the table in the art of the poker face. She was like, no, don't recommend. Like, that's not, like, don't do it live in front of the children. But taking some moments, first of all, knowing how your husband's brain works. You know, is he based in the logic? Is evidence going to sway him? Is education going to sway him? You know, a lot of men tend to be. Or is he maybe more based in emotion and he wants to hear like, honey, what if we laugh more at the table? Like, would that be worth investing in trying this idea? What's great is that results are seen so quickly that even if the best option is to say, listen, husband, I've kind of told you what I'm trying to do. I hear that you don't agree. Would you just step back and be a silent observer for three dinners? And if you don't see anything good happen, great. We'll regroup. We'll talk about it. We'll try a different system. But most likely, within three dinners of following the system, the husband would see something, evidence, you know, he would see proof like, oh my gosh, we actually had a calm dinner and we actually laughed more. And oh my goodness, the child who I was going to say, you have to eat three cucumber slices, he ate three cucumber slices anyway, right? Because these are the kinds of actions that really happen when you follow a positive system and when you keep that connection. So I think proof, like discussion, education, at the least ask to just step back and watch for the proof, is a great way to get on the same parenting page. Love that. Yeah, definitely working on that in my home. I would love to turn a little more practical. How can busy moms work to make everything food-related less stressful when time is of the essence, groceries, and everything costs more than ever before? How can busy, cash-strapped moms try to feed their family in a healthy and connected way while then minimizing the stress that they feel around that effort? Yes. Oh, I'm so glad you asked this because I love giving practical tips. Like that's where I started 17 years ago. I was like, what can we do? So step one is don't try to do it all at once. That's really, really important. I mean, most of it makes me relax. Thank you. Like most of us, I think, are wired that baby steps is the best. So choose one doggone strategy that you can try. And when that strategy becomes habit, you choose the next doggone strategy, whether that's three days or seven days or 10 days. Right. And so when we think about grocery shopping, you know, you talked about like going through the drive-thru because you had to get somewhere quickly. And the antidote to that is to buy some convenience foods that you have in your home that you're okay with, right? So you can go to Costco and you can get some pretty clean ingredient, you know, grass-fed sausages. Throwing those sausages in a pan and heating them up takes less time than driving to the restaurant. or less time than ordering DoorDash and waiting for it to arrive. They sell chips now that are made with avocado oil, where, again, if you had the time, which we don't, you could make those chips in your cast iron skillet. That's wonderful. Now, I don't think you should necessarily eat grass-fed Polish dogs and chips every day. But if you have them in your house because you've shopped with intention and you think, I am going to need an oh crap day, at some point, right? My meal planning shall not be perfect. It's not going to be perfect. And so you plan ahead for the O'Craft Day and you have something in your freezer, in your fridge that's like, you know what? Tonight we're going to have gluten-free crackers, cheese cut up, and some meat sticks that are gas fed. And it's a picnic and I'm not cooking anything. But to me, like that feels preferable to drive through. Yes. And that's that's my own food philosophy. Another great hack for packing lunches is, again, we've got to shop with intention. So you buy your cherry tomatoes, your baby carrots, your strawberries, things that are like whole grabbable foods. Is it super easy for even a child? Your 11 and 12 year olds could totally pack their own lunches if you, you know, get out a few things and say, you got to have one protein and three plant points, fruits and vegetables, right? What we do to speed up the lunch packing process is the kids, when we are on the ball, which Kitty loves and loves, the kids pack their lunches right after dinner. Because our raw veggies are out, our dip is out, the lettuce is out if they want to make a salad. And a lot of times we'll have a dinner that translates into a cold lunch. So maybe it's pasta, but the kids can like pour some Italian dressing on the pasta and have a pasta salad the next day. Maybe it's a slow cooker barbecue chicken or maybe it's grilled meat. Those are wonderful cold. And so they can take their little bento box through, and in two minutes, the lunch is packed. Because, like, why is packing lunches so exhausting? It's because you have to get everything out of the fridge, pack the lunches, get everything away, and now your counter is a mess. But if you combine it with dinner when everything's already out, it's like super fast. So that's a great strategy. And then I would say maybe the third thing when we think about busy moms who are just like overwhelmed is breakfast. Breakfast can be tough. How do we get that protein in? And so again, it's buying meats or sausages that you're okay with. Maybe it's pre-cooking them on a weekend and having a bunch in the fridge so that it's a one minute process. to reheat it. We do every week in the school year, we do at least one day of oatmeal and we set it in the Instant Pot overnight. Have you ever done this? No, I've done the overnight oats just soaking, but I haven't done Instant Pot. Some bellies can't handle the raw oats, you know, that are like soaked in the fridge. So if you need if you need them cooked to feel better, you can mix it all up in the Instant Pot, set the timer for four minutes. It's a four minute process. And so everyone wakes up and it's hot. You've got your, you know, because we have kids who go to school at different times. You got your early leaving kids can have it. It's still hot for the later leaving kids. And where do you get protein there? Well, hopefully milk if you're not dairy sensitive or you can whisk eggs and add them to probably not eggs overnight in the Instant Pot. But, you know, like there are ways. My daughter really prioritizes protein. as a 17-year-old high school senior. And so on oatmeal day, she would have the oatmeal. She's dairy sensitive. She couldn't have the milk. And then she would just throw a few sausages on the griddle. So it's, you know, it's just a couple minutes to make sure that the kids are nourished heading off to school and starting their day well. Yes. Oh, I love that so much. One of my favorite early kind of fast breakfast dishes is the homemade oats, not the instant packets, but taking whole raw oats and then cooking them with raisins and apples. And then I put on a scoop of almond butter and some of the raw sprouted pumpkin seeds for a little bit of protein. And I'll usually put a little almond milk on there and everything too, maybe some fresh berries. And it's like this whole gourmet dish that doesn't take more than five minutes to cook. But I'm all about new ideas. And you're right. There is so much now. Thank goodness. We are living in a day and age where there are so many pre-packaged, ready-to-go, good, healthy alternatives. I'm thinking of the grass-fed, pre-cooked steak available at Costco. That has been a lifesaver for me. But again, there's just, it's a habit and it's a mental game for mothers more than anything. And I know there have been a lot of times in my parenting journey where I didn't think I had brain space, let alone physical energy to think these things through and plan ahead. And I'm so obsessed with how you are making this easy for moms. Thank you so much for all that you are doing. Is there one last thing that we haven't touched on that you would love for moms to know about food and kids and just how to enjoy life when it comes to feeding our bodies? I think the one thing we haven't talked about is getting kids involved. And so obviously, I mean, that's a whole podcast interview in itself. And another episode. We've got to have you back. Yes. But the sprinkle, the sprinkle of why get kids involved is number one for picky eaters. There's no pressure to eat. when you're preparing the food. And that's huge. And they get exposure. It's almost like an inoculation. And they're so much more willing to make friends with that food. So any involvement in the kitchen, even if it's like, hey, can you wash this broccoli? No training needed. You know, that's a huge, huge benefit for our kids who are struggling to have a good relationship with food to get them in the kitchen. And it's a massive confidence builder. You know, I can remember my son, he's now 14. When he was seven, he asked to learn to use a chef's knife because he'd been using a paring knife since age four. And he's like, I think I'm ready, mom. And he tends to look around and say, I don't think other kids in my class can do this. Like, what a cool feeling, right? We want our kids to feel confident in themselves. Forget the participation medals. Give them a chef's knife. My heart is beating a little fast here knowing my boys, but clearly I need to work with them on that. With proper training, kids are not going to have any life-threatening situation with a chef's knife. They may have a Band-Aid situation, but that builds resilience. And I can do this, and I can do hard things, and that's good, too, actually. The easiest way to trust yourself and trust your child to hand them weapons such as a smartphone and a car is to start with a small, sharp knife and a strawberry. Because they have to learn to take beneficial risks, which is another benefit, actually. So those are just like sprinkles by getting your kids involved. Even if you have no idea how to do it, teach them to measure a teaspoon of salt. Teach them to wash the broccoli. Have them move food from the container to the plate. It can be as simple as that for the beginning of exposure, ownership, and participation. Katie, this is incredible. I think I can speak for all of us in that we are wanting to run to wherever you are to get more of you and your wisdom. Please tell us where we can find you. Yeah, Raising Healthy Families is my brand. We're teaching kids to cook, teaching teens to cook. We teach life skills. We didn't even touch on that. And we have the picky eating. So if you put more time at the end of RaisingHealthyFamilies.com, that's where you'll find the picky eating challenge. And you can really step into the five-step process that has now become the picky eater playbook. Love it. I will have all those links in the show notes for everyone. Katie, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. This was awesome. Oh, it's my pleasure, Amber. I'm so glad to help. Your homework for this episode is to tag me on Instagram at Solutions for Simplicity with the biggest tip or takeaway that you learned from Katie's great advice around kids, cooking, healthy eating, and calm living. Definitely share this podcast with another mom who needs to hear it, and then join me back next episode to unpack even more hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. Until then, remember nothing you do changes how wonderful and worthy you are. Have a great day. I know more than anyone how precious your time is. So the fact that you spent it listening to this podcast means the world. Make sure to subscribe. And if you got value out of this show, I would be so honored if you'd leave a review and share this episode with another busy mama who needs to hear it. We've got this.