5 Habits That Raise Flexible Eaters (And Help Prevent Picky Eating)

Do you ever wonder why some children seem to adapt so easily to eating on the go, trying new foods, or sitting down at restaurants… while others struggle with every change in routine?

If you've found yourself avoiding restaurants, feeling anxious about traveling with your little one, or wondering if you're somehow setting the stage for picky eating, you're not alone. So many parents assume flexible eating is simply a personality trait, when in reality, it’s often built through small, consistent experiences during the first two years of life.

In this episode, Kathy shares the surprising story of a family road trip that turned into a 14-hour drive through a tropical storm and why, despite everything that went wrong, feeding their four-year-old was the easiest part of the journey. She walks through the five foundational habits that helped raise a flexible eater and explains how simple, intentional choices early on can make everyday life with food feel so much easier.

Tune in to hear:

• Why flexible eaters are built through experiences, not luck
• How early exposure to restaurants, travel, and new environments shapes long-term eating habits
• Why waiting until your child is older can make flexibility around food more difficult
• The benefits of serving one family meal from the very beginning
• Why consistency matters more than finding the "perfect" feeding strategy
• How perfectionism can unintentionally create stress around food
• Why children need opportunities to experience different eating environments
• How to decide what's negotiable versus non-negotiable when it comes to feeding your family
• Why modeling your own relationship with food has a lasting impact on your little one
• How chasing your child's current food preferences can lead to food ruts
• Simple ways to build variety and flexibility into everyday meals at home
• Why it's what you do most of the time not the occasional travel day or off-schedule meal that shapes your child's relationship with food

Connect with Kathy:

IG: @theminimedietitian

Website: https://theminimedietitian.com/ 

Watch my FREE 60-minute Masterclass: The 5 Habits That Are Sabotaging Your Toddler's Nutrition (and what to do instead)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

I want you to picture something with me. You get a random wild hair and decide to plan an eight-hour road trip with your little one in tow. You convince your husband that it's a good idea. You pack everything up, hit the road, and then bam, you're greeted by a tropical storm that turns your eight-hour drive into a 14-hour drive. Can you imagine the looks that are coming your way from your husband at this point? Okay, well, this was me a few weeks ago. And even though our eight-hour drive turned into 14, the craziest part is that my husband and I looked at each other at the end of it, and we were shocked to say that our four-year-old was actually the least stressful part of our trip. This is not a parenting flex because I truly do not know what we did to deserve that. Sure, it was exhausting. I was so tired of being in the car by the time we got there, but overall, driving through a tropical storm was more stressful than entertaining our little one. Reflecting on this, I've realized something. I could totally chalk this all up to luck and say that we just got lucky to have a kid who goes with the flow and can adjust to different situations. And I will not at all try to say that I am a parenting expert by any means. But what I do want to speak to you today is why I can say with 100% confidence that the ease we had on that trip around feeding our little one and ourselves on the go and in a stressful situation was a direct result of what we did in the first two years. It's because of what we did when he was six months, twelve months, eighteen months, two years, that he is a flexible eater today. And what I want to share with you today is that this is possible for you too. And some of the key things that got us to this point. Just as a general disclaimer, information shared in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes and does not replace individual recommendations that may be necessary for your child. So let's jump in to the five things that I know absolutely shaped who our little one is as an eater, and why something like a 14-hour travel day was not stressful around food. So, number one is we didn't wait until he was older to do the things that we wanted to do. Things like traveling, going to restaurants, eating in different situations, atmospheres. Little ones really have to learn through experience. I have worked with so many parents who feel really scared of eating out with their little one. Whether it just feels like too much to think through, too many steps to take, or we're fearful that they won't eat anything on the menu, or we're fearful that they are going to be loud or that they're going to be messy. And yes, little ones are going to be loud and messy and take up space and draw attention, but isn't that what they're here for? Shouldn't we allow them to be babies, to be toddlers? And if we want them to learn how to act or react or enjoy different mealtime experiences, we have to let them live through those. Something that I see all the time walking into a restaurant, being anywhere publicly is little ones constantly placed in front of screens to eat. Either to help them eat more, which really usually isn't actually helping them to eat more, it's distracting them. So to the parent, it might feel like they're eating better, or it's just to keep them quiet. And the problem with that is that it really creates distracted eating and inhibits your little one from being in tune with their own hunger and fullness cues, or even really learning food. It creates a barrier to little ones exploring different foods. So I see taking your little one out of their norm, taking them to a restaurant, traveling with them. Yes, it's hard. Yes, there's a lot that you have to think through. Yes, it maybe makes things have multiple steps instead of feeling simple and 100% do things on your own too, without your little one when you can or when you need breaks. But if we don't let little ones learn through those experiences and we're just waiting until they get older to do the things that we want to do, then they're not learning how to just come along in life with us. And food is such a big part of what we do every single day. Nobody is exempt from eating or feeding your little one, right? So if you're in a place of feeling scared or feeling nervous or like taking my baby in public to eat or my toddler in public to eat, just feels like a lot. I hear you, but the longer that you wait to acclimate your little one to different eating environments, it's going to take them longer to learn how to do that. Number two, we made one meal from the very beginning. He has always just eaten what we eat. So this made our feeding journey easier for you for a few different reasons. One, it helped to really create preferences for the types of foods that we intended to be a regular part of his diet. This largely looks like a variety of whole foods, but also different recipes and flavors and meals that we as a family enjoy eating. That was something that was important to me from the very beginning. And in the first two years, we are really establishing food preferences and taste preferences. And so having that approach of serving one family meal from the very beginning, a baby who has eaten the family meal from the beginning turns into a toddler who knew no different, right? Does that mean that there haven't been bumps in the road? Absolutely not. I think we personally faced every single feeding challenge I work through with my clients too. Like food refusal, sickness, teething, food throwing, changing preferences, opinions, big feelings, but it was our consistency through all of these constant changes that made the lasting impact. I talk to so many people who are given the advice of it's just a phase, or they'll grow out of it, specifically in toddlerhood. And what I don't think a lot of people, or even like well-intentioned practitioners or doctors, realize when they give that advice is that we're kind of saying, like, just let it be and it'll solve itself. And the reality is that it doesn't solve itself. It's how we respond and support little ones through all of those constant changes that actually changes outcomes. So being able to make one meal from the very beginning and not deviate from that set our little one up to eat a wider variety of foods overall and have a wide palate for preferences of different foods. This does not mean that in the thick of toddlerhood, he always ate everything I served. And that is hard for parents to feel like I'm doing this, but I'm not seeing them eat everything that I'm serving. And that doesn't mean that what you're doing doesn't still matter. And so again, we need that consistency piece. We need the accountability piece because if you're changing your approach all the time based on what your little one is doing, one, you're gonna stay stuck on the hamster wheel. You're gonna constantly feel like you're looking for new approaches or new methods, or try this or try that, and it's gonna feel like you're throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping something sticks. Whereas if we just have one simple approach and stick to that, then you become the constant and predictable one when your little one is constantly changing. Number three, I didn't try to make every experience perfect. And as a recovering perfectionist, I would say still recovering perfectionist, this was hard for me. I remember on multiple occasions forgetting the bib when we went to a restaurant, not having the baby plate to feed off of, and using whatever random things I could come up with. Not every eating opportunity needs to fit into a perfect box. And if you are feeling restricted by feeding your little one, like that you need to be home, you need to be in this perfect environment, that feeding on the go or packing food on the go or eating at a restaurant, if all of those things produce stress for you, then on one hand, it's probably impacting your mental health. On the other hand, it's also going to limit how flexible your little one learns to be around food. So if we create this perfect environment, these perfect plates, everything to be exactly how they want it to be at all times, we jump in and fix everything for them to meet their preference or their opinion at that period in time, then that is what they're going to expect. It's going to happen for them long term, which takes away the ability to be independent, to be an adventurous eater, to have food trust that sometimes things can look different or be presented different, or our environment can change, and food can still be safe, it can still be approachable, it doesn't have to be intimidating or scary. And it might feel weird to hear me use those words around food for a little one because I don't think many of us think of food as intimidating or scary for a baby or for a toddler, right? We're just like, it's food, what's the big deal? It's yummy, it's supposed to be exciting, this is a new experience for you. But what I think we often forget is that food is brand new to babies and toddlers. It is foreign, it is something they haven't figured out yet. We have all the excitement around food because we're like, oh, this is so exciting, this is a big milestone for you. I'm so excited to figure out what foods you're gonna like and enjoy. And we don't always think about how they need to be able to create essentially an internal voice that says, yeah, this is safe to explore. Yeah, I'm interested in this. We need to be able to build their curiosity instead of fear or intimidation, which sometimes happens really unintentionally when we are making everything perfect for them. And then all of a sudden we're in a situation that's not perfect, and it feels really, really hard to navigate. Number four, I determined early on what was negotiable versus what wasn't. This is going to look different for every single person, but there were certain things to me that were non-negotiable. And then there were other things that I could let go, right? My own nutrition going on the back burner. That was a non-negotiable for me. That doesn't mean that I show up perfectly all the time, that doesn't mean that I eat perfectly all the time, but prioritizing my own nutrition is a non-negotiable because I cannot show up as the mom or the wife or the business owner or the friend or anything that I want to be if my body is not fueled, if I do not have energy, if I haven't drank water, if I haven't moved my body, all of these things to take care of yourself, we can't pour from an empty cup. So that was a non-negotiable to me. It's also really important to me that my little one sees me prioritize that. Little ones learn by example more than our words all the time. 10 out of 10 times they are going to learn more from our actions than our words. And so giving my little one that example, even when he was six months old, one year old, 18 months old, I think it's really easy to go through this season and not recognize the impact that our actions are having because we are just so focused on meeting the needs of our little one. And that is a full-time job in and of itself. It is hard to also consider your own needs at the same time because you are going to prioritize what your baby or what your toddler needs first. And that is a great thing. But we do have to be able to find the little ways to make caring for yourself a non-negotiable too. Going back to number two, that's a big part of why I made one meal from the very beginning, is because it allowed me to have the capacity to prioritize nutrition for my whole family when I wasn't making multiple separate meals. My toddler eating more snacks on a travel day just so we can survive and make it to our destination, that's an example of something that's negotiable. Am I usually one to allow unlimited snacks or to give multiple snacks? No. Usually we have boundaries around that. But on a travel day where we need to just make it to our destination, that's negotiable. Now, can we choose what those snack choices are so that they can work in our favor instead of against us? Absolutely. But those are some examples of like what's negotiable versus what's non-negotiable. Number five, I purposefully mixed things up at home and didn't chase what he was currently into. What I mean by that is I didn't chase my little ones' preferences on any given day. Going back to talking about how little ones are constantly changing, that also means that their appetite, their food interest, their preferences from one day to the next, or even one meal to the next, are going to change. So if we are constantly chasing what they're into at that moment, it really ends up limiting them and sets you up for frustration because they could be into something one day and then not super into it the next. And so this is really where we're looking at in those first two years. We are establishing preferences, we're not trying to figure them out or cater everything that we're doing to current preferences. This helps to avoid food ruts because if we don't create flexibility on our own, if we don't purposefully mix things up on our own, that is how we get stuck in food ruts. That's how you end up serving the same thing for breakfast every day because it feels like it's working right now. That's how you end up making separate meals at dinner because it feels like they will only eat two or three things consistently. The problem with that is that food burnout is a real thing. So you may just be feeling the pressure of a food rut right now, like, oh, I'm just bummed out that we're only eating this small variety of foods, and I want to see them eat more, or I'm burned out by just making these same foods all the time, and I want to be having wider variety in my diet. But the other piece is food burnout. So things are going great until they're not going great. So if we end up limiting what those breakfast options are, what those snack options are, what we can make for dinner, because we're chasing what our little one is into that day, then we can actually create a lot of food burnout too, where one day, if they stop eating what that repeated breakfast was every day, then we're kind of left to think, oh my gosh, now what do I do? Right. And so when we are in a position of helping our little one to be more of a flexible eater, when I say purposefully mixing things up at home, buying different brands of foods, buying breads of different colors, buying products that look different from others, buying a pasta that's in a different shape than another pasta, seasoning a meat different from the last time you seasoned it. Those are all things that are going to create flexibility instead of pigeonholing you. And I can truly say with 100% confidence that these five things got us to this place of being able to say, after a 14-hour car ride, wow, our little guy, specifically feeding, was the least stressful part of the day. And I know I even mentioned a non-negotiable for me on travel days is just, you know, more snacks than normal. Or my motto on travel days is survival and grace. Like your job is to get to your destination safely with your little one or with whoever is with you, and to give yourself grace for if the schedule goes awry, if more snacks are given than normal, all of those things. What was crazy to me is that in our road trip experience, none of those things blew up on me. I had multiple experiences with my little one when he was a baby, when he was a toddler, that we were on airplanes, that schedules were thrown out the window, that we had to do a lot more bottles than normal because we weren't very interested in food, when the environment was different, right? So I have lived through so many of those days that were all about survival and grace. But knowing exactly how to reset the next day or when you get to your destination is huge because it's what you are doing most of the time that has the greatest impact. And reflecting on this travel day with my four-year-old, I was just shocked. Like it was just an aha moment of this is why we did everything we did, even when it felt hard, when it when we had to dig our heels in and say, okay, we have to trust this process and this method that I'm building. And literally everything that we followed is what I built into my coaching program, and now walk parents through so that they can have that guide too. So if you're listening to this and thinking, I want to do this too, but nobody's telling me what to do or how to do it, nobody is holding my hand or guiding me through all the ins and outs of feeding a baby who then turns into a toddler with opinions, I totally hear you. And that's exactly why I created my 12-week group coaching program, the Minim Method, so that you can finally have the step-by-step guidance and direction on the feeding journey that you've been wanting, that you've been craving. This program is for you if you are tired of questioning how or what to feed your little one in the first two years. If you want a tailored plan to transition from feeding a baby to a toddler with ease instead of constant questioning and confusion, you don't want to keep wasting time trying to piece together what your little one needs nutritionally. You want to avoid picky eating and raise an adventurous eater, and you also need the practical support to show up as the role model around food that your little one truly needs. Enrollment is currently open for my next cohort, kicking off in August, and I would love to support you inside. Head over to the show notes and apply now.