#437 Picky Eating: What Actually Works with Alyssa Miller, RD

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You’ve probably heard it before. “Picky eating is just a phase. They’ll grow out of it.” But what if they don’t? What if it gets worse? And what if your well-meaning bribing and begging is actually making it harder?

This week I’m joined by picky eating specialist Alyssa Miller RD, and we’re diving into what’s really going on when your kid refuses food. Alyssa brings a refreshing, root-cause lens to the mealtime madness and helps us zoom out to see what picky eating is actually about. Spoiler alert: it’s not about the chicken nuggets.

We talk about how to stop the power struggles, what’s driving the pickiness beneath the surface, and why this stuff hits so hard as a parent. If you’ve ever left the dinner table wondering what just happened or questioned your entire parenting strategy over a side of broccoli, this one’s for you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:
• Why picky eating is a symptom, not the actual problem
• How to spot the root cause behind your child’s food refusals
• Why your own childhood feeding experience might be impacting your parenting
• What to do instead of pressuring, bribing, or sneaking foods
• Why “they’ll grow out of it” is not always true
• The long-term effects of mealtime control and clean plate expectations
• What real progress looks like and how long it actually takes
• How to create calmer, more connected meals starting now 

ABOUT GUEST:
Alyssa is a registered dietitian, picky eating specialist, founder of Nutrition for Littles and mama of three. She is also a podcast host for the Nutrition for Littles Podcast and creator of Table Talk, a Picky Eating Reversal Program for families. She has a gentle root cause approach for more peaceful mealtimes where little ones can learn to like new foods. She is passionate about teaching moms how to raise healthy, independent eaters and is dedicated to seeing families have success at mealtimes and seeing lifelong healthy eating patterns start at a young age. Her work has been featured on Good Morning America, Huffpost and more.

WHERE TO FIND:
Websites: https://nutritionforlittles.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nutrition.for.littles/

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
More Links + Quizzes: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

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I released a free training that shares the 4 steps I use to help clients reduce eczema, inflammation, and food-reaction symptoms by 50%+ in a few months — without restriction or overwhelm. The feedback has been incredible, and I answer every question inside the training. Watch here: christabiegler.com/blueprint

Transcript

[00:00:00] Alyssa Miller, RD: All the different areas that are surrounding this new food for our child to make sure that they feel completely supported before they take that bite.

Believe it or not, eating the food and swallowing it is the last step in reversing pick eating. It's not the first step. And so we need to build the skills, the confidence, the wherewithal to get to that point of actually eating it.

[00:00:19] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On the show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

All right. Today on the Less Stressed Life I have Alyssa Miller, who's a registered dietician, picky eating specialist, founder of Nutrition for Littles and Mama of Three. She's also a podcast host for the Nutrition for Littles podcast and creator of Table Talk, a picky eating reversal program for families.

She has a gentle root cause approach for more peaceful mealtime, where little ones can learn to like new foods. She's passionate about teaching moms. How to raise healthy independent eaters and is dedicated to seeing families have success at mealtimes and seeing lifelong healthy eating patterns start at a young age.

Her work has been featured on Good Morning America, HuffPost, and More. Welcome to the show, Alyssa. 

[00:01:43] Alyssa Miller, RD: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so grateful to be here. 

[00:01:46] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, I'm excited to talk about this, a topic that undoubtedly, I feel like every parent. Would appreciate unless you have one child. I never really had problems with my first child.

It's the second one that gets you. Oh, okay. Yeah. And I am curious about your story as well, because we didn't really learn any of this in dietician school, as is most of the time the case with what we do in our careers. We didn't really learn that 

[00:02:11] Alyssa Miller, RD: exactly. 

[00:02:12] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. So I'm guessing that you have a personal story of how this all happened.

Please share with us why you are a picky eating. Girl, why are a picky D Nest expert? 

[00:02:21] Alyssa Miller, RD: That's right. Unlike you, my first was my picky eater, so that one really threw me for a loop. And just like you said, like in school, aced all my tests. Like absolutely just was like totally got this in the bag. Went through our different, age groups of nutrition and I remember learning about picky eating, feeding toddlers for a day or two.

The test came around life cycles of nutrition, again, aced it like felt so good. I was like, this is gonna be great. Went into my career, I actually ended up in tube feeding. So I worked with patients who have either never eaten by mouth or can't eat by mouth, and they have to literally have a tube directly into their stomach.

So it's like completely skipping anything to do with eating. And was in that career when I had my first baby, my first son, and he turned two, two and a half ish. And he started to get picky and I was like, don't worry. I got an A in this class. I totally know what to do and I'm just gonna feed him.

This is like the age old thing. It's like I'm just gonna feed him the foods that I want. I'm just gonna feed him what we're eating and it's all gonna be kosher. No. Absolutely not. He started to get picky and pickier and I felt like totally at a loss where I'm like, I have all this education.

I know how important nutrition is. We all do, right? Like you don't need a degree to know how important nutrition is for the building blocks of our life. And yet I had this toddler who was like refusing all foods. Someone told me the other day, and it's funny in my field that I had never heard this term, but like he was a Arian.

Like he essentially just wanted bread all the time. And I was like, bread's great. Listen, nothing against bread, but like we cannot survive on just bread, especially during these really formative years. I'm a new mom. I have this two and a half year old. All he's eating is bread and I know that he needs a varied nutritional diet and it felt really stressed.

Really, I like to talk about this story because I think a lot of parents can really resonate with it, but when this kind of all kicked off, when he started to get picky. Almost pinpoint when it happened. I brought him to Chick-fil-A with a girlfriend of mine who also had kids the same age around his age, and they wanted to go play in the play place, right?

And so her daughter wanted to go play in the play place right away. And she looked at her daughter, looked at her untouched food and was like, Hey, they have three more bites of your chicken and. Of course we're like, please eat this fried chicken, right? So we're like, please eat your chicken and then you can go play.

And her daughter like, gobbled it up, no problem. And went and to go play. And so then my son was like I wanna go play with my friend in the play place. And I was like. Ooh. Kinda like this torn thing of you haven't really eaten, you're very distracted by the play place you wanna be with your friend.

We haven't really encountered this yet. He is again, two and a half. And I tell him kinda the same thing, like she's my friend, she's a little bit older in like the mom space than me. I'm like, you've been doing this for longer. You must know what you're doing. So okay, eat three more bites your chicken and then go play.

And sure enough, he did like it was no problem. And that's how it started. And then it was like this little by little thing of okay, now I'm negotiating playtime. Screen time desserts to get him to eat because I know that he needs this nutrition, he needs more protein, he needs more veggies, and we just ended up in this cycle.

The visual that I use a lot is this snowball effect of, it starts as this like tiny little snowball and it's just like now it's out of control and it's become like a full avalanche. Like now all of a sudden my son is not eating anything but bread. I'm having to negotiate with him every night. We're having power struggles.

I just wanna feed him mac and cheese and chicken nuggets. Have him at least eat something, put him to bed, and then eat my own adult food after he goes to bed. But I know as a dietician, that's not the right approach. But I didn't know what else to do and I was found myself stuck. And so I went back into the research, the stuff that we did not learn in school of how this actually works.

Really focused. On a lot of toddler like development and their brain development, their skill development, their curiosities, and started to pull out some ideas and really started to reverse my son's pick eating. And at the time I actually just had a nutrition blog. And so I was on Instagram just sharing my own process and parents were like, tell me more.

What's working, what's share? And I just started organically sharing it. And that really blew up where parents obviously struggle with this all the time. And to see someone. From the depths of picky eating where the kid is literally a arian to getting him to eat a very diet. Of course, parents wanted to learn more and so I pivoted my entire career.

And what was fun about it was at the time being a tube feeding dietician, I was also simultaneously working with patients who have never eaten anything by mouth or kids who have gone years or months even without putting anything in their mouth. And it's very similar behaviors. To picky eating.

And so there was a lot of what I was doing with my son was mirrored in my patients at work. And I found out how much I was passionate about that. At the same time helping reverse my son's pick eating. And it evolved from there where now I'm using these strategies that are research backed, but really approved by moms.

That are like, this is easy. This is not taking, hours and hours of my day or time to reverse. And also using like my kids' natural curiosities, because the thing that I hated the most about when I was in the depths of picky eating was the bribing, pressuring, convincing, cajoling, sneaking like. My relationship with my son was being affected, and I'm like, man, I hate this.

Like I hate meals. And I had this picture in my head of what family meals we're gonna look like. And now they're filled with like frustration and power struggles and he's not even coming to the table. Or if he doesn't eat. And then I'm frustrated and I hate food. Waste is like a big trigger for me.

And so it was just like this. Storm and I hated family meals. I really did. And so I was like, there has to be a way for my kid to eat what he needs, listen to his body. 'cause I didn't wanna be telling him until he was in college how many bites of chicken he needed to eat and feel good about our relationship in the process.

And that's what I un. Covered. And so now doing that for other families, I just feel like it's my biggest calling to help families enjoy meal times and picky eating oftentimes get in the way. So that's where I started and why I do what I do. Yeah. I hope that kind of answered your question.

I 

[00:07:40] Christa Biegler, RD: love it. It's very heartwarming actually. Because as a dietician and enjoy. Meals. I do know that like for years it's oh, this is robbing me of one of my favorite times of the day. Yes. Which is eating. 

[00:07:53] Alyssa Miller, RD: Yes, exactly. 

[00:07:54] Christa Biegler, RD: I 

[00:07:55] Alyssa Miller, RD: just had this picture, I'm like, this is gonna be beautiful, and it was not.

[00:07:59] Christa Biegler, RD: And then you add another one to the mix. I don't know how far apart your kids are, but, and I'm curious, you brought up a lot of really tangible things about hiding cauliflower and whatever, which I don't get too excited about hiding things in general.

'cause then we start to kids are really smart, really young. 

[00:08:12] Alyssa Miller, RD: Yes. They're way more perceptive than we give them credit for. 

[00:08:15] Christa Biegler, RD: And rather manipulative actually. 

[00:08:17] Alyssa Miller, RD: Yeah, they can be for sure. 'cause they learn it works. That's the thing that like kids are not trying to be. Manipulative or mean or whatever, disrespectful.

Like they really just are learning from you. Yeah. The boundaries that you have in place. And this is where a lot of I had to learn so many parenting strategies that I didn't know. Because picky eating, always say feeding is parenting. It's yeah, they are one in the same.

You are parenting your kid through the meal times. And so if you are sneak like. What good it is it if you teach your kid how to say the words, I'm sorry. Without feeling what they've actually done to someone else and understanding the repercussions. And I think a lot of parents, we want them to do the right thing or have the right behavior, but we're missing that there's underlying stuff happening that we really need to shape and form them. That's what childhood is. It's like we get to form them into these adults and I always say it's not about broccoli tonight, it's about broccoli for life. Like I want your kids to not just eat healthy tonight because you told them to, or because they wanna please you and make you more comfortable.

I want them to enjoy all foods. I want them to enjoy exploring things, trying new things, be adventurous with food, and that really grows and develops in eating he and healthy eater long term. And I think so many times. I do it too. We put on our goggles as parents and we're like, just get through tonight.

Like I'm just surviving. And while I totally get that, there's a way to do both, there is a way to get them to eat broccoli today, but also form this desire to eat not just broccoli, but a variety of foods long term. 

[00:09:36] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Super interesting. And on this note, I hate to go back to this, I was thinking about how we are, we learn all about nutrition and then speech language pathologists also get their own.

Kind of like feeding stuff. Yeah. And then psychologists get stuff. So where does picky eating usually get referred to? Who's supposed to be the expert? Because I don't feel like anyone's the expert on this. 

[00:09:58] Alyssa Miller, RD: Yeah. So there's a gold standard of feeding therapy where it's a multidisciplinary approach.

So typically, like in the best feeding therapy clinics, you're gonna find an ot, a pt. Dietician and a speech language pathologist. So you're gonna find a group of people and a pediatrician obviously. So that would be like the gold standard of what you can find, because then you have everyone in their own lane working together to make sure that there's no, like oral motor issues or physical issues or nutrient deficiencies.

You're making sure that nutrition is covered. So you wanna have all those kind of. Disciplinary areas covered. However, that's often not the case. So this is another reason why I went down the route that I did, because I considered going into traditional feeding therapy and working as a dietician in those arenas.

And while I wanna be very clear, there's nothing wrong innately with feeding therapy. I think it can be an incredible tool for so many families who really need it. Where I think they get it wrong is they're working directly with the kid, maybe one session a week, maybe two. First of all, there's. A really long wait list and that's here in America, so I know other countries struggle with this as well.

It's very expensive. And then the therapists work with your child and they give you like a brief synopsis of what happened during the actual therapies, and then they just expect your kid to like hopefully do it at home. The parents feel. Underprepared where they're like, now I bring them home.

Do I do the same thing you do? Like I saw you do this funny thing with this funny fork that looked really weird and there was six adults around him and trying to get him to eat. And it's do I play all these little games? Do I do all these things and parents get left? At home, the in between the sessions completely unaware of what to do or how to do it.

Yeah. Sometimes they get like little tips and tricks here, but oftentimes they're working with the kid and while that's so important and can be really helpful, what I have found that actually preparing the parent and letting them take over that role at home to set up their child for success not only helps the child, but also the parent to feel like you know your kid best.

That is something that I truly will like. Put this flag on this hill and die over is we as moms and dads and parents know our kids best. So I don't know about you, but I've had the experience of bringing him into the pediatrician and being like, Hey, something's off. And the doctor just completely like rushing me off.

No, that's, or that's really normal when I'm like, okay, but just because other kids deal with it doesn't mean I want my kid to deal with it. 

[00:12:08] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:12:08] Alyssa Miller, RD: Or No, this is different for him or whatever. And so I really believe in arming the parent with the information so that they're capable at home.

These are little moments you're feeding your kids. Oftentimes at least three meals a day plus a snack or two, or even three. So that's almost six eating opportunities a day that you're missing if you're just bringing them to feeding therapy once a week. 

[00:12:27] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, it makes such a good point. And this feels a little off topic, but when you say feeding therapy, it makes me think of disordered eating therapy or things, or even stories I've heard about feeding therapy.

I don't participate in this kind of conversation very often, but I've heard that there is some like forcing, it's here you have to eat a bite of this. And that's like a thing in eating therapy too. 

[00:12:50] Alyssa Miller, RD: It's really uncomfortable for the child. I've heard endless stories. Listen, I've heard good stories too.

So of course, we're not just focusing on the bad, but I do really want to prepare parents that you need to, like sometimes it's just understanding. I actually had a mom that comes to mind, I think her name was Molly, who worked with me, and then she did end up going to feeding therapy as well.

And she said, the best thing that you did is prepare me so that. When I saw something they were doing to my kid that I didn't agree with, I knew where my boundaries were. I knew where my line in the sand was. We actually ended up taking him to a different feeding therapist because this is the approach we want to take.

And yes, the forcing a lot of times we see really high rewards for kids who try new things and sticker charts and again, that might work in the moment. What you're really teaching them is to please you and make you happy and make you comfortable. They're really deeply uncomfortable with what they're doing and so just like any other type of therapy, like if I break my ankle and I go into see a pt, they're not gonna make me walk on that ankle that next day.

Like we're gonna build the muscles around that ankle so that it can support me when I do start walking. Feeding therapy should be the same way where it's like, Hey, it's not just this like immediate, just force them to try it and then maybe they'll like it. It's Hey, how can we support. All the different areas that are surrounding this new food for our child to make sure that they feel completely supported before they take that bite.

Believe it or not, eating the food and swallowing it is the last step in reversing pick eating. It's not the first step. And so we need to build the skills, the confidence, the wherewithal to get to that point of actually eating it. And I think a lot, some feeding therapies. Miss that and they just try to jump to the end.

Oftentimes because parents are paying for it, they don't wanna pay for two years of feeding therapy because you're only going once a week and there's a lot of pressure from the parents to have a performance. The feeding therapists of course, want to. Get their child or their patient to actually eat the food and graduate.

I totally get it, but it's not as supportive for the child typically. That's not always the case. I've heard several really great stories of feeding therapists. But then the other thing too is like you're waiting for it. I literally just got an email this week, it must have been yesterday, so I got an email that said, man, I put him on the wait list for feeding therapy.

It's gonna be eight months. Eight months to wait. It's man 

[00:14:55] Christa Biegler, RD: that's a lot of time when you have a toddler. It's like a. Very long time. They change and move fast. 

[00:15:01] Alyssa Miller, RD: Yeah. 

[00:15:01] Christa Biegler, RD: And on that note, your story started when your son was like two, two and a half a toddler. And I feel like it would be easy to say this is a phase and then we're gonna push through it, and then it just persists.

So talk to us about this like concept or this misconception about picky eating, being a phase, and talk to me about how it can progress and look in different ages as well. 

[00:15:24] Alyssa Miller, RD: Yeah, so I didn't really pick up on this for a few years actually when I was working with parents, how often it's just so pervasive that doctors, friends, your parents, people around you with or without kids will say something like, every kid is Vicky.

It's just a phase. They'll grow out of it. And then simultaneously while I was posting online about it, I would get daily dms of like jokes about do you work with husbands? I'm super picky. Is that a problem? Man, I wish I would've found you years ago. That's the one that kills me is man, my 8-year-old, 10-year-old, 12-year-old, 15-year-old is so picky.

I wish I would've found you before. And so it wasn't. As common as most parents think that they'll just grow out of it. And what really drove me nuts about it, because I fell into this trap too. I believe that I was like, it's gonna be a phase. He's gonna grow out of it. I'm just gonna stick to my guns and do whatever and whatnot.

But at the reality of it is there's like this mixed messaging that I picked up on at some point where I was like, man, we are getting told as new moms how important these first 10 years are for development. Their brain is developing re no other years will their brain develop like this. It's 90% of their brain is formed by the time they're 10.

So you're like, okay. That's a big deal. Then we have like their actual physical growth. We know they're going through huge growth sorts. My son is about to turn 10. I'm like. Oh my gosh. You are wearing the same size shoes as your grandma. That's so wild. So they're growing so much. So we're like being told how important these first 10 years are for their development in all different areas.

But then we're also kinda being told like, oh, it's fine if you just make them mac and cheese and chicken nuggets and just make sure they're eating something and eventually they'll grow out of it. You're like, how many years of nutrition that you and I both know how important it is, are we not?

Optimizing during these really beneficial years. And so what I started to learn in the research and also in practice with my own kids, but also with other thousands of families that I've worked with, is when we fix nutrition, like when we get nutrition on point where they're eating a variety of food, we're seeing them get sick way less often, we're seeing sleep issues go way, way down.

They're able to fall asleep faster and stay asleep. We see these really strong mood swings. I remember being like, man. I know tantrums were a thing, like I would babysat, I've seen tantrums, but man, this is like a huge mood swing. That just feels like it takes forever to calm them back down. This can't be normal.

I don't know. But then you're like getting this messaging of tantrums are normal, but you're like, yeah, this feels like there's a mom gut in me that I was like, this is extreme. We see those come way back down. They're able to like. Get their brain back online to actually be able to learn from you.

When you're trying to instill new values and teachings to them, they're able to concentrate more, focus more. All these things when we dial in nutrition. So a, I don't like the idea of like just wait it out. Eventually they grow out of it. 'cause you're like, how much time are we talking here When I pull my followers?

Now, to be fair, it's completely biased 'cause they're already parents of picky eaters. But we're talking an average of four to five years of parents struggling with a picky eater. That's 50% of these first 10 years that are supposed to be super important. So we're like, okay, it's not just a few weeks.

So what I've developed. Amongst my own study of working with over 10,000 families is once it hits like the six weeks. 'cause the thing is that they're not totally wrong. Like most lies or misconceptions are built on a kernel of truth. And they're not totally wrong. Picky eating is a phase.

Okay. So like picky eating will come in as a phase, usually between two and three years of age, depending. And that is a. But then habits start to take over. It's like there's like a threshold of okay, it's a phase and now it's a pattern. And so I, what I've typically found with working with all these families is it's around six weeks.

It's okay, if they're not growing out of this, if they're not moving on from this quote unquote phase at six weeks now, we've started developing patterns and habits that are more ingrained in them. Now they believe they're a picky eater. They've got a limited mindset. They've got foods that they like, foods that they don't like.

You've started responding a certain way, and then that becomes your normal. Like I started to bribe my kid to tell him, how important nutrition is. I'm like trying to teach him nutrition 1 0 1. I'm trying to use logic on this toddler, like I've started to build habits myself of how I talk about food, how I respond to him, what I care about, what I.

Eat what I buy, what I give to him, how often I feed him. All these things are now becoming habits. So I like to say around the six week mark, there's no official like research to say, in fact, there's no actual real definition of picky eating. So you might run into a parent who's man, my kid didn't eat dinner last night.

He's so picky. Then another parent will be like, my kid eats four foods and it has to be the right brand, and then they call their kid picky. So there's like this really large spectrum. So there's no perfect definition, there's no perfect timeframe. But that's what I've seen is once we move on beyond the six week mark, because that kind of gets people out of if they're picky because they were really sick at some point.

If they're picky because they're teething or something like that, it gets them out of some of those other reasons why Pickiness might pop up. You. You don't know why it's happening. So around six weeks is where I say, okay, it's no longer a phase. Now it's a pattern and we need to start some new habits.

[00:20:06] Christa Biegler, RD: Do you have a quiz or something that helps people understand levels of picking? Does it change where you start with them sometimes or not really. 

[00:20:14] Alyssa Miller, RD: So it doesn't change so much of like how picky they are or how long they've been picky or anything like that. But it does, change the approach that you take, why they're picky.

That's the biggest thing that I found is this is how I feel like no one's talking about the root cause of picky eating. We all just talk about picky eating as the problem. And what I've really identified is it's not the problem, it's the symptom. We're seeing picky eating behavior, calling it the problem, but actually there's something going on underneath that's causing pickiness.

To present itself, and this is where it gets tricky again, going back to the feeding therapy conversation and why I like to prepare parents is that you can have two kids sitting at the table. Not eating their green beans. And it can be for two totally different reasons. So one might be more of like a texture issue, whereas another one might be like, oh, I actually choked on a green.

Be like, they're not gonna say this to you, but like this 2-year-old when I was baby led weaning, I choked on this food and there's something in my body that's saying this food is. Unsafe, so I will not be eating it. Those could be two, two completely different kind of root causes to the picky behavior. So once we figure out the root cause, then it's okay, now we have got our map.

Now we know, like I use this example a lot, but it's okay, if I'm trying to get to Chicago. But I don't know where I'm at. If I'm in Denver or New York, I don't know which direction to go. So once we know where we're at, why are we picky? Why are we not eating those foods? We can figure out how to get to where we're going.

So we use the right strategies to get us on the right path. So it's more about. The root cause than it is about how long they've been picky or how picky they are. But I do have, in my I have got a training for parents. I do have an outline of what picky eating is, and it's like a bullet list of 10 points that are like, Hey, if you've got more than three to four of these, it's time to seek support. Like it's time to learn some skills on your own to start helping them reverse picky eating. And so I do have that, but it's not necessarily like totally correlated with how picky your kid is. Does that make sense? 

[00:22:05] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, totally. But this brings up a really interesting point, right?

In functional or integrative or whatever, like everyone's interested in root causes, but we don't think about picky eating, having a root cause. Like I've never thought to myself before this conversation. Wow. I bet picky eating has root cause. And so you brought up texture stuff. Before we hit record, you brought up a DHD.

Can you talk about some of the possible root causes so we can understand what this might look like when you say root causes of picky eating.

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[00:23:45] Alyssa Miller, RD: Yeah, so essentially over the course of working with, again, over 10,000 parents, I've identified 10, so I'd really like to narrow them even further than that if I can, but essentially 10.

And so most kids have more than one root cause, so I think that's important for parents to keep in mind because oftentimes. Times with majority of the parents that I work with, one of the root causes, ends up just being like parental and family interactions. Like how is the parent responding to this pickiness?

And it, again, it's not by any fault of our own, it's literally because we don't know how to handle it. We're watching other parents. We're learning from what we were taught as a kid, which side note is one of the things that I hear the most often is would I talk about a certain strategy around pick eating?

I'll get dms that are like when I was a kid I was forced to eat these foods. I had to sleep at the table until my fin unless I finished my plate, I couldn't, whatever, move on until I finished a plate. Or if I didn't eat it at dinner, I gut served for breakfast at next morning. If I didn't, you're 

[00:24:39] Christa Biegler, RD: A therapist in your free time.

[00:24:41] Alyssa Miller, RD: Yes, exactly. Because and that's really true and I say to them, how does that work out now? Okay, you are forced to eat green beans. Do you like them now? Oh no. I would never touch a green bean. It's like very rare that I see kids who were forced to eat a food as a kid, love them as adults, or choose them actively outside of a way of I know they're nutritious, so I'm going to eat them.

It's no, I actually enjoy green beans. It's pretty rare. So it's really important of like how we address it. So oftentimes one of the root causes has to do with how we're handling it and. Again, this is unintentional. We are not taught this. We love our children. We want them to eat. It's not like we're purposely trying to like make pick eating worse.

We are unintentionally making it worse, and then it's not our fault. We don't know a different way to do it. So that's one of the root causes. Yeah, the sensory thing is huge. Like kids that have sensory preferences that maybe they need more sensory input or they need less sensory input. They have texture issues where, some kids will only eat dry food.

Some kids will eat crunchy foods. Some kids will only eat saucy foods. Some kids. Hate foods that are mixed up together and they can't understand what's going on. Their mouth is literally underdeveloped. That when, even if you were, just think about it. I love to tell parents this, if you're an alien and an alien has never eaten food before and you come to America and we give you a burrito that has like the wildest textures, it's like it's got shredded cheese and it's got queso and sour cream and ground beef and maybe.

There's crunchy tortilla chips in there. It's like the number of textures in something like a burrito is wild. And so to put that in your mouth and understand what's happening in there would be such a wild experience if you were an alien. I love to do like a little exercise of parents thinking about going to a foreign country and then putting a food in front of you and being like.

I've never seen this food before. Like you're all of a sudden going through your brain going, what could this taste like? What could I compare this to that I've experienced before? And we have so many skills as adults, 20, 30, 40 year olds that kids don't have yet simply because their brain hasn't developed there, but also because they don't have the experience to pull on.

We have a Rolodex to understand. Like I talk about the first time I ever saw a pomegranate, I was like, in eighth grade. What, 13? Something like that. But I was able, I was old enough to look at a pomegranate. I opened one up. I'm like, this thing looks crazy. Okay, I've seen seeds before and I've seen red fruits before and I've seen that kind of juice before.

I can start to unpack and understand what I'm about to experience. It's still surprised me. But I understood it. I was willing to try, 'cause I understood it. We're expecting 2, 3, 4 year olds to eat something they can't even pull. From data from other experiences because simply their brain hasn't developed and they haven't had that many eating opportunities.

I've had millions right in my entire life, versus they're like on maybe a few hundred. So it's a totally different experience with our children than it is with us, simply for that reason. So there's a lot of root causes. I do have. 10 that I've broken it down to. I actually have a slide inside my training about all 10.

So parents oftentimes love to screenshot that slide and try and figure it out. What's going on behind closed doors, their surroundings, are we setting them up for success? I've said that a few times. It's an entire module inside of the program that I teach because setting your kid up for success is.

The visual that I like to use is, it's essentially like in T-ball where you put a ball on top of the tee and then okay, I've set everything up, I've set the stage, everyone's positioned, I've given you the bat. All you have to do is walk up and hit it outta the park, and at some point we do have to release like.

You have to hit the ball, but I can set it up perfectly for you so that you have the best chance at hitting a home run. And that's like setting them up for success with the plate. We're thinking about how does a kid think about food? How does my kid experience food? What is their root cause for pick eating?

What is, what gets them interested? What gets them to the table? What gets them to take a first bite? What foods that they feel comfortable around, how can we be considerate for their, our pick eater, but that cater to them, where all of a sudden they're feeling really entitled and feeling like if things aren't perfectly aligned.

That they won't eat. So it's really about taking this kind of root cause approach. And then, like I said, once we know why they're picky, then we can build a strategy for that kid individually, which is a really beautiful thing because every kid is so different and every family is so different. And that's the other thing I love to talk about is every family's values are different.

Every family's things that are most important to them, their priorities are gonna be totally different. So I might have a family who's their biggest priority is veganism, or another family's biggest priority is protein. Another family's biggest priority is just time together. It's gonna completely change how you approach pick eating, depending on what your values are as a family and as an individual and for your child.

[00:29:03] Christa Biegler, RD: I think it's so good for us to stop and consider what our values are as well. Yes. Because I think we run through life without stopping and I think that's in lots of ways, but with the lens of this or anything, we're like having some friction around. I think it's good for us to just stop and be like, okay.

What are my values and what are we out of alignment with here? Because that's why I'm feeling so much friction around this potentially as well. 

[00:29:23] Alyssa Miller, RD: And that's where I found my biggest yeah, friction was my value was to connect with my kid. That was my highest value, was to connect with him on an emotional level, understand him, have him understand me, have open lines of communication.

And then the way that I was feeding him was like. No, you just listen to me like, just obey wait, what just happened? I'm like all of a sudden going into this super demanding, you can't have an opinion. You can't, talk back. You can't disobey me. I'm like, this doesn't feel right. There was like a friction that wasn't lining up with the rest of how I wanted to parent, and it wasn't building the relationship I wanted.

So yeah, I think figuring out your core values as a family and in your relationships are a huge vital step that a lot of parents skip. Which leads us to things like negotiation and bribing them with desserts. Oh, I want my kid to not have a sweet tooth as an adult, but I'm gonna also reward them for eating foods by giving them desserts.

And that it makes sense, right? Like logically in the moment it totally makes sense, but when we step back and see things in a bigger lens where oh, how do I actually wanna raise this kid? And what are the things that I struggle with that I'd like to change for them? And it's a bigger conversation than we typically have time for.

[00:30:31] Christa Biegler, RD: Totally. So you brought this up a little bit already, and we're not necessarily getting through this exact four steps, but we talked about a little bit about root causes and then the other thing you brought up that was interesting to me was helping me think about this differently was just knowing what your kid is experiencing.

Again, I think you've danced in and out of it, but why is this, one of the first steps overall and what do you mean by knowing what your kid is experiencing? 

[00:30:53] Alyssa Miller, RD: Yeah. So the first step I call the parent perspective, it's like what's your perspective on eating? What are you expecting from them?

I like to talk about this gap. It's essentially we have these expectations of our kid, whether verbalized or not. Sometimes it's just an a, like a picture in your head. Like I talked about earlier. I have this picture of what mealtimes were like. I didn't communicate that to anyone. Like I wasn't like, that was just in my head.

It's like this expectation, how much they're going to eat. Their plate's gonna be clean, they're gonna try their veggies, they're going to eat, a little of everything. They're gonna at least try the new dish that I made, whatever it may be. We have expectations, then we have what they actually do.

And when there's a gap between those two things, oftentimes subconsciously we go into I'm gonna make this expectation a reality. So instead of recognizing, oh. We're just at different places. I expected something different and you did something different. And those two things aren't lining up. Huh.

That's really interesting. Curiosity. Instead of that, we go, okay, how do I get my kid up to here? How do I get them up to the expectation that I unconsciously set? And again, none of this is happening consciously, like most parents are like I. Look at your plate and I picture how it's gonna look at the end.

And if you don't meet up to that, I'm gonna force you to do it. No. It's all subconscious. 'cause we've set an expectation for our kids. We didn't even realize that. It's in our parent lens, our parent perspective. And then we try to get our kids up there. That's usually where we start to see things like bribing, begging, pleading guilting, demanding, even overpraising to get them to eat their food, which I always say.

To a lot of parents, they'll say I've tried everything, but really what they've tried is like the same thing in different wrapping paper. All those things I just listed are all one strategy, and that's pressure. So parents will use pressure to get them up to their expectation. So what does that mean?

We need to change. We need to, A, become aware of the expectations we're putting on our kids, and B, create new expectations. I actually say drop expectations, but essentially it's we need to come to our kids' perspective. We need to understand what they're experiencing. So earlier when I talked about, imagine you're in a foreign country and you see a brand new food and you don't even know what it is.

That's how our kids are experiencing a lot of their life. When I talked about the fact that you have millions of meals that you can pull on and you have this Rolodex of information that you can pull on to make predictions, our kids don't have that. Okay, so then I need to look at their plate through their eyes.

What are they seeing when they see a burrito? Some kids feel really overwhelmed at the thought of burrito 'cause all they see is a tortilla and literally anything can be in there. Like I could pick this up and anything could be in there, right? It could taste like anything. They don't. No. And so what I would recommend, and this is one of the steps of this parent perspective of understanding from our kid's perspective what's going on.

Is deconstruct the food or let them build their burrito with you so that they're understanding and able to see what's going into it. And not last week. Right now, like this is, they don't have the capacity. Their brain typically isn't able to remember last week we put corn in there? No, they're, they've forgotten.

Like they, they could agree with anything you say, so it's really important to see. World, see their plate, see their food, and their experiences through their eyes, not through your eyes. 'cause a lot of parents will put their like adult lens on the kid and be like, you need broccoli, you need veggies, you need fiber, you need protein.

The kid doesn't care. No offense, but like they. Don't care about quote unquote being healthy. They don't care about pooping normally. They don't care about meeting their VI vitamin and mineral goals. They don't care about even some parents will say if you don't eat this, you won't grow.

It's some kids that might motivate them, but really we're just using fear and pressure and not. Like intrinsic motivation. And so really thinking of what is intrinsically driving my kid to eat because they are biologically drive driven to eat. And oftentimes we don't let biology take over. We like try to step into biology and we're just like, no, you're listened to me.

I know how hungry you are. I know how much you need to eat. It's so funny, I like think of parents who, and this was me too. It's like you look at your kid and you're like, you must be so hungry. You need all this food and you like pile up your plate. But there's something that happens in our brain, and this happens with our own intake too, is we'll put some on the plate and then we'll expect them to eat that plate full of food.

But you're like, what? What inspired you to put that much broccoli on their plate? Versus like another parent might only put two stocks of broccoli. You put seven stocks of broccoli. Your kid only may eat one stock of broccoli, and then you're like you need more. 'cause I put seven on there. It's those, that was like your decision to put seven on there.

Do you know what I'm saying? It's

[00:35:08] Christa Biegler, RD: no, 

[00:35:09] Alyssa Miller, RD: We're viewing it through this adult perspective instead of through our kids. Now, that doesn't mean that you give your kid the right to like. Decide everything and like now all of a sudden your kid's driving the bus. No. You are being considerate to their perspective, but you're not catering to them.

You're not putting them in a position of ultimate power over everything you're working with. The way that their brain works, you're work, working with where they're at developmentally to get them to eat new foods and be open to new things because that variety is truly key for their health. Did that answer your question?

[00:35:40] Christa Biegler, RD: I think so. And now I, my brain is stuck on two stocks of broccoli. 'cause what I was thinking as you were talking about that was one thing I am aware of from this conversation, or not this conversation, but like the. Child feeding conversation is when we encourage the Clean Plate Club.

We're overriding maybe their natural intuition around like hunger, fullness cues. And now we're hundred percent encouraging overeating overall. But then as a parent in real life, it's like your kid may also not eat at all. Have you ever gone to your friend's house for a dinner party and your kid won't eat at all?

And then at the end of the night they're like, Hey, I'm hungry. I was like. We put the food away an hour ago, you guys, like literally we called you like 12 times. We did not catch that you didn't eat. And so it's like interesting because, and again, if I'm thinking about it from their perspective, they're like.

What's really important right now is I go play with my friend. Yes. Like I don't really care about food. Whereas all of us parents and just like your story, it's actually, could you please eat first? Like you, so anyway, bring this up because very often this clean, I was thinking about what are the downstream effects of what happens when we don't necessarily.

Learn these parenting because what this boils down to is skills that we, weren't taught from anywhere, which is essentially the summary of our life. 

[00:36:51] Alyssa Miller, RD: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:36:52] Christa Biegler, RD: It's like a bunch of skills I didn't know I needed to know anything 

[00:36:55] Alyssa Miller, RD: about. 

[00:36:55] Christa Biegler, RD: Yay. Thank you. The 

[00:36:56] Alyssa Miller, RD: whole life is just accumulating skills.

[00:36:58] Christa Biegler, RD: Exactly. And 

[00:36:59] Alyssa Miller, RD: then trying to fast them onto your kids that don't care. They're like, 

Care about your wisdom. 

[00:37:01] Christa Biegler, RD: And this is, is the sooner we get used to like. I don't know anything. Yeah. And fantastic. And let me work on the skills around that. We'll be less disappointed. So 

[00:37:10] Alyssa Miller, RD: yeah, 

[00:37:10] Christa Biegler, RD: that's a good thing.

But I was just thinking about downstream effects of not learning some of these skills. So the Clean Plate club or like you gotta eat all the things on your plate can override their natural intuitive, although exactly know a little concerning about will they eat enough at all. But that's a whole thing, what are some of the other long-term downstream effects that we know of in the literature or otherwise?

[00:37:30] Alyssa Miller, RD: Yeah, this is a great point. It's really hard to study specific. I was actually just talking to a girlfriend about this because it's so hard to pull out environmental factors from physiological factors from, everyone thinks differently, feels differently. Experience, like I can say two things. This happens all the time. Parents of multiple kids knows that I can say the same thing to both my kids and they hear me differently. It's okay, this is so hard. So it's really hard to say, oh, guaranteed that your kid will have this issue if you do this or if you don't do this. What I can share is anecdotal what I've experienced that dms that come in specifically around like a sweet tooth.

If you were made to earn your desserts as a kid, you have to eat your broccoli before you eat your dessert. If you like. Yeah, clean plate club, getting some sort of reward. There are like dopamine hits that happen that then cause those, it's really hard to get out of that. So it's like this habit that has now been habitualize in you that you have to work out or eat right or do the right thing before you can earn a dessert or treat.

So I see a lot of parents saying, I have. Uncontrollable sweet tooth as an adult and I was never allowed to have sweets. Inversely I'll have parents who say, man, we had a bucket of candy on our counter all the time and I don't even like desserts. So again, it's like a lot of anecdotal advice, but that is seems to be the case.

Same thing with the picky eating of man, if you were forced to eat green beans. You probably hate them as an adult or it took you a lot to start liking them because you were forced or pressured to eat them. The other one that I've started to really pick up on is people pleasing tendencies. I myself have been a recovering people pleaser for several years, and what I started to really pull together is man, what are we training our kids as children to finish your plate so that I feel good about what you are eating so that I am.

More comfortable and now we've just trained our kids to do the thing even if it's not what they need, so that we feel better and often, listen, I'm a parent too. I get it. Like the fear is real of man, you didn't eat and now you're not gonna go to sleep, and now you're gonna have a hangry meltdown tantrum.

When I try to bring you to the car, now you're moody, grumpy. My, I have a kid who if he does not eat breakfast, because sometimes he chooses not to the whole day is like. Rough to try and get back on that bandwagon of keeping his blood sugar steady. So I get it. The results of them not eating are very real and can really affect your family.

There comes a time and a place to teach your kid that. So we've had multiple conversations like six, seven plus. We can start to have conversations around how important our nutrition is, how important eating regularly is, and taking care of our body in these wa in these ways. But I would say that's a big one, is the people pleasing.

And I even see like long term, it's okay, if you always, as a kid, were told how much to eat, it makes sense as adults that we can't naturally. Regulate ourselves. Yeah. Why? We're always looking to diets or meal plans or counting calories. Someone else has always been in charge of how much we eat, and we were trained that we couldn't be trusted ourselves, and that's a really hard one for parents to swallow, even myself included, because there are times where my kids don't eat and there are times where they reject certain foods that I'm like, man, I just, I wish you would eat that.

Everything would go smoother. They have to learn through experience, right? They have to learn through experience, what it feels like to overeat, what it feels like to undereat. To skip a meal, they have to feel hunger, they have to feel extreme fullness. They have to eat running on sugar. Like my son, one time notoriously skipped lunch and then ate something sugary and then threw up, and he had to learn that experience.

And guess what? He still remembers it. And he still, to this day, will not just eat straight up sugar. If he missed a meal, he'll eat it with something, not because I told him to, because he has learned how his body responds. If all he's eating is sugar and I think we're robbing our kids of really valuable natural lessons at the desire to be comfortable of having a day that doesn't have huge meltdowns of getting to bed on time, of sticking to our routine.

We're like in pursuit of this comfortability and this kind of easy day. That we're so afraid of all these things that could happen if they don't eat that we are almost robbing them of their ability to learn these lessons naturally and have natural consequences 'cause we don't wanna deal with it.

It's man, it is really inconvenient to have a kid who's having a big tantrum. Seriously, it is really inconvenient for them not to go to sleep. It is really inconvenient as us that the parents or it's really uncomfortable. It's man I don't want you. Be hungry at 1:00 AM like, I don't want you to be upset.

I don't want you to be sad. I don't want you to be, too hungry or too whatever. But at the end of the day, we have to be okay sitting with our kids, being uncomfortable and learning those lessons for themselves, not in a mean way. This is the thing I teach my students all the time. You also have to have compassion because that stinks.

Man, they, didn't eat at the birthday party and now they're hungry on the way home and we don't. We're not eating again, whatever that might be. Or we don't have food. Yeah, that must be really hard, that must be really hard. My daughter, one time poured out, we went on a hike and she said her water bottle was too heavy, so she poured out all her water and that was her whole water for the hike.

And I was like, man I'm really sorry. I have a ton of compassion for you. And you chose to pour out your water and this was your water for the hike. I have water or whatever. Actually, at the time I didn't. But we wanna be compassionate, of course. And we wanna help show them that things can not be so harsh.

But we also want them to experience the natural consequences of certain decisions in a loving way with loving limits, so that our kids can learn that from themselves. So we're not constantly going, remember, don't eat this. Remember, eat this, please eat more food. It's now. We're like managing their own.

Intake, which then leads us to like totally forget to eat ourselves. We're creating and setting those examples too for our kids all the time. 

[00:42:47] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. I would almost guess that when parents go through these things, these learning, these skills about feeding their children, there's, they also start to have these own ahas about their own relationship with food and potentially improve it as well.

[00:43:01] Alyssa Miller, RD: Oh yeah, it's just like a natural byproduct of learning these things and I actually oftentimes will say, Hey if you fix some of these issues that you already know you have with food. Oftentimes the picky eating can fix itself because you've understood and taken ownership of your own body and your own body awareness, nutrition, all those things, and that does typically trip trickle over to the kids.

Now, there's still some strategies here and there, especially with children. Like I said, their brain is. Very different than ours. So it, it does require a slightly different approach, but we're modeling all the time, especially with food. And so if we do have no fear around food and we understand how to self-regulate and we're able to articulate that and experience that, oftentimes it can really help our kids as well.

perceptive. 

[00:43:43] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. So I get, I don't know if when you work with people, you mostly work with toddlers or if you also, I would imagine the content applies to different age groups, but I think about this and I'm like, oh, I'm going through a phase next. Semester where I'm like taking some intentional time with my kids to do some, like to spend quality time to do homeschooling, et cetera.

And I'm over here maybe I should jump into this more fully. And so the point is do things change in different age groups, or do you teach. The same things for people with parents of middle schoolers versus toddlers. Obviously there's differences. Yeah. But can this work across the lifestyle of different ages or their limitations once they get to high school and teenage years, et cetera?

[00:44:28] Alyssa Miller, RD: This is a great question. It's one of my favorite topics of conversation. So the research, the literature is really focused on kids ages, like one through 10. It's okay, this is like the age range that they're able to study. They're able to control confounding factors more and more in those younger ages.

So a lot of my practices are based on that research. So I say ages one through seven is like my ideal spot to reverse pick eating. I'm like, this is the time. That you have the most control you can, really truly, your kids are, maybe they're going to school around this age, but even if they are, it's, very new to them.

They're home with you more, they're having more meals with you. You just have more control. You're packing lunches. Once they start to get a little bit older, there's more sports leagues and there's more friends and they have influence from more people that are, is higher than yours. And I like that.

Age is one through seven. That's like where I feel like we can do the most good, the fastest. It's okay, we can do this now. However. The principles are the same, and this is, we have hundreds of families, if not thousands of families who have worked with us who do have older kids. In that seven to 13 range.

I've had a few parents, a little older than that, but not many that I've worked with because the principles are the same. How you talk to them changes. So as your kids get a little bit older, as you likely know that they're able to, their brain development has shifted. They can understand cause and effect.

They can understand their own body. They have better body awareness. They literally can understand that they have their own decisions affect their own body, and they desire more and more autonomy. They can also learn things more logically than when they were little. So their brain was literally more black and white when they were little.

So I actually don't recommend teaching about nutrition specifically when they're real little. Actually recommend to avoid that because kids get so confused. Yeah. Because it's not black and white, it really isn't really nuanced. And so then you start to get a little older, 6, 7, 10 ish, right? So around those ages, they start to really make bigger jumps and understanding the nuanced conversation of nutrition.

And actually, my son, we just had a really good conversation around Halloween candy. He was, battling some, a stuffy nose and we were talking about like the effect of sugar on our body just objectively. And there's nothing wrong with enjoying Halloween candy. And he gets to make the choice that's best for him and his body.

And I'm not gonna tell him what to do. He gets to decide what that looks like. And it was really freeing for him and really. Interesting for him to start cluing in some dots. Man, today I ate candy right before bed and here's how I think that affected my sleep. And then yet tomorrow or the next day rather, I ate it, earlier in the day and I felt way better at bedtime and this day I didn't need any at all.

And so it's really interesting for him to start going into these cause and effects. He's closer to 10 so he's able to do that. So it, the biggest changes, the principles stay the same. The biggest changes are how we talk to our kid about food, how we educate them about food and the choices, like the autonomy that they're given.

Just like they get more responsibility as they get older in all sorts of ways, like phones and technology and sports and what they're responsible for around the house. And chores. Same goes to further own nutrition. So we start to hand over more and more responsibility because again, the goal is once they move out, once they go to college, they're completely on their own for what they eat, when they eat, what they buy, how they buy it, how often they eat, how they prepare their food.

All of that becomes their responsibility. So we wanna slowly like release that rope slowly but surely and show that they have responsibility and continue to have this like back and forth conversation and dialogue. So those are the things that changed the most. But I would say the principles still stay the same.

So if you're, even as adults, like I taught myself how to like mushrooms last year, that was like a big win for me. There's two foods I did not like, mushrooms and olives and 50% of them are done. So I'm like, now I like mushrooms. And so it's still. Applicable. I still use my own principles for teaching myself as a fully adult woman in her thirties to like a new food.

The principles are still there. It's just obviously different how I approach it. 

[00:48:14] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. That's super fun. I like to hear that story. 'cause I think that's the reality. If you're doing good things, it's gonna have this ripple effect in the entire family. Yeah. It's like this.

[00:48:22] Alyssa Miller, RD: Oh yeah. 

[00:48:23] Christa Biegler, RD: Quiet. Little thing I like is like if one, I don't, I'm not just looking for one thing to get better. I'm actually looking for it to get better and lots of Wait. So last question would be. If someone's implementing these strategies, they start to understand these root causes and start to implement strateg connecting themselves to the right thing for their particular situation.

How long does it usually take before people start reporting little wins here and there? 

[00:48:47] Alyssa Miller, RD: Oh yeah. I love this question. So I would, when we've pulled our students, it's an average of two weeks. So that's the data that I have for my method is we see an average of two weeks. We start to see some real progress being made.

Some families report like complete picky eating reversal by those two weeks. Some parents are like, I'm just starting to see when, so it's really hard to delineate which, when is where and where they're at. Again, it really comes back to that root cause. The root cause and how long they've been picky are like the two biggest factors outside of obviously the parents' willingness to learn the information and implement the information, which is a given, but the root cause and the amount of time they've already been picky are the two.

Factors that are gonna affect how long it takes to reverse long term. That's what we've seen. Some parents have totally proved me wrong on this, so of course every kid is different. What's really cool is I've seen results that have taken 24 hours. I kid you not, people have taken my program and 24 hours later she's messaged me going.

What did you put in that course? Like how this is magic? My, my daughter yesterday, I was struggling so much. I trusted a random lady on the internet that I've never met. I saw something about you. I joined your program and I like binged it in one day. And now today she's eating her entire lunch. Are you kidding me?

What just happened? So I've seen that kind of result. I've also seen some of my favorite results that take months. To start to make some real changes and real progress. And actually we just had a mom who had a huge breakthrough and a win just recently where she's man, I feel like I'm doing the right thing.

I feel like I keep, hitting this same. Trouble spot with my son and he's just not taking that step forward. And sure enough, it just cracked open the other day. And I love to use this analogy with my students. There's an old kind of parable, I'm sure you've heard it, but of this old man trying to split a rock in half and he's hitting the rock once, twice, three times, four times, a dozen times, a hundred times, and at some point he hits the rock and it splits in half.

Okay? Was it that one hit, that split it perfectly? Or was it the repeated measure of continuing to do the same thing to continue to be steady and then all of a sudden it all clicks and falls into place? I use the same analogy with my students of a bow and arrow. Sometimes when you start reversing picky eating, the tactics that you were using have now shifted.

So it's gonna feel like you're going backwards. It's gonna feel like you're going backwards and you're like, where are we going? This feels worse. I don't know about this. I'm feeling really nervous. And then all of a sudden you let go in that aero springs forward. That's how it feels sometimes reversing picky eating.

So on average two weeks, give or take, depending on a few different factors. But what I do tell parents is time is passing. Anyways. It doesn't matter. It's like as long as you're starting to walk down that path, keep going. Like you can always go back to what you were doing before, but what you were doing before wasn't working either.

So you have a few choices on the table. It's either make progress and continue hitting that rock, hoping one day it splits or go back to what you were doing before. And you're no worse off. Does that make sense? 

[00:51:37] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. I love it so much, Alyssa. I really appreciate the way you talk about this. I think you talk about it a little bit differently.

I think we've had some picky eating conversations here before, but I think this is our holistic viewpoint of it, and that's a welcomed thing because, it's a really, it's almost like a universal problem. To some extent, 

[00:51:58] Alyssa Miller, RD: right? Absolutely. 

[00:51:59] Christa Biegler, RD: So it's a pretty big problem, but the extent of which we believe it's an issue, and then not surprisingly, it's like it actually touches all of these other things.

[00:52:07] Alyssa Miller, RD: Yeah, exactly. 

[00:52:08] Christa Biegler, RD: So such's an interesting, 

[00:52:09] Alyssa Miller, RD: thank you so much for having me. This was so great. 

[00:52:11] Christa Biegler, RD: If people wanna watch and kind understand the entire methodology, where could people find that? Where can people find you? 

[00:52:17] Alyssa Miller, RD: Yeah, so I'm at nutrition for Littles on Instagram nutrition for Littles for my podcast.

And then I do have a training. I'm wondering if I am able to give you a link that you can link to anyone. It's 61 minutes, although the training portion, there's like a q and a section at the end that kind of goes through some specifics, but it's like 45 minutes for the training. And this walks through those steps we were talking about earlier to reverse.

Pick eating. It's essentially four steps. I walk you through the four steps. I explain those root causes. Again, I give you all 10 that I've identified, and you can understand how not only why is your kid picky, but also why nothing has worked. And this is, I think the biggest takeaway that I get from parents Daily is.

Wow. I didn't think of it that way. Or man, I've, I feel like I've tried a thousand things, but what you just pointed out is actually I haven't tried a thousand things as I've tried that one thing wrapped in different wrapping paper, and now they have a new approach. And unlocking that and understanding why quote unquote nothing has worked is so helpful for parents because I know the feeling of i've tried this hack and I've tried that hack and like I had this mom just being like, I was putting rainbow sprinkles on everything because I saw this hack and it worked one time. And so then now we have rainbow sprinkles on chicken and rainbow sprinkles on broccoli. And it works for a while for sure.

For some kids it works for a while, but then it like fizzles out and no one wants to be on that hamster wheel of just finding a new hack, a new trick, a new viral moment. Like no one wants to be on that. Prepare yourself with those principles so that it doesn't take any more time. And I think that's.

It's one thing that a lot of parents really get from that training is I don't have to be a like hack rabbit who's just chasing all those hacks. I could actually understand how my kid is viewing food and how I can work with them to reverse that pick eating 

[00:53:51] Christa Biegler, RD: right. I think that's what happens when we look for Whack-a-Mole,

perspectives. It's if that one thing didn't work, then you gotta try this. But when you understand it from a more framework or a whole sort of holistic method, then you can adjust as you need to because you understand that there's principles behind it. So I think that's why I appreciate this so much.

So Alyssa, thank you so much for coming on today. 

[00:54:10] Alyssa Miller, RD: Absolutely. Thank you so much.