How to Raise an Intuitive Eater: Part II with Amee Severson, MPP-D, RDN

Amee Severson (0s):

I remember having so much fear that she would like the sugary foods more than she would like, like healthy foods. I remember like wanting to go out of my way to like make sure her FIRST FOODS where the right FIRST FOODS, and that was a doozy looking back at it.

Katie Ferraro (15s):

Hey, there I'm Katie Ferraro Registered Dietitian college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby led weaning here on the baby led weaning made easy podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the competence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning. Well, hello and welcome back. This is part two of a two-part series. How to Raise an Intuitive Eater. This is an interview with Amy Severson. She is a registered dietitian and intuitive eating counselor. She's also the co-author of a new book called How to Raise an Intuitive Eater, Raising the Next Generation with Food and Body Confidence.

Katie Ferraro (1m 2s):

So I interviewed Amy's coauthor Sumner in episode two 10, and now I'm going to interview Amy cause they have kind of different backgrounds that are coming at this topic of How to Raise an Intuitive Eater from different places. And Amy is a Registered Dietitian as a Sumner, but Amy's work focuses on body positivity, fat acceptance, and intuitive eating through a social justice lens. So she is a private practice dietitan who does not believe in a one size fits all approach to nutrition and health. She works with clients to make health and nutrition fit into their current life. So she's a big proponent of the health at every size model, which is going to be talking about.

Katie Ferraro (1m 44s):

And as I mentioned, she's an intuitive eating counselor. So she's a proponent of the intuitive eating approach to food. So her book that she co-wrote with Sumner is called How to Raise an Intuitive Eater and with no further ado, I'm so excited to welcome Amy Severson onto the podcast.

Amee Severson (2m 3s):

Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Katie Ferraro (2m 5s):

I know you've been probably very busy promoting your book, which is called How to Raise an Intuitive Eater. So thank you for taking the time to be here cause you guys are super busy, but before we dive in and talk about the book and how to actually raise an intuitive eater, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to become an anti-diet dietitian?

Amee Severson (2m 23s):

Absolutely. I've been a dietitian for seven years. Probably at this point I went to school to be a dietitian, partly because I wanted to get better at my own eating disorder at the time. It seems like a good path to take, I guess, to do that. And I think that's a pretty common trait trope with a lot of dietitians. So I did that and it was an interesting experience. I was always the biggest one in my class. I was, I've never been a thin person. So I was always a lot bigger than all the other to be dietitians in my class. And I also was always really uncomfortable with prescribing diets, prescribing really restrictive like weight loss ones, especially it's cause we were kind of being given these little bits of information like this probably won't work and weight loss and super like reliable.

Katie Ferraro (3m 7s):

I have absolutely no evidence to support this, but eat small frequent meals. Like,

Amee Severson (3m 11s):

But when someone looks like this, it was like, what is going on? I remember being really confused and like what we just learned something different in another class. And I don't understand why we're doing this. How, so that was a very interesting experience, but I was always like kind of weird about the diets and the like calorie restriction. And I think I probably was aware and somewhere in my brain that it was problematic and it was like painful for a lot of people.

Katie Ferraro (3m 39s):

Okay. So you graduate from your dietetics program. Did you do a dietetic internship or coordinate a program and then like after you got your RDN credential, how did you decide to like make this your passion and path of work?

Amee Severson (3m 49s):

After I graduated, I ended up taking a little bit of time off, partly because it's impossible to get into internships and partly because I we've moved states and it was just easier. And in that like gap time while I was working in getting experience, I also started seeing a therapist about my own stuff. And that therapist who I still see today is the person who introduced recovery to me and recovery in the form of intuitive eating in the form of a health at every size and body acceptance. And I was probably really resistant for awhile. I think she was probably like maybe laughing at some of the books I would bring in that were like, well, this person lost weight while they were on eight, an eating disorder recovery.

Amee Severson (4m 30s):

And like, I definitely push those limits a little bit, but I sat through it and work through it and stayed with that therapist and got really passionate about it. And the process to the point where I actually was questioning whether or not I could be a dietitian with these beliefs because it was so ingrained. It was, I didn't, I wasn't taught at all how to be a dietitian without prescribing diets. Like that is not something that you're taught.

Katie Ferraro (4m 54s):

You're literally tested on like diets in order to get the credential and calories. And again, in certain therapeutic settings, those have merit, but for the vast majority of people who are not in a hospital or clinical setting, they're sending the wrong messages and reinforcing unhealthy messages.

Amee Severson (5m 9s):

Exactly. Yeah. It was useful for ICU care and stuff. But beyond that, it's pretty, just not great. And yeah, I really considered whether or not I could do it, but with therapy I, and a lot of encouragement, I think for my therapist and people around me that I didn't have to be that kind of dietitian. So I went through with that. I also paid a lot of money for school. So I went through with the internship and I became a dietitian and I actually went straight into private practice. I had a couple of side jobs as well because private practice is hard to do when you're first starting out, but I just kind of jumped right in. Cause I, I couldn't like be morally ethically and morally against what I believed.

Amee Severson (5m 50s):

So I didn't, and that was where my career with intuitive eating and career with body acceptance started.

Katie Ferraro (5m 57s):

So Amy, can I ask you when you were struggling and you're thinking, gosh, can I even be in this profession as a dietetics educator? Like that makes me so sad, but it also makes me realize like, no, that's exactly why you need to continue in this profession. The profession of nutrition and dietetics needs more diversity needs a wider thought to cast a wider net with regards to the way that people can be treated and deal with food and talk about food. So what made you stick with it? Like, did you find a dietitian mentor that you're like, oh, this is my person or these are my people.

Amee Severson (6m 30s):

So I was really encouraged by my therapist in the same way of like being told, if you don't do this and who is there, it's just more thin white people doing the same thing. And so went to my internship, I went to my internship was in Iowa. So I went to Iowa for a week to start it off. And actually, while I was there, I was so surprised by this. And so happy about it. One of the, not preceptors, but the instructors for the program, they gave her presentation on health at every size. And I was pleasantly surprised and shocked and happy. And just grateful

Katie Ferraro (7m 2s):

We had you not had that as part of your undergraduate training, like no. So the, your first exposure to health at every size was when you started your dietetic internship.

Amee Severson (7m 11s):

Well, it was with my therapist, but the first professional introduction I had was in my internship was in that like first week of my internship.

Katie Ferraro (7m 19s):

Could you briefly describe what health at every size is? Cause I think some people might not be familiar with that approach.

Amee Severson (7m 23s):

Absolutely. So health at every size is the idea that you can pursue health at any size pursuing health is, is something that can be done regardless of body size, regardless of what your weight is and whether or not you lose weight. It looks at weight as more of a, it's not a behavior. Weight is a factor. Like if you have a receding hairline and you're a man with a similar factor, you can't control and it just allows you to be in your body without the guilt and shame of needing to change it while allowing you to pursue health or pursue the parts of health that are important to you.

Katie Ferraro (7m 54s):

So how did you come to be connected with the intuitive eating approach? And does that grow out of Hayes? Are they parallel? How would you describe the relationship with health at every size and intuitive eating?

Amee Severson (8m 5s):

I think for me, they have to be connected. I don't think everyone believes that some people can separate the two of them. I'm not really sure how, because for me they feel intrinsically linked. It feels very, just natural to move into the space where you can trust your body, where you trust that your body is okay, and that you can feed your body and your size, doesn't dictate what you can and can't eat. And we let go of a lot of the myths around nutrition and health. And yeah, so they've kind of grew together.

Katie Ferraro (8m 36s):

I love that you share your personal experiences in your writings, your work, even like the first five minutes of this interview, I'm like, I know so much more about you and I'm curious, would you be willing to share any memories you had from the time when you were starting solid foods with your daughter?

Amee Severson (8m 48s):

So my daughter was born while I was in college. I think I was a junior in college. And so at the time I wasn't really in this world yet. I was definitely more diety. I was definitely more in my eating disorder and I remember having so much fear that she would like the sugary foods more than she would like, like healthy foods. I remember like wanting to go out of my way to like make sure her fruits FIRST FOODS where the right FIRST FOODS. And that was it. That was a doozy looking back at it. And she was interested in all foods. She was interested in a lot as a kid.

Katie Ferraro (9m 20s):

So your book touches briefly on baby-led weaning. I was kind of surprised, like I read the whole thing cover to cover, and there's not a mention of baby, like reading until almost the end. So I'm curious about your personal thoughts on baby-led weaning and you will not offend my, you won't hurt my feelings if you say you hate it, but I asked your coauthor Sumner, this, we did a part, one of this series, How to Raise an Intuitive Eater interviewing Sumner. But I wanted to ask you, could you share your insights? What are your thoughts about baby-led weaning? And then if you see baby-led weaning, fitting into the intuitive eating model.

Amee Severson (9m 48s):

Absolutely. I know we consciously put it at the end of the book. Not because we thought it was less important or because we didn't want to talk about it too much. It was because it fit more in with the nutrition and the ideas of feeding. And for us, we're dietitians, obviously. So nutrition and methods and stuff like that is really important. And also with this whole process, it felt like some of the least important stuff, knowing like sugar content and stuff like that, didn't feel as important as knowing how to support your child and how it could be. Okay. So that's why it's toward the end. And I didn't start off feeding my child with a baby-led weaning. However, we switched to it after a couple of months because it was great. Like I knew what it was going into, but that being a parent, which most

Katie Ferraro (10m 31s):

Dietitians don't. So congratulations.

Amee Severson (10m 33s):

I had a good professor at college for that one, which is good. We had a cool like pregnancy early childhood nutrition class, which was really awesome, but I switched to it because I was curious and because feeding a baby of the tiny spoon are sometimes really annoying and that food is expensive. So it was a, it was a choice. And she took to it really fast. Like it was, she caught onto it really quickly. And I liked it. It was, I mean, there was, I swear. I remember one time we were at a restaurant and she didn't want to eat any like the soft foods. We were giving her any of the foods she could, we were like giving her like pieces of, I like tortilla. We were at a Mexican restaurant, a piece of avocado. She had an entire jar of sour cream was her choice because that's what it's like. Cause baby-led weaning. They just get to choose like what they're eating.

Amee Severson (11m 14s):

And she chose the sour cream for some reason.

Katie Ferraro (11m 17s):

It is so fascinating. And so life affirming to hear you, someone who talks openly about your eating disorder say how happy you were to see your daughter like food. Like that's so cool. A lot of parents, they, they internalize their own struggles with food and they can't be happy about anything related to food. And I know you talked about the importance of therapy and I'm by no means an eating disorder dietitian, but I just really wanted to point out like, you're smiling while you're talking about your daughter, learning how to eat.

Amee Severson (11m 44s):

I remember feeling so motivated to keep her safe from this. There was like at the time when I was more in my eating disorder, I definitely my pressure, the pressure I was feeling was more to keep her thin and coming from two parents who aren't, who were never super thin. My husband's very athletic build, but was a kind of chubby kid. And I was never thin. It was really scary for me to think that she could be a larger child. I learned that was one of my main things, but if my own fears, but I really didn't want her to feel the same way about food that I did. That was one thing that even if I was trying really hard to make sure she had enough vegetables to make sure she her first, because she developed the taste for vegetables before she developed a taste for sugar, because that's what I was doing at the time.

Amee Severson (12m 28s):

I wanted her to not hate herself over food. The way I did when I was a kid. And that was, I don't know, that didn't really fit with what I was doing. It didn't really fit with what I was feeling. It was one of those cognitive distance dissonances that I really felt. And I think it ended up being really powerful because it kind of became a motivator to allow her to eat. It was the thing that like, let me feel okay to give her a cake at her first birthday and to feed her food. You know,

Katie Ferraro (12m 57s):

In your book, you mentioned three key concepts that provide guidance around an area that plays into a big picture, like how we support our kids and their innate, intuitive eating wisdom. So you have key to in the book, which is implement a flexible and reliable feeding routine, and you highlight the importance of maintaining a feeding routine, but I like that you chose the word flexible. So for parents who are just starting solid foods, a lot of times they're like really, really, really set on the schedule. This is my schedule. This is our sleep schedule. This is our milk schedule. How is being flexible important when you're starting solid foods?

Amee Severson (13m 28s):

Flexibility, I think is probably one of the most important things to learn in all of this. And a lot of things, because life has never sadness. It's never the same for a lot of reasons. Everything from our day-to-day schedule changes, whether it's, I don't know that you get more sleep because you're not feeling like you got enough. So breakfast is later to work. Schedule is different to you're hungry, or one day I feel like that's an important piece as well. Like food needs change as well for us and for our kids. And that flexibility allows for that. That flexibility allows for us to be, to be able to move with the life that we have to be able to have the meals when we need them, the meals that we need, the snacks that we need.

Amee Severson (14m 10s):

And I think one of the goals that Sumner and I had with that flexibility, and one of the reasons why we really wanted to push for that phrase is we can't control our kids hungers. We also can't necessarily predict them. And that can start. I mean, heck that starts as soon as they're born, you know, feeding on demand is really important for kids because they are hungry and we don't know what that is. And you know, I think the feeding schedule thing of the past is pretty debunked at this point and pretty discouraged by a lot of organizations because kids know when they need to eat. And when we put them on schedules, it doesn't seem to work as well. There can be some benefit to schedules for some people.

Amee Severson (14m 49s):

And also that flexibility is really important and we can hold that. And as kids get older, like when they move into toddlers and wobblers and get a little older, we do want to have some boundaries in the same way that we would. If you know, your kid is learning to walk and you want them to be able to fall down and learn how to get back up again and learn that they're going to be okay, but you don't want to want them to run into the street. You have a safe place where they can fail a safe place where you don't have to be catching every mistake or on top of everything, but they're not going to go hungry. They're not going to not eat. So providing this structure of what we're going to have meals, and we're going to have snacks and they're going to be reliably fed to you.

Amee Severson (15m 30s):

That, and that means not only every day, these things are going to be available to you. But at reliable intervals, we try really hard not to go between lunch and dinner without providing a snack every day. Because without that reliability, that gap between lunch and dinner can be really big and really overwhelming for a tiny,

Katie Ferraro (15m 50s):

Absolutely. And it depends on the individual family too, because some families eat their biggest meal in the middle of the day. At which point supper might look more like a snack. And so I always remind parents, you know, let your own family feeding schedule, look at that first and then build your child's around that. You don't have to conform. It blows my mind when I see these other bloggers and other Instagram sites that are teaching baby-led weaning. And to be honest, I have no business teaching infant feeding, and they're saying things like a baby needs, three meals and three snacks. Please show me the research and the evidence that supports that every family is different. Every baby is different and it just sets parents up for failure when they think they need to follow this rigid schedule. But I agree with you though, that in some families, certain schedules work like our situation.

Katie Ferraro (16m 31s):

I never had a schedule when I had my oldest. My oldest is the same as your oldest. She's in second grade. Then I had a set of quadruplets when she was one and sure as you know what I needed to schedule because they would die if I didn't have a schedule. And so I feel like you're my therapist when, like I definitely foisted a feeding schedule on our family, just so that we could survive. And then we went on to have twins when the quads were one. So we had seven kids, three and under, and we were on the tightest schedule to the point where I couldn't leave and go do other stuff for a while. Like, until we got stabilized with them. Now that they're older, we're a little bit more lenient, but I love what you're talking about. Like the reliable intervals, like some children just do have inherent trust about food. If they don't know that it's going to be there.

Katie Ferraro (17m 13s):

So letting them know, yes, there will be food when you're hungry, but you also need to learn now that you can talk how to verbalize your hunger in so much of the hunger stuff gets very confusing to parents because they think they start solid foods at six months of age to alleviate baby's hunger. And for those of you listening who have six and seven month old babies, we don't feed them food in response to hunger, infant milk is still their primary source of nutrition. They need time to learn how to eat. That's the beauty of the weaning period. It's like, it's, pre-season, it's a practice. It doesn't matter. Look, give them lots of opportunities to practice so that as they get closer to one, food begins to supplant milk as their primary source of nutrition. But parents are like, I'm going to drop a bottle right now so that they feel hungry. It's like, well, you're going to starve your six month old out that is going to make them freak out. Then they're going to choke on food.

Katie Ferraro (17m 53s):

Then they're going to have negative associations with food and feeding. And it's all, sometimes parents just being so, so, so driven by a schedule that they think they have to adhere to.

Amee Severson (18m 1s):

Absolutely. It's. I think it's really easy to forget that food between six and 12 months is for them to get used to taste and texture and just be with it and pick it up and get that.

Katie Ferraro (18m 12s):

I thought you were going to say at food before one is just for fun and people say, what do you think about that statement? I'm like, I have a love hate with that statement food before one is just for fun. Yes. I want you to have fun. Like you should have fun. Like when Amy's smiling, talking about her daughter doing baby led, weaning, like that lights up my life. That's why this is all I do every day is to see that reaction in parents, especially parents who have a history of an active eating disorder who are like, whoa, it doesn't have to be like this for my child. But on the other hand saying, it's just fun. Implies like shoe my baby, a flaming hot Cheetos and regular Dr. Pepper, like as a dietitian, I can't really endorse that. And I want you to be thoughtful and intentional about the foods that you're selecting, but not to the point where you are, you are stressing about yes.

Amee Severson (18m 51s):

The best way to think about it is to give them the foods that you're eating. Like obviously not flaming hot Cheetos. My kid would have screamed. She still probably would honestly, but to give them like, if you're having spaghetti, give them a little bit of spaghetti. If they have them have a bit of a taco that you're eating and you know, just like it's about the experience for them for fun. Yes. But also because that ability to learn how to chew food, to swallow food, to accept different textures, to move your hand from plate to mouth. Cause you know, we've all watched a kid who tries to throw their hand from plate to mouth and it ends up on forehead and hence the Mac and cheese hair that my daughter had for a good six months. And that is a really important thing.

Amee Severson (19m 32s):

And you asked earlier how baby led weaning fits, fits into intuitive eating. If I think that it does. I think that it's not like if you didn't have baby led, we need as a child yourself or your kids didn't I don't think it means that they're not going to be intuitive eaters. Like it's not like this crucial end all be all because nothing is

Katie Ferraro (19m 50s):

Correct. There's no research that shows that

Amee Severson (19m 52s):

Not at all. And I think that if they are fed in this way and we continue to support that autonomy and we continue to support that trust with their body and trust with food and trusting them, then it naturally falls into intuitive eating. As we move through childhood, we're all intuitive eaters born with very few exceptions. And the only thing we can really do as parents is to continue to support that. And this is one of those things that can be really supportive.

Katie Ferraro (20m 23s):

I love the many benefits of baby-led weaning. And one of them, we have to be just careful when you choose your word. I'm saying to myself, because we talk about the potential for babies to learn, to listen and respond to their own innate hunger and fullness cues down the road. That is important. Like we talked about responsive feeding and on-demand feeding and we, the baby turns their head away from the bottle or the breast when they're full. Why at six months of age, do we take that autonomy away and start shoving an arbitrarily selected amount of smashed bland, baby food down their throat. Assuming that now they're not there. They're not playing any role in hunger and fullness, but sometimes parents hear well. That means with baby led weaning at six months of age, I need to let them tell me when they're hungry.

Katie Ferraro (21m 4s):

And we need to remember that again, the babies are not eating in response to hunger when they're learning how to eat food. But if we step back and we give them this practice period, they will then grow into, as you said, this innate capacity that they have as intuitive eaters, but it doesn't happen overnight. They need to practice learning how to eat so that in turn they can listen and respond to those hunger and fullness cues. Would you agree?

Amee Severson (21m 27s):

Absolutely. I would agree. And I think thinking of, you know, we're not feeding our kid on demand this food. When we start, you know, at six months of age, starting to feed them because a kid might turn away from the bottle or turn away from the breast from they're not hungry anymore or when they don't need any more milk, if they have that cue for themselves. But the hand and mouth cue of that new cue, isn't the same for babies it's they are mouth. I can't remember the exact word, but like a mouth explorers. They explore everything with their mouth. They have oral fixation. And just because you know that your kid is putting your shoe in their mouth doesn't mean that they are hungry. It means that they're putting food in their mouth, which is one of the reasons why we can't rely on their hunger cues, that they can't vocalize.

Amee Severson (22m 9s):

They can't beyond crying or maybe, you know, sign for milk or something. At that age, we can't rely on their hunger cues to tell us when, to give them solid foods in that age, which is why it's not a, it's not crucial for feeding. It's not B. This is what we do to get you full is by giving you this pile of avocado or this pile of spaghetti, it is about learning the texture, learning the food, knowing that they will see something in front of them and put it in their mouth. Kind of the goal of that, of that experience. But it's not to fill up their stomach. It's not not to do those things. That is still the milk.

Katie Ferraro (22m 42s):

It's like your insurance policy is what I tell parents like lean into it. Now, granted, you got to keep trying new foods. Cause eventually you want to stop breastfeeding someday and you definitely wanna stop buying formula if you're doing that. So like we need your baby to get most of their nutrition from food. And it ends up, I would say the two biggest avatars of the one-year-old diet in my just purely anecdotal my experience of over 20 years as a dietician and having seven kids is milk and snacks, too much milk and too many snacks. And it's not rocket science. If your kid's stomach is full of milk and or snacks, they will never eat the wholesome meals that you're preparing and putting on the table. Like it's just not going to work. And yet parents rip their hair out about it. We look at how much milk is your baby or child drinking.

Katie Ferraro (23m 22s):

And then how many snacks are they having? And a lot of times it's snacks that are out of control, right? Like you talk so much in the book about the food environment and what we're up against as parents, but like a lot of parents working parents, well, they feed them, all these snacks at daycare. I'm like, well, who pays for daycare? You okay. Just like if you had a super weird, you know, I don't want the left butt cheek cleaned with this cream and the right one without they do it, like you're allowed to set your own rules about food. You don't have to just say, well, everybody gets there. So my kids full of goldfish when they come home, how do you deal with that? Cause you have a second grader. Who's in the real world with snacks. And I think, did you guys spend so much time talking about snacks in the book? And I was like, just nodding my head the whole time I was reading that section. I'm like, yes, this is real life. But also I'm not powerless against snacks as a parent.

Amee Severson (24m 2s):

Yeah. Think as a parent and as a dietitian, I'm pretty pro snack in general. It's the timing of the snack. Like my daughter is she's eight. She's really active. She has some sensory issues that require a lot of movement to keep her like aware of her body. So we do swim, we do dance, we do occupational therapy. The kid is moving all the time after school. And sometimes that throws off the schedule a little bit because that's what happens when your parent, the schedule is never quite what you want it to be. And that means that we can be, we have to be flexible. That's why that flexibility is important. And it also means that we can still have some control of that. Like if she comes home from dance.

Amee Severson (24m 42s):

So she does come home from dance around five 30 and we usually eat dinner around six or six 30 on those days when she comes home from dance, she's hungry.

Katie Ferraro (24m 49s):

She's had no snacks since lunch. No,

Amee Severson (24m 51s):

She has a, she has a snack after school usually, but she comes home from dance hungry. Cause she had a snack, which probably didn't last, like got her through dance, but now she's hungry and ready for dinner, but dinner might not be immediate. So she'll come home from dance and usually say, I'm hungry. You know, can I have a snack? And because I know dinner is within half an hour, an hour. The answer is usually no, but no in a way of no, because we're going to have to understand and I've made you a dinner and I would like you to eat it.

Katie Ferraro (25m 19s):

Have you actually made it by that point? Cause sometimes I lie. I'm like, oh, because we're having dinner. Like I know you're not even close to having dinner done yet. I'm like, oh they're right. Okay, fine. You can have a snack because I'm running late on dinner. Like that's my whole,

Amee Severson (25m 28s):

I've done that before. I've definitely been like, I have not set foot in the kitchen yet. And like last night, like for example, this is a good example. It was a weird night. We, she had late swimming lessons and I had dog training until like seven 30 or something. So we decided to order dinner and it didn't get there until like eight o'clock, which was a half an hour before bed time. So it wasn't going quick, eat your food, go to bed. But when I came home from dog training, she was, she looked at me, said, I'm hungry for dinner. I'm like, I know dinner. I'll be here in 10 minutes. Like, I'm so sorry. But she got a little snack. When she came home, she had some yogurt or something and she was fine.

Katie Ferraro (26m 2s):

And that's your flexible scheduling in place. I could literally talk to you all day long. Like what do intuitive eating dietitians do in real life when their kids are like, I want a snack. The answer is it's different every day. And I love that you point out it's the timing of the snacks and the timing of the foods. And just to remind parents, there's no right or wrong time to feed your baby. Parents said, what time should I do dinners? At my only suggestion is if you're introducing allergenic foods, we know that if baby is going to have a reaction to a food, it will occur within minutes up to no more than two hours following ingestion. So if you're feeding the baby two minutes before bed and two hours later, they have a reaction and you're asleep and the baby's asleep. That's not ideal. So maybe do allergenic foods earlier in the day. But other than that, do what works for your family.

Katie Ferraro (26m 42s):

Also keeping in mind that like milk is the baby's insurance policy, they're getting most of their nutrition. Your daughter is going to be getting most of her nutrition from meals. So snack here and there is not going to throw you off. In most cases.

Amee Severson (26m 53s):

Absolutely. She has dinner and then she has a snack before bed, but she would have had milk before bed when she was an infant. And that is kind of how it shifted.

Katie Ferraro (27m 0s):

Okay. For our parents before they leave. Cause they all, you guys gotta go get this book, How to Raise an Intuitive Eater is written by Sumner, who was on episode 210, and Amy, who's doing part two today. And I love that you guys joined forces two Registered Dietitians, but you're also real life. People would, you could really sense that throughout the book. And I appreciate you and kind of weaving in your own personal stories without like telling your life story. But I was like, I could see myself having that same situation with my kids. So thank you for sharing that in your book for our parents, what tips do you have? Like anything tangible, specific recommendations. And don't be afraid to say things not to say, cause I love to ask experts of your caliber. Like what are the words we should not be saying?

Katie Ferraro (27m 40s):

Because everyone talks about the positive language and I have to practice that it does not come naturally to me, but like what do we not say to Jack up our kid's relationship with food? If you have any tips for us,

Amee Severson (27m 49s):

I think it's absolutely important to keep the good and bad out of food to not talk about this. Being the good food, that's being a bad food. This being something that we even like towards like treat and stuff can be kind of tricky because it means special occasion. Or we only have very rarely, which just builds it up and makes it really exciting. So keeping the good and bad out of it, keeping the neutrality in there is really important.

Katie Ferraro (28m 10s):

How about at the table at mealtimes words to say or not say

Amee Severson (28m 14s):

At mealtimes, definitely continuing to neutralize that food. The more we talk about food being bad, the more we start to associate with our body, I actually recommend not talking about what kids are and are not eating at meal time

Katie Ferraro (28m 27s):

We don't have to talk the whole time, let the baby learn how to you've watched some of these videos. I'm like just stop talking. The baby needs to learn how to eat.

Amee Severson (28m 34s):

Absolutely. So, yeah, especially at that age, I guess just food, like it's just this, let it be. We don't need to make any comments about food while we're eating food.

Katie Ferraro (28m 41s):

You do not have to go mmmmm to let the baby think that what they're eating is yummy. Like they're enjoying it regardless.

Amee Severson (28m 48s):

Yes, absolutely. And they're gonna develop their own opinions about it and that's totally fine. And just really taking all of that out of it and just letting food be food, letting food be disassociated from the body, letting it not be beyond, you know, this food is going to give you energy to go run around with your friends. Maybe, but not this food isn't good for your body or this food's going to make your body feel sick or this food's going to do this to your body. We don't need to do that. We don't need to let our kids know that I don't know. Sugar will make them crash later or I don't know

Katie Ferraro (29m 20s):

Which isn't actually true. Even when adults say, do you understand it? The carbohydrate and it fuels the body, but okay. Well Amy, thank you so much for taking the time to share your personal story, your professional approach, a little bit about your book. Tell us where we can go to learn more. And also where should we go to buy your book? How to Raise an Intuitive Eater.

Amee Severson (29m 37s):

The book is available and there's lots of information about it. Places ask questions at well, anywhere books are sold and also our website for the book is intuitive eating for kids. That's number four.com. I personally am to be found at prospernutrition.wellness.com is my website. That's where I have my private practice and everyone who works for me. You can find me on social media at Amy is talking on Instagram and Amy Severson on Twitter and that's me.

Katie Ferraro (30m 5s):

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Amy. This has been an absolute pleasure.

Amee Severson (30m 8s):

Yeah. Thank you for having me. It was really great to talk to you.

Katie Ferraro (30m 11s):

Well, we touched on a lot of different points in that interview. I could have talked to Amy all day long, actually did end up talking to her for a long time after the interview. And it was telling her like you have such an amazing way with words. Like it's not that often that you meet a practitioner for whom the language that they're speaking about just comes so naturally, especially when you're talking about what can be really heavy topics. What are very heavy topics like fat acceptance and body positivity. So I cannot recommend Amy and Sumner's book How to Raise an Intuitive Eater enough. It is available as she mentioned, anywhere, books are sold, but I'm going to link all of Amy's locations, her private practice, her book, her social handles, et cetera on the show notes for this episode, which you guys can find@blwpodcast.com forward slash 2 1 2.

Katie Ferraro (30m 58s):

Thanks for being here for this interview with Amy Sanderson about How to Raise an Intuitive Eater.