I recently finished reading Ellyn Satter’s Child Of Mine. Satter is probably the most prominent voice when it comes to feeding children and family dynamics around mealtime.

Satter originally trained as a dietician, with a focus on paediatrics. She later trained as a psychotherapist, but still focused on feeding and eating problems. 

What I like about Satter’s approach to eating is the focus isn’t simply on nutrition. She also considers topics like:

• The work of psychologist Mary Ainsworth on infant attachment
• Adolescent eating disorders
• Child feeding dynamics impact on child growth
• Child psychosocial development
• Speech pathology and oral feeding skills

So the book isn’t simply about what the science says children need nutritionally for healthy growth and development, but all the other components that go into making this a reality.

And while the focus of the book is on feeding children, Satter’s work is applicable for all ages. Her goal is to have children learn these skills so they can grow into adults that continue with these practices. I don’t work with children but this book (along with Satter’s other works) has been recommended to many clients to help with their own eating. 

Eating Competency

One of the central themes of Satter’s teaching is around eating competency. There are four components to being a competent eater (taken from the Ellyn Satter Institute site):

1. Context: Take time to eat, and provide yourself with rewarding meals and snacks at regular and reliable times.
2. Attitude: Cultivate positive attitudes about eating and about food. Emphasize providing rather than depriving; seeking food rather than avoiding it.
3. Food acceptance: Enjoy your eating, eat foods you like, and let yourself be comfortable with and relaxed about what you eat. Enjoying eating supports the natural inclination to seek variety, the keystone of healthful food selection.
4. Internal regulation: Pay attention to your sensations of hunger and fullness to determine how much to eat. Go to meals and snacks hungry, eat until you feel satisfied, and then stop, knowing another meal or snack is coming soon when you can do it again.

These are the kind of ideas that we need to be teaching children and adults. Unfortunately, what I see instead is a focus on teaching, “healthy eating”.

The Problem With “Healthy Eating”

Now, healthy eating and being a competent eater aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact, being a competent eater leads to eating in a way that supports mental, emotional, and physical health.

But when “healthy eating” becomes the goal, people are easily led astray. It leads to a detachment from one’s body and following arbitrary rules about what is good and bad or what is the right amount and what’s too much.

Here are the components of “healthy eating” that are regularly taught and sold to people:

• Aim to go as long as you can between meals. If you eat too often you’ll eat too much food.
• Make sure you never eat too much. You can use pre-determined serving or calorie amounts.
• Pay close attention to fullness; try and ignore hunger (you’re probably just emotional, thirsty, bored, trying to self soothe, or are a sugar addict).
• Don’t focus on food satisfaction, if you do, you’ll just end up eating “bad” foods.
• Avoid snacks, because otherwise, you’ll eat too much food.
• Your weight determines your health. Weight loss = good work.
• There are good and bad foods, aim to eat only good foods.
• Focus on all the items you aren’t allowed to eat and how unhealthy they are.
• Food quality and the nutritional value of the food are more important than if you like the taste of the meal or how you feel about the food you are eating. 
• Your body can’t be trusted, simply follow the “science”.
• Eat a variety, but only within the category of “good” foods.
• If you eat foods that are on the “forbidden list”, feel bad about the experience; this will prevent you from doing it next time.
• All your health problems are caused by eating the wrong foods.
• It’s immoral not to prioritise your health and this is why you have to follow this specific way of eating.

I know some of the above may seem hyperbolic or like a caricature of the actual advice. But while most practices of teaching “healthy eating” are more subtle in their guidance, the above is what it typically boils down to. 

When the focus is on teaching someone to be a “healthy eater”, I can see why people jump from diet to diet. Because each diet tells you why it’s the healthiest one and why you need to be following it. It lays out a strict plan for what you can and can’t do and gives you an “easy-to-follow” template.

Teaching Eating Competence To My Son

Part of my reasoning for reading Satter’s book was because I’m now bringing up a little human of my own. I feel like I have a good handle on eating and how I should model this for Ramsay but I’m always open to new ideas.    

Ramsay will be two at the end of September and it’s lovely watching how he is with food.

The past few weeks have been really hot over here. He normally loves potatoes and sweet potatoes but more recently they haven’t been of interest. Fruit, especially watermelon, is in high demand. We’re going through two or three of them a week.

His eating has decreased because of the hot weather, but he’s eating much bigger breakfasts than normal, as this is the coolest part of the day.

Some meals he’ll have a couple of bites of food and that’s it. Other meals he’s eating what would be thought of as an adult-sized portion.

He has meals at regular intervals. It won’t be the exact same time every day, there is some level of flexibility, but there is consistency to food being offered roughly every 3 hours.

Mealtimes are enjoyable. We all sit down together and converse while eating. No phones, no iPads, no toys.

He is always served a wide variety of foods, with the expectation that he doesn’t have to finish any of it. He gets to try what he wants to try. This means some days his food intake is limited and rather beige because these are the foods he wants. And other days, he eats a buffet’s worth of variety.

In terms of eating healthily, he does incredibly well. But this is only the case if I look at what happened across a week.

If I focus on a particular day or worse still, a single meal, it could easily appear “unhealthy”. Like he’s not having any protein or vegetables. Or that he’s simply living off of white rice.

But when you zoom out and look at the week as a whole, he’s eaten a wide array of fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, cheese, eggs, and whole grains. As well as foods that might be considered more “fun foods” like cake, fish fingers, peanut butter and jam toast.

Body Trust

One of the most destructive aspects of dieting is that it wipes out someone’s trust in their own body and decision making. In the beginning, this might not be so noticeable, because you have this great plan to follow and this easy set of rules to stick to.

But once you’ve done a handful of diets, all with contradictory ideas, the more this confusion sets in.

Which, again, is why I’m such a fan of Satter’s approach (and other approaches, like intuitive eating, that focus on building body trust).

To quote Satter: “People with high eating competence feel more effective, are more self-aware and are more trusting and comfortable, both with themselves and with other people.”

And this is a transferrable feeling. When you feel confident in being able to listen to and support your body, you know you can now do this in other areas in your life.

Becoming A Competent Eater

One of the biggest reasons people get in contact with me is because of a history of dieting. They’ve been on and off diets for years (or decades) and they can see that it’s not working. But they don’t know how to do anything else.

How do you listen to your body?

How do you get rid of the noise in your head about good and bad foods?

How do you deal with the fear around weight gain?

The body is incredible in its ability to self regulate and to let you know what it needs. If you can simply learn to listen and act on its requests, it can take care of the rest.

I’m a leading expert and advocate for full recovery. I’ve been working with clients for over 15 years and understand what needs to happen to recover.

I truly believe that you can reach a place where the eating disorder is a thing of the past and I want to help you get there. If you want to fully recover and drastically increase the quality of your life, I’d love to help.

Want to get a FREE online course created specifically for those wanting full recovery? Discover the first 5 steps to take in your eating disorder recovery. This course shows you how to take action and the exact step-by-step process. To get instant access, click the button below.