Lift the Shame: The Podcast - Mothering Free From Diet Culture, Food Guilt, and Body Shame

Ever grappled with your child's constant hunger pangs right after meals? Fear not, for this episode is designed to help you navigate those mealtime challenges and put your worries to rest. Together, we'll demystify why your child might be feeling hungry soon after a meal, helping you understand their needs better. We'll also delve into recognizing your triggers and finding ways to e...

Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too? As your trusted family dietitian, I'm here to debunk the myth that sweets and a healthy relationship with food can't coexist for your children. In this enlightening conversation, we delve into the critical reasons behind children's obsession with sweets and its impact on their behavior and concentration. We shed light on the dif...

What would it mean to you to finally break free from the generational legacy of body shaming and diet culture in your family? This is the thought-provoking question we're tackling today as we discuss the complex issue of supporting our children in building a better body image. During our conversation, we'll be answering a question from one of our listeners about their 11-year-old daughte...

Hey mama, ever wondered how we can break the cycle of body shaming and build a positive body image for our little ones? We're tackling this pressing issue head-on today, discussing the alarming trends of body dissatisfaction amongst kids and the urgent need to change this narrative. We're arming ourselves with the tools needed to foster a home environment that encourages children to love...

The summertime months can often be a tough season for body image. You might desire to show up more fully and present for your children but may find it challenging to do so when you're holding shame around your own body. Motherhood brings intense changes around our bodies, which can trigger old body image wounds right to the surface.  Tune in to today's short episode to listen to Crystal...

Kids didn't come with a feeding manual. And yet, in our present day diet culture, you may feel overwhelmed with all the things you think you should be doing to raise a healthy, competent child. Feeding kids isn't transactional though. It's not about checking boxes off a list and ensuring you've done everything "right". It's about nurturing the relationship that&a...

You're on a mission to raise an intuitive eater and end generational legacies of food guilt and body shame. But when it comes to sweets, what does this actually look like? You might wonder if your efforts to normalize sugar in your home are paying off or if you're really helping your child learn how to self-regulate sweets. In today's episode, we'll walk through 5 positive char...

If your kiddos are home for summer break, you might find this adds to the stress around food. With increased costs of groceries coupled with more frequent requests for food all day long, you might feel unsure as how to best navigate feeding your children outside the structure their school schedule provided. If you're feeling unnerved by your child's more frequent requests for food now th...

Scripts are popular in the world of parenting. As you learn how to raise an intuitive eater, you might find yourself relying on scripts to help you figure out how to talk to your kids about food and their bodies. But sometimes, scripts can become a crutch and prevent us from doing the deeper work that is needed to break those generational legacies of food guilt and body shame. Tune in to this epis...

Using polarizing language about food with kids has the potential to create hierarchies around food in their minds. While we want to avoid any diet culture rhetoric or food terminology that can become external eating rules, this doesn't mean you can't have any conversations around food with your child. It's possible to have neutral food conversations that preserve their intuitive eat...

Diet culture purports that our kids need lectures about nutrition in order to eat in a "healthy" way. In reality, we see that leveraging health information in effort to steer how our kids eat can create hierarchies around food in their minds. This can form external rules about eating that separates our children from their intuitive eating abilities. The good news is that kids don't...

So you want your child to have a good relationship with food, but you may find that when it comes to how you talk about food, old habits die hard. While you might buy in to the whole raising an intuitive eater thing, it may be harder to trust the process - especially when your kiddo never seems to willingly choose to eat veggies and has a high affinity for sweets. Out of your own uncertainty, you...

Does it make a difference if you serve dessert alongside dinner and let your kids eat in whatever order, amount, and what they want? How should you navigate situations where you feel your child has had enough sweets for the day but they're asking for more? Is telling your child, "That's not on the menu today" a hidden agenda or controlling feeding tactic? And how should you han...

Have you ever wondered if eating sweets will cause a sugar high in your child? Or are you worried about sugar being a cause of hyperactivity in your kids? Sugar is highly demonized by diet culture and is often made to be the culprit for many negative effects or undesirable behaviors you might observe in your kids. These ideas around sweets can influence fear-based tactics in feeding kids, which ma...

You've taken steps to normalize sweets in your home, but what if your child seems to binge eat sweets whenever they're available? Or what if your child's appetite for sweets seems insatiable? If you're concerned about your child's erratic eating behaviors around sweets, this show is for you. Listen is as we discuss some of the more common reasons that influence binge eatin...

So you're ready to start normalizing sweets in your home to support your children in learning how to self-regulate all foods. But maybe you're feeling stuck on some practical things when it comes to kids and sugar. Such as, how can you provide more frequent access to sweets without compromising your child's dental health? Will more frequent access to sweets cause cavities in kids? W...

If you've struggled with an eating disorder or have had a difficult relationship with food and your body, you likely want to do everything possible to prevent your child from facing these same challenges. Eating disorders are complex conditions that are influenced by a multitude of layered factors. While you may not be able to prevent your child from developing an eating disorder entirely, th...

Feeding children has a way of bringing old wounds around food and your body right back to the surface. As you work toward raising intuitive eaters, you might inevitably find yourself feeling triggered by the way your kids eat, their appetites, and/or the sizes of their bodies. This doesn't make you a bad parent. Understanding why you're feeling triggered by these things can help you lear...

An important part of parenting is setting healthy boundaries with our children and creating reasonable expectations from which they can learn and grow. Food is no exception in this piece of parenting. However, if you're healing from a difficult relationship with food and your body, you might worry about the potential implications of turning down your child's food requests. Will saying no...

Another candy-centered holiday is upon us, and depending on how you feel about kids and sugar, this might make you feel overwhelmed. Let's face it: there's a lot of misinformation out there about kids and sweets that can make it challenging to know how to best approach it in your home. If you're looking to rewrite the script around sweets and help your children learn how to self-reg...

Raising a healthy child is likely a top priority for you, though this goal can sometimes feel in direct conflict with trusting a child to eat intuitively. After all, if your child seems to avoid veggies and only want to eat sweets, can you trust that these eating tendencies will really lead to healthier outcomes for your kiddos? If you're worried about your child's overall nutrition stat...

Welcome back to the show, mama! Diet culture loves to dish out rules about what your child needs to eat or how their bodies should look to be "healthy". But in reality, rigid rules steeped in diet culture that micromanage your child's body and appetite will not create healthful outcomes over their lifetime. In fact, it can make them more susceptible to disordered eating and poor bod...

Welcome back to the show, mama! We're continuing our conversation around ways to support your child's overall health that won't perpetuate diet culture into another generation. When it comes to feeding kids, diet culture overemphasizes what our kids "should" be eating - promoting the idea that if kids just eat the "right" foods, like tons of veggies, then they&ap...

Teaching kids about nutrition and health can seem like a good idea in theory. While nutrition facts are often shared with our kids with good intention, there’s the potential for causing more harm than good. Diet culture often purports that in order to raise a healthy child, we need to inundate them with health concepts, which can become food rules that undermine their innate intuitive eating abili...

Happy New Year, mama! This time of year is often saturated with diet talk and diet culture disguised as wellness. This can directly influence your perception of health for your children as well as the culture of food in your home. Separating health from diet culture can give you the freedom to care for yourself and your children in a more life-giving way that truly does support your overall health...