Episode 50: Let's keep things simple

Episode 50: Let's keep things simple

In this episode of The Easy Feed Podcast, I discuss the importance of having a simple approach to feeding kids - focusing on small steps, small wins.

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Links
https://nourishwithkarina.com/feedingbabies
https://nourishwithkarina.com/membership

Highlights:

Introduction(00:00.574)
Karina Savage's Five Days to Healthy Kids Challenge(00:09.486)
Parenting Challenge: Streamlining Overwhelm (02:30.83)
Understanding and Managing Children's Eating Habits (04:50.562)
Increased Fiber and Iron Intake in Children (07:16.854)
Improving Family Mealtime Environment (09:37.644)
Simplifying Dinnertime for Family (12:02.018)
Normalizing Cheat Meals and Managing Stress (14:21.73)
Motherhood and Healthy Eating Challenges(16:48.852)
Nutritional Improvement for Children (18:57.898)

Show notes

READ TRANSCRIPT

Show Notes

In this episode of The Easy Feed Podcast, I discuss the importance of having a simple approach to feeding kids - focusing on small steps, small wins.

I’m diving into how you can find clarity and confidence by focusing on one small goal at a time. We explore the power of tiny, consistent actions and how they can lead to big wins at the family dinner table. Here’s a taste of what we’ll cover:

1. One Step at a Time: By focusing on just one simple goal, we can eliminate overwhelm and build positive momentum. It’s about letting go of the “perfect” approach and realising that small wins add up over time.

2. Fibre First: We’ll discuss easy ways to boost fibre in your child’s diet. Increasing fibre can support gut and immune health, giving your child a strong foundation for overall wellness.

3. Positive Mealtime Vibes: Creating a calm, pressure-free mealtime environment helps children feel safe to explore new foods without stress. I’ll share how small adjustments in our approach can improve the entire family’s dining experience.

4. Making Peace with Simple Dinners: Sometimes, a meal of eggs on toast can be as nourishing as a more elaborate dinner. We’ll talk about how to lower expectations and embrace these simpler options without guilt.

5. Clearing the Confusion: It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by conflicting advice on feeding kids, but choosing just one or two reliable sources can provide clarity. I’ll explain how this approach can bring peace of mind and reduce the stress of sifting through endless opinions.

Let’s keep it simple and build healthy habits together—one meal at a time!

Waitlist for Nourishing Kids - https://nourishwithkarina.com/membership

Healthy Kids Recipes - https://nourishwithkarina.com/healthy-recipes-for-kids

Free resources: https://nourishwithkarina.com/free-info

Introduction (00:00.544)
You're listening to the EasyVid Podcast, episode number 50. Let's keep things simple.

Karina Savage's Five Days to Healthy Kids Challenge(00:09.486)
Hi there, I'm Karina Savage and with over 20 years experience feeding children, including my own, I've learnt all the secrets that busy mums need to get their children eating better and actually enjoying healthy foods. So a huge welcome to the Easy Feed podcast. Hi there, hope your day's going well. Well, we have had the most amazing two weeks recently. I have just completed a...

Five days to healthier kids challenge. For some of you listening may have been involved in the challenge and thank goodness it was, it far exceeded my expectations of what this challenge would be. It's the first time I've done a five days to healthier kids challenge. And really I wanted to create a free learning experience for parents to try to gain some momentum around feeding children because

I feel that sometimes, well, not sometimes, so many times or so often, we are so overwhelmed with day-to-day life that it can become really hard to try to work out where to start with trying to create a healthy eater or try to get your child eating healthier. So I wanted to create an environment where parents could just spend a little bit of time every day learning.

And then a tiny bit of time every day implementing, taking action, but literally it was five minutes. And just get some runs on the board, get some wins. And my goodness, there was so many wins, so many success stories. Just from spending an hour together every day for five days, it was phenomenal. It was really heartwarming to see the transformation that so many moms mostly had.

just by trying to simplify things a little and just focusing on one simple thing. And that's really what wanted to talk about today because we look at all the things that need to happen to try to, you know, get the thing done. So for example, I don't know, I'm trying to think of another analogy, but you know, in terms of feeding kids, you think, my gosh, where do I start? They love junk food.

Parenting Challenge: Streamlining Overwhelm (02:30.83)
Snake food, they da da da da da da da, and you're saying, oh my gosh, where do I start? Whereas if you can actually just try to deconstruct it a bit, strip it back, focus on one thing, get a win there, then focus on the next thing, then you really start to get momentum. And that's really what you want because then momentum brings confidence, it brings clarity, and then you move on to the next thing. And so that's what I think.

a number of parents, we had about 750 people register for this challenge. And that's what a lot of them took away. It was like, let's focus on one thing, get that done, and then we'll focus on the next thing. And that's, think, a really positive way to try to simplify the overwhelm around feeding kids. Because not only does, you know, a lot of stuff going in our own minds as parents,

But there's so much information out there online, whether you're sitting on the couch at night scrolling and you see all these nutrition things pop up or advice or recipes or don't do this, do that, scaremongering tactics. You know, there's just so much out there and a lot of the time it's not from qualified healthcare professionals. It's not from reputable sources, but it's really hard sometimes to know what to listen to and

what not to listen to, what's, know, just to keep scrolling and not actually stop and read it. So it's very difficult, I think, in today's age to try to decipher what's rubbish and junk information and what's reputable. And one of our participants actually in the Healthier Kids Challenge said to me at the end, you know, it was really valuable to hear me say, just listen to one or two.

reputable sources and just ignore the rest because otherwise it's too confusing. So she's now listening to some of what I say or a lot of what I say, which is great. think she's joined Nourishing Kids, which was open after my challenge. It's now closed, but yeah, she's now on the inside and you know, we've kept the momentum going, which is amazing and so much fun. But.

Understanding and Managing Children's Eating Habits (04:50.562)
Just having that one or two reputable sources of information to listen to, that really helps to simplify things because then you just literally keep scrolling and don't stop and read everything. You know, if you're a mom who has a baby who's introducing solids, my goodness, there's so much information out there. Do you do baby lead weaning? Do you do purees? Do you, you know, there's just so much to take on board. And you've just got to be really careful, especially, well,

with children are as important as babies, but you just got to be so careful because you don't want to stuff it up. And I know that you don't want to stuff it up and I didn't want to stuff it up when my little ones were babies, which is why it's so important just to make sure that you're following someone who's qualified. So following someone who's qualified and then really working out what the biggest issues are for your child. And look, I did talk about this as one of the key strategies, as kind of five key components of

understanding how to create a healthy eater. So you might say to me, well, Karina, what's the simple thing that I can focus on with my child because it does seem too hard. does seem bigger than Benher. Where do I start? And look, you know, one of the key pillars inside nourishing kids is understanding why a child is eating the way they do. So you really do want to get your head around what's going on and how they're eating, but really.

Just taking a few minutes or half an hour to really think about what their day looks like. And then trying to improve one tiny bit of that. That's where I would start. I mean, unless you're a nourishing kids and you can really go through the bodges that will learn with me. And I must say that it's not at all time consuming and it's very step-by-step and you've got me to support you the whole way. So was not too time consuming, but I think.

If at the moment you're not inside Narcissian Kids and you're not going through that learning, then it's about trying to just focus on one simple thing, one simple change, one simple improvement to your child's day. So this simple improvement could be one of the following. It could be number one, increasing fibre in your child's day. So how could we increase fibre in our child's day? Well,

Increased Fiber and Iron Intake in Children (07:16.854)
There's lots of ways, but if we start with breakfast, simply adding a bit of fruit to breakfast, swapping the type of bread from white to wholemeal or plain white to high fiber white or grainy at best if you can. Improving the breakfast cereal, choosing a higher whole grain based cereal rather than huge grain or rice bubbles, move them over to something a bit higher in fiber like a sultana bran or a wee pixel porridge. Simply

swapping out something in their lunchbox that's lower in fiber for something that's higher in fiber, swapping potato chips for popcorn. You are increasing the fiber and iron intake. And that one simple change done consistently will make a big difference. If you've ever read the book, Atomic Habits by James Clear, he talks about the importance of small habits, small changes done consistently.

Equaling significant outcomes. And that's really something to remember. We need to be focusing on one little thing, doing it consistently. And that makes a big difference over the days and the weeks and the months and the years. So whether it's increasing fibre in breakfast, in morning tea, in lunch, as I said, changing the bread, adding a tiny bit of extra vegetable into your child's lunchbox.

Afternoon tea, adding one high fiber option on a platter or swapping something to increase the fiber. Dinner, lots of different ways we can increase fiber at dinner, whether it's through vegetables or legumes or putting a blob of hummus on their plate or adding lentils into bolognese. There's lots of different ways that we could increase fiber. Same with after dinner, if they have some dessert, adding some fruit, you know, adding some nuts onto ice cream or adding some nuts into something that you've made, whether it's a crumble.

Not saying you've got to go out and make a crumble, but there's plenty of ways that you could make one simple change to increase the fibre in your child's day. If you just focus on that and do that consistently, that's a big win. Okay. And that will make a big difference. And we know that fibre equals gut health and gut health equals immune health. And that keeps kids healthy and keeps them away from the doctor and reduces their sick days.

Improving Family Mealtime Environment (09:37.644)
which in turn gives you more sleep and you can do whatever you need to do during the day. And it all comes back to focusing on that one simple goal of increasing fiber at that breakfast or increasing fiber at that lunch. So done consistently, it will make a big difference, not only to their fiber intake, but as I said, their gut and immune health. has a ripple effect. Nutrition has a huge ripple effect.

Whether we're talking about improving the environment at meal times, at dinner times, that has a huge ripple effect on the whole family. Has a huge ripple effect on family connecting. Social and emotional benefits to children connecting at family meal times is huge. But if you've spent, you know, the first 10 years of their life focusing on them taking one extra bite of broccoli, then you're going to miss out on all of that beautiful time for connection.

So focusing on the wrong things can have a big ripple effect, but simply focusing on the right things and setting up a really positive family mealtime environment can have a really positive ripple effect. And again, during the challenge, participants were encouraged to focus on one thing that they could do to improve the dinner time environment. And we talked about different options and they had massive wins. must say they had massive wins within a very, you know, within

days. So it was focusing on one specific thing at dinnertime to then have a big positive ripple effect on the entire family. And also on the child's health because these children were starting to try new foods literally within one dinnertime, changing the way that the parents showed up at dinnertime, changing the way they presented the food, changing the environment at dinnertime meant that

It was literally night and day, the day before the child would have refused it. And after we had our session that night, the child ate it. And that means the child is eating, or your child is eating more nutritious food. So not only does it have a positive ripple effect from a family connecting perspective, but your child's getting more nutrition. So that's going to have a massive ripple effect on their health, their long-term health outcomes. Another way that you could keep it simple is to plan your week.

Simplifying Dinnertime for Family (12:02.018)
have literally three or four basic meals planned for the week on the weekends to get the ingredients for those three or four meals. And the rest of the week is either leftovers mixed together or basic cheat nights or takeaway and keeping it as simple as that. So you will have three or four basic family meals that are easy to make. Well, not necessarily everybody likes, but

You can listen to my simplifying dinnertime podcast on that one, because that really talks about how to deconstruct a family meal to cater for all taste buds at the table. And that helps to keep you sane so you're not cooking two or three different dinners at dinnertime or before dinnertime. But I speak from experience when I've done that.

The week is so much easier from a feeding your family perspective because you've got a plan. You've got the ingredients and then you just do it. Even if you're getting home late, you've got food there to throw together to serve up. Sometimes if it needs to be eggs on toast or baked beans on toast or a cheese toastie with some chopped carrot and caps next to the toastie, completely fine. I actually had a conversation with my daughter last night.

Because we got home from, I think it was summer soccer and it was getting late and she initially didn't want the pasta that we were cooking. And I said, well, you got to eat something. And she's like, yeah, I want rice. I'm like, you have rice a lot. Why don't we choose something else? And cause she's also vegetarian. said to her, well, we need to make sure that you're getting protein and rice isn't going to cut it. You need some protein as well.

And she didn't have rice by the way, cause she loves rice and she has some time about her rice. So I said, we need a balance. We need to get some protein in there. So what about some fried eggs next to some pasta with oil and you know, we'll balance it out that way. She's like, I don't want eggs. That's breakfast. And I said, well, it's not actually, and eggs can absolutely be a part of dinner. She's like, I want a proper meal. And I said, it's not always possible to have a proper meal every night. said, sometimes you do need to have.

Normalizing Cheat Meals and Managing Stress (14:21.73)
baked beans on toast or scrambled eggs on toast or, you know, whatever your cheat meal is. And I'm not saying it's takeaway because, know, she, think she wanted to get her tired takeaway and by then I'd got home and I'm like, I'm not going out again. But I said to her, it's normal to have some nights where you're not having a proper cooked dinner. You're having eggs on toast or whatever that may be. So I just wanted to normalise that for her because.

I feel like she was thinking that that's not a proper dinner and no, it's not a proper, you know, well-prepared dinner, but it's still good food, right? So I think it's about lowering the expectations and normalising that those foods can absolutely form a part of a healthy balanced week as can takeaway food and even the hot chips and chicken schnitzel burgers and whatever.

Sure, they're not as healthy, but they can absolutely fit within that healthy, balanced lifestyle. It's the sometimes food, right? But menu planning and having those quick, easy, cheap nights and having a takeaway through in here or there is absolutely fine. And that's another really great way to keep things simple rather than thinking, oh my gosh, what am going to cook tonight? It's like 6.30, we're at home, I haven't even got anything in my drawer.

can't even think of what I'm going to make. You know, that's what we want to try and avoid. And if you are at that point, either get or do eggs on or something like that, because it's completely fine. But just trying to normalise simple eating and normalising it with whoever you need to, whether it's, you know, partner or kids, or maybe you don't need to normalise. Maybe that's what you do. That's great. What you just need to make sure you're doing is planning ahead on that Saturday or Sunday, have three or four meals that you plan.

because that's going to set you up better for the week. And I know that I need to do that more because when I do it's so much easier. So look, there's so many things that we could do. And I think we can carry a lot of guilt around that, but I don't think that's fair because we as parents, as mums, often trying to hold it all together often. look, I absolutely give dads their credit because some dads are the stay at home dads, but
Motherhood and Healthy Eating Challenges(16:48.852)
Still, the majority are mums. You know, we're often the glue that makes everything stick together. In mums, actually, there's a much higher percentage of mums working part of full time now, more than ever. This only makes it harder to try and show up with a healthy cooked dinner, food on the table every night. So there's a lot of pressure on us. There's a lot of pressure on us from all different areas, you know.

You've got your work admin, you've got your kids, your life admin. think that's even harder often than the work admin. There's so much to do then, you know, the kids have got issues at school or, know, they've hurt their ankle and you've got to them to the physio. There's just so much going on all the time. And food.

adds another layer to that. And if they're fussy eater, then there's the guilt around what they're eating or they're not eating and the argument and my gosh, it's a nightmare. So I think we just have to try to simplify things as much as possible and just go, you know, what is one thing that I can try and achieve for my family for this week? One thing. And that's all you need to do. Start somewhere. And as I said, whether it's working on trying to add a little bit of fiber in, whether it's trying to...

not talk about food at dinner time and have a happy meal time. You know, one simple thing, just focus on that, achieve that, gain some momentum and then move on to the next thing. Because if you do, then you are going to start to see these small wins. And obviously I can't give you all the information in this podcast to, you know, extensively teach you how to set up, know,

the best environment to create a healthy eater. And obviously you can jump on my Nourishing Kids membership wait list for that if you're interested. But I think for now, what you can do is focus on one small achievable win, nail that, and then move on to the next. And you'll then get these little wins that will keep you going and gain momentum. Those small habits, those small improvements done consistently.

Nutritional Improvement for Children (18:57.898)
over the days and the weeks and the months will equate to significant nutritional improvements in your child's life. And so this is really important to remember because it doesn't seem like much at the time, but it will make a difference in the long run. And what you're also doing is you're slowly but surely teaching them what healthy eating is and making those small subtle changes, but intentional changes really teaches them what healthy eating is.

So good on you for any small win that you can make or any small goal that you set for your family, but keep it small, keep it achievable. And when you win, when you nail it, let me know. I'd love to know because I'm here cheering for you. If you're needing some food inspiration, I have a really great free information section on my website. So if you head to nourishwithKarina.com

So that's nourish with Karina, K-A-R-I-N-A.com forward slash free info. You'll find there my nourishing kids blog. You'll find there, you know, probably close to 80 kids food reviews, useful links, food inspiration, ideas, guides, nutritious recipes for your family. So that's a really good place to start. If you're looking for a bit more food information, if you're looking for some inspiration feeding kids.

And once you've had a good look around, just pick one thing to focus on and let me know when you've done it. Thanks so much for listening today. I hope that's been helpful for you and I can't wait to chat again soon. Bye for now.