25. Nutrition for Moms: Fueling Ourselves While Supporting Our Kids, with Katie Winter

Susana: Happy Suzday, everyone.

So good nutrition can be a tricky proposition for moms, especially when we're mentally consumed by the challenge of feeding our children. It's It's really common for moms to forget to eat or to save the best food in the house for their child and to forego their own nutritional needs.

Because I'm interested in short and long term health, I invited nutritionist Katie Winter to come on to the show today. She's the mom of two kids, ages 12 and 15. So she's got a longer view of a family's nutrition than some of us do.

In yogic philosophy, the physical body is considered one of five sheaths that form the whole self, and it's referred to as the body of food. In the material sense, we are literally what we eat. We have other dimensions too, like the vital energy that gives rise to breathing, the emotional terrain of feelings and sensory experience. We also have an intellectual side and a core of bliss that emerges when we laugh and spend sweet moments with the people we love. But if the physical body lacks proper sustenance, those other layers of the self suffer as well.

So today, I'm speaking to a fellow mom who's got practical experience and expertise for how to feed ourselves and our kids on that essential layer of our being.

Welcome to Yoga for Mom Life. I'm Susana Jones, and I help moms who struggle to factor their needs into raising a family. With time honored wisdom and on demand practices that give more than they take, you can replenish and thrive on all levels. Learn more at yogaformomlife.com.

So hi, Katie Winter. So good to have you on the show.

Katie: It's great to be here, Susana. Thanks for the invitation.

Susana: Yeah. So Katie and I know each other from classes of hers that I take at P Volve in San Diego, which is a wonderful functional movement class that kicks my butt twice a week. And and, Katie, the reason that I've asked you to be a guest on Yoga for Mom Life is because you're a mom of two kids who are slightly older than mine. And I want to know how to set up the next ten years or so of my life on a long term path of happiness and well-being as a mom. K. So on top of being a fitness trainer, you are also a nutritionist. Tell me about that and, you know, if you can give some broad nutritional advice to the moms with little kids.

Katie: Yeah. You know, every kid is very different with their likes and dislikes with food. So it's it's a question I get a lot. I get from parents, the kid that won't eat enough and how can you bulk them up because they don't have a big appetite and they're the smallest kid in the class. I get those questions. I get a lot of, you know, my kid needs to eat less, is maybe a little on the overweight side, can you help with that? So, children are different. I would say that general advice would be never get too stuck on a certain point in time with your child's nutrition because it will change and faster than you think it will. So if you're sitting there worried and anxious because your child won't eat a single vegetable, it will change in an instant and suddenly they might be interested in something that they weren't or they will suddenly stop eating something that you thought they loved. So they go through these stages. I don't know if it's really because their taste buds are changing or if it's more of physical needs, they have cravings for different things, or it's social pressure to have the cool snack at school. I think that the eightytwenty rule applies for kids as much as it does for adults. Meaning that if you are doing the best you can at home to 80% of the time give them a nutritious meal that has carbs, fat, and protein in the best way that you know how without stressing about it, and the other times you're going through the drive through window or you're letting them eat, I don't know, that extra piece of candy or a few extra cookies for breakfast instead of an actual breakfast, but like just don't sweat that. I think as long as it's not an everyday kind of thing that there is no reason to get caught up in those little things. I mean, I've had a lot of stress early on as a mom and being a nutritionist because both my kids have the celiac gene. I myself have pretty severe gluten allergy and celiac in my family, so we all stay away from gluten, and there's been a lot of headaches with that, going to parties, classroom, you know, snacks, and all the things that they're subjected to that they can't eat, And I've had to over and over say, No, no, no, you can't have that, you can't have that, you can't have that. So I think with kids, if you focus more on what they can have rather than what they can't have, they have a more positive relationship with food in general. Yeah.

Susana: Because it's really easy to trip about, you know, when kids are eating, what they're eating, what they're not eating that they did eat yesterday, like you said. And, I think that was so much of that mental activity and energy going into how the kids are eating, etcetera. I think it's really easy for moms to, like, forget to eat or forget to eat well. You know? I know some moms, like, save the organic foods in their fridge, you know, for their kids, and then they just, like, eat, you know, whatever whatever else they have. So can you speak a little bit to what nutritional principles you live by or have had to integrate into your life as a mom as your kids have been growing up?

Katie: Well, first of all, to speak to what you just said, don't do that. Don't save the best foods just for your kids. You really are doing yourself a disservice. You should feed yourself just as well as you feed your kids and for your body type, for your age. There's no reason why you should be eating the scraps or not as well as your kids and in fact, not only because physically and mentally you need that nutritional support, your kids are watching what you eat And they're watching a lot more than you think they are. And they will throw it back in your face one day, because it's happened to me, where I've said, oh you shouldn't eat this or you should eat that, and they said, I don't see you doing that, and they're not gonna be afraid to tell you that. I've always thought the number one rule is modeling the behavior you want to see out of your kids. So if I am not hungry and it is dinner time and I don't eat or I eat very little and my kids ask me why, I simply say, I'm not hungry or I ate two hours ago because I was hungry then, and that's what I ate. You guys were at soccer practice, I ate X, Y, Z. So I'm modeling it and following what I need for my body, and they're seeing that, I think everybody's really high on this protein kick right now, which is super important, don't get me wrong. I'm 100% backing of the we need more protein than we think we do, or that we normally get, especially moms and kids as well for growth for everything. But it's okay if a day goes by and you didn't have your 80 to 100 grams or more of protein, right? And it's okay for your kids to see that and it's okay for them to question it and it's okay for you to say, hey, I look at it more as like a week, not just what I ate in that day, but I like to eat myself the entire week and then have more retrospect on that than just getting so hyper focused and anxious about one day, one meal, one thing. It's the entirety of what you're eating. So I don't think I'd be telling anyone anything new saying, you you got to focus protein and on your complex carbohydrates and on your fruits and vegetables. I think that where I help a lot with the clientele that I have are mostly moms like me in their 30s, 40s, and then women even into their 50s and 60s and then menopausal years. A lot of women think that they're eating well or enough, but when I look at their food diaries, because I have everyone do that if they're going to work with me, I at least look at three days. There were just these little things that you can tweak here and there that most people don't realize they're doing or eating that are tripping up their diets and making their mental health and physical health poorer than it could be. So that's where I really specialize is because I think I do work with women who are very educated for the most part on nutrition. They have general understandings. But when I help them to really tweak just these little details that they're they just don't understand are tripping up their diet, it can make a world of difference. So

Susana: Are there any, like, themes that you've seen in people's, you know, food diaries where you're like, there's that little tendency again?

Katie: Yeah. I think that the beverage world is a big trip up for most people and the ready to go shakes, protein shakes even, kind of ready to go anything, even bars, I don't think people realize what they're eating. They might just read the front of the label of, oh, it has 20 grams of protein and it's whey and it has 200 calories or whatever, great, but they're not reading the fine details of what they're actually putting in their body, and I'm trained to understand what all of those ingredients are. So I think that can be a big trip up for people, for moms especially, because we're looking for those ready to go meals. We want to grab and go because sometimes you have to. Sometimes you leave your house, you're not going to be back till eight to ten hours later, whatever it is, and you may or may not have time to actually go get food somewhere, or you may or may not have time to have made yourself a full lunch to take with you. So I think the packaged food is the biggest trip up for most people. They don't really understand more than what's on the front. I don't mean to say that people don't understand labels and they don't understand the ingredients, but just the nitty gritty of what's in those packaged food and how it could be affecting their health. That's a big trip up that I see a lot of moms making and I try to divert them to a lot of alternatives. Hey, you can still have a protein bar, you can still have a shake, you can still have, you know, this energy drink, but let's change which one you're grabbing and here's why, to better ingredients, more nutrition, less crap in the food. Yeah. I see that a lot. And and surprisingly, I still see when people log when they eat out, the choices they make. Mhmm. And even for people that eat out quite frequently, I'm sometimes very surprised that there's not more conscious nutritional decisions when eating out. It's almost like all of the knowledge that you have on nutrition goes out the window when you're ordering at a restaurant, like as if it doesn't count. And honestly, again, talking eightytwenty, if you're only eating out a couple times a month, then it really doesn't matter, to be honest. But if you're eating out like a lot of us do, two times a week and maybe more, oh, it matters. You can't just say, oh, because I'm at a restaurant, I'm gonna eat whatever I want, not worry about it. I don't have to look at a label.

Susana: Right. Right. Yeah. This is not vacation from making good dietary choices.

Katie: Yeah, exactly. People are trying to avoid carbohydrates like it's the plague and that's also not the best thinking and you can really trip yourself up, especially women with our hormonal changes. Going carb free or really low carb can actually be very detrimental to women's health. And so I try to reeducate women on carbohydrates and the positive sides of them and which ones they should be having versus not. So that could be a flip up too, is going too low carb.

Susana: Tell me that this is a good snack choice because it's what I just had, or tell me if it's not. Sliced up olive bread from Trader Joe's, dunked in olive oil and fresh rosemary from the garden and some kosher salt.

Katie: Yeah. I don't know the ingredients of the olive bread, so I can't make, like, a super judgment unless I read what's actually in the olive bread. It sounds very promising. Olive oil though is fantastic. It's a great antioxidant. It's a good source of fat. The sea salt's great, we all need a little bit of sodium in our life of the healthy kind, not just from processed foods. And yeah, bread, bread is not the enemy. I eat bread, but I did go through a stage where I was like, Oh no, no bread, right? That's gonna make me fat, or that's gonna do this or that. And I think, like my mom used to tell me decades ago, everything in moderation. And I think that that is very, very true when it comes to nutrition. If I know anything more than any other mom out there, we're all just kind of figuring it out day by day. My kids are 12 and 15. Kind of the main theme of these older years and getting into the teen years is how to navigate the online the online world for kids. Speaker 1: Yeah. What a wild trip. Something that really impresses me about being a mom of a child of any age is how much, like, their mental health impacts my mental health. What's your mental and emotional landscape like for you yourself as a mom having kids at this age who are going through these adjustments into teenage life? Speaker 2: Maintaining sanity. Yes. That's the big question, right? How do we stay focused on everything that is going on in our lives besides the kids and then managing their emotions and how those emotions make us feel. It's a lot. I gotta be honest, Susan, I don't know if I've ever actually thought about, like sat down and really thought about how does what they're going through affect my mental health. I feel like sometimes if, I'm being completely honest, I'm just on autopilot, like robotically going through the days, and then sometimes it'll just hit me where I feel, I don't know, either really, really burdened and I'm trying to figure out why, frustrated and trying to figure out why, like what's causing me to feel like nothing's working for me today or everything is actually spot on and I'm feeling great. And the depth of that kind of emotional journey as a mom, for me, gets hidden with my to do list and all of the tasks, because it really is back to back. And as they get older, another thing besides the social media is the driving them everywhere. And so you're constantly on the road driving them to either friends' birthdays and now it's a drop off situation. Right? Or both my kids play club sports and schools actually are kind of far from us and all of the events and all the social activities that they wanna do. How do I maintain my sanity and my to do list? And I think actually I should do a better job at checking in with myself on how is this all affecting me, because I really do run the household. My husband and I both work full time, but I'm in charge of our house, really, and everything that happens, everybody's schedule, including my own, and making sure things get done. So I think that I could do a better job of checking in with myself and taking moments to not just make sure I get physical exercise, but I get like mental break. And that's something that's been hard for me to do as a mom. I kind of just go and go and go and go until someone in my family is like, What's wrong with you? Why are you acting like that? And I say, What do you mean? What am I acting like? And sure enough, if I really think about it, I'm either being short with them or, I don't know, just not an all around nice person to be around, and I have to really take a step back, and sometimes it takes someone else noticing it. I don't even notice it myself.

Susana: Yeah. Well, there's a lot of self awareness in what you've just said, so I think that's a great start.

Katie: Yes. Obviously, I need to do a little better job of the check ins.

Susana: And what would that look like for you if you were already doing that? Like, where would it where would it kind of integrate easily into life as it is right now?

Katie: I think I'd either have to schedule it because I live by my calendar, or I'd have to make it a routine of before I go to bed every night I read, but maybe instead of spending that entire time reading to spend at least five minutes thinking about the day and things that happened and how it made me feel. So I think if I was more intentional about making it just part of my everyday life, it could even be on all of the long drives that I do every day to take the kids to and from different places, because there's a lot of silent time. Know, teenagers aren't necessarily like sitting in the car chatting it up with you for thirty minutes. There's a lot of silence that can occur. So yeah, I think if I just really thought about, hey, car rides, you should take five to ten minutes to check-in with yourself, Katie, or before you go to sleep as part of the falling asleep process, even when my eyes are closed, think about how I felt during the day. So yeah, I think it's just making it like brushing my teeth and having it in there somewhere that makes sense where I'm not doing anything else but just checking in with myself.

Susana: Beautiful. Mental hygiene to complement the dental hygiene.

Katie: Exactly. Yes.

Susana: It just it really speaks to, like, the different phases that, you know, our kids go through as they grow and develop because, you know, you're saying right now that in a car ride, the teenagers are quiet, you know, a lot of the time versus in the car with, like, a four year old right now. It is so loud.

Katie: I remember.

Susana: They're they're so loud. It's that's really interesting that you've got these long stretches of silence. So you're like, oh, that could be a nice place to integrate a little momentary check-in.

Katie: Yeah. You will have those nice moments. Although then you start to get worried about, are they hiding something from me? Why don't they wanna talk? Something going on?

Susana: And maybe there's this element of that where, you know, assuming that there's not something that actually does need to be brought up, maybe there's a role of this quiet time that's like for their personal integration, a time when they can actually hear their thoughts and be with their impressions of the day. And there's a there's a yogic practice called Mauna, and it's like a sacred silence where it's and it it's not such a disciplinary thing, although, you know, it kind of does make us check ourselves if we would just mindlessly start chatting about something. But it's like it's having a quality of quietness where we're not taking in any external perspectives on anything. And there's something about the white noise of, like, traveling in a car on the freeway that I'm like, oh, I feel like this that could be very conducive to that quiet time even if it's just you in the car and, you know, and you're not needing to wonder what the silence from your child means in the back seat. But either way, very good to know that there's some quiet time on the horizon because it's loud in my neck of the woods. Well, Katie, I am so excited to get back into your class one of these days. I've been recovering from being sick. So making very good food choices around here because, of course, food is medicine. Yes. And you're the first person to come on the show and talk about food. So thank you for sharing this nutritional wisdom with us. Thank you for your time in the middle of a day where you're usually go, go, go. And I hope that you do get those times to just check-in with yourself when it naturally works in the flow of your day and in those little pauses of quiet time with your teenagers in the back of the car.

Katie: Well, thank you. I really appreciate that and having me on the show, and hopefully we can do this again. I will tell you as you're in recovery from being ill, one of nature's greatest secrets to recovery from illness is ginger. So don't be afraid to use a lot of fresh ginger, a lot of ginger, everything. It is really amazing for health recovery. Just a little.

Susana: Oh, I have a fresh jar of pickled ginger in my pantry. So I'm gonna rock some of that. Thank you for that. Yay. All right, Ms. Katie. Well, you be well. And I'm going to add the link to your website as well as your social media presence in the show notes. And I hope to see you soon.

Katie: Great. Same here. Thanks, Susana.

Susana: Thank you, Katie. Bye. For personalized support with nutrition, visit Katie's website at thenutritionwithin.com (Instagram @thenutritionwithin)

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