#9: Raising healthy eaters with wellness coach Emily Geizer

Bilyana Ivanova: Hi, Emily! I'm so happy to have you here on the podcast and talk about our children's well-being!

Emily Geizer: Thank you. It's an important topic. I'm glad you're doing this.

Bilyana Ivanova: Please give us a little background. Who are you? What are you passionate about? 

Emily Geizer: Who am I? I am. I'll tell you the roles I play. I am a mom to 2 teenage girls. I am a health coach. I'm. A former Montessori teacher. I'm. A wife. I'm a dog parent, a nature lover. I live in North Carolina in the US. I think that's a good description of what I'm up to these days.

Bilyana Ivanova: Great. Thank you. On your website you say that true wellness isn't measured by the number on the scale, but rather by radiance of your skin, the ease of your digestion, and the resilience of your immune system. Could you elaborate on that?

Emily Geizer: Oh, I would love to. Yes, I think wellness has been so kind of cheapened and commodified into being just something we have to sell people, or it's only available for people that have money to access gyms and personal trainers and coaches. And wellness is so much more than that. I really do believe that.

Emily Geizer: like I say, it's your skin and your hormones like that's how you can tell. If you feel well, do you have the energy to get through the day? Your skin is literally a billboard for your lifestyle. It really shows, like your gut balance and all of that. So when your body is functioning well, that is wellness, and that comes in all different shapes and sizes. I know very thin people who aren't all that well, and I know people that carry extra weight who are very well and healthy. So the size is, I think, how we tend to look at whether somebody is healthy or not, and it really has very little to do with health. 

Bilyana Ivanova: Yes, I agree, and it's important that we teach this to our kids early on before they start having some body image issues. Especially with girls. I have 3 girls so I'm very interested in that.

Emily Geizer: Yes, this was something that was really important to me. Early on I personally have struggled with weight my whole life. And I went on my first diet when I was in ninth grade.

So I wanted to kind of stop that generally generationally, just not keep handing down this obsession with fat and body size. And I have a background in child development, and I used to be a Montessori teacher. So when I left the classroom and had kids I had tools. I understood how the young child's mind works. I used to lead a classroom of like 30 kids, you know, who were under 7 years old, and so I had the skills to get them on board. Kids want to know more right . They're ready to choose healthy food if they understand why. So when we educate them and involve them, it gives them a sense of autonomy.

Emily Geizer: And we have so much more flexibility in working with kids rather than you have to eat this because I said so, or everybody has to eat their vegetables or don't eat that because you're gonna get fat. None of those are like inspiring or motivating conversations. There’s

immediately going to be tension. 

Bilyana Ivanova: So how do we  approach the situation instead?

Emily Geizer: Yeah. So instead…. And these things can be changed at any point. So you know, if people are listening, and they already have kids, and they're like, oh, gosh! I'm kind of taking the wrong approach, or I can see where I would like to take a better approach. You can start this at any point.

Emily Geizer: And I think that the most important step for engaging in a new way of being in a family is to bring everybody together that's going to be involved, like everybody in your household together and talk about talk about it in a way that's like “I've just learned something new, and I think it'd be really important, for I think it'd be really great for our family to try it out together”. And depending on your kid's age. I mean, I did this when my kids were quite young. They were toddlers.  You know, asking them for input that's kind of age appropriate again. It's a sense of autonomy. I think whenever you carry the suits right now. I just mean like explaining how we're going to shift things, because I imagine some of your listeners may already have a pattern of talking to their kids about food. So when you change how that's going to be, bring them on board with a conversation. I'd like to start focusing on foods in this way. 

Emily Geizer: Educating them is really important and getting them involved is really important.

So some things I think that you can start by doing is identifying foods that you want your kids to explore more and have them easily accessible. Again, this looks different at all ages. I remember these grazing trays we used to use like when my kids were quite young. We would use ice cube trays and stick little bits of pumpkin seeds, raisins, you know, chopped up kiwi like, just so they can kind of try all the different flavors, and there would be lots of colors.  Obviously, that's not going to work for a fifteen-year-old. My daughter would laugh at me if I did that now, so you're going to adjust it to be age appropriate, but raising a grazer, encouraging exploration is a great way to start comfort with food.

Bilyana Ivanova: Okay. So it's not like “Eat your veggies first thing at dinner”, but it's more like. “Why, don't you try some of what I have here prepared on the table?”

Emily Geizer: Kids, especially young kids, don't just eat 3 meals a day.  As parents, we sometimes want to group it into these meals, and because of their metabolism and their growing bodies,little kids are eating all day. So just having the healthy foods available all day for them to be exploring rather than going to the pantry, grabbing a single-serving of whatever convenience cracker that they love. And at a meal what I think is really important is to talk about why the food matters. Like - eating vegetables first is a really great idea. Explain why it's a good idea. First of all, veggies are our growing foods. Explain how there's food that helps you grow. There's food that doesn't do much except to fill you up. And then there's food that actually kind of does the opposite of helping you grow. It depletes your body of nutrients. right? So if you want to be really strong and you want your brain to work really well, you've got to focus more on the growing food.

Emily Geizer: And it's okay to eat the other food. Let's not villainize food, but let's teach why the other food needs to be a priority. Kids are so motivated by, again age dependent, by being able to run fast, being able to grow taller, having strong muscles, doing well in school, like brain brain food. Those are all things that excite kids. So I think when we learn how to talk to our kids to excite them and get them on the same page that we are on the food piece is easy. Instead of seeing it as something we have to force our kids into, it's just this like place of friction. Food is a celebratory come together sort of tool. It's always been used in that way, and if we can keep it positive, and from a place of empowerment, I just think it's such a gift to kids.

Bilyana Ivanova: Yes, that's an excellent point. What about sugar?  Because this is one type of food that's not a growing food, but the opposite.Do you think that we have to avoid it altogether, or because kids love sugar, and it's so addictive. How do we approach that?

Emily Geizer: Kids love sugar and adults love sugar. I just led a 5 day Sugar detox for a big group of people, and they were all adults and all like, Wow! I am so hooked on this stuff. It's amazing. And we're actually wired for sweetness.  So there's lots of places where we can find sweetness. And this is a great place to educate kids. There's all different sorts of flavors. Sweet is one kind of flavor. There's lots of things that give us that sweetness -: sweet root, vegetables, sweet fruits, dried fruit, processed foods, sugar.  And if you understand the role that sugar plays. It helps to talk to kids about how when they're eating all these vegetables and putting all these good nutrients in their body sugar actually has the effect of leaching out these nutrients. So you're putting it all in but then if you're going to eat a bunch of sugar you're kind of negating those positive effects.

Emily Geizer: I think, just having it be a sometimes food is a great thing to teach. And the thing is, this has a lot to do with, like your family culture and habits, too. If Oreos are in the house, and it's a favorite food, and you find that you're snacking on them a lot of course your kids are going to want to, too.

Bilyana Ivanova: Yes and I find it easier to go without sugar than with a little bit of sugar.

Emily Geizer: That was a big thing that we talked about in the detox. If you want to cut cravings, the best thing to do is just kind of cut it cold turkey, because it is highly addictive. So we have a little bit, and then we want a little bit more.

Bilyana Ivanova: But how? What is a sustainable approach to that?  Because ditching sugar all together for a long period of time seems impossible.I don't think I can do it, let alone my kids. 

Emily Geizer: You told me that you have young kids, and I think with young kids, with this whole conversation. I am very sensitive, as I mentioned, like I've had body image issues my whole life, and so I am very sensitive to recreating that. I don't want to recreate that for my girls. So I don't want them to be scared of certain foods. But I do really want them to understand it. And so I think, when you say like, we're not having any sugar for a week it starts being confusing, maybe.

So I think that it’s about having sugar for truly special occasions rather than finishing every single meal.

Bilyana Ivanova: We usually have sugar, like cookies for a snack in the afternoon. That's the only time I give something like that. But  still,  it's once a day every day. 

Emily Geizer: You don't live in the US. And I think we have a bigger issue, maybe, with sugar and processed foods here in the US. There is a big difference between a homemade cookie that we're putting in sugars or natural sweeteners on our own and a packaged product. Yes, and it's not even like packaged cookies. In our grocery stores over 80% of the items on the grocery shelves have added sugars in them. So it's the ketchup, the barbecue sauce, the mayonnaise, the vinegar, the pickles, the yogurt. Things that you're not thinking of as having sugar are where a lot of the sugar is. So I don't think there's a need to demonize desserts so much as saying, “Did you know that adults are supposed to have under 25 grams of sugar a day. So let's count, let's take today and add up and just check. Where is your sugar coming from today? 

Bilyana Ivanova: And read the labels!

Emily Geizer: Yeah, read the labels and start to give language and education around that. So you're not like setting hard rules, but you're empowering kids to take their health in their own hands. They love to learn and be detectives. 

Bilyana Ivanova: Yes, my kids are asking “Is that protein, or is that carbohydrates? “

Emily Geizer: So good! In my health coaching practice I take a food first approach, because food's been linked to mental health issues. Food is linked to all chronic disease, inflammation, joint pain. So it's a great foundation to give our kids to know that food actually has a lot of power.It's not just fulfilling a quick craving. It's doing a lot in our bodies. It's giving our bodies the information it needs.

Bilyana Ivanova: So your kids now are teenagers and you have raised them this way.

Having this strong foundation, do you find that they now make the healthy choice when they're on their own?

Emily Geizer: They have gone through various phases with growing up like with that growing up, and they're both very different. They do make healthy choices. They do crave fresh food and recognize that fresh light food feels good. They do want vegetables. And they eat things I would never have in the home at this point, because they have friends and cars, and access to all that.

And so they do eat it. And I continue to have these conversations with them. Like “I know you love this food, but let's look at what's in it, and what that's doing to you. So you're saying your face is breaking out, and you want medication for your skin. But you just had diet soda, and cookies 3 days in a row, and now you have a breakout so like, let's look at where these things are coming from.

Bilyana Ivanova: Oh, yeah, that's a great point! To see the cause and effect for themselves.

Emily Geizer: Exactly

Bilyana Ivanova: What about sports and movement? Do you think that's a big one big factor in raising healthy kids?

Emily Geizer: Absolutely, I think moving every day is good for every person to do. Not all kids are oriented towards sports and that's totally fine, right? But find ways that are joyful for kids and keep them moving -  hula hooping, jumping rope, taking a walk, cartwheels… Figuring out just how to keep moving the body.  That body structure that they create as kids carries them through as adults. Kids that were really strong  have much more structural health as adults than kids that sat on a couch. It's harder to build that structural health when you're an adult. So for sure, movement is important.

Bilyana Ivanova: Yes, and they spend all day at school sitting behind a desk, and having a terrible posture. I see so many kids with terrible posture.

Emily Geizer: And carrying these big book bags all day and well, and this so like you can't really see me, but like looking at their phones all hunched over with their shoulders up high. 

You know how there's the progression that they show of  humans evolving to standing up right? I think we're gonna be going back down.

Bilyana Ivanova: Yeah, those terrible phones. I'm still avoiding them at home. But my oldest is 9, so it's easy. Still.

Emily Geizer: It's moving so quickly. I have friends who have parented kids just like 5 years ahead of mine. It was a very different phase with phones just in that short amount of time than it is now. It's hard. The food thing feels like a piece of cake compared to cell phones.

Bilyana Ivanova: What about exposure to nature and its role in raising happy kids? I think that emotional well-being is as  important as the physical one.  Because I find the kids are very happy when they're outside. But these days, at least for kids that live in apartments in the city, 

going out has become a scheduled activity. You have to go out for a walk and then come back to your home. It's like we are in a closed box and it affects our mood and our emotions. What do you think about that?

Emily Geizer: 100%!  I think we're all experiencing nature deficit. I'm: a huge proponent of getting out and hiking. We brought our kids hiking and camping when they were young because

it's important for so many reasons. And what you're talking about is like leaving and going on a walk and coming back. And I was just thinking in these tightly scheduled  family environments that we have.  When we were kids you could kind of get lost all day, or there's a story of the parents saying like, come back when it's dark, and you have all day to try to figure out how to fill your time right? So you'd go exploring in the woods

if you had access to that. But now it's kind of like “Quick! We've got like 20 min. Let's go do this thing, and then come back.”  We're not quite giving kids time to go through that process of getting bored, being creative, getting curious. That's true for nature, but it's also true in our homes.

Emily Geizer: Nature does so much for all of us like keeping our bodies. I talk about this a lot with adults, because, as adults we are not in sync with nature, and people find that women find that in their cycles being irregular, whereas if we're out under the moonlight, the cycle sinks up pretty quickly. We are part of nature. We do run in sync with nature, and when we close that piece off, it's kind of like taking an arm off. Part of us is missing. So I think when we stay connected to nature and connect our kids to nature.

We can access a part of ourselves that’s not available otherwise.  And things like sleep are easier to achieve because we're connecting with the actual light outside rather than having your lights on at 10 o'clock at night, and still be quite stimulated, and wonder why you can't get to sleep when you turn your light off. 

Emily Geizer: I think there is so much benefit to being in nature. I also learned something recently from a functional physician. He was talking about that being in nature is actually helping your microbiome because when you're walking around and breathing that fresh air all that you are breathing in, you ingest and it does get into your microbiome which is so important. So I even think it helps with things that we wouldn't normally associate it with.

Bilyana Ivanova: Yeah, it's wonderful. That's why I love summer camps. Because they give kids the opportunity to really be outside and play with dirt and  walk barefoot.

Emily Geizer: And adults need it, too, being outside. Yes, we need more nature camps for adults, too.

Bilyana Ivanova: Would you share with us a  family tradition you guys have that brings you closer and creates a nourishing environment?

Emily Geizer: I think my very favorite one is our family meeting. Which we do every week, and I implemented this when my oldest was like 3 and a half, and my youngest was a few months old.

Because I learned about it at that time  and it seemed like a very important opportunity to give the kids the opportunity to come together and express themselves and ask for what they need rather than having it  spill over into the day to day. So, for example,  when my kids were younger they would spend a lot of time voicing their annoyance about the other one or complaining about something. I would say “You know we're doing that. Although you are not happy about this, save that for the family meeting. “ That's a great opportunity to discuss these things, because then we're not talking about it when everybody is activated and triggered because nothing good happens.  So if there's a chronic behavior that's happening that's annoying one person, you can save it and bring it to the meeting and then work on it there.

 It was a great opportunity for the kids to learn how to express themselves and listen to each other and problem solve in that space.

Bilyana Ivanova: Yeah, we have trouble listening to each other, at least the kids. Because everybody wants to say their part, and nobody wants to listen to the other side. Do you use some kind of talking stick during these meetings?

Emily Geizer: Yes. That's exactly what we used,  we don't have to anymore. But yes, they would have a talking stick that they would pass around, and I can't say that no one ever tried to use this stick violently. But you know, it's all good teaching opportunities.

Bilyana Ivanova: I love it. What I try to do, because I have 3 girls, and it's so hard to spend one on one time with each of them.  What I try to do is have at least one day a week to spend some time with each of them separately. I find that very nourishing for my connection with them.

Emily Geizer: I love that.  What does that look like? What do you do with them?

Bilyana Ivanova: Whatever they want.  For example, with my oldest one we like to go out, and she just shares whatever is happening at school. She likes to share and the trouble usually is that I don't have enough time to just listen to all the things she wants to tell me. So that's what she likes to do. Just go for a walk and talk about what’s important to her now. With the middle one I usually play games.  She loves puzzles and board games and she loves to play with me, just having me by her side. We don't even talk that much, we’re just being present.  So that’s what I do. Listen to the girls and follow their agenda.

Emily Geizer: I love that. I think that's so important. I'm thinking oh, they must feel so loved and valued, you know, for you to say like i'm giving you this time just for you. That's such a rare thing.

Bilyana Ivanova: Yeah, it's great, tooI, I would really recommend it to everyone.

Bilyana Ivanova: There is a question I like to ask - if you could address moms worldwide and give them one parenting advice what would it be?

Emily Geizer: I don't know that I can narrow it down to one. It might be 2, but what I was going to say is - I think the very best parenting tip I could give is to help kids at every age learn how to help themselves.

Bilyana Ivanova: Hmm. I like that.

Emily Geizer: That's really all they want is to be able to do everything themselves, and it really takes away a lot of tension.

Bilyana Ivanova: How do we consciously coach that? By not helping them out when they need help, by waiting for them to try to figure it out for themselves?  What would it look like?

Emily Geizer: Again, it's going to be dependent upon the child's personality, the child's age, and what the task is. But here’s an example.I love to cook, and I really wanted my kids to be capable in the kitchen just to be able to participate, to help and to get what they needed. And so we had a thing, I forget what it's called, for my young kid to be able to crawl up and stand at counter height. We had safe kitchen tools like safe knives, so my three-year-old would help cut carrots and make snacks at the counter with me. She loved being involved. That's helping them to do it themselves. So in that situation I would definitely show how to safely use this knife and then give them the opportunity to try to do it.

Bilyana Ivanova:. Amazing. I tend to go in the other direction. It's easier for me to do it myself. And the kids don't want to  participate so they don't mess up.

Emily Geizer:  I think your response is common and is what I experienced with all the parents in my class when I taught kids. This was a common experience, and that's why I share it, as probably the number one thing that we can do. It does take longer. It's not the easiest path.

But we are here to raise these human beings to be able to take care of themselves.  And that doesn't just happen by itself when they're 16. Surely it doesn't happen like that, right? So start early.

Bilyana Ivanova: Great advice. Thank you. Is there anything else you would like to share with us today?

Emily Geizer: The other piece of advice that I was debating about sharing as my number one tip is to try to find things you enjoy about every stage of parenting. Parenting goes by so fast, and I remember being in some seasons of it feeling like, oh, my God! Is this going to last forever? And like a week later it changes. So if you can find the goodness in all parts of it, it makes the whole journey so much more fun.

Bilyana Ivanova: Oh, yeah, I'm already aware that it's going by so fast. So I love that advice. 

Thank you, Emily, for this amazing conversation.  I learned so much! Why don't you share with everyone where they can connect with you and learn more from you and all the things you got coming up.

Emily Geizer: Okay, great! So I am a health coach. I work with adults. I work with women. My website is my name, emilygeizer.com. You can also find me on Instagram at Emily Geizer. And

because we're here talking about raising healthy eaters, I have something that I created like 10 years ago, with steps lined out about how to raise healthy eaters. I think it's really great, and I'd be happy to share that. 

Bilyana Ivanova: Thank you so much.

Emily Geizer: You're so welcome. Thank you. Love the conversation.