1. The Secret in a Nutshell. When the joy goes out of eating, nutrition suffers.PART I, HOW TO EATPrologue. The eating competence model says to celebrate eating and take good care of yourself with food. It says nothing about what or how much to eat.2. Adjust Your Attitude.
Competent eaters enjoy food and eating. They feel it is okay to eat food that they like in amounts they find satisfying.3. Honor Your Appetite. Appetite is compelling, but it can be satisfied.4. Eat as Much as You Want. Essential to eating's rich reward is having enough to eat.
5. Feed Yourself Faithfully. To develop the meal habit, prioritize pleasure.Epilogue. Eating competence is made up of the permission to eat food you enjoy in amounts you find satisfying and the discipline to feed yourself regularly and reliably and pay attention while you eat.PART II, HOW TO RAISE GOOD EATERSPrologue. Provided parents do their jobs with feeding, children eat as much or as little as they need and grow predictably.6.
The Feeding Relationship. Maintain a division of responsibility: Parents do the what, when, and where of feeding; Children do the how much and whether of eating.7. Stuff to Know to Have Family Meals. How to have pleasant mealtimes: Orchestrate snacks; Make wise use of controlled substances; Manage family meals in restaurants.Epilogue. When raising children, give it your best effort, find out if it works, then tinker with it.PART III, HOW TO COOKPrologue.
To celebrate eating and take good care of yourself with food, cook and keep on cooking.8. How to Get Cooking. Build a foundation for being a good, fast, efficient, and wholesome cook.9. How to Keep Cooking. Like eating, cooking can be an energizing creative act.10.
Enjoy Vegetables and Fruits. Eat vegetables and fruits because you enjoy them, not because you feel obligated.11. Planning to Get You Cooking. Planning can be used or abused. Use planning to lower your stress level, not to pile on jobs.12. Shopping to Get You Cooking.
To plan and cook a meal - or to grab the ingredients to throw one together - you have to shop.13. Choosing Food. Optimism, self-trust and adventure are good motivators. Negativity, fear, and avoidance are not.Epilogue. Mastery in any of the three areas - how to eat, how to raise good eaters and how to cook - increases your mastery in the other two.Plus 17 appendixes in all, including:Interpreting and Using the ecSatter Inventory (ecSI)What the Research Says about MealsWhat Surveys Say about Our EatingBMI, Mortality, Morbidity, and Health: Resolving the Weight DilemmaEnergy Balance and WeightSelect Foods That Help RegulationNutrition Education in the SchoolsChildren and Food Regulation: The ResearchChildren and Food Acceptance: The ResearchIron in Your Child's DietDiet and Degenerative Disease: It's Not as Bad as You ThinkChildren, Dietary Fat, and Heart Disease: You Don't Have to PanicA Primer on Dietary FatSodium in Your Diet Interpreting the News Eating Competence and Feeding Dynamics Resources.