Lisa Kirby on Teaching Kids to Listen to Their Bodies

We’re thrilled to share this conversation with NAMS certified nutrition coach Lisa Kirby about the essential nutrition and lifestyle habits kids need most.

Over the past year, I’ve been through her nutrition and hormones courses at The Green Door Life, and they’ve been extremely beneficial for both my physical and emotional health. And if you’re tired of me going on about sequential daylight exposure in our weekly email… it’s all Lisa’s fault!

In our interview, Lisa Kirby emphasizes the importance of nourishing children with whole foods to support their growth, stable energy, and metabolic health while minimizing processed foods that can disrupt natural hunger cues.

Green Child’s Interview with Lisa Kirby

Lisa encourages families to model mindful eating and natural movement, helping kids stay in tune with their bodies and develop lifelong habits rooted in ancestral wisdom and balanced wellness.

Amity: Moms always ask about the most nutritious foods for kids. Can you share your perspective as a mom with decades of experience in nutrition?

Lisa: We want to empower children to be in tune with their bodies and to grow up without the same kind of conditioning that many of us experienced around food. And what we find is that kids who haven’t been exposed to a ton of highly processed foods are really in touch with their body’s signals. They understand what the body craves. 

Kids are in an incredible phase of extreme growth – physically, mentally, emotionally – and their bodies need mostly complete protein and natural fats. In fact, they can obtain nearly all of their essential micronutrients and macronutrients from these sources. Fats are really important for brain development. Proteins help with bone structure, muscle mass, immune system health, and so much more. And most children aren’t eating enough protein (especially complete protein with all amino acids) and are lacking natural fat sources. 

Kids shouldn’t ONLY eat carbs

Today, a child’s diet is heavily focused on carbohydrates – especially highly processed carbs. And that’s what keeps their blood sugar fluctuating, especially if protein, ancestral fats, and fiber are lacking in the diet.

I see it all the time watching little ones eat primarily carbs. It impacts their mood and behavior, not to mention they’re constantly asking for more and more snacks. Their bodies are actually calling out for the nutrients they’re lacking, and the lack can’t be solved by more carbs.

If you look at little kids, they’re in constant motion compared to most adults. Kids need essential nutrients from proteins and fats and then ideally, the rest comes from produce sources, all of which have a variety of carbohydrates (simple, complex, and fibrous). And there’s actually a reason that most children don’t really crave vegetables, especially non-starchy vegetables. These carbohydrates are not the main source of nutrition kids need in their early years when they’re growing rapidly.

The bitter taste associated with many vegetables is something that develops in the palate as  we get older. It makes sense because nutritional needs change as we age. We don’t need as many dense energy sources because we’re not growing the same.

That said, fiber is important for everyone. Raw vegetables can be difficult for people of any age to digest. Children tend to be more likely to eat vegetables when they’re cooked with some sort of natural fat. You can sauté broccoli in grass-fed butter to make it more appealing to kids and easier to digest than serving it raw. 

Amity: Can you list some specific foods kids need to eat daily?

Lisa: Include protein with every meal – even snacks. The best, most bioavailable (easy to absorb and digest) protein with all the essential amino acids always comes from our animal foods, such as: beef, chicken, pork, bison, wild salmon, sardines, greek yogurt, cottage cheese, and eggs. With protein as the foundation, think about adding a fat, fiber, and/or carb source to round out the meal or snack.

For fats, this may already be included in your protein source (ex: eggs, whole fat Greek yogurt or cottage cheese). If you’re using a lean protein source like chicken, you can add more fat such as avocado, butter, ghee, coconut oil, olive oil, olives, cheese, seeds, and nuts.

For fiber, I find that most kids do best with non-starchy veggies that are technically fruits, like tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, in addition to carrots and jicama (they love crunchy things, especially if you pair them with fun protein dips like greek yogurt Tzatziki or hummus). 

For carbs, focus on whole foods and high-fiber carb sources like sweet potatoes, winter squashes, real sourdough bread, oatmeal, rice, beans, lentils, and low sugar fruits (apples, berries, watermelon, oranges). Local and seasonal eating is always a bonus! 

Offer your child snacks like crackers or chips sparingly. For dessert, real, whole-fat, natural ice cream is a fantastic option because it has all three macronutrients (protein, fat, carbs) and will keep your child’s blood sugar much more balanced than an all-sugar dessert like candy.

The problem with processed food

Lisa: Processed food can be very addictive for many people because it overrides the body’s natural biofeedback. It interferes with the message of when to stop eating. It affects the pathways in the brain in ways that don’t exist in nature. The sweetest things we had in nature were fruit and honey.

Whole foods don’t typically include both carbohydrates and fats together. And a lot of highly processed foods are not just made up of carbohydrates. They’re a combination of carbs and fats, most often in concentrated amounts and from sources that are foreign to our bodies.

It’s so hard to see kids eat processed stuff because I know the nutrient composition of foods. And what I see is primarily children eating empty carbs like goldfish crackers, which are void of the proteins and fats that they really need.

We’ve come to this place where so many ancestral foods that were crucial for brain development, mineral health, and blood sugar regulation are no longer part of our diet. This is why we’re seeing spiked blood sugar, unprecedented levels of prediabetes, obesity, and even full blown diabetes in young children because their blood sugar is spiking. It’s also why they’re hungry and want to eat every 20 minutes.

Amity: The addictive quality of these foods affects adults, too. How do you see this in your clients?

Lisa: The biggest issue we’ve seen in nutrition, health, weight, and body composition is that modern food is more highly processed (it’s easier to eat a lot of calories without feeling full) and it lacks protein and fiber. The other piece is that our movement has decreased significantly. So we’re moving less and eating more without getting enough nutrients. It’s a perfect storm for poor metabolic health.

We might think we can’t afford healthy food. But even most processed food isn’t that cheap today. And in the long run, it’s definitely more expensive because we have to eat more of it to feel any sense of satiety.

That’s why many people are overweight: the body is searching for nutrients in the food, which it doesn’t find, causing constant hunger and cravings. So they keep eating. Then they have health complications and medical bills on top of it, so it really ends up being more costly.

From a hormonal perspective, processed foods generally lead to inflammation. If you think about inflammation as swelling, carrying extra body fat is the body trying to heal. It’s actually a loss of energy. So when we are overweight, it’s actually an inefficiency in the body because it can’t access the stored energy in the form of body fat.

Hormones and metabolism aren’t working properly. The body is not functioning optimally, so it’s swelling. That’s why it’s important to look at the quality of our food, and not just the calories. The body’s metabolic pathways have to come back into balance.

Amity: OK, the question most parents need answered… What do we do about picky eaters?

Lisa: Well, the best option is to prevent it in the first place. For parents of babies, look into baby-led weaning and Weston A Price. Start early exposing little ones to nourishing whole foods that are found in nature like animal foods, eggs, ground up liver, some fruits, mashed up sweet potatoes, or squash. 

For older kids, unfortunately, we can’t go back in time. The picky eating usually starts around toddlerhood. At that age, they are developmentally designed to find and test boundaries.

One of the only things toddlers can control is their eating. When they refuse healthy foods, you just need to keep up the exposure. Sometimes they need 20 or more exposures to foods to actually feel safe with them. 

Offer healthy foods in small portions without pressure. And make it fun! Always serve one food you know they’ll eat, so they have a level of safety around the meal. 

And one important tip… Parents need to chill out about dinner. Dinner is when we are the least insulin-sensitive. Kids will naturally feel like eating more food earlier in the day. They don’t really care about dinner. It will be the smallest meal for them, so offer smaller portions and encourage them to listen to their bodies and allow them stop eating when they feel full.

Amity: That’s so reassuring about dinner! How do you incorporate exercise into your family’s routine? 

Lisa: When I first became a mom, I thought exercise had to take away from family time. But now I’ve learned to incorporate it into our daily routine. Katy Bowman, MS has a program called Nutritious Movement. She talks about movement as the hub of your family and community. Exercise doesn’t have to be a 45-minute isolated event, because the truth is low-intensity all-day movement is just as important as a traditional workout. 

In the 1800s, nearly 80% of the US population worked manual labor jobs outside. So we didn’t need to strength train. We were carrying heavy loads and moving most of the day. That type of activity gets your heart rate up and also builds muscle mass.

The reason we strength train now is that we have outsourced almost all of our movement. Strength training is hard to integrate naturally unless you’re in a place where you can walk to the grocery store and carry your groceries home. 

So, in my family I’m always looking at ways to integrate movement naturally. Every few hours and on the weekends when kids are home from school, we go for walks. Or if I notice we’ve been inside and not very active, I tell the kids, “Grab your football. Let’s go play catch.”

You can have dance breaks. You can do a few yoga poses with kids. And while we’re still outside, I’ll just start walking and they’ll walk with me. It’s a great family activity. In fact, walking is the most underrated movement for physical and mental health.

The more intense activity would be that added load for muscle and bone health. We’ve never pushed our kids into any exercise or sports. But we’re constantly modeling it, and they want to participate. Often, they will naturally follow what mom and dad do. You don’t even have to call it exercise. Being active is just something you are.

More About Lisa Kirby

Lisa is a National Academy of Metabolic Sciences (NAMS) certified nutrition coach, licensed permanent weight loss specialist, and co-founder of The Green Door Life. She brings 25 years of experience helping people optimize their health, build muscle, and balance hormones. She is also a certified hormone specialist through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN), a Health Mindset Coaching Certification (HMCC) behavior change coach, and a board-certified Applied Quantum Biology (AQB) practitioner. 

Her mission is to guide people – especially moms – out of restrictive dieting and decision making fatigue, offering personalized approaches to nutrition and exercise. She enjoys live music, dancing, and family time with her two sons and husband in Buda, Texas. You can follow Lisa on Instagram and learn more about her nutrition, fitness, and hormones coaching at The Green Door Life.