Gather to Eat
by Deborah MacNamara PhD.
Why Attachment and Emotion Matter in Feeding Kids (and everyone else we love)
Beyond Food Battles: Where Attachment Science Meets the Kitchen Table
Feeding our kids (and ourselves) isn’t just about nutrition—it’s about relationships.
Whether mealtimes feel like a battleground or you simply want to create more meaningful moments around food, understanding the emotional and relational side of feeding can transform the experience for both you and your loved ones.
When changing what's on the plate isn't working, there's a deeper story.
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Discover Your Attachment Feeding Style
Uncover which of the three attachment styles shapes how you nourish your loved ones.
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Results are confidential and your email address is not attached to them
"Feeling too exhausted by food battles to add 'one more thing'? Not a confident cook? You don't need to add more to your plate—it's about understanding what's already there.
Gather to Eat is not about complicated meal plans or recipes, or forcing bites or using bribes to get kids to eat. It's about eating better using relational science to guide us.
This course is for anyone seeking to transform their relationship with food and mealtimes—whether you're navigating picky eating challenges, healing your own food relationship, reducing food waste through mindful consumption, or simply wanting to create more meaningful connections around the table.
Join us to discover how eating nourishes both relationships and bodies. Move from anxiety to connection through deeper understanding.
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Discover the profound insights from Dr. Deborah MacNamara's award-winning book 'Nourished,' now brought to life in this transformative course.
Who is Gather to Eat for?
"For those ready to move beyond meal-time battles and quick-fix strategies—to uncover how emotional security and connection are the true foundations of healthy eating. When kids feel safe, eating follows naturally."
- Parents wanting fewer power struggles and deeper connections
- Educators revolutionizing school nutrition and feeding programs
- Helping professionals who support families in community settings
- Organizations building strong workplace communities
- Those wanting to preserve and protect their family bonds by using food as a medium for caretaking
This course is perfect for:
The Power of Simple Changes
Little things shape feeding relationships in big ways. The solutions aren’t in elaborate meals or perfect nutrition—they’re in the moments of rest and connection you create around food.
But feeding is never just about food. We all carry a legacy of food experiences—beliefs, anxieties, and patterns passed down through generations. Sometimes, we worry about how our own relationship with food is shaping our children’s. We want something different for them—more ease, more trust, more joy in eating.
More than what you serve, it’s who you are to your child that matters most. They don’t just see the food; they see you. When they experience warmth, trust, and connection in your presence, eating naturally follows.
Every meal—at the table, on the couch, or anywhere in between—is an opportunity to nurture not just their eating, but your relationship with them. The key isn’t on the plate. It’s in how you come together to share it.
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Step into a deeper understanding where connection leads, and eating naturally follows.
Discover gentle strategies to move past resistance without compromising your relationship.
Find yourself caught in endless mealtime battles, watching your once-adventurous eater refuse everything but their few "safe" foods?
Learn how to transform tension into trust, making mealtimes a place of discovery rather than dread.
Worried about your child's nutrition but exhausted from trying to convince them to take "just one bite"?
Uncover the power of connection and emotional rest to increase receptivity and build a foundation for healthy eating habits.
Feeling frustration when another carefully prepared meal goes untouched and food is wasted?
Rediscover the joy of sharing food as nature's gift, creating meaningful moments that strengthen your bond.
Notice that family meals have become more about fuel than connection?
We'll explore practical ways to shift from frustration to understanding, helping you and your child find your way back to deeper connection.
Feel stuck despite knowing relationships matter?
Join us to learn how to make this transformation, one meal at a time.
Ready to move beyond the battleground and back to the heart of feeding - celebrating food, family, and connection?
Our relationships with our children are the cornerstone of their healthy development and our deepest fulfillment as parents - too vital to let feeding challenges erode the trust, connection, and joy that naturally flow when we come together around food.
“
- 6 modules
- 30 lessons
- Live presentation
- Recorded sessions available for later viewing
- 6 Q and A sessions with Dr. Deborah MacNamara
- Bonus material includes interviews with Dr. Gordon Neufeld and Dr. Katja Rowell
- Lifetime access
- New group starts January 2026
Join us and rediscover the innate wisdom that helps families find their way back to peaceful, connected eating
THE COURSE
$297
Join the Waitlist
This exclusive opportunity is for those on the Gather to Eat waitlist and select invited communities. As part of the founding cohort, you’ll be the first to experience the online course, benefit from smaller class sizes, provide feedback, and have direct access to Dr. Deborah MacNamara. This one-time offer is your chance to shape the Gather to Eat community from the very beginning.
Your Teacher, Dr. Deborah MacNamara
For over 25 years, Deborah has worked alongside families and educators as a clinical counsellor, bringing her expertise to mental health settings, schools, and private practice. Her work supporting parents, professionals, and educators has taken her from local communities to international stages, including speaking engagements at the United Nations and the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education. An award-winning author and faculty member at the Neufeld Institute, she combines research-backed insights with practical wisdom to help families build stronger connections, one meal at a time.
In Nourished, developmental and relational clinical counsellor Dr. Deborah MacNamara shows us how feeding is part of the caretaking relationship and cannot be separated from it. Informed by attachment science, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and research on human emotion, Nourished reframes our approach to providing for our kids and helps us hit the reset button on our relationship with food. After reading this seminal work, it will be impossible to ever view food as just plain food again.
As parents we need our kids to be receptive to what we offer but the road to the stomach must go through the heart. As relational and emotional creatures, our deepest hunger is one that food by itself cannot fill. In this book, Dr. MacNamara gives us the keys to transform the everyday act of feeding our children (and other loved ones) into a most fulfilling and nourishing dance of attachment. Based on developmental and relational science, qualitative research with families, counselling parents, and her own experience as a mother, in Nourished, MacNamara combines storytelling with science and puts food in its rightful place.
What does it mean to be nourished?
Nothing could be more basic than food. However, food is only one part of the concept of nourishment, but it has consumed our focus and eclipsed something far more critical for thriving—connection. We have lost sight of the fact that feeding our families is about human relationship and emotional well-being.
Nourished received Gold in the Nautilus Parenting category and Gold in the Evergreen Health & Wellness category from the Living Now Awards.
Gather to Eat reveals how food is more than just fuel—it is a pathway to connection, trust, and emotional well-being. You’ll gain the confidence to navigate feeding relationships with clarity, transforming uncertainty into a deep understanding of how meals shape our bodies and bonds with those we love.
By understanding the developmental and emotional roots of eating, you'll gain the confidence to navigate eating challenges through a relational lens, replacing anxiety with attunement, and rules with responsive care.
"The book opened my eyes and heart, the course helped me act on this new insight."
Reading Nourished often brought tears to my eyes in the tenderness of the stories, but also deeper insight for when I tried to make sense of problem eating. Taking Dr. MacNamara’s course, however, made the material even more relevant because she offered ways for me to discover the dynamics of food, culture and relationship in my own life. Her course has emboldened me to focus on gathering — on our togetherness — as the precursor to eating and the true path to nourishment.
- Elana
"My message to the world: Be prepared to be amazed."
Deb rounds the corners and softens the edges of a topic that has, for too long, been in the wrong hands. Her groundbreaking and profound offering of nourishment transcends food alone and takes us into the belly of play, ritual, culture and connection; using story and authenticity to weave the unraveled threads of how we feed and are fed. In a time of undoing, Deborah reaches deeply, with grace and humility, into a humanity that has the power to reconnect us; to ourselves and others. You can’t help but feel the rest and reigniting that her profound invitation offers.
- PAM
“Her insights were very thought provoking and hit home!”
I had the privilege of attending Deborah's Gather to Eat course. Deborah is a gifted researcher, synthesizer, and presenter. She made sense of so many mysteries around the significance of food and why it can nourish us as a culture, or how it can become a source of anxiety and angst. Her insights were very thought provoking and hit home! I continually felt like we were having an intimate conversation while she carried us along the journey of how we become eaters!
- RIA
Gather to Eat
Based on decades of research and clinical wisdom, Dr. MacNamara reveals the path back to natural, connected eating. Understand how connection, emotion, and food naturally weave together in human development—and how to restore these essential relationships in our modern world.
Nourished - Three Essential Ingredients
Discover how the simple act of sharing food creates profound connections between people. This foundational module introduces the three vital elements of nourished relationships: the caretaker, the receiver, and food as a gift. Learn how shifting your perspective from "food as fuel" to "food as connection" can transform your feeding relationship. Through practical examples and guided reflection, you'll explore how these three ingredients work together to help kids develop as eaters and to be receptive to what we offer.
Attachment Feeding Style - Understanding Your Relational Pattern
Explore how your attachment style influences your approach to feeding and eating with your loved one. This module delves into three distinct relational patterns: providing, frustrated, and demanding. You'll gain insights into your own feeding style, understand its origins, and learn how it impacts your feeding relationship. Through self-reflection exercises and real-world scenarios, you'll discover how to work with your natural style while fostering a more secure feeding relationship.
Becoming an Eater - A Developmental and Relational Journey
Navigate the complex pathway of helping someone develop a healthy relationship with food. This module offers a comprehensive roadmap that addresses common challenges like picky eating and mealtime behavior while considering the unique needs of sensitive eaters and those with neurodivergence or eating challenges. Learn how to support your loved one's journey to becoming a confident eater through understanding their developmental stage and individual needs. Gain practical strategies that honor both the caretaker's and eater's experiences.
Rest - Creating Emotional Safety at the Table
Discover the crucial connection between emotional safety and health and well-being. This module explores how creating an environment of emotional rest supports eating and strengthens caretaking relationships. Learn practical approaches to help process emotions both at and away from the table through play, emotional release, and supportive presence. Understand your role in facilitating healing, even when you didn't create the eating challenges, and gain tools to guide your loved one toward emotional and physical nourishment.
Gut Feelings - Understanding the Emotion-Digestion Connection
Explore the fascinating relationship between our gut, emotions, and eating behaviors through current research findings. This module bridges the gap between scientific understanding and practical application, showing how emotional unrest affects digestion and eating patterns. Learn developmental and relationship-based approaches to supporting gut health that go beyond traditional dietary advice. Discover how nurturing the gut-brain connection can strengthen overall well-being and eating relationships.
Rituals - Strengthening Bonds Through Meaningful Practices
Rediscover the power of rituals in protecting and enriching feeding relationships. This module examines how intentional practices around food and eating create spaces for emotional rest and connection. Learn to identify lost rituals, create new meaningful traditions, and understand their role in preventing eating challenges. Through practical examples and guided planning, you'll develop sustainable rituals that support nourishing relationships and foster lasting connections around food.
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FAQs
Yes! Every live session is recorded and made available in your course dashboard. If you can't attend a live session or want to review the material later, you'll have full access to all recordings. This ensures you never miss out on important content and can learn at your own pace, even if your schedule doesn't align with our live sessions.
You get unlimited access to all course materials for as long as Gather to Eat is hosted on our platform. Your lifetime access means you can learn at your own pace and revisit the context whenever you need a refresh.
Note on Lifetime Access: 'Lifetime access' refers to unlimited access to the course for as long as Gather to Eat remains available through Dr. Deborah MacNamara website. While we're committed to providing long-term value to our students, we want to be transparent that access is dependent on our platform's continued operation."
- Live Learning & Support
- 6 exclusive Q&A sessions with Dr. Deborah MacNamara
- Access to our supportive Gather to Eat Community
- Exclusive interview with Dr. Gordon Neufeld, renowned psychologist and founder of the Neufeld Institute
- Special conversation with Dr. Katja Rowell, known as "the feeding doctor"
- A curated collection of our most impactful podcast episodes
- Comprehensive handouts for each of the 6 modules, featuring clear summaries and actionable strategies you can implement right away
- Materials designed to help you apply attachment-based principles to your daily feeding practices
Every resource has been thoughtfully chosen to help you build confidence and find rest in your feeding journey while deepening your understanding of attachment-based feeding practices.
Yes! Upon completing the course, you'll receive a professional certificate of completion. This certificate acknowledges your dedication to understanding developmental approaches to family feeding and can be particularly valuable for professionals working with families.
We hear this from so many parents who feel overwhelmed by conflicting feeding advice and "tried everything" without success. What makes this course different is our focus on the heart of family feeding – the relationship between parent and child. Rather than adding more stress with rigid rules or quick fixes, we help you understand feeding through the lens of attachment and emotional connection.
Perhaps you've tried various strategies focused solely on what or how much your child eats, but haven't explored how emotional safety and developmental readiness impact your family's feeding journey. We will step back from the pressure of "getting it right" and instead focus on building a peaceful, developmentally-informed feeding relationship with your child.
Remember: Your previous attempts haven't failed you – they've shown you that there's more to feeding than just food. This course offers the missing pieces: understanding your child's emotional needs, creating attachment-based feeding practices, and finding genuine rest in your role as a feeding parent.
This course is designed to complement, not replace, professional support. It can be used alongside guidance from your helping professional. Please consult them as needed to ensure it aligns with your loved one’s care plan.
Will the sessions be recorded?
How long will I have access to the course and recordings?
What resources are offered in Gather to Eat?
Are professional certificates of completion available for course completion?
Can I take this course if I am getting help with my loved one's eating issues from other healping professionals?
Can this course help if I’ve tried so many things to improve how my family eats, and nothing seems to work?
Praise for Nourished: Connection, food, and caring for our kids (and everyone else we love)
Nourished is not only a book on parenting, but also arguably a foundational book on becoming a provider in the deepest sense of that construct, from the inside out, to all sides of the child, and for all the seasons of parenting. I can’t think of a better portal into the arena of parenting than through the topic of food, or a better way to master the basic dance steps of parenting than through the act of feeding.”
Gordon Neufeld, PhD, psychologist, founder of the Neufeld Institute, and co-author of Hold On to Your Kids
“
This book is stunningly beautiful—an ode to love, relationships, and food. Dr. Deborah MacNamara shows how true nourishment is about connection and how the family meal can be a celebration of emotional closeness. I love Nourished for many reasons, but most of all, for reminding us of the intimate connection between relationships, nurturance, and food. Dr. MacNamara provides us with an uplifting road map for how nourishment is much more than feeding; it’s about intentionality and caring while respecting culture, neurodivergent status, and family traditions.”
Mona Delahooke, PhD, psychologist and author of Beyond Behaviors and Brain-Body Parenting
“
Reading Nourished felt like a feast for my mind and food for my soul. Dr. Deborah MacNamara has masterfully blended science, research, and personal experience to create this enjoyable, easy-to-digest book. Her wisdom, insight, and caring heart remind us to go back to basics, to trust our intuition, and, most of all, to use food in the service of togetherness. This treasure of a book holds the power to transform the way we see food, and in so doing, provides us with the key ingredients for preserving and deepening our connection with loved ones, and others, no matter the distance between us.”
Bridgett Miller, author, What Young Children Need You to Know
“
This book is a gift. Read and ponder so many aspects of our relationships, our attachments, and our relationship to food and feeding, nourishing. I ate it up. Every other paragraph had me stopping and reflecting. Such a provocation and a legacy to pass on, explore, and create dialogue with your own children and grandchildren. Read Nourished and be inspired.”
Jean Clinton, MD, child psychiatrist and author of Love Builds Brains
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- 6 modules
- 30 lessons
- Live presentation
- Recorded sessions available for later viewing
- 6 Q and A sessions with Dr. Deborah MacNamara
- Bonus material includes interviews with Dr. Gordon Neufeld and Dr. Katja Rowell
- Lifetime access
- New group starts January 2026
End the mealtime battles, stop wasting food, and reclaim the path to connected eating that fosters resilient kids.
THE COURSE
$297
Join the Waitlist
This exclusive opportunity is for those on the Gather to Eat waitlist and select invited communities. As part of the founding cohort, you’ll be the first to experience the online course, benefit from smaller class sizes, provide feedback, and have direct access to Dr. Deborah MacNamara. This one-time offer is your chance to shape the Gather to Eat community from the very beginning.
Why does this matter now?
We have become increasingly food obsessed, yet paradoxically disconnected from the relational and developmental roots of eating. Where cultural traditions once provided a framework for teaching us how to eat and enjoy food within community, we now face a landscape of:
- Disconnected mealtimes and food wastage
- Anxiety-driven food rules
- Increasing rates of eating issues and disorders
- Separation of eating from human connection
- Confusion about what constitutes "normal" eating
Transform your approach from getting food in to growing the relationships that make your loved ones want to receive what you offer.
Join the waitlist
When Mealtimes Feel More Like Battlegrounds Than Family Time
Do you find yourself dreading meals, wondering how something as natural as eating together became a daily struggle? You’re not alone. The tears at the table, the untouched plates, the exhausting power struggles, the nagging fear that your child isn’t eating “enough” or the “right” foods—these aren’t just frustrating moments. They take an emotional toll, leaving parents overwhelmed and professionals searching for better answers.
- Why does every meal feel like a battle?
- Am I unknowingly shaping my child's relationship with food in ways I don't intend?
- Why does this seem so much easier for other families?
- Will this ever get better?
If you've ever asked yourself:
The Weight of Inherited Patterns
Many of us carry unspoken rules, anxieties, and beliefs about food that have been passed down through generations. The good news? You have the power to shift these patterns.
Understanding the Deeper Story
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Your relationship with food carries the echo of your own childhood experiences, shaped by:
- Family traditions and tensions around mealtimes
- Behavioural fixes instead of relational safety
- A culture that's lost its way with feeding and eating
- Pressures of "perfect parenting" in today's world
- Your own hopes and fears about nourishing your children
But here's the truth: Your past experiences don't have to determine your family's future.
- Recognize and gently reshape inherited feeding patterns
- Build secure attachments through positive mealtime experiences
- Create the warm, connected moments you've always envisioned
- Transform worry into wisdom, tension into trust
The Gather to Eat course offers more than just strategies – it provides understanding and support to:
A Path Forward, Together
- The relief of understanding why their child reacts the way they do around food
- The joy of sharing meals without anxiety and frustration
- The rest that comes from trusting both themselves and their children
- The warmth of creating new, positive mealtime traditions
- The fulfillment in seeing their kids receptivity in eating better
Parents in our community have discovered:
It's Never Too Late
Whether you're struggling with a picky eater, battling over mealtimes, or simply wanting to create a healthier food relationship in your family, know this: it's never too late to work on connection and to bring your kids to rest in your care.
The journey begins with insight, leads to intentional action, and creates the conditions for your kids to develop healthy eating and relational habits.
- 6 modules
- 30 lessons
- Live presentation
- Recorded sessions available for later viewing
- 6 Q and A sessions with Dr. Deborah MacNamara
- Bonus material includes interviews with Dr. Gordon Neufeld and Dr. Katja Rowell
- Lifetime access
- New group starts January 2026
THE COURSE
$297
Join the waitlist
This exclusive opportunity is for those on the Gather to Eat waitlist and select invited communities. As part of the founding cohort, you’ll be the first to experience the online course, benefit from smaller class sizes, provide feedback, and have direct access to Dr. Deborah MacNamara. This one-time offer is your chance to shape the Gather to Eat community from the very beginning.
