Healthy Eating Guidelines

We, as parents, caregivers and examples to today’s children need to model healthier behaviors. Children who have one or more parent who are overweight or obese have a higher risk of becoming overweight or obese themselves. Even adults who are not parents are still role models to children. We all need to respect ourselves and take care of our bodies in order for our society to produce a shift into making this normal behavior. Imagine the effect on mental and physical health, job performance, sleep quality and family life if we fueled and exercised our bodies properly? We cannot continue our thinking of wellness as the absence of disease, but of the presence of healthy behaviors bearing positive results.

Of course, to defeat a problem there must be acknowledgment of a problem. Many parents of overweight children fail to recognize their children as overweight. In fact, they may also fail to realize if they themselves are overweight. As society as a whole grows larger, “normal” seems a whole lot bigger. It may become difficult to know the boundaries of healthy weight and excess weight.

An easier solution may simply be to resolve to eating well and moving more, no matter who we are and what shape we find ourselves. We can all benefit from a nutritionally sound diet and activities built around adequate daily movement. To me, this is the simplest and most effective first step in the epidemic devouring our country.

When my husband and I first started planning meals with our health as a priority, we continued to feed our children “as children”. By this, I mean that we would give them items that we thought they would appreciate and enjoy. Their menus would consist of hamburgers, macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets while ours would include salmon, vegetables and oats. To our shock and amazement, it did not take long for our children to begin begging for “our” food! My husband and I had been convinced that our children would prefer “kid food” and would have no interest in “healthy food”. I found myself allowing them to try the healthy alternative thinking that certainly they would change their minds and go back to their typical fare. Surprisingly, that did not happen.

Healthy Eating Guidelines and Kids...

Our kids model our behavior and want to be like us. They want to please us. As soon as my children saw that my husband and I had “special” food, they wanted it. Not only did they try it, they genuinely liked it! They also reported feeling better on a general basis when eating better. I have also seen this unexpected phenomenon repeated in the children of my clients. I am often told that it is simply not practical to eat healthy at family mealtimes because children will not eat food that is prepared in a healthy manner. At that point, I have challenged my clients to attempt the unthinkable – prepare a healthy meal for the entire family where everyone eats the same food. Every time the response has been the same- euphoric shock. What has been reported back to me is that the children loved it! One specific mother of two young boys shared an attempt at healthy eating with her family. She prepared chicken breast with red potatoes and a variety of vegetables. To her surprise, the young boys complimented their mother on the best dinner they ever had! How many of us have simply not even tried to feed our children correctly? Has fear prevented us from helping our children eat healthy?

My daughter has developed a habit of asking her friends and peers if they like spinach. Without fail, every time her friends have answered in the negative. She goes on to query them if they have ever tried spinach. When they tell her they have not she informs them how they are missing out. How can they dislike what they have not tried? Spinach is my daughter’s favorite food. We started a mother-daughter time of sharing a big bowl of steamed spinach and she loves it.

My son has taken on a similar behavior. After learning about what is really in the food that he is normally served compared with what he naturally needs from food, he has become a sort of advocate for healthy eating in his junior high school. My son tells me that many girls simply eat french fries and cookies for lunch and then complain about being fat. He has started advising them that french fries are not a healthy lunch. In fact, out of curiosity, he calculated the nutritional value of a school lunch off of the published menu. He was so surprised with what he found that he had it reported in his school newspaper. Our kids are not stupid. They are capable of learning healthy behaviors and making smart decisions. The key is that we must inform them, make sure they are offered healthy choices and give them that power.