Getting regular physical activity, establishing healthy eating habits, managing stress and building positive self esteem help children achieve and maintain a healthy body weight, which will enable them to be healthy adults. Some impediments to this are too much TV, not enough exercise, eating on the go and eating unhealthy foods. Creating healthy habits in children can encourage weight management, weight loss and healthy lifelong weight management as adults.
Instructions
Creating a Healthy Child Makes for a Healthier Adult
1. Send your children outside to play. Physical education and regular physical activity are crucial to the healthy future of youth. Sign them up! Community, private and school organizations offer a variety of programs designed to suit children's interests and schedules. Walking, biking and jumping rope are activities your kids can enjoy with you or their friends. Take them out and exercise with them. Let them play with the WII on rainy days, but use active programs.
2. Cook healthy meals together. Choose nutritional foods that are colorful and fresh. Cut fruits and vegetables into shapes, letters and numbers. Learn read food labels, noting nutritional content. Avoid highly processed and high-fat foods, hydrogenated fats and highly processed sugars. Buy low-fat snacks. Be aware of serving sizes. Eliminate fast food and high-sugar drinks. Children need and want limits and boundaries. When your kids complain, explain that you love them and want them to be healthy, then help them choose a substitute. Teach them to eat only when hungry, not for emotional comfort or social pressure. Discuss with children identify their body's hunger signs and the difference between emotional eating and physical hunger. Nutrition education contributes to long-term health by helping children to make healthy decisions about food. The Food Pyramid is a graphic tool for teaching children about the five food groups.
3. Limit the amount of stress at mealtime. It can help with weight loss. Create a relaxed environment. Sit down to eat and limit distractions. Talk with your children about the stress in their lives and discuss healthy ways to relieve it like talking to a friend or trusted adult, riding a bike, walking and reading. Reward children with positive reinforcement other than food. Keeping positive and helping to reduce stress will support weight loss.
4. Don't delay! Help your child develop good habits. When children are clinically obese, overweight or chubby, they may feel isolated and socially disconnected. Food provides immediate gratification when kids feel stressed or lonely. Remember, your kids need to eat at designated times, in the kitchen, and should not watch too much TV. Frame your discussions in terms of health and healthy habits, rather than diet and weight loss. Underlying issues regarding weight can be difficult to solve. Get professional help. Pediatrician, nutritionists and fitness specialists are all resources for creating and maintaining healthy habits. Weight problems and health risks can be carried into adulthood.
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