With the country coming to its senses about increasing health problems in children, it is no wonder that most mothers have started to pay more attention to their kids health. With the reduction of the starting age for the onset of health problems like obesity and eating disorders, it is doubly essential that your child develops healthy eating habit. Here are some eating habits that you can work on for your kids:-
Healthy Eating Habits 1 - Eat healthy yourself
Most often children take after you about a lot of things. This is the reason why you should develop healthy eating habits for yourself. This in turn will also influence what you feed your family.
Healthy Eating Habits 2 - Cook more - Eat out less
1. Cooking has become a luxury to most especially because of the lack of time in today's fast moving world. But cooking is one way you can guarantee a diet that involves healthy food!
2. Assess your families eating habits and see if you eat out or order in more often. Resort to some quick and healthy recipes if you are short of time. Try to reduce eating out to once in a week or less or fix a day in the week for such a treat. This way you can control your families junk food intake and at the same time appease their food cravings!
Healthy Eating Habits 3 - Develop a Balanced Diet for your family
1. Chart out a diet that includes fruits, vegetables. Make sure that you add protein rich food like Fish, eggs, beans and nuts.
2. Involve the children in the meal planning and preparation process and use this oppurtunity to explain to them the importance of eating healthy!
3, There are a number of healthy snack recipes online, access them or use your own creativity to cook up healthy snacks for your children.
4. Remember that children, especially younger ones often raid the kitchen for food. So, stock up lots of healthy snacks and food like fruits.
5. With obesity on the rise in children it is also important to limit their consumption of fat rich food. Reduce your child's fast food and sweetened drinks intake. Don't cut it out completely as doing so will only increase their craving for it. You will have to learn to control their intake either by fixing a day when they can eat out or buy ordering in a surprise treat once in a while. Check this link for some tasty low fat recipes.
6. Avoid deep-frying food and stick to healthy cooking methods like broiling, grilling, roasting, and steaming.
Healthy Eating Habits 4 - Family Meals
1. Family meals are great as it guarantees quality time spend amongst family members and also ensures that the kids get one completer meal in the day.
2. At the meal you can encourage your kid to eat the veggies and fruits that you have added to the spread on the table.
3. Family meals are also a great opportunity for your child to witness your healthy eating habits.
4. Once the Family meals become a habit, provided they are served at a fixed time, the children can reduce unnecessary snacking practices
Healthy Eating Habits 5 - Other practices
1. Don't bribe or reward your children with promises for food.
2. At the dining table don't follow the clean plate rule. When the child says they have had enough remove the plate. Remember it is no about eating more or less. It is about eating right!
3. If you think that the child has been taking lesser food, query them about it, they could be on a self imposed unhealthy diet!
Healthy Eating Habits 5 - Track their food intake
Though tracking your child's food intake may be difficult, you can try. Strike up a conversation with your child about his week and figure out how many times he has eaten junk food. If you think it is too much, explain to him or her, the dangers of an unhealthy diet and its consequence like obesity or eating disorders
- Prev:Some Things to Know Before Putting Off Weight Loss Surgery
- Next:Weight Loss Hypnosis - Safe and Effective