Do you currently have a healthy eating plan in place in your family? Are you teaching your kids healthy eating habits and why its important to make healthy food choices? Have you thought about what family routines and values you are creating around eating?
Creating habits and routines that encourage healthy eating in your family will teach your children how to make healthy choices. Learning to make healthy choices for themselves is an important life skill. It’s the small habits that you create around food in your family today that will contribute to long lasting life skills in your children and help them become healthy adults.
We are living in a society full of unhealthy, overweight adults with epidemics of diabetes, heart disease and stress related illness such as anxiety and depression. Most cases of these diseases are lifestyle and diet related.
You might like the idea of meal planning and getting the kids involved in helping prepare or cook meals but how do you make it happen in your busy schedule? I often talk with Mum’s who are bored with cooking the same things each week or think that they have to have new and exciting recipes all the time to get the kids interested in eating healthy foods. Its funny really because a lot of kids kind of like the same stuff all the time and they like to know what they are having in advance .
There was a period of time in our family when our son was an incredibly fussy eater. Meal times were stressful. Over a course of 6 months we overcame this problem by putting together an action plan that he was in control of. This may seem like a long time but in the scale of things, it's not at all. Was it easy? Not really! Did we have set back? Yip! Was it important for his long term health? Absolutely! Are meal times more enjoyable and less stressful now because we persevered? Yes!
Our goal was we wanted him to choose to make healthy choices and understand why it was important. He is now a fantastic eater and knows how to make healthy choices. There are still some foods he won’t touch but he has a well balanced healthy diet which includes his own home made baking treats he bakes for us once a week. At age 11 he has become a master baker which I encourage and I believe it is a balanced way of approaching eating and is teaching him many other skills. Lemon drizzle cake is his signature dish.
I also have a daughter, who decided at the age of 5 that she was turning vegetarian. It was partially my fault as I started talking to her about where her food came from. I thought this was the right thing to do. She was happy about honey coming from bees and apples growing on trees but when she found out her chicken leg was once a chicken she was horrified. She physically couldn’t cope with the idea of eating a chicken or a lamb and would vomit if she was forced to eat it.
We had to adapt to overcome this, as she was very determined. Luckily she had a mother who was prepared to cook vegetarian meals and who had the knowledge to teach her how to eat healthy as a vegetarian. At 13 she is an active, athletic, healthy vegetarian who has stuck to her morals and never faulted. She cooks regularly and knows how to get the necessary nutrients from her diet to be at her best. Our daughter has learnt that people have different ethical, religious and cultural values around eating food and in particular meat. Although she would like everybody to become vegetarian she realises people have different views from her own, but she also doesn't have to compromise her values to please others.
I remember I also use to struggle with our kids having friends over for dinner or afternoon tea and not knowing what to feed them because their friends didn't want what was on offer. I would often revert to giving treats that I knew everyone would eat to keep them happy and then I realised, I was sending the wrong message and going against all my values around encouraging healthy eating. Kids are so over exposed to treat foods and I didn't want to be contributing to the problem. So now I only offer healthy options that are commonly liked and I let the kids choose if they want to eat or not. It was important to me to be consistent with my message around eating for my children. However there are occasions when we just indulge in takeaways, like birthdays, holidays or family get togethers. It's a treat, and for our family thats something we enjoy but don't miss it in-between and also realise we don't feel that great afterwards.
Do you Know what obstacles or challenges you would like to overcome around healthy eating in your family? What has and hasn’t worked for you in the past? What knowledge do you need for your family situation to move forward? Your values and routines around food may be different to mine and you may be facing similar or different obstacles than the ones I have mentioned. However, regardless of the challenge you are facing in your family, creating a plan and knowing how to implement that plan is what will get you the results you are looking for in teaching your children the life skill of healthy eating.
If you know that you will succeed, where would you start today?
Creating habits and routines that encourage healthy eating in your family will teach your children how to make healthy choices. Learning to make healthy choices for themselves is an important life skill. It’s the small habits that you create around food in your family today that will contribute to long lasting life skills in your children and help them become healthy adults.
We are living in a society full of unhealthy, overweight adults with epidemics of diabetes, heart disease and stress related illness such as anxiety and depression. Most cases of these diseases are lifestyle and diet related.
You might like the idea of meal planning and getting the kids involved in helping prepare or cook meals but how do you make it happen in your busy schedule? I often talk with Mum’s who are bored with cooking the same things each week or think that they have to have new and exciting recipes all the time to get the kids interested in eating healthy foods. Its funny really because a lot of kids kind of like the same stuff all the time and they like to know what they are having in advance .
There was a period of time in our family when our son was an incredibly fussy eater. Meal times were stressful. Over a course of 6 months we overcame this problem by putting together an action plan that he was in control of. This may seem like a long time but in the scale of things, it's not at all. Was it easy? Not really! Did we have set back? Yip! Was it important for his long term health? Absolutely! Are meal times more enjoyable and less stressful now because we persevered? Yes!
Our goal was we wanted him to choose to make healthy choices and understand why it was important. He is now a fantastic eater and knows how to make healthy choices. There are still some foods he won’t touch but he has a well balanced healthy diet which includes his own home made baking treats he bakes for us once a week. At age 11 he has become a master baker which I encourage and I believe it is a balanced way of approaching eating and is teaching him many other skills. Lemon drizzle cake is his signature dish.
I also have a daughter, who decided at the age of 5 that she was turning vegetarian. It was partially my fault as I started talking to her about where her food came from. I thought this was the right thing to do. She was happy about honey coming from bees and apples growing on trees but when she found out her chicken leg was once a chicken she was horrified. She physically couldn’t cope with the idea of eating a chicken or a lamb and would vomit if she was forced to eat it.
We had to adapt to overcome this, as she was very determined. Luckily she had a mother who was prepared to cook vegetarian meals and who had the knowledge to teach her how to eat healthy as a vegetarian. At 13 she is an active, athletic, healthy vegetarian who has stuck to her morals and never faulted. She cooks regularly and knows how to get the necessary nutrients from her diet to be at her best. Our daughter has learnt that people have different ethical, religious and cultural values around eating food and in particular meat. Although she would like everybody to become vegetarian she realises people have different views from her own, but she also doesn't have to compromise her values to please others.
I remember I also use to struggle with our kids having friends over for dinner or afternoon tea and not knowing what to feed them because their friends didn't want what was on offer. I would often revert to giving treats that I knew everyone would eat to keep them happy and then I realised, I was sending the wrong message and going against all my values around encouraging healthy eating. Kids are so over exposed to treat foods and I didn't want to be contributing to the problem. So now I only offer healthy options that are commonly liked and I let the kids choose if they want to eat or not. It was important to me to be consistent with my message around eating for my children. However there are occasions when we just indulge in takeaways, like birthdays, holidays or family get togethers. It's a treat, and for our family thats something we enjoy but don't miss it in-between and also realise we don't feel that great afterwards.
Do you Know what obstacles or challenges you would like to overcome around healthy eating in your family? What has and hasn’t worked for you in the past? What knowledge do you need for your family situation to move forward? Your values and routines around food may be different to mine and you may be facing similar or different obstacles than the ones I have mentioned. However, regardless of the challenge you are facing in your family, creating a plan and knowing how to implement that plan is what will get you the results you are looking for in teaching your children the life skill of healthy eating.
If you know that you will succeed, where would you start today?
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