A happy family lifestyle is based and starts with healthy eating. From watching the family’s nutritional aspect to controlling eating habits as well as involving kids in decision making on matters food, a well fed family is a happy one. Do not starve your family, set goals and plan well for grocery options.
Without a healthy go-to option for each, you’re far more likely to make bad spur-of-the-moment grabs. Plus, having a staple of one or two healthy usuals makes grocery shopping easier. And if you try to restrict them, you’ll actually cause your child to crave them more. But if you don’t buy the sweets to begin with, kids won’t even miss them. Keep good-news snacks on hand (like nuts and pretzels) and fruit and veggies washed and chopped in your fridge.
Talk to your kids about smart-eating goals, and encourage them to call you out if you grab junk food. It makes them feel like part of the solution, instead of feeling singled out as the only ones who have to follow healthy-eating rules. When families come together to eat, they create an emotional harmony that I think is pretty sacred for long-term health.” If evenings don’t work, turn breakfast into your family sit-down instead.
To stay at a healthy weight, you have to eat, not starve yourself. “If you don’t fuel up regularly, you’ll become insatiably hungry, causing the ‘hunger’ hormone, ghrelin, to spike,” Dr. Oz says. “The problem is, it takes a half-hour for that hormone to return to normal once you start to eat, but in that 30 minutes you’ll likely chow through many more calories than if you hadn’t eaten on an empty stomach.”
Sourced From: http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20307339,00.html
Physical activity and good family nutrition go hand in hand. Children and adults alike should engage in activity for 60 minutes daily if they aim at achieving a healthy family life. This is important for all the members of the family, especially for the young ones who need exercise for fitness.
According to the document 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, children and adults should engage in physical activities for 60 minutes each day. This is especially important for young children and adolescents–to ensure they continue to build strong bones and muscles.
Choose one or two activities to participate in each day. One simple activity you can do together is to take a walk after dinner. Walking is an excellent way to help digest a meal and strengthen muscles, and it provides an opportunity to share about each other’s day. List the activities on your calendar and mark off each day’s activities together so everyone can look forward to the next day’s activities.
One way to track your family’s fitness goals is to write them down and put them on the refrigerator or in some other highly visible location. Review your goals periodically. After a goal has been met, set a new goal to work toward. Remember: The most important goal is for all family members to participate in physical activities regularly, so it’s important that any goals you set are attainable and that everyone is motivated to work toward them.
Parents are usually at the front line when it comes to family affairs. The decision on what to be done and how it should be done depends largely on them. Parents should thus watch carefully what they provide for their kids when it comes to diet and teach them on what to do and how to do it best.
We shop for, prepare and cook the food for our family. We are the ones who decide what arrives on our children’s plate. The more children are exposed to certain foods, the more likely they are to accept them into their diet. Children are more likely to be vegetable-eaters if there are lots of vegetables available in the home.
Research has shown that when parents set firm boundaries around food – that is, unhealthy foods are occasional treats, and they don’t give in to their children’s pestering – children grow up with healthier food habits. It’s about being loving and responsive to our kids needs without allowing them to run the food show.
Our children are keen observers of the way we eat and what we eat. Every time we prepare a meal or eat vegetables or grab a quick snack, we are showing our children how to eat. They are watching what we choose to eat and how we choose to eat it.