Healthy Family Tips

Healthy Family Tips-Blog post

It can be hard getting our families to eat healthier but there are definitely things we as mom's can be doing to help provide our families a healthier lifestyle and it begins the moment you head into the grocery store.

Make sure that you have eaten prior to heading to the store so you aren't tempted by all of the different unhealthy foods, go with a plan (usually following a meal plan will help), and make sure you are purchasing mostly around the perimeter of the grocery store.  I do keep some junky snack foods on hand for my family such as pretzels, goldfish, and cereals but if you try to keep mostly healthy food that will help.  You can't expect to have your child make the decision to eat an apple if a pop tart is the other option.  

Now once you are home you will need to help your family to make smart choices by reminding them the importance of eating fruits and vegetables to help them get faster and stronger.

Here are some things that I require for my children to practice eating healthier:

• they need to have a fruit or vegetable at every meal or when they grab a snack
• dessert is only allowed after dinner if they were outside and active that day 
• dessert is either on a bread plate or served in a teacup to keep portion sizes in check 

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Some other things that I try to do are:

• have colorful dips on hand filled with greens and herbs so they can dip their veggies, fruits, or pretzels into them or pour on top of things like scrambled eggs or roasted potatoes
• rethink the whole grains.  You can mix white rice and brown rice together to help them get used to the brown rice
• spiralize vegetables and add them into the cooked noodles
• if your kids eat cereal, add a tsp of flax meal for added fiber that will probably go unnoticed

And lastly, spend at least 30 minutes at the dinner table.  Practice slowing down as it's important to take time to chew your food so that you get all of the nutritional value out of your foods.  We love to play fun question games at the dinner table to get us talking and having fun.

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:09

Hi, I'd like to welcome you to raising healthy humans. I am your host Courtney, a personal trainer and health coach and the founder of formfit. a community where I help busy moms move more. As a busy and sometimes overwhelmed mom of three myself, I understand that it can be difficult to find ways to live and raise Healthy Families. It is my goal to help provide you with the information and tactics you need to help raise healthy humans. Episode Six healthy family tips. Last month we focused on movement this month, we are going to focus on mealtime. And it can be really hard to get our families to eat healthier, but there are definitely things that we as moms can be doing to provide our families a healthier lifestyle. And it begins the moment we head into the grocery store. If you are one, like myself, who get frustrated with the food that your children are eating, let me remind you, you're the one who brought it into the home, I have to tell you all a quick story because it just came up this past week. So my son, we were camping, and my oldest my 15 year old, he decided that he thought it'd be fun to play mom for a bit. So he started talking to us about sugar because I talked about sugar a lot and how I don't want them eating sugar. Sorry, I'm laughing here. And he says to me at one point, as he's acting like me, and he's got his arms going, because if you know me, you'll know that my hands and my arms are always going. So he's like, so I really want to talk to you about your sugar intake. And this is him acting like me, because you're eating way too much sugar right now. And if you continue to eat the sugar is just, it's not good for you. I'm not you need to stop eating the sugar. And I'm going to tell you that as soon as we get home from this camping trip, we are going on a sugar detox I am I am not buying any more sugar until I go to the grocery store. And then I'm going to pick up some chocolate chips. And then I'm going to get frustrated with you when you start to eat those chocolate chips. And he went on and they did the same thing about all the snacks that they eat because they eat snacks and I don't have a lot of snacks in my house. I do have goldfish and pretzels. That is two things. And then my husband we have chips in the house because he says they are the ABCs of groceries shopping. And it's always by chips. So I tried it by purchase the healthier chips. But we do always have our ABCs here I've got to be really bad. But anyway, the whole key is it starts with me. It starts with you when you go to the grocery store. And if you are not willing to commit to stop bringing those foods in the house, then you cannot be upset when your children are eating those foods. Before we head off to the grocery store, you need to make sure you have eaten some food. I don't care what food that you have eaten before you go to the grocery store so that you are not tempted by all of the different unhealthy foods because I know you know as soon as you walk in that grocery store and you're hungry, you are picking up everything. Oh, this looks good. Oh, this might be yummy. Oh, I want to try this. So make sure you go and you have eaten is really important to figure out what you are going to eat for the week. So whether or not you have a plan where you go through and you pick five of your favorite meals each week and write them down and write down what you need for those. That is a great way to do it. There are also numerous websites out there that offer meal plans, some of them are free, some of them you do need to pay for. We do have one as well that I'd love to be able to offer you and I actually have kind of converted ours from a used to do a meal plan. But what I have found is that my clients tend to like to be able to pick and choose what recipes they have. So now each week I just provide them with recipes They pick what they want. So if you're interested in trying that, let me know I'll have a link in the show notes for you so that you can grab a five day recipe book, just make sure that you have a plan. And make sure you are purchasing mostly around the perimeter of the grocery store, so that you don't go through those center aisles where all the junky snack foods are. Now, this does not mean that you can't have any junky snack foods on hand, it's difficult to not have those extra foods in the house, I know when my middle son who's 13. Now when he was younger, he used to always have the healthy food and he would always say, Mom, can you stop buying Can I have something that's not healthy in my lunchbox because I'm getting picked on. Because I have I always have all the healthy food. So we do still have some unhealthy foods on hand. But I try to ensure that I'm choosing mostly healthy stuff around the perimeter of the grocery store. And then just a few of those items that I always have. For my children as well, you cannot expect to have your child make the decision to eat an apple. If you also have a bag of Cheetos on the table, right? They're always going to go for the Cheetos because the companies have used scientists to determine what is the most palatable and crave worthy ingredients to add to that item. So they're always going to choose that one over the other. So once you've grabbed all your items and you are home, you will need to help your family to make smart choices by reminding them the importance of eating fruits and vegetables to help them get faster and stronger. I really like to try to keep positive conversations around our food rather than negative. So making sure that we want to eat this apple. So it provides us with the nutrients to build strong bones, things like that, or the nutrients that you need to grow taller using those positive words around your healthy food, rather than using negative words around the unhealthy food. And then start working with your children to find ways to help them eat healthier. So for us in our household, we have a fruit or vegetable at every meal. I'm not so much concerned especially while they're younger, how much fruit they are eating. I do like to have them try to eat vegetables throughout the day. But I'm not going to nitpick and tell them that they need to eat a vegetable over a fruit during this time. So anytime they have a meal or a snack, they also have to have a fruit or a vegetable. And it's their choice, making sure that you set certain boundaries like that in place. Or if you have little ones having always offering those healthy items along with it, that is going to help them and the more that they have those healthy foods, the more that their body is going to start to crave them because they're getting the nutrients they need. Now with dessert, I do we do have some dessert in this house, I always try to have some sort of healthy option, what I would consider a healthier option for dessert. But then we also do have ice cream, especially in the summertime. This is a rule in my household. I know that some people would say this is not the best rule. But for my family, it works. And it is if you are out and you are active, you can have dessert. But if you sat around and played video games all day, don't ask me for dessert, you need to be out doing something throughout the day. I know some people may not agree with that and that's okay. But that's a choice that I have made for my family and it tends to help get them honestly moving more. I also tried to discourage them from eating sweets every single day, but I don't discourage them from having dessert. So on the days that we do decide to have dessert, we try to keep our portions small. So anytime I'm serving especially ice cream in the summertime, it's always in a teacup that is how am I Children have it always, they never grabbable unless all the teacups are dirty. But they notice for themselves that when they because usually they'll have what is it like two scoops in the teacup, but when they put it the two scoops in the bowl, they're like, Oh, this looks like there's not anything there. And they'll always have more. And they also, even if I say no, you can only have those two scoops, they feel it's that psychological thing where they start to feel like but I only had like it didn't even fill up my bowl, you know, they start to feel this negative sensation from it because it's not full. But when it's in a tea cup, and you put two scoops, it's like coming out of the bowl in that feels, you know, it feels like they've got a lot of ice cream, so it gives that different impression for them. So that is another thing that we do is make sure that we use small plates for cakes or cookies, things like that. And then tea cups for any type of ice cream or cobbler. And another thing if you are one who likes to make desserts, start looking at making desserts with fruits in them. That's another thing that we like to do. Especially right now in the summertime, my children love strawberries and rhubarb. So we'll do strawberries and rhubarb crisp because I can make that a little bit healthier than I would with a pie. But you know those are options is trying to find a different way to add some dessert. Another one that we like to do pretty often in our house is mass rated berries. I just honestly don't even mass rate them. So it's just strawberries. I don't put any sugar on the strawberries to massarray them. It's just strawberries. Sometimes we do strawberries, blueberries and raspberries, and then they get some whipped cream. And they love that and you can make whipped cream with chick pea juice. If you've ever tried that it's Aqua fava, you can use that. Or you could use coconut milk. That's another way to make healthier whipped cream. So those are two things that I would recommend as well in regards to to desserts. The other things that I like to do to ensure that my children are eating healthier is one cut up and clean the fruits and vegetables. I'm thinking right now that we have had the same bag of carrots in our house. Now my middle son, he loves carrots, he will take a enormous bag of carrots with him to school every single day. But I did not I bought whole carrots this last time rather than buying ones that were already cut up. And I keep forgetting to pull them out and clean them and cut them up. And darned if those bags, those two bags of carrots are still sitting there. They keep breaking off little pieces because we do have a rabbit. So we give him a little carrot as a treat. But they have not had those carrots. It's my middle one. Like I said he has not had carrots in probably a week. So make sure it can truly make a difference if you are not cutting those veggies and washing those fruit and then I like to keep them out. I actually read this recently and I don't know where I read it. I apologize. But I used to keep everything out in a bowl. But I had heard that when you put your fruit in a bowl it actually and I'm not going to talk about the scientific terms here, but things end up rotting quicker. So they mentioned put it out on a platter. That is what I have started to do instead is I now have a platter out where I keep our apples, our oranges and our bananas right now. So that is something else to ensure that your children eat healthier is have those out. I will also post a picture for you of the glass containers that I use to cut up celery and carrots that you can use as well. And I've also seen where people put them in jars with a little bit of water at the bottom so that they don't dry out especially like your salary. But you can do this with peppers and celery and carrots. But once I have everything cut up, I try to make a color full dip about once a week so that my children can use those for their snacks. I'm thinking like hummus. I have a Piri piri sauce which is really yummy, which has like peppers and onions in them, too. Tim cherry is also a good one. But any kind of homemade sauce is great for them to be able to dip their vegetables in. And then what I also like to do with those sauces is pour them over top of. So if I have scrambled eggs One morning, I might use my chimichurri sauce because it's got parsley and cilantro and oregano in there. I might dress my eggs with that haven't gotten any greens. But there's my greens. And same with Piri piri sauce. There are many times where I might make us a salad or a bowl like a keen wa bowl or something for lunch. And I will just pour that on top because it It adds a nice flavor. Plus, I know I'm getting the benefits of those veggies or fresh herbs. Another thing that that I like to do in regards to having my children eat at dinner time is rethinking my whole grains. My kids, we eat a lot of rice in our house, and my kids like of course white rice, but there are times where I will add a little bit of brown rice. And you can always start this where you do mostly white rice with like a tablespoon of brown rice added in. And then the next time you make your white rice, you add two tablespoons of brown rice added it right. So that's kind of a way that you can start to add in different Rice's for your family. And you can do this with wild rice. You can do this with Kean Wah, different things like that can change it to where they're just getting a little taste of it. And that way they can start to get used to it. I do this as well with my noodles, spaghetti nights are always favorite nights for us. And we will do regular pasta noodles for them. For my husband and I we usually will do spaghetti squash or zucchini noodles. And I will add a little bit of the spaghetti squash or zucchini noodles to my children's plate. So they're getting that. And another thing that I do in regards to my spaghetti, I try not to hide a lot of vegetables in their food. So what I usually will do is for our spaghetti, I will cut up mushrooms I understand the importance of mushrooms, I have one child who likes mushrooms, the other two are not keen on them. But when it comes to spaghetti, I have noticed they don't know the difference. So there's no sense in me telling them they still do have to have their broccoli on the side or their salad on the side, something like that. But any time I can sneak in a little bit of extra goodness I do. So I always always chop up mushrooms and add them to my ground beef or ground turkey whatever I choose that evening. And it always goes unnoticed. Even though they swear how much they hate mushrooms. So there's an extra little tip for you if you're interested. And then the other thing is in regards to breakfast time children love cereal, my oldest has started to understand that he feels much better when he has eggs and sausage in the morning. He notices how he's able to go a lot longer throughout the day before he has to eat lunch, but he still does have some cereal in the morning. We try not to have colored cereal in the house. So nothing that has any kind of food dyes. But they do have some sugary cereals. But one thing that we have done to kind of help increase their fiber if they're not having fruit is to add a little bit of like a teaspoon of flax meal in to the cereal. It's not something they honestly even notice because you know, it's almost like the powder at the bottom of the cereal boxes. It just looks like that. So it provides them a little extra fiber. Now is this gonna make huge differences in their health? No. But the reason I like to add fiber to their cereal in the morning through the flaxmeal is because it helps to slow down the absorption of the carbohydrates and the glucose. So that's something you can take it or leave it but that is something that I do. If they're going to have their cereal, and lastly is to spend time at the dinner table, I understand that lives are busy. And you may not have a lot of time to sit down and eat as a family. But the more you can do that, the healthier your children will be, have a meal at least once a week, if you can, and you can rethink it, maybe you're not all at home at dinnertime, but maybe you can all eat breakfast together in the morning, that might be an option. Or in the summertime, maybe when things are a little bit less busy. That is when you can all sit down together and have a breakfast rethink when you it doesn't have to always be that dinner time. Let's spend at least 30 minutes together, practice slowing down and chewing your food thoroughly, not rushing, I'm going to eat at the dinner table for 10 minutes, and then I'm out of here. Slow down, chew your food. So you get all of the nutritional value out of your foods. And enjoy that time. We love to play fun question games at the dinner table to get us talking and allowing us to spend more time together. And one of the other things that we do is and I've learned this from someone else, but it's rose, bud Thorn, and that is where we do so the rose is something that was great that day, something we enjoyed that day, the bud is something we are looking forward to. And the thorn is something that was difficult for us or something that disappointed us. And then we try to encourage like a different way of looking at it for them. So that's something that we always do at the dinner table. Either that or the question games is for fun for us. So I hope that you can take I'm sorry, I was kind of all over the place with these tips. But hopefully you can take some of them and use them in your family. And your actionable step for today is to try one of these pick one I will have all of them kind of written out for you and you pick one that you that either resonates with you that you're willing to try you can try it for a whole week and see if it works for your family. If it does great, keep going with it. If it doesn't, then put it aside, feel free to try another one or just move on and you'll have another actionable step next week that you can try out as well. So I hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget, we do have a five day recipe guide. If you are interested, let me know or you can click on the link in the show notes which will take you directly there so that you can receive that and be able to give some meals a try. I hope you all enjoy it and I will talk to you soon.