Moving through Midlife | Habit Stack & Movement Snacks for Midlife Moms, Parenting in Midlife | Fitness over 40

7 | Family Dinner Time

June 14, 2021 Courtney Episode 7
Moving through Midlife | Habit Stack & Movement Snacks for Midlife Moms, Parenting in Midlife | Fitness over 40
7 | Family Dinner Time
Moving through Midlife
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Show Notes Transcript

Sitting down to a family meal some days seems impossible. Families today run in multiple directions most nights of the week but there are many great benefits to making the time to have family meals.

Here are five reasons why making family mealtime a priority should be at the top of your list.
Creates connection-
Improves mental health
Healthier meals, better nutrition
Saves money and time
Teaches table manners-

Grab our 5 day Meal Plan to enjoy some family friendly recipes and don't forget to join our Form Fit Mom Community.

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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 Seven family dinner time, when it comes to our health, the most common response that I hear from people is time, they don't have time for certain things. And when it comes to having a healthy family and healthy meal time, that again, is something I hear all the time is, we don't have time to sit down for a family dinner. And I'm going to ask you to really take a moment and pause on that statement and decide what your values are as a family and reconsider, maybe not dinner. But finding a time where you all can be together having a family meal, this can be breakfast, obviously in during school lunches, probably not an option. But dinner and breakfast are two great options. And I'm going to hopefully be able to provide you with some other ideas to help you find ways to get dinner on the table where everyone is sitting down at a dinner table without electronics or the TV going on in the background. If I think back to my childhood, and my family and my friends, I can tell you that the families that appeared to be most connected, were the ones that sat down and had meals together. Those were the ones that the parents are still married, that the children are involved with their parents lives and you know, they have a very positive relationship. They're friends with their siblings, and they all get along. That is one thing that I've noticed is that they all sat down, they found the time to sit down and have meals together. So if that is something that you are interested in keeping a relationship with your children over time and your husband as well, then I would recommend maybe taking some some time to sit down and have a meal together. One of the first reasons that we should make sure that we sit down together is it creates connection. Like I mentioned, as our kids get older, they are naturally going to start to pull away from us as parents, and they start to develop their own identities. But this is a crucial time to create opportunities to connect with them. And many times, just sitting down and having a conversation with a teenager can be extremely difficult, but having time around a dinner table where everybody is eating and there's a lot more going on a lot of conversations are being had, I noticed that children are more apt, your teenagers are more apt to talk freely and openly about things is a great time to help them connect with their siblings as well. Because you can hear the interactions with one another one thing that I had mentioned in the last episode six was how we have games that we play at the dinner table. And it's not something that always happens sometimes the conversations come about freely. But when we're struggling, we have two things. We have a table topics game and it's designed for families and there are different questions and they're silly questions. They're really good when the kids are little I feel like they you know they allow them to imagine different situations and it's just a fun way to get them talking and then that spurs other conversations and it's great for like the interaction with each other because the kids are giggling and laughing at each other's responses. So that's one that we enjoy. And then the other one that I had mentioned was rosebud, Thorn, this is a great one, if you aren't getting a lot of conversations with your children's about their day at school, it kind of helps bring that out. Because it's the rose is something that you enjoyed that day, something that was positive, a beautiful part of your day, so to speak, the bud is something you are looking forward to. And then the thorn is something that occurred that maybe you had a difficulty with or disappointed you or upset you during the day. So that's a great way to again, get conversation started with your children, it always creates some interesting conversations. And it also is something like that we will do as well, my husband, and I get involved in the conversation as well, because I do think it's important for your children to not only talk about their day, but to also take the time to listen to the other people in their families day, including the parents. Another thing it can do when you have meal, family meal time together, is improves their mental health. It allows there to be a bond and an interaction face to face, which is why it's so important not to always do this in front of the TV, or to have electronics around because you get that face to face interaction. And there was a study by the National Center of addiction and substance abuse at Columbia University. And they found that the more often a family eats together, the less likely a child will smoke, drink or use drugs. And that's probably because they're sitting and they're talking with you. And I feel like the more interactive we are with our children, the less they want to disappoint us. And you know, the more that they they're the morals, the morals, the family, morals, become a part of them as well. So, you know, make sure you're eating together, disconnecting from those electronics, turn off your phones and the TVs and be present with them. I'm not saying this needs to happen every single day, our family it, you know, obviously in the summertime, it's a lot easier for us, we are not on the go as much, but my husband, he is gone many evenings when it's dinner time. So for us, it isn't something that we do every night, to be honest with you. There are nights that we sit down. And if you haven't watched feed Phil on Netflix, I encourage you to watch it. It's a fun show that the kids and I enjoy watching. He's a sweet man who goes all around the world and he tries food from different places. And it's just something that we all can watch together, we interact with one another. And yes, it is not what I'm recommending you do every night. But there are opportunities for that as well you know, to be able to interact and watch something together. This study I mentioned before also found that kids eat healthier when they're sitting down at the table. So you're more likely to sit down and eat a healthy meal that contains more fruits and vegetables, and less soda, making sure that you're taking that time to sit down and eat as a family can help them get better nutrition into their bodies. The other thing that it does is it can help everyone at the dinner table slow down. When you sit down and you eat and you your main goal is to eat the dinner, you will eat very quickly, many times you will overeat and you don't get the nutrients that you need as well. So when you slow down, when you take a little bit of time to slow down you're eating because you're talking and communicating with someone else. You are more apt to take longer to eat which then allows your body to respond to whether or not it's full or not sooner. It also allows for you to chew better, which helps to create more desk digestive enzymes when you're chewing, which will help when it goes down into the stomach and into the intestinal track. The body can then pull and I don't know like again the scientific terms but the body is able to pull more of the nutrients out the more digested The food is and the more digestive enzymes that have gone down with the food. If you are noticing that when you're sitting down to meals, your children are still not getting involved in eating some of the healthier Foods on their plate, I would encourage you to get them into the kitchen with you and help you with the food preparation. One of the things that I always did with my kids when they were younger, was the green beans and asparagus, they were snapping the green beans, they were snapping the ends off of the asparagus, and they would help me get it set. And I will tell you that that truly can help with them eating. I know it sounds crazy. And for those of you who have done it, I'm sure you're shaking your head, yes, because for whatever reason, the more they are hands on with the cooking experience, the more likely that they are to try it and eat it, and many times enjoy it as well. So the fourth tip is it saves money and time, by the time you leave the house and are on the road and stopping at a fast food restaurant or an actual sit down restaurant and getting the meal taking that time. That adds up with time. I know that it seems like it might be taking less time for you as a family. But it really does add up, it adds up in time and cost you are more likely to pay more for your food. If you go out to eat than if you stay at home, you are more likely to eat non healthy, high sodium meals when you go out to eat than if you stay at home. So the cost of a home cooked meal averages I have here written for 31. But honestly, as of right now, with the cost of meat, I would probably say it's a little bit more than that. But there are definitely ways that you can keep it around for 31. But if you look at the same meals, if you go out to eat, the average cost would be about $20.37 more than what it costs at home. So there are advantages to eating at home. It costs less. And it's less time even though you may not think so to eat at home. And I know I could hear some of you right now saying Yeah, but I have to get my child to gymnastics or I have to get my child to baseball and we don't have time. So think about how you could do something that still allows you to eat nutritious food still allows you the opportunity to spend time together as a family while getting out on the road. And I will tell you, my kids are getting older. So we are dealing with that. Now I have one in dance, which I've mentioned probably numerous times, I have one in football and I have one in soccer. So we are going nonstop. What I do for my family is we eat a lot of sheet pan meals, we eat a lot of instant pot meals, and I have been able to, for the most part still create where we are eating together as a family. There is one night that was a difficult time for us because I was going in two different directions at once, pretty much. And that was a night where we would get some sort of meal not always but like something quick from our grocery store and come home and eat it. And it would be an on the go situation. But think about things that you can do. Maybe you look into meal, prepping some of your items. And have, like I had mentioned the other day about a picnic, maybe you can pack up your items in a little picnic basket or I mean even just a little cooler or something. And then before the baseball game starts, you lay out a blanket and you all sit down and have a quick meal before your child goes out to practice or play the game. Just a thought something that you can think about that is something that I did. When I owned my stroller fitness company, years back, I did teach an evening class. And that was a difficult situation for me because I did not have dinner, you know, I wasn't able to plan a meal. And that's what we would do is I would make sandwiches for them. And we would go and I would lay out one of my blankets and we would eat on our picnic, we would have our picnic at the park before I would teach the fitness class. So there are ways you have to get creative. You have to think about things differently. Don't always look at what's the easiest. Instead start trying to think what could be a healthier way we could do this. And the last thing for having your children eat at home is it helps to teach them table manners. We all want our children to be well behaved Especially when they go places or out to dinner. And if you have teenagers like me, you may be looking at them thinking what in the world is going to happen when these kids go out in the real world, and are out for a business dinner and they're some Mac in their mouth like they, they're chewing their food with their mouth open. So sitting down together gives you the opportunity to demonstrate good table manners, it helps to teach them how to hold a fork properly and cut with a knife. These are things that we have dealt with, with older children and I sometimes I'm like, Wait, how did we go this long without teaching them this, but you know, it's that getting into the habit of cutting their chicken up before it ever gets onto the dinner table. So providing them that opportunity as well. Remember, it is our goal to help them become citizens who can go out into the community and interact with other human beings in a positive and manner filled way. So those are my tips for you. I hope that you're able to take something from this. If you have any ideas, feel free to let me know. I'd love to be able to share them in our community. If you are interested in trying out one of our meal plans, which might help you with some meal prep. I do have recipe books that can help you I do have a 30 minute meal recipe book if you're interested. definitely reach out to me You can email me at Courtney at form fit Naples calm. I will also put a link here for you to grab one of our meal plans if you are interested. It is a week of meal plans with grocery list and meals that you can get on the table fairly quickly. And I hope you all enjoy