Raising Healthy Eaters

I don't know about you but this past weekend went way too quick! We felt like we didn't have a moment to even sit and enjoy a tea!  Both kids had birthday party's, hockey games and we were invited out with the kids on Saturday night.  It can be challenging for parents to Raise Healthy Eaters when you are on the go but educating kids and giving them the green light to make choices is really important for there health.  It is easy when they are toddlers because we can give them what we choose as parents but what happens when they enter elementary school and are influenced by peers? It's tough because we don't want to alienate our kids but at the same time we don't want them to put garbage into there bodies.  I am a big advocate of Food & Mood.  What we put in our children's (and our) bodies really affects our mood and how we feel. This is so evident when working with allergies, food intolerance's, ADD/ADHD.  Parents can really notice this after Halloween or a Birthday party.  As kids get older the 80/20 rule works great.  Give your kids a choice.  For the birthday parties I always tell my kids they can have pizza and cake but no pop or juice (liquid sugar) please choose water.  At first when transitioning to this it may be tough but giving kids a choice I find makes them accountable for there health and they really start to learn to like to be healthy.  For example it would be great for kids to have water in there school lunches and snacks.  If they are consistent with drinking water all week they can have a choice for a "special drink" on Friday or Saturday. Many parents I have worked with say that at first this was a struggle but when the weekend came they really looked forward to that special drink!  So what are some suggestions of special drinks?  Well, I realized when my kids were about 5 that there is something about opening a canned beverage. The cracking sound from the tab was exciting and one day I was opening a can of coconut water for myself and there eyes lit up with excitement.  In that moment I realized that the can was the exciting thing, not the beverage inside!  I poured it into two glasses and they didn't want anything to do with the glass and wanted to can so I gave it to them.  They loved it.  My one son loves it with a shot of lemon juice and this is great over ice on a hot day!  I am really passionate about avoiding High Fructose Corn syrup so if you are looking for a pop (soda for Americans) check your local health food store for cleaner pops without these ingredients and do some research into high fructose corn syrup or watch a good documentary like Food Matters or Nourishing our Children.  It's what we do every day that makes our health, not once in a while.  Enforcing kids to fill up on healthy food first before treats is a good rule to live by and if we teach our kids the importance of a healthy body and how it affects our mind and our mood they will grow into healthy confident adults that make good choices.

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