Articles ¬ Eating In ¬ Your Kids and FoodIf you make wise food choices for yourself, you can help your family improve their diets.
What do your kids do when they come home from school? If they are like the majority of Canadian children today, they grab a sweet or fat-laden snack, then plop themselves down in front of the TV for most of the evening. As a result, we have a growing problem on our hands: Canadian children, especially those in Atlantic Canada, are getting fat!
Stats Canada tells us that the rates of obesity have tripled over the last twenty years. Thirty-seven percent of children between the ages of two and 11 are overweight. Eighteen percent of these are considered obese. And many of these obese kids are developing weight related illnesses like hypertension and type II Diabetes, which used to only be associated with adults.
The majority of overweight children (as with adults) put on the pounds because they eat more calories than their bodies can use. Exercise is no longer a natural part of our lives. Play is a natural part of our children's lives, but play has changed too. The average child spends more time in front of TV, video games and computers than they even spend in school.
Another factor in this alarming trend in weight gain is our tendency to use food for emotional reasons. We eat when we really need comfort. We eat to stuff down angry feelings. We eat to calm our anxiety, to manage stress. We eat to reward ourselves. Parents over feed their kids or give in to what their children are craving due to guilt as they work long hours or to avoid conflict.
Like with all aspects of health and wellness, prevention of problems is paramount. Following are some ideas to help you and your child's transition to healthier eating and weight management.
As many adults will attest to dieting does not work. Resist the impulse to put your child on a diet. Dieting teaches your child to rely on external rules about eating, and lose touch with her own body's signals of hunger and fullness. Fill your fridge and cupboards with a healthy variety of foods. Let your child control his food intake, after you have provided great choices for him. Most food struggles are power struggles. Many parents find that if they offer the choice between eating carrots or broccoli the child will actually chose one of them. As well, have the kids get involved in food prep as soon as possible, this will really peak their interest in eating the stuff.
Speaking from experience the worst food decisions seem to be made when a person is hungry. Kids have a faster metabolism than adults and it is likely that if the parents are skipping meals the kids may not be getting all of the food that they need either. The ideal for any of us is to have four to five smaller meals daily and our portions per meal should be the size of our open cupped hands. Anymore and the stomach stretches allowing for over eating in the future. Also, to avoid overeating make sure that even snacks are eaten at the table and in a plate or bowl, not out of the package.
Many parents who bring in their kids to see me say that they are picky eaters. Kids are either picky eaters because they are acquiring habits from their parents, due to a power struggle or if they have a sensitivity to a food. A sensitivity is very similar to an allergy only the symptoms are often milder and illusive. It is very common that the food that a person is sensitive to is the one that they crave. To test for food allergies do the following. Stop eating the suspected food for one week. Next, have a lot of that food on one day and then stop eating the food again for three days. If there is any difference in physical symptoms or behavior between any of these days, the food is a problem. It is very common for a person to be overweight if they are eating a food they can not digest or absorb properly.
Everyone is busy and finds it difficult to make time to cook healthy meals. A slow cooker can help a lot with this as the food prep typically just takes a few minutes and it can be set so that your food is ready to eat when you arrive home. They are great for cooking whole chickens, roasts with their vegetables and soups and chili. Additionally, when cooking always make more food than you need so that you have left overs for other meals. Not all processed food needs to be avoided. There are numerous frozen and canned meals that are very close to what you would make at home. Read labels and if you don't know what some of the ingredients are or if you can't pronounce them, avoid these foods. Believe it or not if you must resort to fast food from time to time, they are all not devoid of nutrition and high in calories. In the last few years more places are offering baked potatoes, pita wraps, soup and salads as alternatives to their fatty cousins burger and fries.
I find that any lifestyle change works best if a person is offered substitutes for foods that need to be avoided or greatly decreased. Here are some suggestions for healthier snacks for the entire family. Some ideas for lighter snacks would include; making popsicles out of yoghourt and fruit or fruit juice, popcorn as a substitute for chips, raisins, an apple with nut butter or cheese, trail mix, and homemade whole grain muffins (make a bunch and freeze them). Two fast meals that your kids can help you make are mini pizzas made with English muffins or tacos. Both of these meals are fast and allow the kids choose the toppings (have lots of vegetables on hand). Also, for those kids who don't seem to like vegetables try juicing them or make nutritious dips as an accompaniment.
Parents have a huge influence on their children's eating and exercise habits. Realize that what you eat and how much you move has more impact on them than anything you will ever say. It is up to us to show our kids what place food has in a healthy life. Give them choices but have all of them be healthful and make sure that you are showing them that these are your choices too. Take back control of your life. Who's in charge anyway?
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