Tips and strategies for encouraging healthy eating habits in your family

Most of us have a pretty good idea of what healthy eating is: lots of fruits and vegetables and not too much fat and sugar. But when it comes to kids, knowing what is healthy is only the start. And even if you shop ‘healthy’ it does not mean that your kid will willingly eat it. There is hope. Kids need some extra encouragement and guidance along with a few of these strategies your kid is sure to eat healthy. Be a gatekeeper. It’s likely that the easiest way to get your kids to eat healthy is to remove the less-healthy options. Take control over what food and snack choices are in your home. If a kid is hungry they will eat it when there isn’t an alternative. Have you ever heard of a kid starving to death because his parents would not feed him potato chips? Keep healthy food in sight. As for those less-than-good-for-you foods, keep them in high cabinets and out of your kid’s reach. Arrange your refrigerator and cabinets so that healthy foods are the first foods that you see. If you choose to have some unhealthy options in the house keep them out of sight and you and your kids will be much less likely to choose them as an option. Make healthy food convenient. Wholesome foods, particularly fruits and vegetables require little preparation which is great for your ‘starving’ kid and you. Have a fruit basket at eye level on the counter at all times or have a container with carrots and celery sticks ready to go in the refrigerator. You might be surprised at how many more fruits and vegetables your kid will eat simply by having them visible and easy to grab. Make learning about food fun. Taking some of the mystery out of where foods come from can work wonders for some selective eaters. Prepare family meals together, have your kid mix the ingredients and serve the food to the rest of the family. Plant a vegetable garden as a family project and put your kid in charge of watering and picking the ripe vegetables. Kids that are involved are more likely to be a willing participant in the eating process. Keep an eye on Portion sizes. Parents often stress over how much their kids should be eating. Whether you are trying to get a selective eater to take a bite of anything green or limit the amount of dessert your sweet-toothed kid wants watching portions is necessary. Knowing the size of a healthy portion will give you some needed perspective. You can use the USDA’s Guidelines for Healthy Eating to learn about what a healthy portion is. Set a healthy example. Keep in mind that eating meals together isn’t just a great way to catch up on your family’s day it is also the perfect time to role-model healthy eating habits. Kids learn by watching their parents…That’s food for thought!

Diet facing lousy choices

It's 11:30 AM. You've been up since 5 o'clock and the hunger meter is on high. "What to eat?" you think to yourself. You pore over the menu for the deli downstairs but nothing you can allow yourself looks that good. Sure, you could go out for fast food but there's a meeting coming up and you don't really want to move your car and then have to find a new parking spot when you return. So you decide not to go out. That leaves eating in. You look at your choices, wishing you'd had the foresight to bring something from home. There's the vending machine in the break room, filled with plastic-wrapped, rubber-textured sandwiches, bagels, muffins and Danish. Ugh, you keep spinning the carousels, hoping that by some miracle, there will be a vegetable snack plate or something half-way decent. You narrow down your choices to a cup of noodle soup or a chicken breast sandwich. Now you have another choice: eat something to take the edge off or power through the minutes of temptation until you are sitting in your meeting and eating is out of the question. After an hour of dreary, repetitive discussions, your hunger may have calmed down. How you handle it each day, depends on your mood. Often, if we can get through that one tempting half hour, we're set for the afternoon and can easily wait for our well-planned light dinner. On other days, you know in your heart that if you don't eat something, you won't be able to concentrate on your work because all you can think about is food while you try to conceal the embarrassment of a gurgling stomach. On those days, take the chicken sandwich, remove the bun, and microwave the miniscule piece of chicken provided. Then cut it into tiny pieces and eat slowly with a plastic knife and fork. If you can make the pea-sized pieces last for 15 or 20 minutes, you'll feel like you've actually eaten an entire meal and be on your way to a pleasant non-food-focused afternoon on a very limited caloric intake. If you truly want to control your weight, you can do it anywhere. The key is never to eat until you've had a lengthy internal dialog with yourself that forces you into a full awareness of your food intake and then select the lesser of all evils and consume it as slowly as you can manage. Even trapped in the office with nothing more than a killer vending machine, you can turn bleak choices into a self-esteem building triumph.