Did you know that chronic disease often begins in the gut due to poor nutrition? Therefore, it is incredibly important to encourage a healthy lifestyle for our kids from a young age! Here’s how you can help:
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Be the example!
If you are telling your kids they can’t have juice or soda, don’t drink it yourself! Your kids look up to you so lead by example and follow a healthy lifestyle.

It’s never too early or late to start.
Start your kids off from a very young age eating fruits and vegetables. Use things like hummus dips or toothpicks to make vegetables more fun and interesting. If they didn’t like something the first time then you can reintroduce it at a later date, prepared a different way.
 
Do you have a picky eater at home?
If mealtimes are a struggle, try these 4 tips to help your child develop better eating habits.

1. Make it a family affair by planning family mealtime. Eat meals at the table as a family. Do not offer food while your child is playing, watching television, or walking around.

2. Try different preparation methods -- roasting, air frying or using different seasonings.

3. Try new foods when they are most hungry at the beginning of the meal. Continue offering new foods even if your child has said no to them before. It can take as many as 10 times for a child to try a food and like it. Don’t give up!

4. Be a role model. Your child will eat better and be more willing to try new foods if she sees others at the table eating the same foods. Family members, including older brothers and sisters, are important role models for healthy eating. How can you preach eating whole foods when one kid or parent is eating sugary cereals and doughnuts? Doing a pantry clean out is tough, but sometimes necessary to get all the unhealthy processed food is out of the house. 

You can use these tips for a child of any age. It’s never too late to start having a healthier and more enjoyable mealtime.

Everything we do today affects us in some way, shape, or form in the future. I think we learned that when we discovered how bad smoking is for us, or when we discovered what carcinogens are, but what about our other choices?

We choose to drink too much alcohol, eat too much sugar, and fill our grocery cart with processed junk. We also choose to sit at a desk all day, then sit in a car, and sit on our couch, and we avoid movement. What price will we pay for not exercising or for making poor food choices? 

Think about this for a second, we are animals who are made to move and feed off the land. Yet we still drink soda and participate in activities that cause harm to our bodies for enjoyment. The worst part is that we DON’T EVER STOP TO THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE.

One day these choices will catch up to us- saving money to buy the big bag of chips because they are on sale (this is just one simple example) that will cost you in the long run. What will that cost be? Your Health.

This is the cost of all our medical bills, pain, immobility, and independence that could be a result of our current poor choices. In case you didn’t know a trip to the doctor is EXPENSIVE and not having a good quality of life is depressing, to say the least. Who doesn’t want to be able to play with the grandkids (or great-grandkids) or be able to take care of themselves?

The great news is that you CAN CHANGE this outcome!! You have CONTROL over your current habits and research shows by following a few guidelines you can lead a much healthier lifestyle- leading to a better quality of life. Here are the simple steps to being more healthy:

Maintain a healthy diet- this means eating as little processed foods as possible and focusing mostly on whole foods (think the perimeter of the grocery store)

Maintain consistent physical activity- this means working out at least 3x per week and trying to attain a goal of 10,000 steps per day (at least 8,000 for those who feel that’s too much)

Reduce sugar intake! Men shouldn’t consume more than about 36g per day and women should limit it to around 25g per day according to the American Heart Association.

Not smoking

Moderate alcohol intake- this means limiting your intake to an average of ONE beverage per day!! (I don’t mean one of your pours of wine or vodka- we mean the actual serving size)

The hard part is making sure you actually stick to these basic guidelines. Our society is full of bad influences from the people we hang around to the commercials we watch, so living a healthy lifestyle when we are full of influences and busy schedules can be difficult to do on your own. We recommend that you find an accountability buddy and ask them to help keep you accountable.

If you can’t find one- we are here to help! It is our goal to empower YOU to be able to set the habits in place to do this on your own!! All you have to do is get started by booking a Free Intro HERE!
 
Check out this awesome article from Harvard University HERE.