Real Mom Nutrition
Like most moms, good nutrition for your kids is important. It’s not always that easy to do, but certainly can be done by following a few steps. The first and most important is to have healthy foods in the house and ready to snack on and eat at meals. If you don’t have junk available, all your kids will know is healthy food. If you’re making a switch from junk food to healthier eating, it’s more of a challenge, but still can be done.
Don’t force kids to eat healthy food.
The minute you force kids to eat new foods, automatically, they know they won’t like it. If you’re introducing new food to a child, you can put some on their plate and see if they’ll try it, without the hassle and tears of just one bite. Some parents don’t give their child any of the newly introduced food, but serve it to themselves, saying they don’t think they’ll like it because it’s for adults. That alone makes kids want to try it. Smart moms make food look appealing and fun, so there’s no doubt kids will love it.
Make eating healthy more fun with meals kids will love.
If you want kids to enjoy their meals, make them fun. Make your own taco or burrito night can be one way to do it. Have plenty of healthy options ready to pile on the taco or burrito, like the traditional lettuce, tomato, onion, taco meat and cheese, plus other options, such as avocado chunks, sweet potato squash filling—instead of refried beans—mixed mushroom sauté and Greek yogurt. There are fun recipes that kids will love that combine fruits and vegetables with flour, eggs, a small amount of sugar and spices for fruit and vegetable muffins. Smart mom’s even let kids help make these, so they see how delicious fruits and vegetables can be.
Real mom nutrition includes what the kids drink.
You may think that you’re doing your child a favor by providing fruit drinks, but you’re not. Neither are sugar drinks and soft drinks appropriate. Smart mom’s make sure the fluid is as healthy as the food. One problem with fruit juice is that it’s missing important fiber and far more calorie laden than eating the fruit. Instead, have bottled water on hand for the kids. Frozen fruit or ice cubes with fruit in can add a cold treat while adding flavor. A tiny refillable bottle also makes it easier for kids to drink. Even adding some juice or berries to make it more flavorful will boost their desire to drink it.
- Make healthier French fries in the oven from sweet potatoes. You can even make sweet potato chips and kale chips for snacks.
- Homemade trail mix in individual single serving baggies, popcorn, and fun treats like ants on a log—celery with nut butter topped with raisins—can make kids look forward to healthy treats.
- Never give kids junk food as a special treat or reward. It makes it look far more appealing and desirable. When eating in restaurant, choose healthy several healthy options and let your child pick from those.
- Teach your children to make their plate a rainbow. Each colorful fruit or vegetable contains specific nutrients that often relate to the color it is. When you have a plate filled with a rainbow of colors, you’re more apt to have all the nutrients you need.
One of the benefits of eating whole foods is that they’re often the easiest to make. I have clients in Louisville, KY that love eating simple and reap the benefits from that whole food diet. Eating simple doesn’t mean eating boring. In fact, you’ll be amazed at just how flavorful the food can be. It doesn’t mean that you can’t use herbs and spices, either. It simply means that you don’t eat complex foods created in the lab by food manufacturers.
One of the reasons I became a personal trainer in Louisville, KY was to help people stay healthier using natural methods, including exercise. Lately, there’s been a lot of promotion on food as medicine and rethinking about serious conditions like Alzheimer’s. Several studies are now considering Alzheimer’s as Type 3 diabetes. While most studies are in their infancy, there are links to insulin use in the brain and Alzheimer’s disease. It all starts with genetics in this particular case and shows that serious conditions occur from a variety of causes, not just one. It reminds us that we all are different and have different needs.
There’s a lot of ways to improve your energy level that help maintain a high level. While some people automatically reach for a sugary treat, it may help for a short time, but it won’t take long and you’ll be right back to dragging around, trying to stay awake. Instead of grabbing a sugary treat, try a bottle of water to give yourself a boost. Sometimes, even mild dehydration can drain you of energy, which is often why coffee doesn’t do the trick—it dehydrates you. Water also can be helpful if you think you’re hungry. Often the body confuses the messages and sends a signal of hunger when you’re really thirsty. At those times, you’ll often find yourself craving watermelon, sodas or other foods that are filled with fluid.
Taking time out of a busy schedule is commendable, but finding ways to boost your exercise benefits is just plain smart. Exercising isn’t normally part of every American’s day. Most people have jobs that are sedentary, so getting adequate exercise means scheduling it into their day. Those with more physical jobs often don’t get a complete workout. They may have strength style movements or endurance ones, but seldom flexibility movements. That leads to injury unless they also schedule a workout time. Here are a few ways to maximize that time and give you better results.
Everyone has those days when you want to scream at the store clerk, kick the dog or knock off everything on the counter. It’s often created by an extremely stressful situation that occurred earlier, but sticks with you for a long time. You can get rid of that bad mood by working out. It doesn’t take long before you feel the mood lifting back to your normal, relaxed self.
Losing weight is important if you want to avoid type 2 diabetes, but you also can reduce your risk of diabetes by exercising. Exercise provides other benefits too, including heart health. It helps lower LDL and triglycerides, while raising the healthy cholesterol, HDL to make your cholesterol profile healthier. It builds strength and improves your mood. The benefits it offers to your body also helps you reduce your diabetes risk by regulating your blood sugar levels, aiding in weight loss and increasing insulin sensitivity.
There’s a lot of clients in Louisville, KY that ask for help from a personal trainer to help shed weight. They also know that exercise lowers high blood pressure in the process. When you participate in a program of exercise, you’re heart pumps hard, making it stronger. That means it pumps with less effort and causes the force exerted on your arteries to be less. Lowering that force means lower blood pressure.
A teenager’s nutritional needs are different from their parents and even different from younger children in the family. I see so many teens in Louisville, KY that are consuming junk food for their primary meals and wonder whether they even know what constitutes a healthy meal. It wouldn’t be unusual to find they don’t, many adults don’t have that knowledge either. As a parent, you probably have very little control over what your child eats when he or she is away from home, but you can control what they eat at home.