What I Learned About Teaching Kids Nutrition (Month 4)

1.  Convenience is king.  The foods that are sitting out within easy reach get eaten the most, for good or bad.  (when grapes or cucumbers were out, kids were eating them...)

2.  Healthy eating begins with a healthy attitude about your body (earlier blog post here).

3.  Mind your attitudes about food too (here is where I list a lot of the research behind this list)-- no eating out of of boredom or sadness, for example, only out of hunger (easy to say, not always easy to do)

4.  Keeping this in mind, let your kids decide when they are full.  (don't pressure kids to finish everything on their plates, but see number 5...)

5.  Linking dessert to healthy eating throughout the day can be a powerful motivator for kids.  But, never use dessert as a reward or a punishment.

6.  Sugar begets sugar.  Save a simple treat for the end of the day, otherwise, a small amount of sugar early in the day leads to craving more and more throughout the day and derails healthy eating.  This is a tough one for us.  Some moms prefer not having sugary foods in the house at all.  Don't guilt yourself or them over this, it's just the way our bodies are wired. (like this...cute)

7.  Give kids a little credit-- my kids actually loved some of the dishes I put in front of them that I never thought they'd eat!  (not true for everything)  No one even noticed we ate veggies straight for 2 weeks.  They will not always be happy everything you make.  Don't take it personally that your healthy, lovingly prepared meal meets a "that looks like the most disgusting thing I've ever seen!" (don't give up!)  They may like it after they've tried it (in our house, they have to try at least one bite of everything), and if they don't, they'll still thank you some day for trying.

8.   Plan ahead.  Remember rule #1?  When I haven't planned ahead, and we get hungry, that is when we make poor food choices. 

9.  Pay attention to your eating traditions, replacing unhealthy ones. 

10.  Labeling something a "treat" can make it feel like one. 

11.  Trust yourself.  I forced myself to try using things I had on hand (in my garden), and tried making up my own dishes instead of always following a recipe, and I did much better than I thought I would! 

12.   Eating simple healthy meals gave me more time with my kids but also was a fun way to involve them in meal preparation!   Even the time I asked my kids to go pick some corn and shuck it and bring it in, and later in the day I found a box in my bedroom that looked like it was full of long golden hair.  Huh?  Yes, look what they saved (why is it in my bedroom?):

13.  Model good eating behavior.  I'm still working on this one.  But our attempt to eat more vegetables resulted in the most weight I've lost since I had baby and the best I've felt since I had him.

14.  Sugary drinks count as a treat.

15.  Eating fresh foods and adding fresh herbs like parsley, basil, or thyme can replace some of the flavor lost with processed food, and can eventually change your taste buds so you actually crave healthier foods.  After some of our veggie dinners, sugary foods sounded gross to me.  If you knew me, you would know that is nothing short of a miracle.

16.  Enlist their aid.  When we talked about nutrition one night at the dinner table (I think this should be an ongoing discussion), I thought the kids would moan and groan, but they actually got fairly animated, saying "we should talk about this more often!"

17.  Point out the connection between healthy eating and healthy bodies.

18.  Make it fun.  Challenge the kids to find out the health benefits of the foods in a meal.  For some reason, they eat carrots better when they know that pilots in WWII were fed carrots so they could see better in the dark.

19.  Teach them that being active is an equally important part of the equation.  Remember the research that showed that exercise was more important than willpower?  I still love that one.  Getting active with the kids this month made for some really great memories.  I'm hoping that they'll learn a love for active pursuits and healthy foods just by being exposed to them often. :)

20.  Offer healthy snacks.  One mom cuts up fresh vegetables and the kids are allowed to eat them anytime, even right before dinner.  If the kids are too full for dinner, at least they are full of vegetables!