Healthy Family – Eat Right and Get Active

Photo by Don Hammond

How often do you and your family eat meals together and get active together?

Luckily, our family get’s active pretty easily each day. We have a large backyard so we play kick-ball, T-ball, tag, etc., quite frequently. When the weather is not great for outdoor activities, freeze dance is a favorite indoor game to get the wiggles out. We just put on a kids music channel and dance the afternoon away. It’s amazing how many calories you can burn just dancing with your kids.

As for eating together, we try to eat together as much as possible and although my kids are still interested in chicken nuggets and mac-n-cheese, we also serve a balance of fruits and vegetables throughout the day and keep the junk and sugar treats to a minimum.

So, this topic got me thinking about other tips to help my readers as well. For eating, I found this great tip on Active.com:

Discuss the Importance of Good Nutrition and Healthy Eating Habits

Children need adults to teach them about foods that are healthy for their bodies as well as to model eating healthy foods. Talking about good nutrition with children can be as simple as explaining the need to eat foods from different food groups to ensure their bodies receive the different vitamins and minerals needed to stay healthy. Create menus with your kids that include foods that are healthy and that everyone enjoys. Then, take your kids shopping and let them locate different foods and teach them how to read food labels.

My kids love to shop with me so I love this reminder about having your kids help create and shop for a healthy menu.

For family fitness activities, I found some great tips on About.com. Here is a summary of some of those suggestions:

Create a friendly competition: Make a dance party into an American Idol-style event with points awarded for the best moves. Who in your clan can take the most steps in a day, do the most push-ups, or twist into the most complicated yoga pose?

Step up the Silly Factor: go all out with crazy costumes and crazier moves. If you’re taking a family walk, tell jokes or sing goofy songs as you go. Silliness is definitely a favorite for my family.

Be Newbies Together: As a family, choose a new sport and learn it together. Martial arts, horseback riding, and dance are especially well-suited to varying ages and skill levels. Last winter, I took skating lessons with my daughter. I had not been on skates in years so it was really fun to try it together.