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How to Make Healthier Choices

How to Make Healthier Choices

No, you don’t have to completely revamp or reinvent your family’s lifestyle to raise healthy kids. It’s really a matter of planning ahead and deliberately choosing how you handle meals, movement, and other matters. Here are a variety of healthy switches that are fairly easy to introduce.

Instead of: Grabbing fast food or take-out when you’re rushed and don’t have time to cook dinner.

How to Make Healthier Choices

Try: Picking up a rotisserie chicken and cooking frozen veggies you’ve been keeping on hand

Instead of: Going to the movies, a puppet show, or another form of passive entertainment every weekend

Try: Planning a family bike ride or an outing to a park where you can play tag, kick a ball, or find another way to be active

Instead of: Snacking while your family watches TV

Try: Keeping your hands busy—with coloring, doing a puzzle, or knitting—or letting everyone chew sugarless gum if they feel the need to have something in their mouths

Instead of: Feeding your kids or yourself and your spouse whenever each person gets home from work and after-school activities

Try: Appointing a family dinner hour and exercising control over when you stop working or playing so that you can have the evening meal together

Instead of: Indulging the munchies when your child is frustrated, upset, or otherwise out of sorts

Try: Suggesting that you go out and toss a ball or play croquet or badminton to blow off steam

Instead of: Rewarding your child for good behavior or an accomplishment with a sweet treat or another form of food

Try: Letting him pick a special activity to do together or even a movie to watch together

Instead of: Skipping breakfast because you’re in a hurry in the morning or grabbing something on the fly

Try: Having everyone get up 20 minutes earlier so you can all start the day with a healthy morning meal

Instead of: Having your kids clamor for your attention and something to eat while you scramble to pull dinner together in the early evening

Try: Reconnecting with a fun activity such as dancing or coloring together, then serve them some veggies and dip or apple slices and ask them to keep you company while you get dinner ready

Instead of: Letting bedtime arrive when it’s convenient for everyone or your kids are simply too exhausted to keep going

Try: Establishing a clear bedtime and introducing a consistent sleepytime routine with a bath, reading a story, or listening to calming music together

You can find more useful tips like this int he Weight Watchers Eat! Move! Play! book available through Amazon.

 

Reprinted from the book Weight Watchers Eat! Move! Play! With permission from John Wiley & Sons Inc.
 
Disclosure: I received no monetary compensation for this post. The opinions are my own. I am on a journey of weight loss and merely passing along information that I found beneficial.

About Julee: Julee Morrison is an experienced author with 35 years of expertise in parenting and recipes. She is the author of four cookbooks: The Instant Pot College Cookbook, The How-To Cookbook for Teens, The Complete Cookbook for Teens, and The Complete College Cookbook. Julee is passionate about baking, crystals, reading, and family. Her writing has appeared in The LA Times (Bon Jovi Obsession Goes Global), Disney's Family Fun Magazine (August 2010, July 2009, September 2008), and My Family Gave Up Television (page 92, Disney Family Fun August 2010). Her great ideas have been featured in Disney's Family Fun (Page 80, September 2008) and the Write for Charity book From the Heart (May 2010). Julee's work has also been published in Weight Watchers Magazine, All You Magazine (Jan. 2011, February 2011, June 2013), Scholastic Parent and Child Magazine (Oct. 2011), Red River Family Magazine (Jan. 2011), BonAppetit.com, and more. Notably, her article "My Toddler Stood on Elvis' Grave and Scaled Over Boulders to Get to a Dinosaur" made AP News, and "The Sly Way I Cured My Child's Lying Habit" was featured on PopSugar. When she's not writing, Julee enjoys spending time with her family and exploring new baking recipes.
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