Parents as Role Models for Children – Emotional Eating

Have you ever wondered how emotional eating becomes a habit? As parents, we are role models for children, either good or bad and unfortunately, it is usually us who teaches a children the concept of emotional eating.

Remember when your babies were learning to walk. Or when your toddler fell over because they tried to walk or run too fast. (Read Are You Teaching Your Children Healthy Eating Habit?)

Do you remember seeing a baby trying to walk for the first time? Definitely a case of practice makes perfect. Initially they learn to stand and wobble and then fall down. It is also a time in which tears are common. Sometimes because the child is startled by the fall other times they hurt themselves by hitting body parts on floors or furniture. The child will cry for a few minutes, but soon determination makes them try again and eventually they succeed.

But there is another side to this story. Within seconds of the child falling a parent or other adult will usually reach out and try and comfort the child and this is great. It’s important to comfort the child and reassure them that it everything is okay. But how we comfort them can have far reaching and unforseen effects on the child. Do we simply cuddle them, or do we reach for a treat like a cookie, the pacifier or a bottle of milk.

If our response is the latter then there are lessons the child will learn from this, including:

• If you feel upset, eating is comforting.
• It’s NOT okay to show your emotions. Shove something in your mouth to replace those feelings quickly.

If no food was offered then the child could be comforted by the hug from the adult. The pain or fright soon goes away and the crying stops. But instead the child is being taught the concept of comfort eating. Even worse if they were given a sweet treat then they have been given a taste for sugar and that becomes addictive in itself.

Here is another example, this time for an older child. Their room is a mess and we want them to clean it up. So we offer them a candy and a soda if they will clean up. Uh oh… trouble brewing again! The lesson learned… When you work or achieve something, eat a sweet treat to reward yourself!

Unfortunately, unless we later study food and nutrition, then the food lessons we are taught as children are passed on to the next generation. Why? Because we don’t know any better ourselves!

As you can see, we need to consider what food lessons our children learn from our actions:

• Do we food to bribe our children to do things?
• Do we use food to comfort our children?
• Do we use food to encourage children to conceal their feelings?

Learn to understand the lessons your actions teach so you can break the cycle and ensure that your child never relies on emotional eating. Whether you like it or not, as parents you are important role models for children.

source : weightlosstips4kids

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Encouraging Child Fitness with a Wii Weight Loss Plan

Are you concerned about inactive children and teenagers? Wii weight loss plans are becoming extremely popular as a means to get them up and moving when sometimes it seems that the only part of their body that gets a workout is their fingers operating the game pad. Wii fitness games provide an excellent way to engage them in an exercise program without having to drag them away from the television and game console. So turn their obsession with video games into a means to increase fitness. Wii weight loss plans are cheaper than the gym but still provide a wide variety of exercises that your child or teen will love. And the best thing is, a Wii weight loss plan allows you to involve the whole family so you can benefit from increased fitness too. If your children need to lose weight, they need exercise they can enjoy. If exercising is a drag they’re not likely to persist with it.

Most personal trainers recommend a minimum of 60 minutes of cardio exercise every day for children and teenagers want to maintain healthy weight and fitness levels. If they have never shown an interest in other forms of exercise but they like playing console games then Wii fitness programs provide an excellent option.

Wii games can be customized to their fitness level and they can even track their progress. Over time, you will actually see evidence of their increasing fitness levels and a leaner and more toned body. Kids don’t really care that much if they’re losing weight, as long as they are having fun they will continue to play the games.

Some of the Wii fitness games available include:

• Wii Fitness Ultimatum (with Gillian Michaels)
• Wii Biggest loser
• Wii Sports Resort
• Wii Water Sports
• Wii Sports Plus
• Wii Dance Party
• Wii Sports
• Wii Fit

Using a Wii fit program to improve fitness is a great help, but remember, exercise is only one element of fitness. It is also necessary to address their diet if you want to optimize their weight loss. It may surprize you to know that this doesn’t necessarily mean cutting back the amount they eat, it can simply be a matter of changing the types of food they eat.

When they eat appropriate portions of healthy food as frequently as they should they will be able to eat all the food they need without feeling hungry. It is recommended that we eat 5 or 6 small meals per day, three main meals (smaller portions than they would have if only having three meals) and the rest snacks like a piece of fruit or a small can of tuna or salmon or maybe the occasional cookie or cake, just don’t overdo it on sugary snacks. Avoid feeding them large amounts in the evening as metabolism naturally slows at that time, better to have a big lunch and a light dinner. It is important to maintain the right balance of foods, a balance of 50% carbs, 30% fat and 20% protein is generally recommended. If you follow this you will discover that they aren’t hungry and their energy levels will be enviable.

Adequate hydration is also crucial to losing weight. When we become dehydrated our body ceases to function at optimal levels – our metabolism slows down and our body starts retaining toxins and fluid (since it doesn’t want to release what fluid it has). Ensure that they drink plenty of water to avoid this. The recommended daily water intake is 8 glasses.

When it comes to losing weight it’s important to remember the three pronged approach: eat right, drink enough, and exercise frequently. If they do this consistently they are guaranteed to lose weight. So if you want to improve their fitness and make weight loss fun try incorporating a wii weight loss plan for their exercise so they don’t get bored.

source : weightlosstips4kids

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Are you Teaching your Children Healthy Eating Habits?

What lessons were you taught about food about food as a child? Were you taught healthy eating habits, or unhealthy? Most parents teach the same lessons they were taught, and these lessons will be passed down through many generations until someone decides to break the cycle.

Were you raised in the “eat everything on your plate” generation. Eat everything on your plate, even if you were already full. Were you told to think of the starving children in third world countries? Did you ever understand how leaving one potato could help a starving child in another country?

If you are concerned about starving children around the world don’t use it to encourage your child to overeat, think about buying less food and donating money to a charity that supports famine relief.

If you want your children to learn healthy eating habits then prepare healthy meals at home, and try not make them feel guilty when they have had enough.

Of course, the approach is completely different for a fussy eater who won’t eat anything except what they want to eat. Fussy eaters should be encouraged to eat SOME of everything on their plate so they don’t try to avoid the foods they don’t like. And to stop them eating their favorite foods then saying they are full you can impose a one hour time limit after dinner before they are allowed to come out with the infamous “I’m hungry!!!”

It’s not a good idea to use the ‘eat everything on your plate or you don’t have dessert’ motivation either. This encourages children to overeat in order to get the yummy foods. Having a half hour break between dinner and dessert can help with this.

Of course, ultimately you need to build up some idea of just how much each child is capable of eating and base their portion size on this amount. Sometimes they will be hungrier, in which case make sure they understand that they can request more. But care should be exercised in what they are eating. Don’t give them an extra sausage as these are high in fat (and therefore calories since fat has four times the number of calories compared to protein and carbohydrates) give them extra vegetables instead and if they need to lose a little weight then reduce the amount of simple carbohydrates on their plate (potato, pasta, rice or white bread) and increase their other vegetables. There is a very good reason for this, carbohydrates provide the majority of our energy requirements but simple carbohydrates require virtually no digestion which means less calories are used in the digestive process and any excess calories consumed are more likely to be stored as adipose tissue (fat). Complex carbohydrates on the other hand burn a lot of calories in the digestive process making them much less likely to contribute to fat stores.

So consider, if you were raised to eat everything on your plate, have you continued the cycle by teaching your children to do the same?

Imagine 15 years into the future. Your child has become an overweight adult suffering all kinds of health issues. They may even blame you for making them eat everything on their plate, or not allowing them to leave the table without their plate being clean, or constantly feeding them junk food and take outs. They are even more likely to blame you if they were overweight as a child. Now back to the present, how would that make you feel?

Give them something valuable to pass on to their children by teaching your children healthy eating habits.

source : weightlosstips4kids

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Successful Diet Plans For Overweight Teenage Boys

Maybe you’ve got a teenage son that is obese, or perhaps you are an adolescent young man yourself and want to get rid of weight. Regardless, you need to know that there are diet plans for overweight teen boys that genuinely work. Let’s be honest though, it will not be effortless, but if you stick with it and can stay focused on the ultimate objective, it is going to be a good deal simpler.



Before you do anything at all with your teenage boys eating habits it’s crucial that you talk to your family health care professional to make sure of a couple of things. First, that the teenager is really overweight. Though that could seem obvious, what one individual thinks of as overweight might not be identical as what another views as overweight and his weight could be completely acceptable. Secondly, teenage boys (and all people) have precise dietary needs and every weight-loss program must take those requirements into account. For this you will need professional guidance!

As a parent, you may criticize yourself. Possibly because you’ve heard that kids learn a great deal of their behavior from their mother and father. In other terms, your eating habits and attitudes concerning food have had an impact on your teens waistline. While there may be some truth to that, stressing about it is not going to fix the issue. You can’t change what you might have (or haven’t) done in the past, but it is possible to change what you do from this point forward.

Whilst you might be researching diets for obese teenage boys, things will be much better if the whole family unit makes the changes that are needed. Substitute bad foods for good ones, keep munching to a minimum, and focus on making better food choices.

An additional issue to consider is that different age groups have diverse calorie needs. As an example, children generally do not need in excess of 1,600 calories per day. But, one of the groups that needs the most is teenage boys; based on their activity levels they can require as much as 2,800 calories. That is a huge amount of calories! Because they need so many calories, it may be difficult to restrict their consumption. You might say they’re eating machines. But that doesn’t mean they can have anything they want.

Creating an eating strategy is a good start. Pick a large variety of foods to ensure there are plenty of vitamins and nutrients. target foods that are as close to their natural condition as possible. However, it is all right to include the occasional treat. If you are able to plan in advance, then the teen won’t have to calculate calories while they are eating since they have been figured out ahead of time.

Another reason a visit to the health care provider is a good plan is because this is a time when hormones produce considerable changes. The health care provider can do assessments to see if the weight gain is a result of hormones, or if there are other issues at play. Be honest with the doctor and abide by any recommendation they provide.

Another facet of good diets for obese teen boys is activity, also called exercise. The only way for anybody to slim down, regardless of age, is to burn more calories than you take in. And because teen boys need a lot of calories to stay healthy, exercise becomes an even more important part of the equation. No matter what particular plan you select to pursue should have a part that reduces calories and an element that burns extra calories. That is the secret to losing weight. Encourage your teenager to become active. If they are addicted to console games or the area you live is unsafe for outside activities (due to nightmare traffic, gang activity or whatever) then invest in one of those console games that requires them to get up and get moving, Nintendo Wii or Xbox kinect. Take the dog for a walk with the whole family, go for a bike ride or a picnic in the park on the weekend etc. You’ll be amazed at how much fun you can have as you get yourself and your overweight teenage boys fit.

source : weightlosstips4kids

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Weight Loss Foods for Kids

When it comes to weight loss for kids, there are challenges to be faced that are unique compared to the challenges faced by adults losing weight. In the first place, dietary changes and restrictions are IMPOSED on children, whereas, adults are act on their own behalf in most cases.

Helping a child understand the reasons for the change in their diet can be awkward to say the least. Any sudden changes in food and portion sizes are unsettling for children. The younger they are the harder it is. For example, explaining the health risks of obesity like heart disease, stroke, diabetes etc probably doesn’t mean much to a kid unless they happen to know someone who suffers from those ailments. Furthermore, you don’t want to frighten them with worst case scenarios, nor do you want to undermine their self esteem and cause them to have a negative body image. Check out this post on Helping children develop healthy body image.

It stands to reason that if a child is overweight or gaining weight then you need to reduce their calorie intake in order for them to lose any excess weight.

Thankfully, it is possible to reduce their calories WITHOUT decreasing their food intake. It is simply a matter of substituting natural foods for processed foods. For example, instead of giving them a candy bar or packet of potato crisps as a snack, give them a piece of fruit… it contains about half the calories, is just as filling and is nutritionally rich from all the vitamins. And instead of pizza, take out burgers or chicken nuggets and chips for dinner, whizz up a quick fish burger with uncrumbed fish (ie. not the freezer fillets) and salad on a wholewheat (brown) bun. An alternative is homemade salmon patties (tinned salmon, peas, finely chopped carrots and mashed potato to bind rolled in breadcrumbs and heated in a non stick frying pan without oil). If they don’t like fish then make patties with minced beef, lamb or chicken, finely chopped onion, an egg, salt and pepper to taste and a little all purpose flour to bind… the point is not to have all the msg which acts as an appetite stimulant, fats and sugars. Those are the biggest culprits in weight gain.

Another thing to watch for is what your child drinks. Did you know that one can of soda contains around 160 calories. If they drink four per day that’s an additional 640 calories that do NOTHING to satisfy appetite… i.e. they are empty calories. That is about one third of their daily calorie needs. But don’t fall into the trap of always giving them fruit juice either as that contains almost as many calories… better for them to have a piece of fruit which will also satisfy hunger. Encourage them to drink water but if they must drink soda at least make it diet soda.

If your child likes eating noodles there is a brilliant new product on the market called shirataki noodles. Actually, they’re not new, they’ve been consumed in Asia for over 2000 years, but they are a new concept to so-called Western nations. Shirataki noodles are made from a combination of water and soluble fiber to form a gelatinous noodle which the body is incapable of converting to energy making them effectively calorie free. I recommend that you attempt to find these noodles at your local Asian food store. If they don’t stock them then thankfully, they are available online from Miracle Noodles. If you need some recipes visit shirataki noodle recipes

Exercise is another aspect of weight loss for kids and it’s really not that difficult to get them more active. If they attend school locally then encourage them to walk to school instead of driving them. If they catch a bus encourage them to get off a couple of stops early and walk the rest of the way. Go for a family bike ride at the weekend or give them the job of taking the dog for a walk. Actually, it’s probably better if the whole family does that together as you would all benefit from the extra excercise. If you have trouble dragging the child away from their console games then get a wii and some of the games that will encourage them to get active like Wii sports and Wii fit. That way, it combines their favorite activity with some excercise.

As you can see, weight loss for kids isn’t an insurmountable challenge. A few small changes and your child will live a long, healthy life.

source : weightlosstips4kids

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