Some dos and don’ts to helping your teen eat healthier.
Seven ways to encourage your teen to eat healthy.
This article provides a nice little reminder list of do’s and don’t for dealing with overweight teenagers or just helping your teenager stay at a healthy weight:
- Don’t nag, don’t be the “food cop”. It usually doesn’t work and may just get you parents frustrated
- Lead by example: this is interesting because we may think that our teenagers don’t pay attention to what we are doing since they are so wrapped in their own lives. But studies have shown if we are healthy, then they eventually will too. But forget studies for a minute, I can tell you that on more than one occasion my college kid will tell me something I told him as a teenager. So, somewhere inside, they are paying attention and listening.
- Do it for the whole family: So don’t single out “healthy rules” for just one child. Regardless of weight, all children need to eat healthy in order to be healthy.
- Make it easy. So for example, keep sliced fruit in the frig, make healthy food readily available.
- Give them a say: some compromise in what food goes and stays will help them feel involved and part of the decision
- Eat together: you will hear this a lot, but there is so much overwhelming evidence that eating together as a family helps the child in so many ways
- Cut down the screen time: the best rule is 2 hours or less total, that includes TV and computer time
Let me know if any of these worked!
