It’s always hard to try to balance the daily stresses of life. There are so many things to do with so little time. When it comes to your family, and helping them have a healthier, happier life, there is no time like the present to make time. But with so many things to focus on health wise, where do you begin?

Here are a few tips that the American Dietetic Association offers up some wonderful guidelines that even the busiest parent can follow:

-Eat a variety of foods, but make sure every food counts and has as much nutritional value as it can get

-Watch your calories and your portion size for both you and your family

-Kids need at least 60 minutes a day of physical activity to stay fit, so help your kids do this (you should be getting some physical activity everyday yourself so just include them!)

-Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Here’s a little trick I do, I put fruit and vegetable puree in every meal I make. My family has yet to taste it and it packs a big kick in increasing their vegetable intake, even for the pickiest eater.

-Eat whole grains and drink low fat or fat free milk.

-Use little or no salt in preparing food. Honestly, I almost never use salt, I never have. But if you’re using it then cut down as much as possible.

These are just a few tips to help you keep you and your family on the track to being a healthy family.

When you become a parent, you are charged with many things. You are to keep your children safe, teach them right from wrong and take care of them, among other things. One of the things that parents need to be aware of is the health of our children. I must confess to being a part of a wide scale parenting hypocrisy when it comes to my children. I’ll give you some examples that I have been guilty of myself:

-You make your kids eat a vegetable at every meal (fruit for breakfast). They just have to. Yet you won’t dish out green beans onto your own plate.

-You tell the kids no candy or sugar before bed, yet I used to eat a bowl of ice cream every single night, in bed before sleeping.

-You tell the kids to go play outside, that the TV will rot her brain out, as you sit in front of the TV watching an entire marathon of Ghost Hunters, or Flip That House.

-For a snack, your children must have something fairly healthy, while moms snack might consist of a Snickers bar.

-Your kids usually have to have milk, water or juice for meals, yet you would down a huge Sprite in front of them at one sitting.

My point is that if our children learn by example, then part of our job as parents is to take care of ourselves. I have ceased all of that type of attitude, the “I’m the adult, I can do what I want” when it comes to eating and exercising. Leading by example means that we are out there, doing what we are supposed to be doing, in the hopes that our children will follow in our path.

So pile on the green beans moms and dads, break into the grapefruit and run that extra mile, because it’s your job!

Helping children build healthy bones should be a focus for raising a healthy child. Lack of knowledge about this for many parent has lead to major problems for the kids and will drastically affect them the rest of there lives.

Children build over half of their bone mass during the adolescent years of their life so parents should be aware of the importance of this and what to do. As humans we reach our peak bone mass by the age of twenty, so you can see that the years that children are spending at home are the most crucial by far.

The 3 most important things that are factors for building strong healthy bones are vitamin D from exposure to the sun, plenty of exercise and of course calcium.

Poor nutrition, lack of exercise and other physical activities has lead to an astonishing number of childhood obesity cases and is being directly linked to more and more diseases that are effecting children more than ever before. One of these is Rickets.

Rickets is a childhood bone disease that is usually only seen in 3rd world countries, but in recent years is showing dramatic increase in the number of cases in the United States. Rickets causes bones to severe aches and pains in the bones and causes the bones to become permanently deformed at a young age.

According to Dr. James Beaty, President of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, “There’s some early data showing that even a 10 percent deficit in your bone mass when you finish your adolescent years can increase your potential risk of having osteoporosis and fractures as much as 50 percent”. So as you can see it will not only affect them now, but will cause them a life time of problems and pain.

What’s the cause of this? Well, when it comes to American kids you are talking about poor nutritional habits, too much tv, too much internet and too many video games. “This potentially is a time-bomb,” says Dr. Laura Tosi, bone health chief at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington D.C.

What can be done? Make sure that your children get plenty of sunshine, calcium and lots of exercise.

Calcium is the building block of healthy bones. Foods which are good sources of calcium include fat-free or low-fat milk, yogurt, cheese, canned fish with bones, nuts, fruits, vegetables, dried beans, rice beverages, molasses and some leafy greens.

The best source of vitamin D is natural sunlight, that’s why getting outdoors is so important for your children. When the kids are playing outdoors they are getting both exercise and vitamin D.

So, are you putting your kids at risk? It’s like anything else…..it’s a learned behavior. You MUST educate yourself and your children. As a parent it’s your responsibility to make sure that they have the opportunity for a long healthy life and not just for the 18 or so years that they are at home.

This is not likely the first time that you have heard that watching TV may not be good for you. Over the years I have shown many customers of mine the value of time and that the time they spend in front of the TV is detrimental to their health.
Recently I read an article from the wholefood farmacy about a Harvard research that was done.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Children’s Hospital Boston found that kids who spend more time watching television also eat more of the calorie-dense, low-nutrient foods advertised on television.

Previous studies had demonstrated that children who watch more television are more likely to be overweight, but this is the first time a research team has found evidence for a mechanism explaining that relationship. The study results appear in the April 2006 issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent medicine.

“We’ve known for a long time that television viewing is a risk factor for overweight, though the common perception is that this is due to the fact that it’s a sedentary use of time,” said Jean Wiecha, the study’s lead author and a senior research scientist at HSPH. “This study provides evidence that television is effective in getting kids to eat the foods that are advertised, and this drives up their total calorie intake.”

The results of the study showed that each hour of increased television viewing over baseline was associated with a total energy increase of 167 calories — just about the amount of calories in a soda or a handful of snack food, said Wiecha. Each additional hour of television viewing was also independently associated with increased consumption of foods commonly advertised on television, and these foods were shown to be responsible for much of the calorie increase. Viewing time seemed to have the strongest connection to additional consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.

Twice as many children and almost three times as many teens are overweight today compared to their counterparts growing up 20 years ago. Overweight young people are more likely to become overweight or obese adults who are at risk for diseases like diabetes and heart disease. The results of this study bolster a longstanding recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics to limit children to less than two hours of television each day to both lessen sedentary time and reduce exposure to content associated with negative consequences.

It is a personal mission of mine to help change the momentum of the health crisis in America. I feel that reaching the children is one of the very first “calls to action” and we need to take it more serious. With that being said, we all need to lead by example.
Each of us are leaving a path behind us that others will follow. What kind of path are you leaving?

Are you interested in helping with my Health Crisis Call To Action Plan? CLICK HERE and ask what you can do to help.

Middle school students who perform more vigorous physical activity than their more sedentary piers tend to do better in school, according to a new study done by researchers from Michigan State University and Grand Valley State University . The research is published in the August issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.

The science is also crystal clear on another issue with making your kids healthier!

Children who eat a healthy breakfast before school are healthier, more alert, have more energy, exhibit better behavior and get better grades. A recent State of Minnesota Breakfast Study found that students who ate breakfast before starting school had a general increase in math grades and reading scores, increased student attention, reduced nurse visits, and improved student behaviors.

How’s your kid doing? Let us know!