you are what you eat
Nutrition is our second most important goal. This is an area many parents dread, particularly moms. Making three meals a day is hard enough, and now I’m asking you to make them nutritious for the well-being of your child! So I want to encourage you as to why good nutrition is so very, very important.
Snacking: When they were very little, I let my kids snack anytime they wanted. However, they had to choose out of the stack of “Snack Tupperware.” This is how my fridge looked. Yes, I wrote on the Tupperware as Rebecca was learning to read at that time. That also helped the kids know what fruit or veggie to refill (when a container was empty in the dish drainer).
They knew at any time that they could open the fridge and snack on any of these fruits and vegetables without asking me. Those were the only designated snacks. As they got older, we did granola bars, unbuttered popcorn, and the like.
Genesis 1:29
“And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.”
Genesis 1:29
Fruits & veggies every meal
And here is what the kids pack in their lunches are well:
Make healty food fun!
scary sats 🙁
The Center for Disease Control says that for our current generation of adults, heart disease happens to be the leading cause of death in Americans and that half of American adults have at least one of the three main risk factors for it: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or smoking.[1] So 1:2 is at high risk for developing heart disease. Then 38.5% of Americans will get cancer, so that is about 1 in 3.[2] Finally, 1:4 adults will have diabetes.
If you line up yourself and two friends, it’s not just a matter of which one of you will get a big disease, but very possibly it’s a matter of which disease you each will get. Because chances are with three people, each one could get one of these three major diseases. Those stats really scare me: I don’t want anyone I love to get any disease!
[1] “About Heart Disease,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, March 20, 2020), https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/about.htm)
[2] “Cancer Statistics,” National Cancer Institute, accessed April 22, 2020, https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics)
water, water, water!!!!!!
Our body is 60 percent water, so we need to be drinking a lot of water to keep it healthy. How much should we drink? People say eight glasses a day, but actually it depends on your body weight: Take your weight, cut that number in half (oh, that felt good didn’t it?) That is the number of ounces you need every day. If you take that number and divide it by eight (assuming a glass is eight ounces), that’s how many glasses you need for a day. Just say you weigh 150 pounds. That would be 75 ounces, which is about nine eight-ounce cups of water.
hydration equation
Your weight: ________lbs ÷ 2= ___________
I need ____________ ounces/day
(or ÷8 =______ standard glasses of water a day)
food is fuel!!!
First, memorize this line and teach it to your kids:
Food is fuel!
That’s it! It’s just to fuel your body. You would never put lemonade in your gas tank, would you? No, you only put gas. Well you only have one body, so you need to take care of it. If you don’t take care of your body, where are you going to live? It runs best on good fuel and breaks down when it is fed bad fuel like junk food and fast food. So feed it well. In America food has become more than fuel…it is comfort, and social, and stress relieving, and mindless (in front of the TV). If you are down, then make a phone call, take a walk, or journal. If your kids are sad, then tell them to come get a hug from you, and go play outside for a bit. Don’t turn to food to make you happy or use food as “comfort.”
make drinking water fun!!!
You can make drinking all of that water fun by having the kids pick out a cool water bottle that they take to school. Back at home they can refill them for the afternoon and supper time. Measure out how many ounces are in each water bottle so each child knows how many times they need to refill that water bottle during the day. Then they can track their amount and be able to put a tally mark in the box each day under “water.” If you make it a game, and if you get the kids involved, they’ll be eager to prove that they can drink up and reach the mark!
