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Jump On!
Get Your Teen on the Healthy Family Bandwagon
By Kim Seidel
"Involving teens in healthy food preparation has been shown to increase healthy eating," Dr. Kulze says. "Have them experience healthy food with all of their senses – seeing, tasting, touching, eating and smelling. I always involve my children in food preparation."
It can be a big challenge, but aim for five fruits and vegetables each day for children and seven to nine servings each day for adults, Dr. Kulze says. She also suggests that in addition to two servings of fruit at breakfast, you and your teens eat a fruit and/or a vegetable with lunch. At the family meal in the evening, two servings of vegetables can be served: a salad, as well as side dishes.
Encourage your teen to eat breakfast as a healthy way to start their day. During research for her book, Thin People Don't Clean Their Plates: Simple Lifestyle Choices for Permanent Weight Loss (Inspiration Presentations Press, 2005), Jill Fleming, MS, RD, spent over 10,000 hours researching the lifestyle habits of those who are already thin and healthy.
"They all shared almost identical habits with people who are successful at losing weight and keeping it off, as reported by the National Weight Control Registry," Fleming says. Their common traits include eating breakfast almost every day. "Eating breakfast 'breaks the fast' from the night before to wake up the diestive system," Fleming says. "This speeds the metabolism. It is best to eat something within the first hour of waking up."