In part one of this two-part se­ries, I dis­cussed some of the mis­takes to avoid when try­ing to get your child to be healthy. With the growth in child­hood obe­si­ty and all of the as­so­ci­at­ed health risks, there is an in­creased fo­cus on get­ting chil­dren to main­tain a healthy weight. In my work as a health coach, I meet many adults who have an un­healthy re­la­tion­ship with food and poor body im­age, of­ten­times due to be­liefs that start­ed in child­hood. When we are teach­ing our chil­dren to get healthy, it is im­por­tant to not just think about the short-term goals (of weight loss or eat­ing broc­coli at din­ner etcetera) but to keep in mind the long-term lessons you will like to pass on to your chil­dren. This week, we fo­cus on some of the vi­tal steps to pre­serv­ing a healthy body im­age as you en­cour­age your chil­dren to fol­low a health­i­er lifestyle.

Be Mind­ful About Your Lan­guage

As we know, chil­dren learn from ex­am­ple, so, what are you teach­ing them about body im­age? Do you sulk when you look at your­self in the mir­ror? Do you avoid tak­ing pic­tures if you are not com­plete­ly put to­geth­er? Do you make com­ments about oth­er peo­ple’s phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance (pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive)? Even if you are not talk­ing di­rect­ly to or about your chil­dren, they will in­ter­nalise these mes­sages and start to have ques­tions about their own bod­ies. There is enough pres­sure from the me­dia to have a “per­fect body”, so you can en­cour­age your chil­dren to fo­cus on their in­ner qual­i­ties in­stead of out­ward ap­pear­ances. En­cour­age them to al­so seek pos­i­tive role mod­els based on their ac­tions and not sim­ply their looks.

In ad­di­tion, be aware of what you are teach­ing your chil­dren with re­spect to healthy lifestyle choic­es. Do you grum­ble as you eat your “di­et food” and light up when you see cake and ice cream? Do you ex­er­cise on­ly when you need to lose weight? In­stead teach your chil­dren that you are choos­ing to eat healthy foods so that you have en­er­gy and that you choose to ex­er­cise so you can be strong and live a longer life.

Make It a Fam­i­ly Goal

With the preva­lence of fast foods and so many processed foods on the gro­cery shelves mar­ket­ed di­rect­ly to chil­dren, par­ents face an up­hill bat­tle when try­ing to get their chil­dren to eat health­i­er. How­ev­er, since chil­dren learn habits from what they see at home, once par­ents be­come more knowl­edge­able about healthy eat­ing and lifestyle, chil­dren will nat­u­ral­ly ben­e­fit.

When you set a healthy lifestyle goal as a fam­i­ly, you would not have to sin­gle-out a child and run the risk of him or her feel­ing de­prived or in­se­cure. Have a fam­i­ly con­ver­sa­tion about cre­at­ing a healthy lifestyle for every­one.

One im­por­tant way to bring the fam­i­ly to­geth­er for this goal is to eat meals to­geth­er. Sit­ting to­geth­er for a meal not on­ly en­cour­ages health­i­er eat­ing habits, but al­so pro­vides a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for the fam­i­ly to bond.

In­volve Your Chil­dren Through­out the Process

Your chil­dren are more like­ly to be mo­ti­vat­ed to change when they are in­volved in the process. Let them shop with you for pro­duce so they can choose what new fruits and veg­eta­bles they will be will­ing to try. In the gro­cery, show them how to read prod­uct la­bels to look for added sug­ars, preser­v­a­tives and ar­ti­fi­cial colours and flavours. In­volve them in the meal plan­ning and teach them about prepar­ing a bal­anced meal. Al­so, let them choose their own recipes and help out with the cook­ing as they will be more in­clined to eat once they pre­pare it them­selves.

Teach Chil­dren to Lis­ten to Their Own Bod­ies

An im­por­tant part of choos­ing the right foods for our bod­ies, is to un­der­stand what our body needs. First­ly, chil­dren should learn what it feels like to be hun­gry and to be full. Of­ten­times our chil­dren’s meals are so struc­tured that they do not learn the sen­sa­tions of be­ing hun­gry. They are fed break­fast as soon as they are awake, they eat lunch and din­ner on sched­ule and of­ten snacks are of­fered in be­tween meals or giv­en on de­mand.

In ad­di­tion, when we do not al­low our chil­dren to leave the ta­ble un­til they fin­ish their din­ner, this makes them ig­nore their bod­ies’ sig­nals for sati­ety. Not be­ing able to recog­nise the phys­i­cal in­di­ca­tions that your body is in need of nour­ish­ment (ver­sus a crav­ing or an emo­tion­al need) and know­ing when your body is sat­is­fied, is a chal­lenge that plagues many adults. Learn­ing this valu­able les­son in child­hood can pre­vent many is­sues lat­er in life.

It is al­so use­ful to high­light the con­nec­tion be­tween the food that your chil­dren eat and how it im­pacts their mood. Are they bounc­ing off the walls when they come home from a birth­day par­ty? Do they get cranky soon af­ter hav­ing a high-sug­ar meal as their blood sug­ar drops? Help them to make these con­nec­tions so they can learn to choose the foods that will help them to fo­cus in class, have the en­er­gy for their ac­tiv­i­ties and make them feel great.

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion de­fines health as “a state of com­plete phys­i­cal, men­tal and so­cial well-be­ing and not mere­ly the ab­sence of dis­ease or in­fir­mi­ty.” Hav­ing a pos­i­tive body im­age and a healthy re­la­tion­ship with food are crit­i­cal as­pects of our men­tal and so­cial well-be­ing. When chil­dren feel good in their bod­ies, this con­fi­dence ra­di­ates in­to every as­pect of their lives.