Healthy Weight

 
It is very important that children have a healthy diet and maintain physical activity. Here are some of the ways in which you can encourage this within your family.

Healthy diet

Fruit and vegetables

To increase your child’s interest and appetite for vegetables, it is a great idea to involve them in the recipe searching and shopping stages. By doing this together your child will become aware of everything that is available and can choose a preference in terms of recipe. Your child will enjoy having a say in what your family eats, and you can make a challenge out of trying new types of food.

A similar approach can be used for fruit: take time to explore the supermarkets and –talk to your child about all the different types of fruit that exist. Make it a challenge to try as many fruits as possible and listen to what your child says about each one. When they tell you what they like, you could start a game in which you could include fruit in different forms like cereal, fruit bowls or make your own ice-lolly.  

Recipes

Start 4 Life can provide you lots of interesting, inexpensive and simple recipes for your baby or toddler. Change 4 Life provides the same quality recipes but for children 1 years and older.  

Food shopping

We can understand that it is not possible for many parents, but try and use any opportunity to involve your children in the food shop, as this will could give them an idea of where their meals are coming from and it can also spark an interest in a particular food item that they like the look of. The supermarket will open their eyes to many new products, encouraging them to try more, whilst having a hand in the decision making. Sometime fresh fruit and vegetables can be expensive, frozen fruit and vegetable have the same healthy effect and can cost less.

Cooking

For fast meal menus and recipes why not visit the Change 4 Life recipe section, where you'll find a lot of suggestions to try out as a family. It's worth cooking in bulk too because this means you will have home-made ready meals available for super quick healthy dinners. There are many stages to cooking a meal and you can get the whole family involved by dividing the cooking into different parts.

Mealtimes

It is important to maintain regular meal times so that your child becomes used to eating at certain times around the day. There are many options for healthy snacks inbetween main meals including carrot sticks, nuts and fruit.

Anything about diet well-being?

Fussy eating (not just for toddlers). We already a page which covers fussy eating - link to this or copy the info over?

School meals can be a great start for a nutritional diet

Being active

Encouragement and motivation

Exercise needn't be getting your child to go swimming or running, so think about which activities your child enjoys more - are there any day-to-day activities that you could turn into a fun form of exercise (that gets your heart rate up for 10 minutes or more at a time) for everyone to enjoy together? Here are some suggestions for 10 minute exercise routines:

10 Minute Shake Up Games: Change4Life and Disney have teamed up to bring you play-along games inspired by your favourite Disney and Pixar characters. These 10-minute bursts of fun will really get your kids moving and count towards the 60 active minutes they need every day.

Whilst you might be focused on getting your child to school as quickly as possible via car for example, the walk there and back is a simple form of exercise which can help your child (and you!) reach your 60 minutes of activity a day. 

It's important to let them try different things so they can find something they like. Try and understand which forms of exercise they enjoy and encourage them to continue with these and look for further opportunities to develop their interest like joining a local team or an afterschool club. All forms of exercise and sport are great for a child and you should motivate and celebrate any progress or developments they make.

Promoting confidence

Doing sport is not only healthy for the body, it can have a great impact on confidence and well-being; above all it can be a lot of fun! It is important to support your child in trying out different sports and be encouraging whenever they start playing. Try and promote the feel-good factor as much as possible. 

Something about body positivity

PE

Children need to be active for at least 60 minutes in total each day but also need to reduce the time they spend sitting. PE sessions will offer different sport types so be attentive to what your child has done each session and what they have particularly enjoyed. You can see if they would like to continue some of their favourite sports outside of school or you can find out if your school offers afterschool activities.  

Using the community (Parks and green spaces)

Try and engage with other families in your neighbourhood and find out what activities they do. This could be a useful way to gain ideas whilst giving your children opportunities to make friends and partake in shared activities. Local authority websites have parks and free activities that are available.

 

 

 

 

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