Ideas for Maintaining Healthy Weight

Weight management is about more than controlling your self-indulgence or having enough will power.

Children and adults can become obese due to:

• Health problems and medications
• Genetics and culture
• Types of food selections
• Lack of activity

Here are a few ideas for managing your family’s eating habits:

• Limit food choices, but no pressure.
• Give choices of healthy foods.
• Post on the refrigerator ideas for healthy snacks (use pictures with young children).
• Provide lower calorie foods that are filling, such as soups or raw vegetables.
• Provide foods with fat such as olives, cheese, or nuts (fats are more filling) along with lower calorie vegetables for snacks.
• Give water instead of sugary drinks and soda.
• Don’t encourage children to eat after they say they are full or want to leave the table.
• Plan family walks and movement activities.
• When watching TV, have your child march around the living room during every commercial—you can even give them a chart and a treat (nonfood) when they have marched a certain number of times!

All of us have little habits and routines we follow or family traditions that could contribute to weight problems. One habit, tradition or food is not going to cause weight problems, but each one adds up, and if there are too many that are less healthy, weight problems occur. For instance, having a large piece of pie and ice cream at Thanksgiving dinner probably won’t affect your weight. But if on Thanksgiving Day you eat all day and have several large pieces of pie, cake, ice cream, dressing, and other fattening foods, you may gain weight.

IN-HOME ACTIVITY

Healthier Traditions and Routines Game

1. In addition to the game cards and game board, you will need a token for each player (buttons, small toys, colored pieces of paper, etc.) and a die.
2. Print the game board and game cards.
3. Cut out the game cards and place them in a stack, upside down next to the game board.
4. Place the player tokens at the start square on the game board.
5. Everyone rolls the die and the person who rolls the lowest number draws a game card from the stack, answers the question and moves.
6. The person to the left goes next.
7. The first person to finish is the winner.

Healthier Traditions and Activities Games

Don’t forget to journal!

What are three things you can change in your routine this week to provide better nutrition and/or more activity for your family?