Healthy Attitudz® LLC – Let’s begin our journey together with one of the most important aspects of inspiring and educating a child on the benefits of making healthy choices. That aspect is balance. It is imperative for a child to start learning early that more than anything, being healthy is all about finding balance. As a child grows, he or she will learn to identify a balance between food and fun.
As a parent, you can help to instill this message with your child by explaining energy. The ‘energy in’ is the food they consume. The food is fuel that fills up their tanks. Explain to your child that some fuel is better and lasts longer than other fuels. For example, the energy obtained from a simple sugar snack food item such as a cookie does not provide the sustained energy that an apple provides. Try this! Here is a fun way to interact with your child to educate them on this lesson. Simply ask your child whether or not a food choice provides their growing bodies with good fuel or not so good fuel. Observe as their minds churn as they start to assess what they select before consuming it. It’s fun, try it!
The second half of the balance equation is ‘energy out’. Explain to your child that they fuel their bodies with good fuel so they can produce sustained ‘energy out’. They produce ‘energy out’ when they perform physical activities such as playing, running, skipping, jumping, and even laughing! Here is a fun way to interact with your child to educate them on this lesson. Create a simple fuel tank meter picture with numbers on it from 1 -10, where 1 means that the fuel tank is close to empty. Then, ask your child a couple of questions after they have finished playing their favorite physical activity. Simply ask your child how much ‘energy out’ they feel they created and ask them to point to the fuel meter to show you how full or empty their fuel tanks are. Again, observe their minds churn as their creative minds visualize their own inner fuel tank meters! It’s fun, try it!
Let me know how it goes!
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Below is a column I wrote related to your post called Protecting our Aspiring Athletes.
ReplyDeleteWhile watching my son’s first pre-mod football game last week I kept thinking that before I knew it, both of my boys would be participating in sports at the high school level. While I am pleased that they are interested in sports, I am a concerned about what they are being taught. Sure, they are learning all of the good things like team work, sportsmanship and responsibility, but that is not what concerns me. It is what they are seeing on a higher level. For example, a very popular major league baseball player recently sent a strong message to our young aspiring athletes-you can use illegal steroids, get caught and still be allowed to participate in the game.
In June of 2008 I read an article entitled “High school students newest victims of steroid use in sports.” When I read this article I was shocked. I saved it so that when the time was right I could show it to my boys and talk to them about this important issue. That time is now. Steroids equal danger.
Like steroids, energy drinks should be cause for concern. There are many claims that these drinks improve athletic performance. Energy drinks have become extremely popular and are being effectively marketed to all age groups, including children. I can tell you that children are paying attention to such marketing. During wrestling season my boys begged me to buy them an energy “shot”. They were convinced that if they drank it they would win all of their matches. Wrong!
Research has shown that although these types of drinks are legal, their extremely high caffeine levels can be especially harmful to a child’s health.In 2006, a study conducted by the University of Florida’s Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine analyzed the caffeine content in energy drinks and other beverages. The results were published in the March edition of the Journal of Analytical Toxicology. This specific research showed that “there are important health concerns that cannot be ignored with regards to the amount of caffeine contained in these drinks. Children should be considered vulnerable to excess caffeine. Warning labels would be prudent.”
How do we protect our children while encouraging athletic performance and teaching them safe ways to achieve this objective? Education. We need to set solid examples for our kids and help them make good choices. Asking questions and communicating the dangers of bad choices, like steroids and energy drinks, will be one of the best defenses against use.
It is important for our children to know that athletes do NOT need to compromise their health to “win the game.” A more important goal is to win life’s challenge and achieve our “personal best.” The human body is a remarkable, high-performance organism which, when fully supported to perform at optimum levels, can achieve amazing feats. No steroids or energy drinks are required.
As sports medicine advances, science seems to support a natural approach: give the body nothing more than it needs to maintain itself. Components of this maintenance include nutrition for fuel, sleep for regeneration, and anti-oxidants for intra-cellular detoxification. Athletes at every level are learning that by supporting the internal production of their own body’s master antioxidant, glutathione, they can achieve their personal best without artificial enhancements.
This is the kind of healthy approach to sports – and life – all kids should have. It is based on this approach that the only enhancement for athletic performance (and optimal health) I will ever give to my children, other than vitamins, is a natural combination of ingredients clinically proven to accelerate the body’s own production of glutathione. For more information on this supplement visit www.LookLiveFeelBetter.com
As a grandparent I now see how important it is to teach your kids at an early age about food. Weight was never a problem in our family. I guess we owe that to my dear wife and mother of our kids. We never had more than we could eat on the table, but we never left the table feeling hungry. Oh yes there were some things served that not everyone liked but they were eaten by all there. Education is a great thing and it needs to start at home.
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