Building a Framework for Healthy Eating

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This is true especially in combating the epidemic of childhood overweight and obesity. Because healthy eating is a lifestyle, it is a lifelong process and one that is best initiated from the beginning of your child's life. You can use the tips in this book to do that. But what about your older children? Don't worry—it's not too late to get started on converting their eating habits and instituting a healthy lifestyle. Get started now!

The first step is to take seriously the need for a healthier, more active lifestyle in order to prevent health problems. This requires that you educate your children and adopt healthy practices for yourself as well. That is, be a good role model. Until you've made healthy eating a part of your own lifestyle, you'll have no credibility when trying to get your kids to change.

It's impossible to tear down your family's old habits and reconstruct a healthy lifestyle all at once. Rome wasn't built in a day. Slowly build a framework for healthy eating for your family. Try achieving small, attainable goals and working toward them until they are reached. This may mean making one food change at a time, such as eating baked instead of fried potato chips. The key is to not change too much at once. Just keep going forward, whatever the pace.

More on: Healthy Meals for Families

Excerpted from:

From Raising Healthy Eaters: 100 Tips for Parents by Henry Legere, M.D. Copyright © 2004. Used by arrangement with The Perseus Books Group.

To order this book visit perseusbooksgroup.com.