On To the Next Generation

Carrying the lesson from my previous post forward, what are we teaching our girls about food?  I think we have the tools we need to teach healthy eating habits: knowledge of healthy foods and portions, money and desire to buy and prepare healthy foods, and willingness to set good examples.  Did I miss anything?  Of course, we are still honing our tools.

But what about eating out?  I grew up on the extreme of eating out maybe 4 times a year.  Bethany is growing up on the opposite extreme of eating out 4 times a week.  My family dined out to have fun.  We dine out now for convenience. Obviously, I know we have to cut back.  But how do we handle eating out? Should it be a common thing?  That is not physically healthy.  Should it be rare? What are good reasons to dine out?  How often is it ok?  How do we teach our kids to handle eating out so they don’t grow up craving chicken nuggets and French fries when they are sad or stressed or want to celebrate something?

And what about junk food?  My family rarely had junk food in the house, but now we almost always have junk food in ours.  That has scaled back considerably since I’ve been on Weight Watchers again, but I’ve discovered Hershey Kisses are low in points, if only due to their size, so I keep them in the house all the time. I noticed the other day that they have become our regular afternoon snack, coupled with a granola bar.  I don’t want to banish junk food from the house, lest it becomes forbidden fruit, but we shouldn’t need a chocolate fix every day either.

So how do we avoid eating out and junk food becoming an issue for our kids?  Oh wait, I know that one! We need to develop a healthy attitude ourselves and then model it for the kids.  Now what is a healthy attitude?
Hmmm….