Teaching Kids to Eat Healthy, NOT to Diet

As a homeschooling mom I spend most of my online time blogging about that at Special Connection Homeschool.  Well, we recently had some issues where my daughter was wanting to copy some of my calorie counting activities.  Knowing that it is important not to let children get obsessed about their weight, I decided to try to find some ways to get her involved while keeping it positive and focused on the right things.  Below is the blog I posted about some of the ideas we came up with.

Healthy Choices: Eating Right and Exercise

I am one of those moms who has struggled with her weight most of the time.  Before Gess was born I had actually lost weight and kept it off for 5 years.  Then I got pregnant again.  It's a story many mothers are familiar with.  It took me 9 years to get the weight off, but 2 years ago I did it!   I actually blogged about my journey and shared some tips at Lori's Say on Weight Loss, but I got too busy to keep up with it.

I am still in a weight loss club.  It's called TOPS which stands for Take Off Pounds Sensibly.  I think having that scale to be accountable to every week has helped me maintain the weight loss these last 2 years.  While in maintenance mode I don't always have to track what I eat, but I try to do so whenever I find myself struggling to stay withing my goal.  I also do it when we have contests or programs at TOPS that require it.  It's good to check yourself from time to time.

Anyway, so what does this have to do with homeschooling Gess? Well, the other day I found her with a notebook and pencil and she said was writing down her "calories."  I also noted that she had written her name at the top of my food journal page and checked off a box.  It was cute, but it also got me thinking that it was important to address this topic with her for a couple of reasons.

1.  Gess is at a healthy weight and I don't want her to be obsessed with counting calories or watching what she eats, especially at a young age.  Even when a child is overweight they need to focus on making healthier food choices rather than "losing weight."  You never want to encourage a child to "diet" but you do want them to eat healthier and become more active. 

2. I like that Gess sees me using tools to help me make wise decisions about what and how much I eat as well as how much I exercise, so I do want her to be a part of what I am doing.  I just want to be sure she does it in a healthy and responsible way.  So to do that I came up with the following chart:

Instead of checking off a box for every 100 calories she eats (like I do) I am going to have her check off when she has had a serving of healthy foods.  I want her to aim for 2 fruits, 2 vegetables, 2 protein and 2 dairy per day.  This morning she checked off her dairy and fruit after eating a yogurt parfait she made for breakfast.

You might notice that I also made a check box for each 30 minutes of exercise she does.  Of course she's a kid so by that I do not mean a workout video (though she actually enjoys those) or "exercise" but rather, active play.  Swimming, gymnastics, playing ball, any sport, going for a walk, dancing, or just some time at the play ground.  (Bike riding is great too, but Gess still doesn't do that very well.)  You get the idea.  Something to make sure that she hasn't spent her day do nothing but sitting indoors on the computer (which she loves) or watching TV (which she doesn't really do that much).

Gess is actually a very active girl and this box wasn't necessary to encourage her to exercise but I want her to see now that it is something she should always strive to do, even when she is older.  I am hoping this will make her see that exercise means just having active fun, rather than thinking of it as hard work.  Maybe then, even as an adult she will be mindful to get out and enjoy the outdoors in an active way.

Gess is also a fairly healthy eater.  She still remembers the Food Guide Pyramid study we did a few years ago (before it changed to ChooseMyPlate) and will still randomly talk about the category of a food while she is eating it.  She is not a big fan of vegetables though, so I am hoping this will help her to eat more of those.  Maybe by saying, "but you have to check off that you ate your healthy vegetables" will help her get through the serving.

Speaking of ChooseMyPlate.gov, it is a good resource to go if you want to try to do something similar to this with your kids.  They have different serving suggestions for kids based upon gender and ages.  I don't think my chart follows their exact pattern, but as I said, Gess is already eating fairly healthy and maintaining a good weight and BMI so we are just focusing on keeping that up.  If you have a child who is really struggling with weight, they have some good tools to use and will give you ideas on where to start.

So, while Gess might not be ready to make choices like this:

She does make choices like this:

And while I once caught her doing this (that's a treadmill she is laying on).

I'm not worried because she does plenty of this.

10 Tools For Weight Loss Success

These are the tools I used to help me reach and maintain my KOPS status.

1. Calculate Caloric Intake – In order to monitor your daily food intake you must first determine how many calories you need to eat in order to lose weight. To calculate that you can multiply 7 by each pound of weight. That will give you a good starting point. You should not, however, exceed over 2000 calories per day. I started my weight loss by simply subtracting 200 calories from the daily recommended allowance which started me at 1800. When I would stop having losses I would subtract another 200 calories. The lowest amount I ate was 1400-1500 per day.

2. Know Your Serving Size – When counting calories be sure you are eating the correct portion size. I read every label and measured everything. Each portion of meat, cereal, snacks and sides went on the scale or in a measuring cup. A 2 oz mistake can be a costly 150 calories!

3. Eat Lots of Fiber and Protein – These both make you feel fuller, longer. A bowl of cereal is about the same amount of calories as a bowl of Weight Control Oatmeal, but the significant amount of difference in the protein and fiber means that one will hold me over to lunch and the other will make me want to snack and end up eating more calories in the long run.

4. Make Each Calorie Count – When you are down to 1400 calories you really want to eat things that are not only satisfying but filling. This is when it must become a lifestyle change rather than a diet. If you simply deprive yourself to lose weight you won't sustain the weight loss. To make each calorie count make better choices. A 4 oz. Boneless, skinless, chicken breast is 132 calories where a 4 oz. Sirloin steak is 254 calories. For half the calories you can have the same amount of protein and less fat. I have found since losing weight that I really avoid red meat, pasta and pizza because I am just not willing to waste the calories on those foods. I eat much more chicken, lean ground meat or substitute ground turkey in things like chili and casseroles.

5. Prepare and Plan – It is almost impossible to lose weight if you eat out a lot. Preparing food at home is essential. When I crave a nice juicy cheese burger I avoid the drive-through and make it at home instead. If I use 95% lean ground meat, reduced fat cheese, FF may and lots of veggies I save myself about 200 calories and it actually tastes so much better. If you find that you must eat out plan ahead what you will do. You can look up nutritional information for every restaurant online and many calorie counting books will have some restaurant info as well. I usually order a grilled chicken sandwich with honey mustard rather than mayo when eating fast food.

6. Log Your Calories – Your food diary is your best friend. Think about it, if you can't remember to log your food when you are eating it do you really think you will remember how many calories you ate at the end of the day? You have to be sure you write down each food item and how many calories it contained. I would use check boxes to visually see my caloric intake for each day.

7. Allow for Treats and Snacks – We need to have some food we enjoy if want the weight loss to be sustainable. I allow myself a bowl of 94% FF popcorn when I watch my evening television show rather than snacking on a bottomless bag of chips. I also keep 80 calorie FF pudding on hand for a desert after a meal if I want something sweet. Find what low cal options work best for you. I found that the 100 calorie cupcakes were so good I ended up eating them more often. It's best to avoid tempting treats, even when they are low cal.

8. Eat Veggies – I try to eat a vegetable with every meal. I also do not count the non-starchy veggies such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, carrots, mushrooms, onions, etc. in my daily count. So when I was eating 1400 calories a day I was not counting any of the broccoli I had with my dinner or the green beans I ate with lunch. You do however have to count any butter, dressing or other stuff you eat on or with these veggies. I always count my starchier veggies such as potatoes, corn, peas, etc.

9. Drink Plenty of Water – It is essential to drink plenty of water for good health and weight loss. Drinking water before a meal and between meals can help ease some hunger pains and keep you from snacking.

10. Exercise – It is just as important to burn calories as it is to eat less of them. Whenever I started to reach a plateau I would know that it was time to increase my level of exercise. I made sure that I exercised 3-5 times per week for about 30-45 minutes a day, although when I first started I only lasted about 15-20 minutes per day. The trick is to find a way to keep it fun and motivating. I also found that if I exercised at the times I was more vulnerable to snacking I would end up snacking a lot less because I never felt like eating right after a good work out.

This may sound like a lot of stuff to remember, but it really is not that difficult and it made the world of difference for me. On May 10^th of this year I reached my goal and I have maintained it ever since! I have only been over goal once and only be a ½ pound and I have never been outside of my 10 pound leeway.

Once you reach your goal and can start adding calories back into your diet be sure to do it slowly and make good choices about what foods you add in. You want to make sure you don't get back into bad habits. I generally still limit my snacks and sweets and continue to eat lots of fruits and veggies and leaner meats. While I am now able to indulge myself from time to time I have learned that a treat tastes a whole lot better when it remains just that, a treat.

To sum it all up all you need to really do is eat the correct amount of calories each day and exercise. If you do that right you too will reach your weight loss goal. You may not get there in a hurry but you will be able to maintain it for a lifetime.

The Biggest Loser: The Workout Video

When I first started to make exercise an integral part of my lifestyle, I had trouble finding something that didn't drive me absolutely crazy. You have to agree, walking on a treadmill several times a week gets really old, really fast. While Richard Simmons is an exercise icon and helped me out many moons ago, I just can't hear or watch another Sweating to the Oldies video. Trying to find modern exercise tapes was also discouraging. I am sorry, but I am a conservative, 42 year old woman and I don't do Latin dance moves or worse yet, Hip Hop very well. Sure, they look so cute on the screen but that doesn't come naturally to me. I just wanted something like the old Richard Simmons tapes. Not disco dancing and funky music, but REAL people, doing REAL exercises.

About that time I got into a conversation on exercise and weight loss with some ladies at church. One of them was doing and exercise video form the Biggest Loser. She was currently watching the show for the first time and they were sharing a bit about it with me. Having never seen an episode, I was certainly willing to give it a try. I went home and added the Biggest Loser: The Workout to my Netflix Que and waited for it to arrive.

From the first time I put it in I was really glad I did. There on the screen were real people doing sensible exercises and each one of them had a weight loss to show for it. These are exercises anyone can do! After the first day my husband even started doing them with me. That was a big clue there that this was not some dorky exercise video. If he can tolerate it, anyone can! It wasn't long before I purchased my own copy of the video. I am now also a fan of the show The Biggest Loser as it inspires me to see how much work these people put in to shed those pounds.

This particular video - Biggest Loser: The Workout has 4 different routines as well as a warm up and cool down segment that I do each time I workout. I started with the Low Intensity and did that for quite some time before attempting any others. The next one I tried was Tone and Sculpt, then on to High Intensity and then finally, I braved the Boot Camp workout. Now I change it up depending on my mood, the time and how much or what type of exercise I want to do. This is a great workout video that I highly recommend. I will be trying some of their other videos soon.

Below is an excerpt to show you what it's like. This is not an endorsement for the place that is advertising it as I know nothing about them. I got mine for just under $9 from Walmart.com but the NBC Store currently has it on sale for $8.11.

Tracking Exercise Progress

Exercise is a vital component to a healthy lifestyle. If you do not implement a regular exercise routine into your daily life, you will struggle to lose weight and will not be able to maintain it if you do lose it. Exercise needs to be a regular part of any healthy lifestyle. One way to help yourself maintain consistency is to keep track of how often you exercise. I have a TOPS Tracker that I use that keeps track of my weight loss and physical activity. Each time I exercise I jot down what day of the week it is and what duration and/or distance I completed. While that works alright for me, I really prefer to see my accomplishments on a larger scale. So what I did was find a calendar program that allows me to put in whatever data I choose. I made this calendar My Workout Journal.


Now I can view my progress in a monthly view and have an overall feel for how much exercise I am getting a week (this calendar has other view options as well).

My goal is 3 hours a week over 4-5 days. I usually end up with 2 hours and 45 minutes as my average. That is working really well for me and I am seeing results so I am pleased with that. I would eventually like to see more, but the realities of being a busy homeschooling housewife and mother makes it hard for me to find a consistent time each week that I can exercise. Therefore a journal is imperative to keep me accountable to myself and make sure I am making the time I need each week.

While this particular calendar program at Calendars.net is public, you have to give the URL for anyone else to be able to access it. There are several other calendar options you can choose from that are not public. My Google email account comes with one but I wanted something I was more willing to share publicly so I could be accountable to all of you as well as myself. There are also several sites online that let you keep track of various other weight loss data too. Choose whatever works best for you. The important thing is that you use something to make sure that you keep track of the amount of exercise you are getting.

If you notice I have offered access to view my calendar on the side bar of my blog. Look for the exercise image and click on it to see just how much exercise I have been getting in!

Counting Calories

The first thing one must do when they decide to lose weight is figure out how. What diet plan or weight loss program will you follow? I really do not like to use the word "diet" because we should be changing our lifestyle, but the truth is that in order to lose weight we do need to cut back more than if we were just eating to maintain our current weight. We have to do something. I have basically tried two different methods to lose weight over the years; counting calories and following the Weight Watchers point system. I will discuss my experience with Weight Watchers in another thread, but in this one I want to discuss the method I am using this time, which is counting calories.

One of the greatest benefits of counting calories is that it is an inexpensive and simple way to lose weight. Since I was starting on my own without anyone to guide me I had to sort of hit and miss in order to figure out where to start my daily caloric intake. Since the average recommended daily allowance seems to be 2000 I decided to start at 1800. I was not really losing anything at that amount so I cut it back 100 more calories and kept doing that until I started to lose weight. I began to see a difference at 1600 but eventually that too seemed to taper off. So basically all I did was eat the number of calories that seemed to help me lose weight. If I had a couple of weeks with very minimal or no weight loss I would then cut back 100 more calories from there. (The amount of calories you need is reduced as your weight is also reduced so the amount of calories you eat does need to be adjusted as you lose more weight.) I am now currently eating 1400 calories a day and I am still seeing a steady loss at this amount, especially since I am also following a consistent exercise regiment as well.

Since having muddled through this on my own I found a really great reference that tells you exactly how to calculate how many calories you should be eating when attempting to lose weight. It came from the Biggest Loser Complete Calorie Counter Book that I ordered to help me calculate my caloric intake. At the beginning of the book they spell out their plan which says:

The Biggest Loser Diet calls for 7 calories per pound of current body weight until you reach your target weight. (If you weigh over 300 pounds, count 300 as your starting weight for this formula. Likewise, count 150 pounds as your starting weight if you currently weigh less than 150 pounds). 12 calories per pound will usually maintain your target body weight.

When following these calculations that put me close to 1300 calories. Since I am still having steady losses at 1400 I have not yet gone to 1300 but at least this gave me a general sense of how many calories I should be eating. I am not really trying to get to my goal weight in a hurry, I am more interested in a steady, slower, but consistent weight loss. Since currently 1400 calories is doing the trick that's what I will eat.

The hardest part of counting calories is calculating the calories when you are cooking a meal at home. It's really easy to look at the label of a boxed meal, can of soup, or TV dinner but it's difficult to figure out how many calories are in that casserole dish you made. That is where calorie counter books come in really handy. You used to be able to find these at the checkout of the grocery store, but I had the hardest time finding one this time. That is why I went online to buy one, and even then, I did not seem to find that many. I ended up purchasing the The Biggest Loser Complete Calorie Counter Book from Wal-Mart for $4.00. This is my main tool for counting calories. However, the book is not as complete as I would like it to be, so sometimes I just have to surf online for the information that I seek.

One site that I found I use is the Calorie Chart which has foods sorted alphabetically. They usually have most everything I am looking for, but I am not sure how accurate it is. However it seems to have served me well so far.

There are other sites as well, all you have to do is search for them. The point is that you need to tabulate all the ingredients in a recipe. After you have tabulated the amount of the total for the dish, divide it into servings to find the amount of calories for each one. This can be a bit of work at times, but if you write down the total calories for the entire dish plus the per serving calorie cost on your recipe card or in your calorie counter book you will only have to do it once. I even tabulated the amount for the Christmas fudge I made and wrote that down on the cards I handed out with it. It certainly was fattening fudge and knowing the calories made me decide to only eat a half a piece! This information is important to know before we put anything into our mouths.

While we need to watch how many calories go into our body, we do need to pay attention to other nutritional information as well. If you look for things that are lower in fat for instance, not only will you find a more healthier food, you will find that you will get fuller when eating them because your serving size tends to be larger. For instance, you can eat a much larger helping of chicken then you can beef. While 4 ounces of a boneless, skinless chicken breast is 132 calories, a 4 oz. sirloin steak is 254 calories. When you only get about 400 calories a meal, you want to make every calorie count.

Other tools that are helpful to have on hand for accurate calorie counting is a food scale. I have a digital food scale that measures my serving size in both grams and ounces so I know exactly what size and how many calories the serving on my plate is. You can pick those up at your local retail store or just about anywhere online. They are not that expensive and very beneficial to counting calories.

There is one other adjustment that I have made. There are certain vegetables that are considered "free" in Weight Watchers. You can eat things like carrots, broccoli, lettuce, celery, cabbage, green beans, etc and not count them at all. I still do this, even though they do have calories in them. So far this has not kept me from losing weight, so I will continue to do that. You may decide to count them if you want, it's up to you. The important thing to remember is that while the vegetable itself is free, what you add to it is not. The vegetables in a salad may be free, but you must count the calories in the dressing, eggs, cheese, bacon bits, etc. that you add to it. The green beans are free, but you count any butter you put on them. Broccoli is free, but count the cheese if you add any to it. A carrot is free, but not the ranch you dip it in. Only the vegetable is free. Also, not all vegetables are free. Extra starchy ones like corn and peas are not. Use common sense here. I may try to compile a list of free foods in the future.

To recap and to provide some other helpful advice I will close with some tips to remember when counting calories.

Tips to Remember:

Calculate the amount of calories per day you should start with - Use the formula above from the Biggest Loser Calorie Counter Book (7 calories per pound if you weigh between 150-300 pounds) or simply start at under 2000 and keep adjusting until you see results.

Serving Size - Be sure that you only eat the amount of food that is in a serving size. Do not count a 6 ounce piece of chicken breast as a 4 ounce portion size. Look at the serving size on every label and know how much a serving is.

Measure everything - In order to be sure your serving size is accurate, measure everything.

Prepare food at home - It's almost impossible to lose weight if you eat out too much. You can control the size of your portion and what goes into your food when you make it yourself. When I crave a hamburger I make one at home out of the 95% lean ground beef and use my light or fat free mayo, low fat cheese instead of the high calorie content you get from a fast food joint. I usually save about 300 calories per sandwich and it tastes a whole lot better.

Log your calories - You must write down everything you eat and the amount of calories that were in it. If you don't write it down you are bound to forget some things and risk eating too many calories.

Plan Ahead - If you are going out to eat plan ahead. If it's a restaurant look up their information online before you go and know what the calories are before hand. Also take your calorie counter book with you so you can figure it out on your own. The BL Calorie Counter Book does have some restaurants listed in the back.

Allow for some snacks - Denying yourself any goodies will only make you want to gorge on them later. I allow myself to have a couple of sweets when I want them, I just count the calories. I have found fat free or sugar free pudding cups to be a great source of sweets. For just 70-80 calories you can have your chocolate craving fulfilled and still lose weight. Also have healthy snacks available during times when you know you will be weak. I love to munch during my evening television shows so I pop some 94% fat free butter popcorn which costs 100 calories. Keep fruits or healthy protein bars on hand when you need an afternoon pick me up.

Eat protein and fiber - Protein and Fiber are essential for a healthy diet but they also help you feel full longer. Be sure you have protein with every meal and that your diet consists of plenty of fiber as well. You will find that you will be less likely to be hungry between meals if you do.

Eat plenty of veggies - A well balanced diet is essential and getting your fruits and vegetables is a must. There are some vegetables that I even consider as free food. They say you burn more calories eating celery than are actually in the celery itself. So eat vegetables with every meal to help you fill that void without having to count that many calories if any at all.

Exercise - Yes, I know this is just about counting calories but it's just as important to burn calories off as it is to take them in. Regular exercise will help you lose weight, get your body in shape and make you feel better. I have personally found that now that I exercise regularly I am a lot less likely to snack between meals.