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Health Tips for Young Lawyers

Keep It Simple: Promoting Healthy Eating Habits for Children

One of the challenges of being a young professional is balancing both your health and wellness along with your child’s. Making food decisions for your child that promote healthy development are not always easy to make. The best piece of advice is to keep it simple. We unintentionally complicate wellness when it isn’t necessary.

Consider the following suggestions to keep your child’s wellness simple:

1. Encourage your child to maintain a consistent schedule with meals and snacks. When practiced the majority of time, this helps to maintain hunger and hormone balance. What does this schedule look like? Ensure your child consumes breakfast consisting of a carbohydrate and a protein within two hours of waking. From there, offer or make available a healthy snack within 3-4 hours. The snack should be sufficient to hold over hunger until a meal is consumed. The rest of the day should follow a similar pattern with food consumed approximately every 3-4 hours, typically alternating meals and snacks. 

2. Make healthy snacks such as fruits, vegetables, whole grain crackers/tortillas/bread, and lean protein (low fat dairy/lean cuts of meat/eggs) readily available to your child. Encourage the consumption of these foods by placing them on the center shelf of the refrigerator or pantry at eye level for your child. You do not have to throw away the sweet treats, just place them somewhere else in the kitchen so that it is not the first item seen when your child is searching for a snack or meal. Consider portioning cuts of fruit or vegetables or whole grain crackers into snack bags for your child to quickly grab as he or she rushes out the door for school or extracurricular events.

3. Include your child in meal preparation. This will teach your child invaluable cooking skills that will help them maintain a healthy lifestyle as they enter their adult years. When one has the skills and competence to prepare meals at home, it removes the intimidation factor of cooking at home and decreases dining out on larger and less healthy options. Utilize this concept when also doing your regular grocery shopping, and use this as another teaching opportunity for healthy skills.

4. Engage in family meals most days of the week. This creates an avenue to discuss your child’s interests, activities, struggles, and victories, ultimately creating a deeper bond with your child. It also constructs a more open line of communication for you and your child to address emotional wellness, not just the physical health.

When possible, restricting certain foods or placing focus on your child’s weight should be something a parent avoids. Implementing the above recommendations along with encouragement of healthy food practices, not “good” or “bad” foods, are the main ingredients in keeping your child healthy now and in the years to come. 

-EMMY LU TRAMMELL, MS, RDN, LD, is Registered Dietitian Nutritionist in Lubbock, Texas, who provides nutrition counseling to those who struggle with eating disordered behaviors. While pursuing her PhD in Nutritional Sciences from Texas Tech University, she frequently engages in community outreach to educate others on healthy nutrition practices.