My grandfather was in the medical corps in World War One. In his diaries he tells the story of two soldiers in the ward (actually a tent) at the same time; one had a ‘cushy wound on the buttock’ while the other was seriously wounded, his body smashed in many places. No-one expected him to live. But despite his injuries he was positive, kind and concerned about others in the ward. He recovered. In contrast, the guy with the flesh wound was fearful, negative and worried that he might die. In the end, he did.

This is a dramatic and tragic true story of how our thoughts and attitude affect our physical health. I’m sure most of us can relate to it. I once had to say good-bye to my husband at the airport, knowing he wouldn’t be back for nine months. At the time I was recovering from a cold. Within a few hours of that tearful farewell the cold returned with a vengeance and dragged on for another month as I struggled with my emotions.

I know a woman who had struggled with being overweight for many years. One day her sister sat with her and said sorry on behalf of the whole family for the various ways they had hurt her. Within a few months this woman had joined Weight Watchers and over the next year dropped from a size 20 to a beautiful size 14 (USA size 12). Coincidence? Perhaps. But I’m not the only one who’s observed that a lot of eating problems – over-eating, under-eating or unhealthy choices – are just a symptom of an unhappy heart.

‘As a man thinks in his heart, so is he’. These words of wisdom from over 2000 years ago apply just as much today – and science bears it out. Researchers at Harvard measured the immune response of people as they watched various images. When they watched (and engaged with their emotions) scenes of Mother Theresa their immune factors increased. Watching war scenes had the opposite effect.

So much of our physical health starts with our thoughts, and not just the thoughts in our head, but how we really feel in our heart. What emotions do you mostly feel: love, joy, gratefulness, peace? Or anger, fear, worry, boredom and unforgiveness? Even if you know what foods you should be eating to lose weight or keep healthy, your emotions could be sabotaging your most determined attempts.

Before you beat yourself up for not being self-disciplined enough, take some quiet time-out – all by yourself – to check your thoughts and emotions. It may be the key to good health you have been searching for.

… continued from yesterday’s post

4. Eat Breakfast

Eating breakfast is one of the most important habits to develop. Even if it is just a banana and a glass of milk, teach your children that some food in their stomach kick-starts the body for the day making it easier to control weight and giving them energy for work, study and play.

5. Listen to your tummy

“If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding.” Children are born with the ability to stop eating when they are full. But we sometimes unintentionally over-ride this natural regulating mechanism when we make them finish their meal. I do encourage kids to take a few extra bites of the nutritious bits of the meal if they have left too much. If they insist they are full, I let them off – but they don’t get dessert.

Teach older children to listen to their tummy and ask themselves both quantity and quality questions: “Is my tummy full? Will I feel sick if I eat those extra biscuits? Is this what my body really needs right now?” You are training children to be aware of the many cues around them enticing them to eat, even if they are not hungry. Just because they are at the movies or passing the food hall at the shopping centre, do they really need to eat? If an advertisment shows a gorgeous model eating chocolate biscuits or a famous sportsman eating fast food, ask them if they think eating that food will really help them look like that model or be as fast as that sportsman. Do they eat that stuff in real life? What else do they do to look or perform like that? Will eating a certain food or drink give them the same lifestyle and friends as on the advert? If the answer is yes, are they the type of friends they really want?

6. Sit at the table to eat

There’s a time to play, a time to work, a time to rest and a time to eat. All too often the ‘time to eat’ is all the time! We balance dinner on our lap in front of TV, we stuff in a sandwich while continuing to work, and we grab snacks on the run. Train your children to focus on food when it’s meal time and then forget it until the next meal time. This means eating regular meals, sitting at the table – with no distractions. It not only reduces snacking, grazing and the risk of choking as you run around with food in your mouth, it also teaches social skills such as table manners, how to use a knife and fork, how to talk over a meal and patience to wait while others finish.

7. Eat Slowly

I spend my professional life telling people to slow down and enjoy their food, then find myself at home telling the kids to “hurry up and eat!” As much as we would love our children to finish their meal in minutes rather than hours, it won’t be too many years before we will be nagging those same kids to slow down and chew their food ‘properly’ rather than inhaling it. This is a good time to remind them that it takes about 20 minutes for the message to get from their stomach to their brain that they are full. So eating slowly is great for weight control. It also gives them time to chat – preferably without their mouth full!

8. Enjoy Cooking

Children are more likely to become discerning, adventurous eaters if they know how to cook. OK, we all know of overweight chefs but at the very least your future son or daughter-in-law will thank you! Give children their own apron – it’s half the fun of cooking – and let them help you in the kitchen. Buy a kids cook-book for inspiration and as they become more confident let them cook dinner once a week.

9. No routine visits to fast food outlets

As a child I used to think the kids who had fish and chips every Friday night were so lucky. As an adult I am glad this wasn’t part of my childhood training. If kids are trained to associate fast food with good feelings – as a reward for winning Saturday morning sport or as a fun family outing – what are the chances they will go to the sushi bar as adults?

10. Be a role model

Actions speak louder than words. What we teach should be what we do. Like any elite athlete, put the effort into training your children now and you are sure to reap the rewards later.

‘Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it’

As a young teenager I was in the local running club. Every Saturday it was between me and my best friend who would win the women’s race. A couple of times during the week we would go down to the club and Noel, a great runner himself, would spend hours training us to run faster. Looking back, I feel humbled by his dedication. We didn’t pay him and I don’t even remember saying thank-you.

Tonight I am watching the All Blacks, who are NZ’s fabulous national rugby team (as of this moment ranked No. 1 in the world by the IRB), play France. They know all about training – it’s hard work and it takes time. Let’s hope they trained extra hard this week!

So what’s running and rugby got to do with healthy eating? As parents, we need to train our kids to make healthy food choices. Training is more than telling. If the All Blacks coach just told the team what to do then headed home, how well do you think they would do? If we just tell our kids to eat more fruit and vegetables, is that enough? Training takes time, effort and often thankless dedication.

Follow these 10 healthy eating training tips to set your children up for life:

1. Be Adventurous

One of the best gifts you can give your kids is to train their taste-buds to enjoy many different flavours, not just sugar, fat and salt. Children may have to try a new food up to ten times before they start to enjoy it. So don’t give up too soon. Tell your children that when they try a new food, even one bite, it’s a sign that they are growing up. And praise them lots.

Tasting samples at the deli or supermarket is a fun food adventure. I once left my 4 year old with his grandmother at a deli sampling table of various oils, marinades and sauces. A few minutes later I returned to find my son excitedly dipping the last of the bread into onion jam and thyme infused olive oil! They had tried almost every sample and eaten all the bread. That deli doesn’t do samples now!

Let your child choose a new food at the supermarket. Serve it with foods they love and they may love it too.

2. Eat five or more colours a day

All the wonderful colours in fruit and vegetables come from natural plant chemicals that have super-health effects on our body. Different colours have different effects so it’s good to eat lots of different colours each day. If the only colour your children like is red tomato sauce, then this may be where to focus your training.

Get your kids to list their favourite fruit and vegetables and class them into colours. Chose which colours they want to eat at each meal through the day, and give them coloured stickers to match.

If you have fruit trees, a vegetable garden or even a few herbs, involve your children or grandchildren in planting, watering, weeding and most importantly, eating. A child may leave the peas and carrots on the plate and tell you they hate tomatoes but chances are they will at least take a little bite if they have pulled the carrot from the ground, prized the peas from their pod or popped a ‘moon squirter’ (baby tomato) in their mouth. Food tastes so much better with a fun name or if you have just plucked it from a tree, vine or bush.

3. Drink Water

Buy your children a cool water bottle or two and encourage them to take them whenever they go out. Give them only water with their meals. Keep juice and other sweet drinks as ‘sometimes’ food, not ‘everyday’ food. Juice has valuable nutrients and gives a concentrated energy boost for active, fast growing children who can’t seem to eat enough food. But the bigger picture is that we want our children to go for water when they are thirsty, not insist on some sugar sweetened drink.

Talk to them about how their body needs plenty of water for sport and their brain needs plenty of water to concentrate. Put a sponge in some water and compare it to a dried out sponge. If our brain and body are dried out, it’s no wonder we get headaches, muscle cramps, and feel sluggish at school and on the sports field.

Part 2 of this series here…

1 Ensure regular meal and snack times. Children respond best to a routine.
2 Serve child-sized amounts. Big serves of food are daunting to a little one.
3 Don’t give up on the first attempt. Children can take 8-10 tries before they like a new flavour. A child may spit out beans at 18 months and be happily dipping them in tzatziki (yoghurt with finely chopped cucumber and mint) at two and a half. Offer only one new food at a time and serve it with familiar foods.
4 Try it Raw. Some kids hate cooked vegetables but will happily munch on raw carrot sticks, cauliflower pieces, snow peas and green beans while you prepare dinner. Who knows: they may eat their daily vegetable quota (about 1 cup) before they even get to the dinner table!
5 Use shapes and colours. Cut fruit, cheese, bread and vegetables into interesting shapes such as cubes, sticks, and circles. Arrange food on the plate to look like a house, flower, or a face with grape eyes, grated cheese hair, carrot stick mouth and baby tomato nose.
6 Name it. My four-year-old recently enjoyed fish, vegetables and a pile of mashed potato because it was called “Tracey Island” from Thunderbirds!
7 No distractions. Turn off the television. Have children stop their play and sit up at the table to eat. Meal-time is for eating, not playing.
8 Check that children have not filled up on milk, fruit juice or snacks just before dinner. Milk is more like a food than a fluid – nutritious and filling. Keep it for set meal and snack times. Children who ‘live’ on milk can miss out on important nutrients because they are too full to eat other foods.
9 Have a taste-testing session. This worked amazingly well for a fruit-phobic five-year-old. Together we shopped for a variety of fruit that he thought he did not like but was prepared to grade with a tick or a cross after trying. He sat down and very seriously tasted a tiny morsel of each one. He was completely free to give it a tick or a cross. His mother and I asked his opinion of each and made if a fun game. There was no pressure on him to eat any of the fruit as it was not a meal time. To his surprise, and ours, he ended up giving a tick to almost every fruit!
10 Lead by example. Actions speak louder than words. If our regular lunch is a burger and soft drink, we can’t expect our kids to want sandwiches, fruit and water.