Feed Your Family With Love
By Emily Barr, MS,RD,CNSC – V.P of Nutritional Services and Co-creator of Ignite Your Skinny Gene Program Love your mate Our instinctive nature tells us to shower our loved one with sweet treats or rich decadent meals, all of which are loaded with an unimaginable number of calories, heart stopping saturated fats, and sweetened with sugar that could turn our blood into syrup! Our goal is to show them our undying love, not poison them with unhealthy, non-nutritive foods! Ideally we show our love through food every day, not just that special day in February. In order to love our mates the right way, we need to take a look at the big picture. Take a look at our special someone’s family history, generations before can provide us with a lot of information of their possible health risks. Heart disease, cancer, and diabetes all travel down family blood lines. Identifying the risk is the first step; next we need to modify their diet to help reduce their risk of carrying on the family disease. Heart disease – limit saturated fat, sodium, and cholesterol Cancer – limit saturated fat, alcohol, tobacco, and sun exposure Diabetes – limit intake of concentrated sweets and extra calories and fat Love our mate’s body. Over the years, extra weight may have snuck its way onto our bodies, extra pounds that may not have been present early on in our relationship. Weight gain is an indicator that the current diet situation may not quite be on target. Of course, that doesn’t change the love we have, but we do want to live long healthy lives together, so a change in lifestyle may be necessary! If you are showing your love in a healthy way every day, then the special occasion splurge is a-okay! Love your kids Our instinctive nature with our children is to feed them kid foods, peppy little animal sugary shape snacks, juices in fun containers, chocolaty flavored cereals, and cartoon character endorsed cookies. As much fun as these foods are, they are not the healthy choices that our little ones need. Our kids have the same health risks as adults (like you and your spouse), and not to mention the additional risk for obesity and type 2 diabetes growing up in this generation of excesses. Our goal as parents is to teach our children about healthy food choices and the importance of eating them at every meal and snack time. This can be a challenging venture, but over time, it only gets easier and easier as it becomes routine. We need to make healthy habits mandatory in our homes, leaving the junk foods out of the house and filling the refrigerator and your child’s plate with the healthy ones. Don’t forget that we need to model healthy eating habits. That means that everyone in the home is eating the same healthy foods, no exceptions. Of course, it seems harsh, but we are only doing this out of love. Love your dog How can we forget to show our four legged companion some love? Walking the dog is the best reward they need, which is great because it benefits us, as well! Oh yes, and don’t forget to love ourselves. Surrounding ourselves with our loved ones is the greatest gift of all. Knowing we are teaching and providing our families with healthy, nourishing foods will definitely allow us to sleep w
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