Making family health a priority is essential. Parents can enhance and promote a healthy lifestyle for the kids, including providing good nutrition, plenty of physical activities, and quality sleep. Observing healthy habits helps maintain a healthy weight for the entire family, protects memory, improves brain function, and helps improve your mood. Below are activities recommended to maintain your health as a family.
Stay Active
Please make an effort to sign family members to pursue something to keep their bodies active. Add activities including yoga classes, while the children may try swimming, gymnastics, or any other sport. Trying several activities and finding the one that bests suits the family is crucial.
Have each family member choose an activity that is comfortable for all other members and pursue it together weekly. Take a bike ride, a family hike, go skating or bowling, and try freeze dancing in the house to stay active.
Kids may get up to 60-minutes of exercise every day to improve their concentration, reduce stress, and enhance sleep. Plan well for the children to establish the kind of physical activities they like and model a healthy activity. Even those that last five minutes, exercises are beneficial to the body as every minute spent on being active adds up.
Eat A Healthy Meal
Make an effort to consume a balanced diet to avoid health-related issues down the road. Whenever possible, eat as a family and only consider well-balanced meals. Minimize saturated fats and sugar intake and drink the recommended volume of water daily to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Teach the kids at an early age the importance of eating healthily and have them collect healthy foods from local grocery stores and prepare them together. Provide vegetables and fruits at every meal, but do not force the kids to consume them, but make them available. Model a healthy eating approach as kids will try it one day.
Below are tips for establishing healthy meals.
- Make an effort to eat at predictable times and minimize skipping meals
- Eat breakfast to reduce the chances of energy slumps while at school.
- Minimize the rush in the morning by packing the kids’ lunch a night before
- Eat meals with family if possible: The family routine has additional benefits for children’s emotional and physical health.
- Pick a weekend to make plans for the whole week’s meals: Take the kids to the grocery stores and get as much healthy food as possible. Preparing meals at home and meal planning helps save parents a considerable amount of money.
- Consider planning for snacks: Kids require snacks right after school, and ordering healthy snacks or preparing them at home is essential.
Get Quality Sleep
Quality sleep is essential, especially for children and parents. It is crucial to health, such as healing, concentration, proper immune function, mood, and memory. Drivers who fail to get enough sleep may cause speeding-related fatalities, which account for 26% of car crash deaths in America. Half of those fatalities are reported on roads that require all drivers to cruise at a maximum of 55 mph. Create an enabling environment in the bedroom by making such a room sleep-friendly by observing a routine sleep schedule.
Tips to enhance quality sleep
- Observe a calming bedtime routine, including reading or taking a warm bath
- Minimize caffeine intake
- Observe a routine of sleeping and waking up every single day, even on weekends
- Use the bed for sleeping only.
Schedule Regular Health Checkups
Schedule regular doctor appointments for your spouse and children. Ensure the family remains on top of vaccinations, including the flu shot. Request the family doctor regarding the best preventive screenings the family members should obtain. Secure health as a family as it sets a foundation for long-term healthy habits and minimizes risks of heart disease, obesity, cancer, stroke, or any other related health issues. Research indicates that parents may consider seeking orthodontic treatment for their kids when they are seven years old.
Kick Addictions
Parents have to be observant of this rule, especially for kids. Make screen time a privilege that is allowed after homework and chores are completed. Minimize screen time to two hours each day and keep screens away from a child’s bedroom. Family members with smoking habits have to try their best to quit the habit. A recent study indicates that almost 29% of the U.S. population spends at least 20 hours every week caring for chronically ill aged family members or friends who may have had an addiction in the past.
Have a plan to maintain your health as a family. It sets a foundation for a lifelong healthy habit and minimizes the risk of heart disease, obesity, cancer, stroke, and other health issues.
