Pack a Lunch that
Won't Pack on the Pounds
With the back-to-school season here, it’s time to start thinking about nutritious bag
lunches! Make sure your children eat right when they’re away from home:
- Place a few spoonfuls of DinoShake® in a shaker to mix with milk for a nutritious
addition to lunch.
- Let your kids participate in lunch preparation, reading the nutrition labels to you.
- Discourage kids from trading their nutritious
lunch items for unhealthy snacks.
- Ask your kids to bring home anything
they don’t eat. Much better to find out
they don’t like apples than to have
that “apple a day” go straight to the
trash can.
- Slip encouraging notes into the
bag of a child who is self-conscious
about weight.
- Include Thermojetics® High-Protein, Low-Carb healthy snacks in their lunch bag.
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 Growing Healthy Bodies - Overcoming Remote-Control Lifestyles
In the U.S. Surgeon General’s recent report, he outlines two basic factors not only
contributing to our expanding waistlines, but to our children’s as well–the foods we
eat and our inactivity. We need to commit to improving not only our own health, but
also the well-being of our children. Making Herbalife part of our daily schedules is time
well spent on growing healthy bodies. While most adults need to obtain and maintain
a healthy body, we also need to make sure we are managing our children’s healthy
growth and with Herbalife products, you can do just that.
The hard facts
Some may say our children are already
healthy and that they don’t need
to worry about bulging bodies. But
reports suggest just the opposite: Our
children are fat, sedentary and eat
the wrong foods. In fact, the Surgeon
General’s report states that the
prevalence of overweight children
has nearly tripled in the past three
decades.
You may have children or you
may not, but these findings reflect on
the greater society we live in. During
the past 100 years, we have lost
control of our food sources and our
lifestyles have become increasingly
more sedentary.
Comparing now vs. then
Let’s examine how physically easy our
lives have become:
- When I was a child, we had
to turn a knob on our television to
change channels. Now, we have
remote controls. This modern luxury
has taken away the potential to get up
and change the channel, burning up to
five calories.
- Our cars used to have roll-up
windows which, when wound vigorously,
could burn up to two calories.
- We used to have manually
operated garage doors but, no longer.
Most of us now have remote-operated
door openers.
These luxuries have taken away
opportunities for us to use our muscles
and burn calories throughout the day.
Decreases in our physical demands
have led to an increasingly overweight
population.
Children today are growing up
with these luxuries. Additionally, with
television, video games and computers,
children are much more inactive today
than at any other time in history. In
the early 1960s, children were active
about 4.5 hours each day thanks
to walking or riding bikes to school,
recess, after-school sports programs
and playing. Today’s children are
active less than 30 minutes a day. It’s
no wonder our children are struggling
to maintain healthy weights!
Inactivity = obesity
Inactivity combined with our food
today is a lethal combination! These
two factors contribute to an increasing
percentage of obese children. Obesity
is one of the major risk factors
associated with many of our chronic
diseases. We may think that chronic
disease is an effect of the aging
process. But, never before have we
seen such a large percentage of
overweight children. In fact, 10 to
15 percent of American children
are seriously overweight. If this rate
continues, we could start seeing a
higher percentage of these chronic
diseases affecting younger people.
Healthy eating habits on the decline
So what about the food we eat
today?
- We no longer grow our own
foods, we rely on outside sources to
provide them to us.
- Food is harvested green, then
shipped long distances and stored for
months. When it finally makes its way to
the grocery stores, it is not as nutrientrich
as when it was first harvested.
Reports also point out that we are
going out to eat more often now than
ever before. And when we go out to
eat, we have a tendency to eat foods
we would not normally eat at home,
often loaded with extra calories.
It seems fast-food places have
appeared on every corner of the
planet!
- When I was a kid, fast-food
restaurants existed, but we did not
frequent them nearly as much as we
do today.
- Today, on average, children
eat
fast food four times a week!
- The majority of fast foods
are high in fat, high in salt, high in
cholesterol, low in vitamins, low in
minerals and low in fiber! This is exactly
the opposite of what is recommended
to grow healthy bodies.
Reality check
In an ideal world, children would not
eat fast food at all. But with the media
influences today, children get a warped
view of what good nutrition is all about.
They whine and beg to go to fast-food
restaurants. They think it is a treat.
They are happy when they get their
kid’s meal, complete with toy.
I challenge all of us to change
the concept of going to fast-food
restaurants for our children. Don’t
promise to take the kids out for fast
food as a treat for doing their chores or
getting good grades. Instead, choose
something more healthy.
Preparing our kids for good health
Let’s make an effort to nurture healthy
lifestyles that will lead to healthy habits.
As adults, it’s up to us to work with
our kids and help them enjoy activity
and nutritious foods. Here are just a
few ideas:
- Take walks with your children.
- Enroll them in a sports program
and take time to watch them when
they compete.
- Play an active role in their lives.
- Become active yourself. Lead
by example.
Again, I know that most of us
work and our time is limited, but we
must be responsible for helping our
children grow healthy bodies. And
by setting good examples for your
children, you will increase your health
potential, too.
Getting kids involved
As far as the food side of the equation
is concerned, teach your children
responsibility by letting them prepare
one meal a week. That way, each
child can create a meal, learn to read
recipes and prepare the food. Even
the very young can get involved in this
way.
- Let small children stir.
- Take your children to the grocery
store with you and nurture interest
by letting them pick a vegetable one
week and a meat/protein the next.
- As the child grows, so does the
responsibility. Around age six, start
introducing nutrition information.
- As the child’s reading abilities
improve, help him or her understand
food labels and balance the meal with
a vegetable, protein source and a grain
product.
With early involvement in meal
planning and food content, children will
grow up with a better understanding of
how food not only pleases the taste
buds, but also feeds the body.
Herbalife can assist us in helping
to grow healthy bodies through our
great children’s products. DinoShakes®, Kindermins®, Dinomins® and other Herbalife products taste great, are easy
to take and can help provide children
with essential nutrients.
Activity and nutritious foods play a big part in growing healthy bodies–a
bigger part than most people realize- so we should try to focus on these
essentials. I always say in training that we are not “HerbaDiet,”
we are HerbaLIFE! Herbalife is for family, for life!
As adults,
it’s up to
us to work
with our kids
and help
them enjoy
activities
and nutritious
foods.
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| * These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or
prevent any disease.
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