I’m confident that I share the same desire as just about all husbands and fathers – the good health of my wife and kids. Everything is better or even possible when health is not compromised. You’ve likely experienced health issues or been around a loved one who has and so you know well how clear the importance of good health is when you are struggling with it. Keeping yourself healthy can be a challenge these days. When those closest to you are on the same page, it is a lot easier. If you are working to improve your health or want to raise healthy kids, having a unified healthy family is like a performance enhancing drug.
Whether it’s creating good habits for your kids or making a transformation yourself, adopting a TEAM approach to a healthy family stacks the deck for success. As far as children go, Fredrick Douglass captured it well with this [Tweet-worthy] quote:
It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. #healthyfamily Click To Tweet
Wanting the Best for Your Children
As a parent, it’s natural to want the best for your kids, whether that be the top education, opportunities with music, art, personal development, professional success, athletic achievement, resilience, health or happiness.
Often parents will make sacrifices for this to be possible. We get it. We’ve done it. Sometimes these sacrifices may go too far and take a serious toll on one or both parents.
You might be thinking “Whoa! That’s what being a good parent is all about!”
Sure, some sacrifices are necessary. Bree and I are still trying to master several consecutive nights of uninterrupted sleep 9 years later.
Yes, you probably need more money to feed more mouths and clothe growing bodies which all requires some sacrifice.
BUT…
The in-flight safety announcement no one actually listens to, has some transferable wisdom:
The same reason they say this on the plane is the same reason it is important in life. If we give and give and give and don’t take care of ourselves, we run into trouble. When we can’t be productive or function well, then we will not be able to be there for our kids, our spouse and we become the burden.
So, instead of getting into a tug of war between balancing your health and your children’s, embrace the concept of TEAM as a success strategy for creating and sustaining a whole healthy family.
TEAM as a Success Strategy for a Whole Healthy Family
When you unify care of your children and care of yourself into a whole family approach that’s when the magic happens.
A TEAM strategy applies 'united we stand, divided we fall' to a whole healthy family's success #healthyfamily Click To Tweet
TEAM is an acronym
- Together
- Empowerment
- Accountability
- Motivation
Together:
All family members are making a conscious effort together – for themselves and to support everyone else. As Jim Rohn said: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
You might not spend the most time with your family members but if you share a house then you influence each other quite a lot.
If no one at home is bringing junk food into the house, there’s less temptation present and less willpower needed. Also, if everyone is into being active then it is easier to stay fit.
You actually have opportunities to blend family time with fitness, which is like a healthy Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Instead of (processed, low-grade) chocolate and (fake, 1o artificial ingredient), peanut butter being “great” together, you get (bonding) family time and (vitality-boosting) fitness, which are truly great together!
Take Home Action – Strive to have a homemade family dinner together at least three times a week. If you really want to go for the gold, get everyone involved in prep. Kids can easily set the table and usually chop some veggies. This creates buy-in and is great for bonding.
In fact, family dinners are a great strategy to improve kids overall well-being and future success.
Your child may be 35% less likely to
engage in disordered eating, 24% more
likely to eat healthier foods and 12% less
likely to be overweight (Hammons &
Fiese, 2011). All three of these statistics
are attached to one family ritual—shared
mealtimes.
Empowerment:
When you’re part of a team, which a family is, you gain strength. You do need to act like a team for this to happen, though. When you do, you’ll make an extra effort which you’ll find easier because your efforts affect the rest of the family and vice versa.
People often notice changes in others more easily than in themselves. When your family has more energy, gets sick less, is in better shape and is happier, you’ll be energized to continue your efforts and support theirs.
Take Home Action – Add a salad to dinner regularly or build in a family walk as a routine. You might hear moans and groans and there will be times it doesn’t work but consistently putting it out there will lead to adoption (no, not the kind of adoption to get a new kid that might be more cooperative).
Accountability:
When you include your kids in your health goals, whether they be for you or everyone at home, the power of accountability increases your chances of sticking to the plan.
A healthy family can be a great support network that is usually comfortable enough with each other to give tough love and push us to be our best selves. This can be key to handling those times of weakness or help you get back on the horse.
Take Home Action – Try it! For example, tell your kids you are not drinking wine (or anything) for a month. They’ll let you know loud and clear if they catch you breaking down (and hopefully, you won’t try to sneak it by them either). At least, that’s our experience. This can also be applied to everyone with things like sugar or pizza, etc.
Motivation:
It might not seem like it and it’s not always convenient but being a role model for your children is a great way to motivate healthy habits in them and keep you motivated to be healthy for them.
We can’t really expect kids to eat greens if we don’t. And kids don’t need to eat “kids food”. Real food and good, healthy food doesn’t have an age requirement on it.
Things like Happy Meals, Kraft Dinner, Mac ‘n’ Cheese, Fruit Loops and the like are not good, real or healthly. In fact, a developing child’s body and brain need nutrient dense, quality food even more than adults. Their immune systems, bones, brains and pretty much everything else require the right amount and type of vitamins and minerals (from food) to grow to their best potential.
Remember wanting the best for your kids above, this has a lot to do with it. If you are providing all the equipment and opportunities for your child to excel at a sport, you’d do well to add in the best nutrition as well.
The same would go for academic success and mental health. Good nutrition, fitness and lifestyle increase your kids’ chances of better success in everything.
'Kids foods', like deep fried Dino-nuggets, won't give the fuel (fossil or not) kids need to succeed. #realfood Click To TweetWhen you take the time and effort to consistently feed your children good healthy food and they watch you do the same, sooner or later, they will develop a palate for things you never thought they would. Then you can eat together as a family with less effort.
One Meal for ALL!
(Note: As a father who has worked part-time as a human garburator for my daughters’ unfinished plates, it is much better to sacrifice myself for real food rather than ‘kids food’.)
It’s not unusual for one parent to be busy making positive changes while the other parent is not aboard. This makes it really challenging and can even lead to sabotage, unconscious or conscious. Once upon a time, I was that dad – riding the couch while Bree went to the gym and getting the girls hashbrowns and candy.
No bueno!
Once I saw the light, that became a thing of the past and our daughters palate, especially our eldest, transformed to embrace foods like kale, artichoke, liverwurst, sprouts and so on.
Patience and consistency mixed in with role modelling lead to a unified, whole healthy family.
Take Home Action – Picture your children growing up into teenagers and young adults. Try to imagine their habits when they are older. It is much more likely that they will keep or return to a healthy lifestyle if you provided it for them while they were growing up.
As parents, we have the opportunity to create a rough set point for our kids’ health habits. This can be the difference between them developing diabetes, heart disease or other ailments in the future.
With this, find that motivation to role model good health and stack the odds positively for your kids.
The beauty of a unified, whole healthy family is that it goes beyond health. From uniting together for family dinners to sharing common goals and practices, the bonds and positive associations that are formed here are more likely to last for the rest of your lives.
