On Feeding Littles

Let me start off by saying that I am not a super-healthy, natural, organic mama. As much as I would like to be, and am working on changing towards. I have been thinking a lot recently about what I feed my son and how it affects him. As you may know, I work for Slimming World and one of the things I hear most often is that School Holidays are the hardest time to slim because all the children's snacks and treats are in the cupboards and temptation is just too much. THIS SCARES THE CRAP OUT OF ME!! I know its easy to give children, high sugar, high fat convenience snacks to calm them, please them or (as we have all done) bribe them when they are screaming or playing hell in the supermarket! But while we let them nibble on these unnutritional snacks do we really think about what lessons we are giving them and what the effect that the food is having on their little bodies. Anyone who is losing weight or has lost weight, is constantly saying to yourself...I don't want this in my body, its not good enough, when it comes to these snack foods. We know it isn't good for us and therefore refuse to eat it. So why then if it's not good enough for our bodies, do we insist that it's ok for them? Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying that children should never be allowed to have these foods, but surely having them in the cupboard to be used as a daily food or even worse when they are eaten many times during the day removes the 'rarity and specialness' from them and they get transitioned into everyday food items that children are helping themselves to more and more often.

Recently I have been paying a lot of attention, not only to my food intake but also that of my family. It has been noticed that (kinda obviously) Haydns behaviour and attention span deteriorates after eating certain foods and this made me think long and hard about what I was letting him eat. I want to involve him in this process and not just suddenly swap out all of his foods so we got a book called The Healthy Lunch Box and sat together to choose some foods he would like to get from our next shopping trip. To my surprise, this was his favourite:

We made a list together and hit the shops, we choose lots and lots of fresh fruit and veg and absolutely by accident, when we got home there was no chocolate or processed junk in our shopping....at all! Everyday now we make better choices and have still eradicated ant form of junk in our house. Please don't get me wrong, we still eat chocolate, ice cream and cake but its appreciated so much more as a one off treat we can enjoy on days out or as a family date.

I have also been encouraging him to help me in the kitchen with the cooking as I think it's quite scary how so many people grow up without the basic knowledge of how to cook!

I know it's not a perfect system but I feel confident that day by day I make baby steps towards becoming a healthier person and am teaching my family to have eating habits for life!

Love Danielle
xxx