Kids Fitness & Nutrition

Fitness and nutrition go "hand-in-hand" for all children to thrive and live a healthy life, and teaching kids about fitness, nutrition and how to lead a healthy life is an important task for parents. Nutrition is a key driver of kids' behavior and academic performance at school, while fitness is an important part of maintaining lifelong health.

Daily Activity

• It is important for parents to encourage their kids to participate in daily physical activity for at least 60 minutes to promote a healthy body and prevent weight gain. There are a variety of activities kids can do such as riding bikes, playing soccer or swimming. Parents can incorporate physical activities into chore time by including raking the yard, sweeping, vacuuming and taking out the trash. Parents can also start a "Walk-Pool" with other parents and instead of picking up their kids from school, each week a different parent walks with kids as an escort home.

Make a Fitness Deal

• Parents are often challenged to successfully encourage their kids to participate in daily activities that require physical effort. Television, the Internet, text messaging and video games may all seem more exciting and thrilling than riding a bike or playing basketball to many kids. To increase kids' fitness levels and support a nutritional diet, parents can set rules ahead of time that for every two to three hours of sedentary activities such as watching television, kids must do something physical for a minimum of one hour.

Start With Breakfast

• Parents can practice habits of eating healthy for nutrition as role models for their children by preparing nutritious meals, starting with breakfast. The most important, affordable and easiest to prepare meal of the day is breakfast. Parents can offer foods such as whole-grain toast, eggs, fresh fruit, oatmeal and 100 percent orange juice or low-fat milk. Breakfast is an important part of proper nutrition for kids as it provides stamina and strength to endure daily activities and helps kids' attention and performance levels while at school.

Lifelong Habits of Health and Nutrition

• Take your kids to the store to purchase foods, teach them to learn how to read nutrition labels and show them how to plan healthy meals. Encourage kids to help prepare meals by teaching them basic skills such as how to scramble eggs, cook meat or warm a soup. Teaching kids about nutrition as well as how to purchase, plan and prepare healthy meals instills life skills that can be one of the greatest gifts parents can give a child. Not only do kids learn how to plan healthy meals, they also learn basic cooking skills and the competency to feed themselves in a healthy manner for a lifetime.

Re-thinking Fast Food & Snacks

• An important factor to children's nutrition is food that is rich in nutrients and vitamins and low in calories and fat. Parents can support a healthy, nutrient-rich diet for their kids by serving fruit and cut-up vegetables instead of cookies, candy and chips. Cutting back on high-fat fast food decreases the amount of empty-nutrient foods that children will consume. Make family dining-out experiences special occasions that occur a maximum of once a month. Make eating at a restaurant a special occasion where kids are taught to eat slowly and focus on taste, texture, aroma and savoring, not gulping food.