3 Ways to Role Model Healthy Living for Your Kids

The real secret to becoming an exceptional parent is modeling the values you would like your children to adopt. It’s not enough to simply provide sound advice, you must exemplify the virtues you’re teaching. 

Role modeling healthy lifestyle choices will make a profound difference to the health and well-being of your children long after they have grown up and started their own families. In fact, if you’ve done a good job, they will then pass on these values to their own children. 

Here are three ways to role model healthy habits and behaviors:  

1. Role Model Healthy Eating   

Healthy eating is both simple and complex. It’s easy to do but it’s hard to explain.

It’s simple to eat healthy foods because nature has provided us with an abundance of healthy foods. For instance, it’s hard to go wrong if you’re following a whole foods diet comprising fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains, and legumes because they are nutrient-dense. Besides vitamins and minerals, they also offer phytochemicals and antioxidants. 

Of course, there are subtleties involved such as food allergies, farming methods, and so on, but these are merely tweaks to what you should eat. 

Healthy eating is hard to explain because there is a great deal to learn about nutrition. Not all fats, for instance, are the same. Some, like omega-3 fats, are healthy. Others, like trans-fat, are unhealthy. So besides encouraging your children to eat healthy foods by example, it’s also important to educate them about why they are healthy.  

Another layer of complexity is social influence. Unfortunately, healthy eating is the exception rather than the norm. Many foods advertised as healthy are far from healthy.  

Widespread social approval of less than wholesome foods can confuse your children when they are visiting their friends. Your children naively assume that because everybody likes a particular type of food, it must be good for them.  

Take baked goods, for example. Your children may be exposed to baked goods when visiting friends, foods made with love and joy by well-meaning mothers, such as chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven. 

Most people consider delicious baked goods harmless. They are oblivious to the fact that they have too much refined sugar, refined flour, and saturated fats.  

Incidentally, if your child feels deprived because their friends are eating delicious loaves of bread and other baked goods, one workaround is to make your own baked goods from scratch. For instance, it’s possible to buy a nutrient-dense bread mix or gluten free oats that tastes delicious but has none of the unhealthy ingredients of conventional baked foods. 

2. Role Model Regular Exercise  

As a mom, you should do regular moderate or vigorous exercises. Exercises such as walking or gardening are considered moderate while running or swimming are considered vigorous. The Mayo Clinic recommends at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day.

Regular exercise helps maintain a healthy body weight. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, a healthy body weight lowers the risk of many serious illnesses, like different types of cancers, diabetes, heart disease, and strokes. 

3. Role Model Quality Sleep Habits  

In our hectic culture, quality sleep is often ignored to squeeze more hours out of the day. Sometimes people sacrifice a few hours of sleep to get a little more work done. At other times, people deprive themselves of a long night’s rest by watching television or playing a video game late into the night. The more sleep deprived you get, the worse your health.  

According to the Cleveland Clinic, chronic sleep deprivation can cause the following health problems. 

• High blood pressure
• Diabetes
• Heart attack
• Stroke
• Obesity
• Depression
• Impaired immunity
• Low sex drive

You’re Establishing a Healthy Framework 

If you can instill healthy eating habits, regular exercise habits, and good sleep habits in your children, then you will establish a healthy framework. This new scaffolding will allow them to add other healthy habits and lifestyle choices as they mature.