Better eating habits and kids....Need more help!!

[Henrietta23]

He would definitely buy into that. He loves to pretend.

 

[big brown horse]

I like to pretend too. I've got a million of those silly pretend games when it comes to eating better etc.

Free, what is an earthbox? Is it a play on "lunch box"?

 

[hennypenny9]

Hey, just thought I'd pop in to cheerlead a bit! Yay for real food!

I was never picky, I always loved everything put in front of me. No siblings to get bad habits from, and my mom never had anything junky in the house. I think something that helped was that we grew some veggies. Not a lot, no. BUT it really helped me appreciate the whole process, from planting to eating.

I know some are having luck with the "explain why it's fake food" thing. Yay! Even though I loved everything, I still LOVED soda. No matter what my mom said to me, I did not care in the slightest. Even once I asked for a soda and she handed me the sugar jar and a spoon. Didn't work. But now I'm okay, I grew out of it. So don't be discouraged if the older ones don't listen right away. Even me, as dense as I am, figured out "hey, when I eat fast food, or a doughnut, I feel like crap... Huh."

 

[freemotion]

Or teach what is a serving size, and let them have a little crap at a restaurant and such....a juice glass of soda, with ice, not a Big Gulp!

Earthbox is a brand of planter that combines soil and hydroponics. We make them in five gallon buckets, so I call them earth buckets! They are SUPER efficient little gardens, and will survive quite a while without watering (except mature tomato plants, they still need a refill daily when big). I did a thread with pictures, I'll try to find it.

Here it is: http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1967

 

[Henrietta23]

We played a game with DS when he was younger. We had a set of dice, one each green, white and red. Each color was assigned to a food on his plate; red for meat, green for vegetables and white for something else depending on the meal. He would roll the dice and have to take that many bites of his food before rolling again. He still sometimes asks for the dice at dinner.

 

[big brown horse]

That is a cute game! Moms have to have a big bag of tricks handy at all times!!

Thanks freemotion, I remember that!

 

[Dace]

Hey, just thought I'd pop in to cheerlead a bit! Yay for real food!

I was never picky, I always loved everything put in front of me. No siblings to get bad habits from, and my mom never had anything junky in the house. I think something that helped was that we grew some veggies. Not a lot, no. BUT it really helped me appreciate the whole process, from planting to eating.

I know some are having luck with the "explain why it's fake food" thing. Yay! Even though I loved everything, I still LOVED soda. No matter what my mom said to me, I did not care in the slightest. Even once I asked for a soda and she handed me the sugar jar and a spoon. Didn't work. But now I'm okay, I grew out of it. So don't be discouraged if the older ones don't listen right away. Even me, as dense as I am, figured out "hey, when I eat fast food, or a doughnut, I feel like crap... Huh."

DD16 was just telling me yesterday how an overweight friend was complaining about not being able to eat whatever she wanted. The girl is working with a personal trainer who also is helping her work on her diet. After a long rant about food she said, I just want my white bread back! DD (who is skinny as a rail) said, well I eat WW bread, white bread is not good for you! The friend was astonished that DD would choose to eat something healthy, when she didn't have to (meaning a diet!).
Her little story and what she said made me proud! Just a few weeks ago she was a white bread junky!

 

[big brown horse]

Your efforts are paying off!

 

[Dace]

It has been a few weeks so I thought an update was in order

For the last two weeks we have slacked off a bit because we really needed to do a big grocery shop and just did not have the money to....so we started sliding a little bit into old habits. Not too bad though. Some microwave popcorn (which we had one hand) and cheezits ($2.50) vs raw nuts ( 6.99 lb) a few slips...just trying to get thru the little squeeze.

DH's job pays somewhat irregularly, so we tend to live in feast or famine mode too frequently. Once we stabilize a bit more financially, I am going to clean out my pantry of every single processed non-food crap that is in there! For now though there is some sense of security in having a bunch of packaged will-last-10years stuff in there.

We also have been talking quite a bit about buying some clean meat. I have a friend who bought a pig and it is being raised on a farm organically, when it goes to butcher she is going to give us some. I am trying to find a cow for us to split, but finding a deal it has been a bit of work! We have done well with minimizing meat, although we did have hot dogs recently, but I have been trying really hard to plan ahead so that the dinner hours does not sneak up on me leaving me to resort to poor choices.

Anywho, that is the update...one step back two steps forward. Guess I could have just written that and saved you the last 5 minuted of reading my ramblings huh?

 

[Dace]

Meant to add...I would like to try my hand at sprouting. Any tips or fool proof things to try? I am not really sure what is actually sprout-able.