10 Habits of Healthy Familiies - Part 1

Team approach

Every wonder how families stay healthy, fit and thin? We asked Oprah’s go-to doctor, Mehmet C. Oz, MD—who gets his own show this month—for his tips on "how to build a healthy family strategy". Dr. Oz says families (like the Carroll's pictured left) that make healthy lifestyle choices together, stay healthy together. Here's his gameplan for your family.

Don't go hungry

To stay at a healthy weight, you have to eat, not starve yourself. “If you don’t fuel up regularly, you’ll become insatiably hungry, causing the ‘hunger’ hormone, ghrelin, to spike,” Dr. Oz says. “The problem is, it takes a half-hour for that hormone to return to normal once you start to eat, but in that 30 minutes you’ll likely chow through many more calories than if you hadn’t eaten on an empty stomach.”

Dr. Oz keeps filling almonds on hand—don’t be surprised if you see him nibbling a few on his show.

 

Automate breakfast and lunch

Without a healthy go-to option for each, you’re far more likely to make bad spur-of-the-moment grabs. Plus, having a staple of one or two healthy usuals makes grocery shopping easier. “You don’t want to reinvent the wheel every day,” says Dr. Oz, who starts his day with a bowl of steel-cut oatmeal with flaxseed oil, a few walnuts, and some raisins or agave for sweetness—a morning meal that Randy and Kathleen have adopted and now love.

For lunch, Dr. Oz recommends a vegetable-based soup (like this tomato fennel soup recipe) or a turkey or tuna sandwich on whole-grain bread. For the kids, you can improve upon the PBJ sandwich (it’s not horrible, but the jelly is all sugar) by using less jelly or turning it into a PB sandwich with a piece of fruit.

Exercise 20 minutes a day—at home

Why stay at your place? “If you have to go somewhere to exercise, you’re automatically going to need more than 20 minutes, and it violates the flow of your day,” Dr. Oz says. “An hour is a long time; 20 minutes is nothing.” Keeping your daily workout goal short and convenient works, he explains, because none of us want to admit that our lives are so disorganized that we can’t carve out 20 quick minutes.

“What we find is that if we tell people to do 20 minutes, they enjoy it and end up doing more than 20 minutes,” which is even better for your heart, Dr. Oz stresses. Simple ideas that work: Skip rope in your driveway, and alternate with crunches and push-ups; do 20 minutes of a workout video; walk in your neighborhood.

Be the food decider in your house

“I know this can be tough for parents, but the big decisions about what to eat must be made by you at the supermarket,” Dr. Oz says. Here’s why: If you bring chips and cookies home, your kids (and you) will naturally want to eat them.

And if you try to restrict them, you’ll actually cause your child to crave them more. But if you don’t buy the sweets to begin with, kids won’t even miss them, Dr. Oz promises. Keep good-news snacks on hand (like nuts and pretzels) and fruit and veggies washed and chopped in your fridge. “Kids will eat healthy snacks when they get hungry enough,” Dr. Oz says.

 (Source: Health.com)

10 Habits of Healthy Families - Part 1