Healthy Kids - revisited and assimilated

I've been wondering how to bring all my random scribblings together in one place, so I thought I'd start with this one as it seemjed a) the easiest one to start with and b) still relevant to our lives. It was a blog I called 'Healthy Kids' and I managed one whole post! This is what I wrote originally:

I've been thinking about starting this blog for a while now. My main motivation is the fact that we all, as a family, seem to have been getting really out of shape over the last year or so and I wanted to try and find a way to encourage some changes without making any of my children feel self-conscious. There are issues around eating disorders in our family in the past so I want to be as sensitive as possible to the needs of every member of the family, and anyone else who reads this blog. I guess what I'm saying is that this is most emphatically NOT a diet blog or a 'fat camp' blog. What it is about is making changes slowly and steadily so that we can all start to embrace a new way of being.

Our eating patterns as a family have been getting healthier and healthier over the years, but there is definitely room for improvement, especially as regards encouraging the kids to eat more fruit and veg. We have few additives in our diet and sweets and crisps are kept to occasional treats, but we still all crave the 'nasties'.

As for exercise, it feels like we used to be more active as a family than we are now. We used to live in a town until the kids were 7, 4 and 16 months and we'd be out on foot or on bikes or scooters most days, walking the dog along the beach or down the cycle path. If we needed any shopping we'd walk into town and back and it was just a part of our life to fit exercise into our day. I think it helped that none of us thought of it as 'exercise' it was just part of life, and fun.

Since we moved to the countryside I've found it quite difficult to fit the same kind of exercise into our days. The road to the nearest village is too dangerous to walk the kids along and the only circular walk from our house is at least two and a half hours long, which is great once in a while, but kids really need achieveable, short-burst activities. We now have a bigger garden than we've ever had (we moved from a terraced house with a concrete courtyard) and the kids have a climbing frame and a trampoline, but they seem almost phobic about going outside. I'd have put it down to the change of scenery but we've been here three years now, you'd think that would be long enough for them to adjust.

So what I'm hoping for from this blog is to find new ways of looking at our diet and exercise and help the kids, and us, stay as healthy as possible. If you'd like to share the journey with us, please do. You're very welcome.

It's really interesting to read what I wrote then and to have a go at an update. Well, it felt like things didn't really improve as regards exercise, but looking back I remember a few cycle rides and walks and swimming, so I guess we didn't do all that bad. Also the road into the village has been improved and a fantastic footpath has been added. And we've doggedly continued strewing fruit and veg in front of the children in the hope that they'll give in and try it. One of the kids will eat almost whatever is put in front of her, but the other two are still a bit resistant, one of them, I feel, on principle. Just as they look with disdain on anything overtly educational, so too the idea of healthy food is met with high-minded refusal.

I'm hoping that the addition of a dog into the brew is going to produce results. The great thing is that puppies are not suppose to be over-exercised: five minutes of walking per  month of their age, thus 15 minuts at 3 months. So I'm hoping that the kids will barely notice as the amount of walking increases, as they'll be too busy running after Charlie. Sneaky eh? And as is the way with these things, after a while I'm hoping that the endorphins will start to kick in and they'll find they no longer mind or even notice the distance. When we first got Merlin I realised that I really missed walking if I wasn't able to get out some days. It had become its own virtuous circle. I like stuff like that, that grows organically as it were:-)