30 Day Healthy Food Challenge

3/3

Yesterday was a treat day. Had a burger and fries. What I noticed was that they were fairly tasty at first. But the portions were unnecessarily big and I instinctively forced down more food even after it became unenjoyable. Perhaps relatedly, my stomach's felt a little weird this morning.

I think I'll try to be mindful of that on my next treat day. No point eating unhealthy stuff if I'm not enjoying it.

 

Welcome and good luck! You've definitely given yourself a difficult challenge! Or at least, it would be very difficult for me.

 

I find with some of these challenges, even if I don't meet them on a given day, I often come closer to meeting them. Like in this case, sticking to your resolutions until midnight is better than breaking them periodically throughout the day.

 

0/30

Had a Sonic burger for dinner yesterday. Then had a couple cookies at my wife's choir performance. In my defense, I had the baby (almost 17 months old) all day for the first time. It's often pretty much impossible to cook with my daughter around unless there's someone else to entertain her. And even then it's pretty hard.

The next couple days will stay tough. I've gotta watch the baby for most of today again. Then on Monday I'll be driving 1h30 min to a nearby city to look at a used car. And may have to look at others. I realize the key will be to prep healthy food that I can take with me and/or eat quickly. But I don't even know if I'll have time to do that.

I do make sure to give my daughter healthy food. No added sugar, very little added salt. I offer her lots of fruits and try to keep offering vegetables. But if I manage to get some of that stuff ready for her, when I sit down to eat with her, she doesn't stay seated long enough for me to get a full meal.

 

Nice, keep it up!

 

Mine is 17 months-old. We started giving her solid food when she was six months-old. At that point, she didn't eat much of it. It was mostly to expose her to the flavors of vegetables and fruits. I've heard that that can reduce the risk of eating problems (i.e., refusing everything other than grilled cheese and chicken nuggets) in childhood. We also did a mix of "baby-led weaning" and traditional spoon feeding. There's not much I'd do differently if I could re-do it.

If you're interested, I did research on other aspects of parenting a child's eating. Here's an excerpt from an email I sent my dad and wife, summarizing what I found. Each of these hypotheses has some evidence supporting it, but some are better supported than others:

1. Using foods as rewards or punishments leads to worse eating and worse food preferences.
2. Encouraging children to try new foods leads to better eating and better food preferences.
3. Keeping the child's environment freer of junk and fuller of healthy foods leads to better eating. (Very highly confirmed)
4. Monitoring a child's food consumption is associated with better eating.
5. Involving children in meal preparation leads to better eating and better food preferences.
6. Parental modeling of good eating leads to better eating and better food preferences.
7. Pressuring children to eat something (or to finish what's on their plate) leads to worse eating and worse food preferences.
8. Overtly restricting a child's diet leads to worse food preferences (not sure about worse eating, at least during childhood). (Fairly well confirmed)

"Better" eating = eating more fruits and vegetables and less junky snacks;
"Better" food preferences = stronger preferences for fruits and vegetables and weaker preferences for junky snacks.

A couple notes about 8: (a) there's some evidence that this effect only starts once the child reaches age 4. (b) Overt restrictions are restrictions that the child is aware of. One can "restrict" a child's diet, covertly, by keeping the child in non-junky environments. This kind of "covert" restriction, of which the child will be unaware, is very good for the child's eating (that's hypothesis 3--the most highly confirmed from what I read and according to Blaine et al's literature review).

Sources:

• Blaine et al, Food parenting and child snacking: a systematic review
• Blissett, Relationships between parenting style, feeding style and feeding practices and fruit and vegetable consumption in early childhood
• Durao et al, Maternal child-feeding practices and dietary inadequacy of 4-year-old children
• Gubbels et al, Diet-related restrictive parenting practices. Impact on dietary intake of 2-year-old children and interactions with child characteristics
• Langer et al, Predicting dietary intake among children classified as overweight or at risk for overweight: Independent and interactive effects of parenting practices and styles
• Sleddens et al, Food parenting practices and child dietary behavior. Prospective
• relations and the moderating role of general parenting
• Vollmer and Baietto, Practices and preferences: Exploring the relationships between food-related parenting practices and child food preferences for high fat and/or sugar foods, fruits, and vegetables

 

1/30

Did it yesterday! What's been a big help is having pre-washed, pre-cut vegetables around so that if I don't have time to incorporate them into cooked meals, I can measure out a serving or two. Yesterday, I ate a lot of broccoli and carrots like that.

 

One other thing to prepare yourself for: at a certain point, babies are in this sweet-spot where they're growing fast and (hopefully) haven't yet been exposed to junk food. The hunger and the pure food preferences often make them pretty willing to eat a wide variety of foods, even vegetables. Then their growth rate levels off and their appetite declines. Around this time, they typically get a lot pickier. Also, they're often just not hungry at what we consider "meal time." I definitely got stressed and annoyed when my daughter would take a dish I'd thought through carefully, to make it taste good and be healthy, take one bite, pull it out of her mouth, and throw it on the floor. In hindsight, I do wish I'd been more understanding of her then. Making it into a fight or any kind of high-pressure situation won't help, imo. Encourage babies to eat good food, yes, but never make meal time a chore or in any way unpleasant. Easier said than done sometimes.

 

2/30

 

That sounds tasty! What kind of fish?

 

Same here! Limiting my sugar intake is the biggest change I'm trying to make for my little one. And I can honestly say this challenge has helped!

 

3/30

 

I also think being honest with ourselves about these kinds of issues, and then seeking out and trying constructive solutions, like this challenge, rather than giving up or beating ourselves up, is likely to lead to improvements.

 

0/30

I might have eaten enough vegetables yesterday, but I'm not sure.

 

0/30