Ep 150: Healthy Habits for Teens

Sid Garza-Hillman, author of Raising Healthy Parents, joins us to discuss healthy living and how anyone can start living healthier by taking small steps every day. Plus, the importance of dealing with stress, the number one obstacle standing in the way of what parents want.

Full show notes

Getting kids to eat healthy is no easy task. Not only do they resist apples and broccoli, they tend to have a fit when you don’t take them to McDonalds after soccer practice or reach for cookies at the grocery store. Plus, it’s hard enough to keep yourself on a healthy diet! After a long day of working and parenting, it almost seems like second nature to fill up a glass of wine and microwave some nachos!

And although you might put your own health on the back burner, creating a healthy family includes healthy parents too. If you aren’t taking care of yourself, you’re not being your best self, meaning you aren’t fully there for your kids! Plus, how are you going to convince your kids to be active and fill their body with nutrients when you’re on the couch eating a Snickers bar?

To understand how both parents and kids can lead happier, more nutritious lifestyles, we’re talking to Sid Garza-Hillman, author of Raising Healthy Parents: Small Steps, Less Stress, and a Thriving Family. As a nutritionist, Sid has guided individuals and families away from unhealthy habits into prosperous ways of living! His groundbreaking approach to nutrition and holistic health emphasizes the value of reducing stress and taking small steps to arrive at a healthier life.

In our interview, we’re covering the different kinds of stress, and how too much stress on a parent can lead not only to unhealthy living, but also make life tougher for the entire family. We’re getting into some nutrition science and psychology to reveal how you and your family can change your eating habits for good. Plus, we’re discussing how you can introduce healthier options to your kids without them running in the other direction.

Reducing Stress For a Healthier Family

In his work as a nutritionist, Sid often found that his clients couldn’t seem to stick to a healthy diet any longer than two months. When he asked himself why, he realized that it wasn’t because they needed more information–he had told them everything they needed to know. It was because they were totally stressed out from life and hadn’t developed healthier ways of dealing with it than eating junk food! For parents who manage insane schedules, stress is a huge cause of unhealthy habits.

Sid explains how a level of stress can be labeled as “adaptive stress”, meaning it spurns us on just enough to grow and evolve. But a high level of stress puts the human body in survival mode, raising blood pressure and heart rate, weakening the immune and digestive systems, and causing weight gain. And when parents find themselves in this state, not only does their physical health decline, but their parenting is affected too. Sid emphasizes the importance of taking care of your own health if you want to raise healthy kids!

Plus, it’s important to practice what you preach, says Sid. Nagging your kids to be healthier isn’t going to work if you don’t set a good example. Showing them that you care about your body will encourage them to do the same for themselves. In the episode, Sid and I share how you can develop a more active routine and healthier diet–and rope kids into doing the same. Plus, we discuss what he calls “stealing moments of recovery,” a simple way for parents to decrease their stress on an everyday basis.

So you want to create healthier habits to cope with stress more effectively...but you don’t know what exactly you should be eating to be “healthy.” Does that mean less calories? More fruit? Sid gives some priceless nutrition advice in our interview.

The Essentials of Eating Healthy

Although diet fads and fitness gurus make nutrition sound complicated so they can sell you supplements or recipes, eating healthy is actually pretty simple, says Sid. He compares food to a gift box. All food has calories, the same way all wrapped gifts have wrapping paper. But what’s important is looking past the paper to what’s inside the box, or what kind of nutrients the calories contain. Are there vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, or just empty calories that don’t nurture the body?

So what foods does Sid recommend? Mostly fruit and veggies, beans and whole grains, seeds and nuts...and keep the rest of the stuff to a minimum! And even though eating healthy might seem like an insurmountable task, it doesn’t have to be, says Sid. It’s not too hard to throw some fruit and almond milk together in the morning to make a smoothie, or whip up a salad with a few veggies.

Sid champions a method called “MOT” or “most of the time.” This means that as long as you're sticking to a healthy diet most of the time, then you’re in the clear! Don’t sweat and fret over the small stuff, Sid insists, or you’ll just be tempted to give up entirely. It’s ok to have pizza for dinner, or for kids to have two slices of cake at a birthday party, so long as your family’s regular diet doesn’t consist of feeding yourself or your kids junk, says Sid.

Talking to Kids About Health

The last thing we want to do is make kids feel bad about their bodies. So how can we have a talk with them about adopting a healthier lifestyle without body-shaming them? Sid explains that the conversation shouldn’t be about their weight, but instead about their vitality. He suggests reminding them of all the amazing benefits they’ll see in their lives if they opt to take care of themselves instead of filling their bodies with junk.

And although it can be hard for you and your family to say goodbye to the toaster waffles you usually eat for breakfast, Sid recommends thinking of it as a trade rather than a restriction. Instead of viewing these new dietary guidelines as punishment, it can be a lot more fulfilling to focus on the incredible benefits of making healthier choices. Although your kids might not be upset when you replace their Cheetos with sprouts, helping them understand that they’ll have more energy to hit home runs or draw some cool doodles can work wonders!

No matter what, it’s important to have a discussion with kids about health, says Sid. Kids’ prefrontal cortexes have yet to fully develop, meaning they’re likely to act on impulse instead of make rational decisions. If they’re informed about the consequences of eating 10 donuts in one sitting, they’ll be more inclined to think critically about how that choice will affect their bodies.

In the Episode...

Sid has some seriously innovative ideas about how we can create a healthier lifestyle for our entire family! On top the topics discussed above, we also talk about:

• How to get your teens to behave more healthy
• The trick to getting kids to like vegetables (and other foods)
• The “everything in moderation” myth
• How to use Sid’s signature “small steps” method for any habit you want to start or change

Sid’s advice on creating change is backed up by psychology research and I hope listeners can leverage it to create the changes they want to make in their own families and lives! Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.