HOW SHOULD I FEED MY KIDS?

This question comes up now and again when I am working with clients who are parents with growing families. Comments like, “Getting one dinner on the table is a challenge now, how am I supposed to make two different meals?” and “I'm just not creative enough to make separate meals every day, how do people with kids do it?”

Most people, parents included, who are looking to improve their health and lose weight still seem to be of the mindset that the person losing weight needs to eat one way, while their family eats another. A falsehood perpetuated by a nation at its highest obesity rate in history obsessed with dieting. The good news is, diets don't work and families can enjoy the foods they love prepared as one meal in a way that works with our bodies. The person who needs to lose weight does, overall health of the family is improved and everyone benefits. Sound too good to be true? Science says otherwise.

Physiology of the human body, in the way it digests and metabolizes food, doesn't change just because we grow up and grow older. Our bodies absorb and use food the same way today as it did the day we were born. Let's look at how a baby eats. Babies are hungry as soon as they wake up and feed on breastmilk or formula, both of which are completely balanced proteins, fats and carbohydrates. They eat only when they are hungry, stop when satisfied and repeat the process every three to four hours throughout the day. This continuous system of fuelling the body keeps the body in a state of homeostasis, or balance. Blood sugar remains stable, hormones are balanced, metabolism functions optimally, and the body is able to burn fat, build muscle and create the energy it needs to function on a daily basis.

So, if the way our bodies metabolize food hasn't changed as we grew up, why did our eating habits? Adults will often skip breakfast, opting for coffee alone, consuming their first meal at lunch time, several hours after rolling out of bed. At this point, most of you would be starving, making it very easy to overeat leaving you feeling stuffed, uncomfortable and sluggish. And because lunch was so big, you'll hear, “I'm good until dinner now...” when dinner is actually five, six or even seven hours away. Not good. By the time dinner rolls around and you're so hungry you could almost gnaw your own arm off. And the cycle of over-eating combined with being stuffed and feeling uncomfortable continues.

This continuous system of deprivation and over-eating actually creates chaos and imbalance within the body and can be quite damaging to your body's systems. Irregular and imbalanced meals cause blood sugar to spike and crash several times throughout the day, hormones cannot balance, metabolism is slowed, internal stress is created and cortisol is released causing your body to store fat rather than burn it. These conditions are perfect for weight gain and very effectively lay the groundwork for a whole host of nasty diseases that develop as a result of being over weight – diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cancer etc.

It seems that we should be getting back to the basics and feeding ourselves and our kids the way our bodies were designed to be fed, think PFC every 3, like a baby. Eat a balance meal of a protein, fat and carbohydrate within one hour of getting out of bed, and every three to four hours throughout the day. Simple. So how does that help you in the kitchen? It means that when you follow the PFC rule, every time you prepare a meal, make a lunch for school or work or fix a snack, everyone can eat it. Together. And enjoy it. It does take a little bit of planning, but you don't have to be a chef to do it.

Get your kids involved and plan for the week, asking them to help build their lunches and choose a few favourites for dinner. You fill in the rest of the week's menu. Now take a look at the choices and make sure each dish includes a protein, fat and carbohydrate. Next, assess the quality of each dish and replace any processed items in the recipe with whole foods. This is especially key in kid's lunches as whole foods allows them to concentrate and focus better in school, have more consistent energy throughout the day and avoid mood swings and behaviour issues. Last and most important, when you cook, make extra. Leftovers will make sure that mom and dad have healthy balanced lunches to take to work the next day, and save time in the morning. Time that can now be spent around the breakfast table.

So it is science, but not rocket science. Babies, kids, teens, adults, parents, grandparents – our bodies all digest and use food in the same way, so why not give it what it wants? You'll lose the weight, everyone in your family will improve their health and you don't have to turn your world upside down in the kitchen to do it.