The topic of food can be a sore subject in many households. If you’ve ever had your teen get upset with you for talking to them about their diet, you know just how challenging it can be to broach this subject and keep your relationship with your teen intact.
However, while it may be difficult, having conversations with your teen about eating well is critical. When teens are not eating right, it can lead to both physical and mental health issues that you don’t want your teen to face.
Here are some tips for encouraging your teen to improve their nutrition and adopt mindful eating habits without shaming them along the way:
Teach your teen about nutrition
Nutrition is not about crash diets, counting calories, or avoiding any foods with sugar, fat, and salt. It’s about adopting a balanced diet where the body receives the fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and protein it needs to survive and thrive.
Some teens believe that in order to have a healthy lifestyle, they can’t eat junk food at all or that they should only eat a few calories each day consisting of fruits and vegetables. However, these ideas could not be further from the truth.
Teaching your teen that it is okay to eat sugary foods or salty foods in moderation and that the body needs certain healthy carbohydrates, proteins, and fats to function properly will help them see that eating well is an important part of taking care of themselves.
This way, your teen won’t think comments about nutrition are veiled criticisms of their body or their weight, and they won’t feel like they need to starve themselves in order to stay healthy.
Encourage your teen to journal regularly
When your teen spends time journaling about their moods and their feelings each day, over time it can help them start to notice different trends and patterns. While your teen does not necessarily need to keep track of their calorie intake or the food they eat each day, getting in the practice of journaling will help them become more aware of what they are feeling as well as the factors that contribute to these emotions.
This will help them start to become aware of how their diet can influence their food. When teens are not eating well or eating regularly, they are more likely to experience feelings of irritability, depression, and anxiety. This can exacerbate many of the struggles they are already dealing with each day.
As teens begin to recognize that their diet can influence everything from their energy and motivation levels to their mental health, they will start to be more mindful of what they are eating each day, which can help them become less vulnerable to big emotions.
Focus on the positives
Far too often, parents spend time criticizing or scolding their teens for poor eating habits rather than teaching them about the benefits and importance of eating healthily.
Teaching your children about good carbohydrates and proteins and how these nutrients can help give them more, longer-lasting energy throughout their day is a far more effective way to encourage teens to eat better foods than to shame teens for eating too much sugar.
Instead of getting upset with your teen for eating a bag of candy before soccer practice, for example, talk to them about the positive effects of eating meals that are high in protein before physical activity.
By focusing on the positives rather than the negatives, you can avoid making your teen feel like they are being judged for what they choose to eat.
Model good eating habits
It will be hard to help your teen embrace a nutritious diet or practice mindful eating habits if you don’t do these actions yourself. If your teen sees you skipping meals because you’re focused on getting work done, overeating because something tastes good, or obsessing over your weight regardless of how healthily you eat, these behaviors will start to rub off on them.
Let your teen see you adopt a balanced diet and make an effort to eat a variety of foods from a variety of food groups so that they can emulate your behavior.
Cook together
If conversations around food are tense in your household or your teen has trouble disassociating food from feelings of shame or impulsive behavior, try reshaping this narrative by cooking together.
When food becomes a source of fun, creativity, and bonding, it will make your teen more comfortable around food in their everyday life.
Try new healthy recipes together so that your teen will be exposed to a variety of fruits, vegetables, and protein sources. Not only will this help them learn to enjoy nutritious foods, but it will also help them to see that eating healthy foods is not as difficult as it may seem.