Changing The Conversation Around Healthy Eating With Your Family

Happy African American family talking while preparing food in the kitchen for healthy eating

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We can all read about nutrition and food facts until we’re blue in the face, but making real, sustainable change to eating habits isn’t just about knowing the data. In order for healthier habits to take root, a perspective shift has to happen around the way we see food. If you’re putting in the work to get your family to eat healthier and live healthier, but it feels like an uphill battle, it could be time to change the conversations around food and nutrition.

As part of MADAMENOIRE’s weekly series for National Family Fit Lifestyle Month, let’s talk about how you talk about food and healthy eating with your family. Eating right can prevent chronic illness, increase longevity and overall help every member of your family feel better every day. But, getting there shouldn’t feel stressful. In an effort to take a holistic approach to eating better, here are ways to change the conversation and perspectives around food in your home.

Focus On Feeling Good

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If you’re already making efforts to have your family eat healthier, start a dialogue around how everyone is feeling after these changes. Check in once a week and really talk out how everyone’s been feeling since you all stopped eating fast food, cut back on sodas, reduced desserts to just weekends, or whatever the change has been for your family. This gives everyone the chance to be conscious of the way that eating healthier has made them feel. In this way, you can also take the emphasis off of topics like weight or dress size, which can lead to fear-based action, and move the focus to the positive element of feeling good in one’s body.

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Explore Healthy Swaps Together

Satisfied school kid and mother eating healthy breakfast.

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Finding healthy swaps for the items you’re trying to phase out can be fun. You can pick up several healthy snack options and try them together, exploring which ones you like as a family. So, if you’re moving potato chips out, you can pick up popcorn (unbuttered, lightly salted), kale chips, chickpea puffs (like Hippeas) or veggie chips. Sit down and try them each with your family to find the ones you like the most.

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Don’t Be Too Militant

Daughter and mother cooking together at kitchen

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If you’ve ever tried to make a food “off limits” for yourself, then you know what happened – you craved it more than ever. Then you ate it, and had increased feelings of guilt around it because it was “off limits.” Spare your kids this cycle. Foods don’t have to be forbidden in your home. Just focus on finding tasty alternatives and having more of those than the other stuff. But if your kids still want to occasionally have the “bad” stuff, that’s okay (and try not to call it “bad”). The important thing is that they’re having more of the healthy choices.

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Aim For Averages – Not Perfection

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Aiming for perfection will just cause stress in the household. Set your goals, like having more fruits and veggies, eating less candy, consuming fewer sodas and so on. Maybe you can keep a chart and give everyone a star each time they make that healthy choice. Create a celebration around good choices, but remove negativity or shame around less-than-ideal ones. The idea is to trend towards healthier eating. But expecting perfection just isn’t realistic.

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Make A Love It Or Lose It List

Multigenerational family eating dinner together at dining table

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Make the healthy eating journey a collaboration. Keep a book of the healthy recipes you try as a family. You can start to move the things you all loved into a “love it” pile, and the ones you didn’t like into a “lose it” pile. Slowly but surely, you’ll have a compilation of healthy, yummy recipes that everyone agrees they want to eat.

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Grow Your Own Food To Connect To it

Mother and daughters tending the garden at home

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Consider starting a small garden. Even if you don’t have a yard, you can have some indoor plants like windowsill herbs. If your kids participate in watching something go from seedling to ready-to-eat fruit or veggies, they’ll be proud of themselves and be extra excited to eat it. Plus, this can be a healthy, fun activity to do together on the weekends.

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How To Talk About Healthy Eating With Your Family