My family's healthy lifestyle, our proper nutrition

Eating right today...

Proper nutrition is one of the fundamental factors of healthy and complete human development.
What and how we eat greatly influences our entire lives. Issues of healthy nutrition become especially relevant when a small child appears in the family. To paraphrase the famous statement of Arkady Gaidar, we can say with confidence: “Everyone understands what “proper nutrition” is in their own way.” In most cases, ideas about healthy food are associated with our family eating habits, national traditions, lifestyle, as well as with the principles of attitude towards our health. A “reconsideration of values” almost always occurs when a small child appears in the family. What should you pay attention to?

Lesson three: Be firm but polite!

Alas, sometimes, despite all your efforts, relatives do not lose hope of “re-educating” you. This means it’s time to use a more subtle psychological weapon: “speech strategies.” With any “assault”, first agree: “Yes, counting calories is simply stupid, but I still want to try!” “Yes, unsweetened tea is not very tasty, but I’m already used to it!” Try to teach your family to look at the problem from a different angle: of course, it’s not very pleasant to chew on a hard carrot instead of a soft bun, but in a month at your mother-in-law’s anniversary you will be the slenderest and most beautiful! The main thing is not to enter into open conflicts, because you want to improve your figure, and not worsen family relationships!

Where do milk rivers originate?

At the very beginning of this special issue, we already drew your attention to the fact that it is not for nothing that breast milk is called the elixir of health, the main food for babies, and the best medicine for children. Mother's milk contains immune antibodies that protect the baby from pathogenic viruses and bacteria, fatty acids necessary for the development of the brain and nervous system, as well as a large amount of immunoglobulin A, which prevents the occurrence of allergies. Infants are less likely to suffer from diarrhea, respiratory diseases, and middle ear infections due to the anti-infective factors of human milk (leukocytes, lactoferrin, etc.). Mother's milk is the most correct, ideal nutrition for a baby, because it contains all the necessary substances in an ideal combination. And for mothers, breastfeeding is very, very beneficial - both in terms of women’s health and emotionally. But there is another important point: it is during pregnancy that the family principles of rational, proper nutrition are laid down, and during the period of breastfeeding, continue to be instilled. The most balanced and vitamin-rich menu is almost always for pregnant and nursing mothers.

Conclusion: it is very important to “infect” all members of your family (that is, your husband and older children) with the correct attitude towards nutrition during pregnancy and breastfeeding. As a young mother, you simply won’t have enough time, energy and money to cook several different dishes at the same time. It is convenient to adhere to the principle “everything ingenious is simple”: all complex, multi-component dishes are usually quite difficult for the stomach and intestines.

Second lesson: motive is an asset!

You yourself know for sure that you decided to lose weight exclusively for yourself. But sometimes it’s better for your husband to present the matter in such a way that you are trying only for him - you want to please him, seduce him, give him the opportunity to be proud of his elegant wife. Calmly explain to your family and friends that your current appearance annoys you - which means that until you lose weight, you will be an angry, unbalanced fury. To enhance the effect, you can throw a couple of mild tantrums, but most likely they will take your word for it. If aesthetic motives do not work on family members, try citing medical indications: constantly complain that you have pain, burning, shooting and stabbing everywhere. If you dare, you can lie in bed for a couple of days so that everything in the house falls into disrepair... And then say that the doctor associates your condition with excess weight and prescribes a diet. You can slip medical literature to a distrustful mother-in-law; she will probably be carried away by the idea of ​​healing through weight loss.

"Adult" agreements.

Before you begin systematic work on transferring your own family to proper and healthy nutrition, you need to dot all the i’s. The most important thing is the unanimity of all adult family members, because, you see, not only small children need proper food. Moreover, the attempts of one parent to pursue their line, not supported by the other, will generally turn out to be absolutely empty and useless. Let’s say you offer your child muesli with juice or natural yogurt for breakfast, and dad eats scrambled eggs with onions and bacon every morning, and also snacks on sandwiches, giggling at your “healthy” diet... Will you achieve more success? Or, when there is an official ban on chips in the family, the grandmother still quietly buys them for the “poor girl who is forbidden from everything” almost every day... Will the little girl refuse such a wonderful delicacy? Of course not! She won’t refuse, and she’ll also thank grandma for treating her... Remember: children from a very early age understand perfectly well that action is much clearer than any words. You can convince your child as much as you like that sweet carbonated water is harmful, but if at the same time you drink it yourself, and often, the result of your conversations will be zero. With this option, the baby will understand that since they don’t give him food, but eat it themselves, it means that he is being deprived of something. And the baby will begin to perceive “bad” food as a sign of adulthood, a world that must be accessed. Needless to say that a child will always strive to enter this world inaccessible to him? Therefore, first agree with all adults in the family on common “rules of food” and then try to adhere to them. Moreover, it will be useful and very useful for everyone: both adults and children. Proper nutrition is the key to good health and well-being, no matter how trite it sounds, but it is true.

My family and my diet. Proper nutrition. Menu

Of course, it’s enough to just stick to any diet in splendid isolation. Just you and a refrigerator filled with super-healthy foods recommended by nutritionists. There wouldn’t be those who constantly seduce, but when children are constantly begging for a sweet donut, a chocolate bar, or ice cream, or a husband, having fallen off from work, won’t accept anything other than fried potatoes with a couple of chops, it takes an incredible amount of willpower not to fall into the abyss of these temptations. The only way out is proper nutrition. The menu should take into account all the wishes of the household.

What could be worse than support?

Every person who has been on a diet at least once has encountered this situation: as soon as you announce your firm intention to lose a certain number of kilograms, everyone around you begins to admire your determination and encourage you. Everything seems to be great! But sometimes loved ones, trying to increase motivation, reward with such epithets that you want to go and eat the resulting stress. And when, after two or three days, everyone begins to be interested in the results... It’s as if the kilograms are disappearing so quickly!

Proper nutrition. Menu for everyone

How much you had to suffer before, watching the rest of the family absorb all sorts of forbidden delicacies (then, by the way, often suffering either from diathesis or from heaviness in the stomach). Now the decision was made to establish proper nutrition for everyone. Then no one will be offended. Large volumes have been written in dry scientific language about how to eat properly. Which is why the opinion arose that healthy food is tasteless, monotonous and bland. The most important task is to find suitable recipes and make the transition smoothly, so that

no one noticed anything.

How to eat properly

It's worth starting small. You will not be able to establish proper nutrition right away. Build your menu gradually. The first step is to ditch the sugary cereals and creamy yoghurts at breakfast and replace them with muesli, which everyone loves. Try to remove the cookies and candies that everyone constantly carries as a “snack”, replacing them with nuts and dried fruits, dried fruits and small unleavened crackers. If everything went smoothly, proceed further:

• Sausages can easily be replaced by meat baked in foil.
• Hot meat dishes can be prepared from lean meats (beef, rabbit, chicken breasts). By the way, such dishes turn out very tasty if they are made in pots.
• Instead of your favorite fried potatoes, treat your loved ones to potatoes baked in foil. You can experiment with different fillings, such as vegetables and cheese.
• Cook most of your food in a steamer or oven; a Vogue frying pan is an indispensable tool.
• Low-fat dairy products will help you reduce your caloric intake. Kefir 1% fat, various milk yoghurts, cheeses 17 and 30%, cottage cheese 0%.
• Ice cream is easy to make yourself! Freeze the juicy pulp of your favorite fruits, mixing it with natural yogurt if desired.
• A bread maker can be an invaluable help!

And finally

The final chord will be a war with chocolate bars and sweet soda. Instead of the latter, you can use either regular drinking water, or water with lemon, or compotes. Store-bought juices, which, despite all the assurances of manufacturers, contain a huge amount of sugar, can be successfully replaced with homemade, freshly squeezed ones. As you can see, it’s enough to simply establish proper nutrition in the family. The menu, compiled taking into account all the taste preferences of your household, will delight both those who are losing weight and food lovers. And yet, the main thing that you will get by applying these rules is vigor and good mood.

Important principles.

♦ Consistency in approaches is also very important, not only to specific products, but also to the proper nutrition system as a whole. Let's say you think that drinking soup and a second drink with compote during lunch is harmful. Or that it is advisable not to eat a sweet dessert immediately after the main meal. By evening, your views on this problem should not change.

♦ Try to avoid fundamental extremes (by the way, this is relevant not only for problems related to food). Even if the issues of proper nutrition have always been very important for you, you should not automatically transfer to your child the principles of vegetarianism, raw food diet, separate nutrition, nutrition according to blood type, and especially a variety of fashionable diets (to be honest, we know: some mothers are addicted to this is very active). Children's nutritionists and pediatricians never tire of reminding parents that the digestive tract and many other systems of a child's body function differently than those of an adult. For the harmonious construction of the bone skeleton, nervous system, for proper weight gain, etc., a small child needs, for example, much more fat (both plant and animal) than his parents, in percentage terms, of course. This does not mean at all that a five-year-old toddler should eat half a stick of butter a day, far from it. However, you should be very aware that oil, both vegetable and butter, must be present in his diet. The lack of animal proteins in the diet (beef, veal, chicken, etc.) must be compensated for by a well-thought-out amount of plant proteins (beans, lentils, peas, etc.). But if your baby has low hemoglobin, significant weight loss and some other symptoms, you will have to adjust his diet, and not just select the appropriate medications.

♦ Whatever “proper” nutrition plan your family follows, variety in the family diet is very important. There is no need to buy different types of sausage; this, of course, is not what we’re talking about. But “sitting” on just kefir or green apples is also a certain extreme. Remember that each fruit, especially those grown in its native land, contains a unique set of vitamins and other useful substances, and each fermented milk product (ryazhenka, acidophilus, and yogurt) is “responsible” for its own part of the work to improve the health of our intestines.

Conclusion: proper nutrition is not an end in itself, it is simply a way of existence.
And if you live in a family, then it’s easier and better when the same rules exist for everyone: take your children shopping at grocery stores, consulting with them, teach them how to prepare salads from fresh vegetables and cut cheese, discuss a sample menu for tomorrow.

Balanced menu for 7 days

Monday

• Morning: oatmeal with milk (nuts, honey, dried fruits if desired), bread, cheese, green tea.
• Day: pickle, boiled rice, steamed chicken cutlet, carrot salad with garlic, marshmallows, compote.
• Evening: vegetable stew, stewed beef liver, fruit jelly, still water.

Tuesday

• Morning: millet porridge, cottage cheese with sour cream, cocoa.
• Day: borscht, mashed potatoes, baked fish, marmalade, tea.
• Evening: durum wheat pasta, boiled beet salad, drink.

Wednesday

• Morning: rice porridge with milk, cottage cheese casserole, tea.
• Day: chicken broth with eggs, stewed cabbage, steamed cutlet, lean cookies, jelly.
• Evening: vegetable salad, boiled buckwheat with mushrooms and onions, compote.

Thursday

• Morning: semolina porridge, rye bread sandwich with cheese, cocoa.
• Day: fish soup, pilaf with chicken and vegetables, marmalade, compote.
• Evening: boiled potatoes, stewed vegetables, white cabbage salad.

Friday

• Morning: omelet, cottage cheese with sour cream, marshmallows, tea.
• Day: cabbage soup, boiled buckwheat with meatballs, marmalade, compote.
• Evening: vegetables baked with meat, tea.

Saturday

• Morning: oatmeal with honey, cottage cheese casserole, tea.
• Day: mushroom soup, boiled rice with white meat, fruit drink.
• Evening: boiled pasta, vegetable lecho with mushrooms, compote.

Sunday

• Morning: buckwheat porridge with milk, long-lasting cookies, jelly.
• Day: pea soup, mashed potatoes, fish baked with cheese, fruit jelly, compote.
• Evening: stewed cabbage with steam cutlet, tea.

Between main meals it is recommended to eat fruits and yoghurts, but no later than 2-3 hours before a full meal. In the evening you can drink a glass of kefir or still mineral water. It is recommended to drink at least 2 liters of clean water during the day.

What foods are healthy?

There are products whose usefulness no one doubts. In addition, it is advisable to use optimal methods of preparing dishes - boiling, stewing, baking (gentle heat treatment).

Fresh vegetables, fruits, garden herbs, sprouted grains - this is a unique balanced set of vitamins (primarily group B, C and provitamin A (beta-carotene)) and microelements (potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium); This is plant fiber that helps improve intestinal motility and absorbs various toxins, bacteria, and infectious agents, removing them from the body. Vegetable protein is also important, as it has a different nutritional value than animal protein. According to pediatricians and children's nutritionists, frozen vegetables, fruits and berries are very healthy and easy to use. But only on the condition that all storage rules have been followed. Give preference to so-called “quick-frozen” products, that is, sharply cooled within two hours after assembly. This treatment helps preserve vitamins as much as possible. Be careful with the exotic - mango, kiwi and papaya are not suitable for every average Ukrainian.

Fermented milk products are rich in vitamins and microelements. The daily diet of all family members should include a choice of cottage cheese, kefir, fermented baked milk, yogurt, live yogurt, and cheese. By the way, all of the listed fermented milk products have a different “composition” (yogurts are prepared using strains of the Bulgarian bacillus, kefir - using a special starter, etc.). A very important point: buy fermented milk products with a shelf life limited to a few days, that is, “live” and not heat-treated, and only from refrigerated display cases!

Whole grains. There is a big difference between whole and processed (refined) grains. More than two dozen components important for human health are lost during the refining process. If cereals are made from whole grains, this will serve as the basis for a healthy diet for every family member. Grains and cereals are needed not only for making bread (the most useless is soft wheat), porridge (buckwheat, oatmeal, corn, barley), but also side dishes (rice, buckwheat), muesli (oatmeal and corn flakes for breakfasts and snacks). When choosing pasta, give preference to durum wheat.

Dried fruits are useful for everyone; it is very convenient to use them instead of sweets and marmalade and for snacks, or add them to porridge and muesli. In terms of the set of microelements and vitamins, dried apricots differ from prunes, and figs differ from dried cherries, so it is good to use the maximum range of these healthy products in your diet. Particular attention should be paid to the quality of drinking water. It is not for nothing that water is considered the basis of life: every person should drink ordinary water. Other liquids (soups, juices, fruit drinks, tea) should also be in the diet.

Proper nutrition for a month: how to organize

To wean yourself off junk food and poor nutrition, you need to carefully plan your family's new diet. To do this, you need to stop buying unhealthy foods so that you won’t even be tempted to eat a sausage sandwich or candy. Plan healthy meals for a month - it’s convenient, it will allow you to organize your budget , and it’s long enough for you and your household to get used to eating in a new way. It is better to purchase meat and cereals 2 times a month for 2 weeks, and buy dairy products, fruits and vegetables every day so that they are fresh, preferably in markets where their quality is higher than in supermarkets.

Fast food and company.

Perhaps the only food that does not raise doubts about its uselessness is fast food (“fast food”): products without cooking. So much has already been said about the dangers of such food, but to this day fast food establishments are thriving. Moreover, most often in their advertising campaigns they emphasize that these are family restaurants, implying that people come here to relax with children. I hope you understand that this is nothing more than an advertising campaign in order to attract visitors, a myth, a beautiful shell. There is also “junk” food - salted fried nuts, seeds, chips, crackers. It is naive to assume that “crackers are the same “Borodino bread”, only cut into cubes.” Carefully read the information on the packaging: a small amount of rye or wheat flour contains numerous flavoring additives identical to natural ones, excess salt, food coloring and flavor enhancers, which nullify all the beneficial properties of this very flour. Tasty? Maybe yes. Healthy? No. Don't forget to drink - sweet carbonated drinks in large quantities are dangerous for a child's health! They contain a huge amount of harmful dyes, taste enhancers and preservatives. It is important that the baby understands why this is harmful. After all, in a few years, having pocket money, he will choose what to buy - a bag of juice, mineral water or sweet soda. Even without discussing the features of the production of natural fruit juices or the quality of mineral water, it is clear that this option is still better than the third. The main thing is that the child makes the right choice on his own.

First lesson: claim your rights!

A woman often voluntarily appoints herself to the role of “slave Isaura” - only she cooks, and only what her husband and children love, her own food interests modestly huddle somewhere in last place. By deciding to change your eating style, you are making your first attempt to break out of the vicious circle, and it’s just wonderful! But the desire to become a “dietary black sheep” may be perceived without enthusiasm at first.

Ideal relatives, ready to share all the hardships of a diet, are extremely rare, but at least they shouldn’t be ironic, scold you, or slip delicious morsels oozing fat under your nose! Of course, you can try to deceive the public: “I ate at work”, “I have a headache and no appetite!”, “It’s so hot today, I can’t get anything down my throat except fruit!” If your family is not too persistent and curious, you can hold out for a few days, but you want to change your diet for a long time (more precisely, forever)! This means that you will have to “split”, but you need to do this wisely.

Bad eating habits of adults are passed on to children...

Imposing your preferences on a small child can be considered a kind of psychological “fast food”. First of all, this applies to sweetening and adding salt to food. Yes, we are so used to it, we were taught this way. But the baby’s taste is not formed at the time of birth, so he does not know what it means to be tasty. In our opinion, babies gobble up, in our opinion, bland and tasteless zucchini purees, pumpkin and unsweetened cottage cheese, natural yoghurts without fillers, etc. The later your child learns the taste of candy, the better for his health and development! Although it is also impossible to completely exclude sweets from the diet - glucose is involved in many chemical processes necessary for the development of the child’s body systems, including the brain. Natural sugars are found in most foods. especially in milk (lactose), fruits (fructose), vegetables, herbs. According to nutritionists, adding salt to food does not have any additional nutritional effect. The need for salt is a matter of habit. The approximate daily amount of table salt (sodium chloride) for children aged 1 to 3 years should be 4 grams, taking into account the salt contained in food (for example, vegetables have enough of their own healthy salt, as well as fruits - fruit sugar, fructose ), children under 7 years old - 5 grams. For adding salt, it is better to use iodized salt, and after cooking the dish: beneficial iodine is destroyed as a result of heat treatment. Sometimes “proper nutrition” is associated with undoubtedly healthy, but necessarily tasteless. Actually this is not true! In addition, no one can forbid you to go with your children to a café-pastry shop or restaurant and prepare something very unusual, sweet and airy for a family holiday.

Carrot dessert - a healthy recipe

If you eat right, you don’t have to deny yourself desserts. An important point is that they must be natural and low-calorie. It’s easy to prepare a casserole at home if you have an oven or multicooker.

From the ingredients:

• Carrots (kilogram).
• Eggs (4 pieces).
• Vegetable oil (teaspoon).
• Cottage cheese (300 grams).
• Sesame (30 grams).
• Salt.

Recipe:

1. Peel and grate the carrots.
2. Separate the eggs into whites and yolks.
3. Beat them separately.
4. Add cottage cheese to the yolks and stir.
5. Add carrots. Stir.
6. Pour in the whites. Stir.
7. Grease the mold with oil and pour the workpiece.
8. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.
9. Cook for 40 minutes at 180 degrees.

What else can you do in advance?

What can be done in advance is, of course, better done in advance. For example, fillet a turkey and put it in the refrigerator in an airtight container. Or prepare minced meat for hamburgers, meatballs or cutlets. Remove the fish from the freezer and defrost it properly, without haste, on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Be sure to cook soup, or, more precisely, two soups, no more than 1.5–2 liters each. This is not at all because I am so kind, but simply so that the “refuseniks” still eat: if not cream of champignon soup, then lentil, if not minestrone, then pumpkin. Children are always happy with jelly or compote. It’s also better to prepare them in the morning so that they “arrive” by lunchtime. In between, you can bake muffins, a chocolate cake, or a little bit of cookies – just one baking sheet. After all, it is possible that someone will want something sweet or need consolation: a child’s life is not an easy thing. All these operations take no more than one and a half to two hours, so there is a lot of free time left before the active actions caused by the children returning home begin.

How to diversify standards

There is no need to reach the point of fanaticism. It's funny to cook a separate handful of rice for everyone. But putting together an individual puzzle is exciting.

• Puzzle No. 1: vegetables (for example, red bell pepper, stalked celery, carrots, garlic, spinach, champignons), chopped and quickly fried in a wok in olive oil, + rice - for two vegetarians. 15 minutes!
• Puzzle No. 2: chicken breast cut into narrow strips + vegetables, also quickly fried in a wok, + rice.
• Puzzle No. 3: shrimp, the same wok, a drop of sesame oil, lemon, garlic + rice.

Same with pasta. Cook a pack of penne, spaghetti or fusilli for 15 minutes, then pasta with mussels, tomato sauce, bacon and cheese and cream sauce, with tuna. Each option takes another 10 minutes - you don’t even have time to get tired.

Fifth lesson: don’t break away from the team!

Now, armed with techniques for confronting malicious relatives, you can no longer hide in the corners, covering a plate of low-calorie salad with your body, but calmly sit down at the table with everyone else. Perhaps at first you will not feel too comfortable among the abundance of “forbidden fruits,” but do not refuse family meals. After all, they satisfy not only physical hunger, but also emotional hunger - a common dinner or Sunday lunch brings people together. You can easily put both a personal meal and some “shared” salad on your plate.

If you don’t want to lose your “old” family by creating a new figure, try not to break established traditions - invite guests, bake. Now there are so many interesting recipes for dishes with low calorie content! The main thing is to maintain a sense of humor, good mood and contact with loved ones even in combat dietary conditions!

Note to the reader

The principle of three “yes!” When making an official statement about upcoming changes in your digestive life, apply the “THREE YES!” PRINCIPLE proposed by Dale Carnegie - ask three questions in a row, the first two of which you are guaranteed to receive a positive answer, then the third time they will probably agree with you . (“Darling, have you already had dinner?” – “Yes.” “Darling, does your football start at nine o’clock?” – “Yes.” “Honey, if I go on a diet starting tonight, will you support me?” – Yes) -ss! Which is what you needed to prove!) And immediately make it clear that your decision is final and irrevocable and cannot be appealed!