CHOLESTEROL DIET SECRETS |
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Never Too Young for Cholesterol Increasingly, more kids are obese and some are even put on cholesterol medication. These poor children are deprived of basic lifestyle such as the opportunity to engage actively in sports (jogging, skating, football), deprived of the joy of looking good in front of the mirror, deprived of self confidence and the list goes on. Fortunately, their diets and lifestyles are often the cause of their obesity, and parents can make a difference here. Cholesterol is not just a problem for the adults. It filters down to our kids by way of them picking up bad habits from we the parent and the adults and peers around them. What we learned during childhood affects us into our adult lives. In an interesting book titled "The Nurture Assumption", the author wrote about how children are influenced much more strongly by their environment in which they grow up than by the genes they inherit from their parents. Environment means their home, parents, their peers outside home - all of which the parents have a certain degree of control over. Therefore, parents can certainly play a positive role in helping their children to stay healthy. Here are some ways: - The next time your kids ask you to play baseball, cycle, swim or do any forms of exercises with them, join in. Not only do you get to spend quality time with your kids, you will also be exercising your own body which is good for managing cholesterol. Therefore, I could not stress more of the many benefits of exercising with your kids. Some of the most memorable moments I have with my own child came from spending time exercising together with her. Life is a collection of memories, so do not let these moments slip by. - Make it a family routine to eat fruits 30 minutes before dinner. That 30 minutes is valuable time also for fostering bonds with your children. Have conversations with your kids about their school, teachers, peers (yes their peers, get to know who your kids are spending time with), what they ate in school, then share plans for the weekend. - For moms in the kitchen, use the 80/20 rule. The amount of food prepared the healthy way (steam, boil, stir fry, clear soups) should make up about 80 percent of the total spread. Please follow the link at the end of this newsletter for a simple cholesterol-free tasty soup menu. - Sweet treats can be harmful. Avoid keeping too much of sweet foods such as cupcakes and cakes for “special occasions” and “special treats” at home, as this inadvertently would encourage children to indulge in sweet menu and psychologically they may look forward to sugary foods in your absence. Consuming plenty of sugar puts both the adult and children through mood swings and stresses the body as it now needs more energy to break down the sugar. Unused sugar are stored as fats in our body, contributes to obesity and increases one's risk of having problems with high cholesterol. - Bring your kids along for grocery shopping, play "treasure" hunt, have them help you search for fresh and low-fat groceries. In this way, you are making them read labels, and they would understand terms like trans fats, saturated fats, unsaturated fats pretty easily. This good habit of label reading stays with them into adulthood. - Limit the amount of time that your kids spend on sedentary activities such as watching television and playing computer games. Kids generally need clear guidelines on what they can and are not allowed to do, and they would follow them pretty closely if you train them from young. For example, you may decide to let your kids watch television for an hour a day max but allow them longer time for sports activities. In getting them away from sedentary lifestyle, you are helping them to steer clear from one of the risk factors of cholesterol, which is the lack of exercise (couch potato syndrome). - Lastly, send your kids (as well as yourself) to bed by 10pm. The human body undergoes a rejuvenation and renewal process between 11pm to 1am. It is during this period that our body uses its natural capacity to combat bad LDL cholesterol and repair other parts of the body. This is the reason why our body would feel light and brand new the next day after we get that full two-hour rejuvenation process the night before. If you don't believe, try it out. Oh by the way, getting enough sleep is so crucial for cholesterol control that I have devoted a separate section on this topic, which will be in the next issue of Cholesterol Diet Secrets.
To your health, Nancy |
If you have missed out the
previous issue about the A-Z list of ingredients that makes tasty ABC
soups,