Our natural summertime habits can actually make our kids lose weight and it’s not just because they are more active.
If your kids are in school or even being homeschooled, they’re waking up early, you’re on a regimented schedule, you’re getting food in their belly starting early in the morning. So what happens during summer?
When we transition into summer, we let those schedules loosen up a little bit. It’s really normal for a lot of families especially for those with teenagers to let them sleep until 10 or 11AM and have breakfast at noon, lunch at 5PM, go to the pool, hangout and play night games, and come home and have a quick snack before they go to bed by midnight.
What’s happening if you’re following this kind of schedule is that your kids are missing an entire meal. Your underweight kids don’t get the chance to have the calories that they really need. They’re skipping whole meals and probably burning a lot more calories because they’re more active compared to sitting on a chair in school all day.
2 Simple Fixes to Your Underweight Kids and Athlete’s Summertime Regimen
- The first tip for underweight kids and athletes: GET THEM UP in the morning and make sure they’re eating. Increase their feeding window for the day. If they’re sleeping in, their feeding window is 8-10 hours and we need to increase that to 12 hours, which is going to help a lot.
- The second tip: NO CEREAL ALLOWED. Although cereal has sugar which will convert to fat very quickly in the body, those are not the type of calories that you want. It’s not providing them real nutrition.
Best Healthy Breakfast Combo
These foods will help kids with brain development, muscle development and will help sustain them through the day.
The best breakfast I can prepare for my kids are eggs and green smoothies. Serve them boiled, fried or scrambled. I also love making healthy smoothies for my kids because I can hide a lot of greens in it. You can add in a handful of spinach, kale or even broccoli. It really makes me happy every time I can sneak in more nutrition to their diet.
So on the days that I can feed my kids eggs and a smoothie for breakfast, I’m feeling like supermom because they have better focus, better moods and more energy for the day. And I do notice when I’m consistent with that, they stay a healthy weight.
There are four healthy macros for kids: protein, carbs, fat and the fourth one is water which obviously is important. Make sure that your kids are getting plenty of healthy fats, protein and carbs by giving them a green smoothies from www.smoothies4beginners.com. Follow that link for a free downloadable smoothie recipe book!
What healthy breakfast foods do you love serving your kids?