What does it mean to set a healthy example to your children?

What they also pick up on is our attitude towards how we look after our bodies with movement and nutrition. As parents we can be pretty hard on ourselves and the guilt can, at times, feel heavy. We often think that we’re not doing a good enough job, we can feel like we don’t spend enough time with our children, like we’re not making them eat enough nutritious food, we’re not reading with them enough, we’re not active enough with them, and so on, and so on. Like I said, the guilt can feel heavy. So when we think that on top of all of this, we should also be a living, breathing example of what a healthy person looks like, that can just add to the feeling of not doing a good enough parenting job.

In this article I want to share with you some really easy ways that you can set a great example for your children of what a healthy lifestyle looks like. The best part is, you’re probably doing a lot of it already – we’ve just been conditioned to think that healthy and fit looks only one way and if you’re not doing those things then you’re not healthy or fit. I’m going to drop a few truth bombs, hopefully relieve you of some of that parenting guilt and who knows, maybe inspire you to make a few changes.

As a parent to an eight and five year old, I want to teach them that exercise is a way of looking after their body and a celebration of what their body can do, regardless of how they look.

I teach them this by being careful of the language I use in front of them when talking about exercise or talking about my body or their body. When I talk about my own training and my own fitness, I never link it to the way that I look or to my weight. For example, I’ll tell them that I exercise because it keeps my muscles strong so that I can lift them up in my arms for a cuddle and because it’s good for my mental health. I tell them that I’m proud of what my body can do and I ask them what their body can do that they’re proud of.

The way you talk about your own body and your own fitness in front of your children has a big impact on the way that they will think about their own bodies and their own fitness. If you use language such as “I need to lose weight, my tummy is so squidgy”, your children will listen and use this to make their own stories about their own body. Trying to talk about your body without making reference to the way it looks is a great example to set.

We’ve all been brought up to think of a healthy body as slim, thin, lean, muscular and does not weigh much, because this is often what we see on social media and advertisements in the fitness industry. But this simply is not accurate. A person’s weight, size, shape or body fat percentage does not fully tell you about their cardiovascular health, muscle mass, bone density, blood pressure, visceral fat (fat around internal organs), immune health, cholesterol, gut health, etc. Your genetics also play a huge role in the build of your body. There’s so much more to health than just the weight, shape or size, which is why it’s so important to disassociate how your body looks from your health.

I often remind my children that a body can have tummy rolls, cellulite and body fat and still be healthy, strong and capable of doing amazing things.

If you think that you don’t do enough exercise to be a good example to your children, maybe rethink it. Exercise doesn’t have to be in a gym or be a sport. It can be playing chase with your children, it can be walking the dog together, spending a morning doing some gardening, kicking a ball around, going swimming together, walking to school –exercise is so much more than sweating it out in a gym or on the netball court.

Firstly, I’m not keen on the term junk food. It implies that there’s something bad about it, like it’s junk. Food does not have a moral value, it’s not good or bad and eating it does not make you good or bad (I’ve said so many times when I was younger, “I’ll be naughty and eat another chocolate” or “no thanks [to the offer of a biscuit] I’m trying to be good”... can you relate?). I think of food as being on a spectrum of “nutritious” to “less nutritious”. All food lies somewhere on this spectrum.

Secondly, all food is fuel for our body, but we need more of some foods than others in order to thrive. No food is off limits when it comes to a healthy diet, we just need everything in the right amounts. Showing your children that you enjoy a range of food in the right amounts and that you’re game for trying new foods with them is an example of a healthy relationship with food and a healthy diet.

Next time you think about setting a healthy example for your children, not only focus on how you’re moving and fueling your body, but how you talk about it too.

Louise Hurley As a MumSafe™ trainer and Pregnancy and Postnatal Corrective Exercise Specialist, Louise’s mission is to help mums at every stage of motherhood safely start or return to exercise. Louise is the owner of Strong Mums and runs small group training and 1:1 PT. Find out more at www.strongmums.com or on social media @strongmumsgosford