Ring in the New Year with healthy steps- tips for setting healthy goals with children

List of Goal Ideas | Setting Realistic Goals | Go to Printable Goal Trackers

Here's some tips and steps to set goals to eat healthier and be more active as a family. This is a great opportunity to help kids learn the importance of healthier food choices and being active by encouraging kids to set healthy goals!

Thoughts to keep in mind when beginning goal setting with children:

✰ Find times to talk about how eating healthy food and being physically active  keeps our body feeling great and growing strong. ✰ Make goals simple and be specific ✰Encourage the kids to talk about their own ideas about being healthy. ✰Don’t expect the progress towards the goals to be perfect. It is normal to have ups and downs. ✰Be patient. New health habits take time ✰Small steps are great, they add up over time ✰Keep it fun and positive – no nagging ✰Give encouragement to each other even when goals aren't met ✰Be excited and enthusiastic! This will help kids stay involved and motivated. ✰Celebrate your child's success

Ideas for Setting Healthy Goals

Plan a time to have a 'healthy family goal night'. Discuss why making goals is important to the family. Each person can share their ideas and together you can pick one or two goals to work on.  It helps to have your child be a part of the discussion, they will feel more involved with the goal and this can help them be more committed to working on it.

Here are nutrition and fitness topics, you might consider to use when setting new healthy goals with your children. For children is it best to pick one or two specific goals and work on these over time.

✰ Read food labels while at the store ✰ Eat at least 5 servings of fruits/veggies per day ✰ Drink 2-3 cups of milk or a high calcium food every day ✰ Substitute meat for other high protein foods at least one day a week- Learn more at Meatless Monday ✰ 60 minutes daily physical activity goals ✰ Eat with the entire family at the kitchen table (every night or pick a few nights each week for family dinner) ✰ Limit TV time to 2 hours a day ✰ Use small salad plates for the entrée to help with portion control ✰ Wash hands and wrists for at least 20 seconds ✰ Drink 6 to 8 cups of water each day ✰ Choose foods with 100% whole grains ✰ Start off the each day with a balanced breakfast

Set positive expectations with the kids when setting goals. Keep it simple. Plan ahead to have healthy foods or fitness activities available that support the goal.

Remember healthy habits take time to become a part of a normal routine. If you encourage kids and keep it fun, they are more likely to want to stick with the goal.

Setting Realistic and Specific Healthy Nutrition and Physical Activity Goals

Often, we set very broad goals or too many goals. After not being able to keep them up we give up thinking this is too hard.

Try to pick one or two goals and be very specific, here's a few examples of of how to set specific healthy family goals:

• Too general Eat more fruit and less processed snacks Specific nutrition goal: Serve fresh fruit salad, whole wheat crackers and cheese for snacks on Monday and Wednesdays or try a all 'fruit and veggie' for dinner two nights a week for one month

• Too general fitness goal: Increase our physical fitness Specific physical activity goal: A family hike every Saturday for 45 minutes this month

• Too general nutrition goal: eat less meat Specific nutrition goal: We will have meatless dinners on Mondays

✰ Start small. Don’t make big changes all at once ✰ Keep it simple (if this is a new habit, just select one day vs. seven days....don't even think about the whole year!) ✰Agree as a family on your time period. For example, you will work on this one goal for 4 weeks. ✰Use a fun kid friendly agreement and have each family member sign it ✰Put the family agreement in a visible place as a quick reminder ✰ Consider using a positive reinforcement tracker sheet ✰ No nagging- expect slip ups as your child is learning new habits, keep focus on the positive ✰Start each morning with a positive encouraging statement ✰ Congratulate small steps and encourage each other to stay on track

Printable Goal Trackers Sample Agreement Goal Sheets and Kids' Goal Tracker Pages Visit our Healthy Goal Printables Page to choose your goal agreements, trackers, food diaries or you can even print and customize your own weekly goal sheet!

Your family may need a lot of stars at first before they completely adopt a new behavior. This is OK as it is part of the process of adopting and maintaining healthy habits.

Just remember that every positive change, no matter how small, will add up to a healthier child!