Category Archives: Life

Food, Going Healthy, Life, Parenting

Making Sure Your Family Have Healthy Balanced Diets

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When you have a family, you take on the responsibility of ensuring that everyone remains as fit and healthy as possible. But knowing where to start can be relatively difficult. Of course, numerous factors play into well being – ranging from exercise to mental wellness. But for now, let’s focus on diet and what we consume!

Managing Calorie Consumption

The first step that you need to take into consideration to make sure that everyone’s getting what they need from their daily diet is to effectively manage everyone’s calorie consumption. Now, you don’t have to be hyper-vigilant and excessively strict with this. If your family goes slightly above or below their recommended calories every now and then, it’s not the end of the world. You just need to make sure that everyone’s having roughly the right amount the majority of the time. Calories can be spread across meals and snacks and will vary depending on your age and lifestyle. The below list will give you a good idea of where different family members should be though!

  • Children aged 2 to 8 – 1000 to 1400 calories
  • Girls aged 9 to 13 – 1400 to 1600 calories
  • Boys aged 9 to 13 – 1600 to 2000 calories
  • Active women aged 14 to 30 – 2400 calories
  • Sedentary women aged 14 to 30 – 1800 to 2000 calories
  • Active men aged 14 to 30 – 2800 to 3200 calories
  • Sedentary men aged 14 to 30 – 2000 to 2600 calories
  • Active adults over 30 – 2000 to 3000 calories
  • Sedentary adults over 30 – 1600 to 2400 calories

Ensuring Everyone Stays Hydrated

A factor we often forget to evaluate in our diets is what we drink. Sure, we don’t chew drinks up and swallow them and we don’t dedicate whole meals around drinks, but they do still contribute to what’s going into our bodies. It’s absolutely essential to ensure that your family are all staying hydrated. This involves drinking around eight glasses of water a day, though the recommendation for younger children could be less. This will keep you hydrated, keep organs functioning well and will prevent issues such as loss of concentration or dry skin. Having a fresh water supply available at all times is essential. Generally speaking, the water system in your home will provide you with this. But you could visit this link for backup water sources too!

Balancing Everyone’s Plate

Everyone’s plate should contain all of the different food groups in appropriate moderation throughout the day. This includes fruit and vegetables, starchy food, dairy or dairy replacement, protein and fats. Avoid cutting any single food group out. Everything works together to keep everyone’s bodies ticking over properly. If you’re struggling to get all of the food groups into your family’s diet, consider consulting a nutritionist who will be able to help! Or, if you’re pressed for time and have the budget, meal delivery plans are an excellent option. Most services come with a variety of options, include key nutrients for a healthy lifestyle and can lend themselves to different diets (e.g. vegan, paleo/keto, etc..).

These are just a few steps that you can do to move towards ensuring your family has healthy and balanced diets. The steps are simple to implement and will quickly become routine when you get into the swing of things!

Life, Lifestyle, Parenting

Benefits Of Fostering A Child

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Fostering can bring many benefits into the lives of both the children who are placed and the adults who look after them. There are thousands of children being fostered today in this country. These are children and young adults who would otherwise potentially be alone in the world or be in toxic relationships and homes with their natural parents. There are many benefits to the foster care parents in having these children living with them, not least of which is the feeling of bettering their lives, and giving them a chance they would not have had in other circumstances. 

What Are The Benefits Of Fostering For The Children?

But what of the children themselves? What are the benefits to them of fostering? The first benefit is stability. Children who are put into foster care may well never have had a stable home relationship, and this can damage them in a number of ways. It can give them anxiety disorders about strangers, since they might have a fear that everyone will treat them badly. It could lead to problems forming relationships. It may even mean that, as adults, these children are unable to believe in themselves enough to hold down a good job and build their careers. By offering these children who desperately need foster care the chance of a different life, foster parents are giving them the stability that they are looking for. They can build their confidence and in turn, use that confidence to lead successful lives. 

Another benefit is education. A technique often used with foster children is ‘guided education’. This is learning with the child in mind, using their skills and likes to create a well-rounded teaching experience that will give them the knowledge and qualifications they need. Foster children can be behind their peer group when it comes to education. They may have missed a lot of schooling due to their home life, or it could be that they haven’t been motivated to learn before, due to feeling worthless or unloved. With guided education, they are given the tools they need to help themselves.

You can also help these children to live normal lives and to get access to all of the things they should. Whether this means taking them to dental tests or hearing tests, ensuring that they eat a nutritious diet, and enabling them to go to school; you can help them to lead a normal existence, which they otherwise would not be able to. This is something that a lot of people tend to take for granted today because it is something that is so normal to them and their children. However, for a lot of kids, these basic necessities are not a reality and it is something that they are missing out on. Wouldn’t it be good to be able to give a child all of these things?

How Else Can Fostering Help?

A foster child won’t just have their new foster parents and possibly siblings to take care of them; they will have a social worker to look out for them too. All this extra attention and focus while in foster care will build their self-esteem and will ensure that no matter what their problems and how they want to deal with them, there will be someone they can go to for help. Even though a child may only live with their foster family for a few months, in the majority of cases the children and the foster parents keep in touch. This means that the love, affection, and stability that the children have had will continue for many years to come. 

Finally, although some wisdom states that it is best for a child to remain with their parents (or parent) in as many cases as possible, this is not always true. A foster family is an established way of allowing rifts to heal and bonds to reform, so as to enable families to build themselves up again. This may be because of abusive relationships or in circumstances where the parent simply cannot nurture their child in the way they should – due to drugs or alcohol, for example. Fostering can be the very best thing that can happen to unfortunate children and young people.

So there you have it: an insight into the many benefits that are associated with fostering a child. If this is something you are considering, then we wish you all of the luck in the world on your new venture in life. Being a foster parent is truly incredible.

Going Healthy, Health, Life

The (Un) Healthy Habits You Need To Say Goodbye To

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We all want to be healthy. At the moment, given the current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic, remaining in good health seems more important than ever. However, it can be a challenge. Most of us try to do what we think is right to keep ourselves happy and healthy and recognize that the odd bad habit – perhaps a few glasses of wine or a pizza on the weekend – is fine if done on moderation.

However, some of the things that we do that we think are healthy and do on a daily basis can actually do more harm than good. Here, we look at some of the healthy-but-not-really-healthy habits that you need to consider saying goodbye to.

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Choosing salad over a meal

It sounds like the healthiest option, right? A nice healthy salad – low in calories, full of vitamins and minerals. It is a great choice, is it not?

Well, not all of the time. If you have a plain salad, then yes, it is healthy, but how many people have a plain salad? Not many. Most salads come with all sorts of delicious toppings, extras, sauces, and dressings, and that is where the problem lies. These extras all contain added salt and fat and can often be more calorific than having the burger that you were craving.

Not only that but if a salad does not fill you up, you can often find yourself reaching for the cookie jar or other unhealthy snacks later on.

Listening to music before bed

It has been proven many times that listening to music can reduce your stress levels and help you to relax. Because of this, many people listen to it before they go to bed. It makes sense, does it not? If it helps you to relax, it will help you drop off into a nice, deep sleep.

But what if you are listening to your chosen music through earphones? It might be time to find a new way of zoning out before you go to sleep, as regularly blasting out the tunes into your ears can very easily cause damage to your delicate eardrums and canals.

The thing with hearing damage is that it happens gradually over time, so few people notice a problem until it is too late to reverse or repair the damage. Of course, regular hearing tests can help, but the best way of preventing hearing loss, which usually requires a hearing aid, is to protect your ears. No blasting music, no matter how relaxing it might be, no putting things like earbuds into your ears to clean them and wearing ear defenders if you are exposed to loud noise at work. 

Drinking smoothies and fruit juices

Smoothies and fruit juices, on the face of it, are super healthy. They are jam packed with fruit and seem like an easy way to get some of your portions of five fruit and vegetables a day. They taste pretty delicious at the same time and are healthier than grabbing a takeout breakfast or a can of soda.

However – they are not quite as healthy as you think. In fact, they can be pretty unhealthy. Firstly, if you are replacing a proper meal with a liquid, you are not going to be getting the nutrients that you need. Secondly, the fruit is packed with sugar. It is natural sugar, and nowhere near as bad for you as refined sugar, but it is still there. This can cause a spike in insulin levels, which causes a spike in blood sugar levels, which can lead to unhealthy cravings. 

If you are relying on smoothies to help you lose weight, you may find that your weight loss plateaus very quickly or that you end up putting on weight.

Drinking a cup of tea at bedtime

All the advice and guidance for getting a good night’s sleep tells you to have a warm drink before bed. Many of us put the kettle on and make a cup of tea. It’s hot, it’s comforting and feels like the right drink to help us unwind before we go to sleep.

The problem with this is that tea contains caffeine, and we all know that is not the best thing to have before you go to bed. Caffeine is a stimulant, which will do the opposite to help you have a quality sleep!

There are plenty of habits that on the surface appear to be healthy, but in reality are damaging to your efforts. Take heed of these – you don’t have to cut them out completely, just be aware!