Health: Homeschooling - Eating your way to a Healthy Body
By Mimi Rothschild
It is important to eat right. Homeschooling has always advocated the importance of a balanced diet. You should ensure that your child has the right mix of essential nutrients in his or her diet. A lot of health magazines and websites focus on how you can reduce those extra calories and have a shapely body. However, being underweight is also a serious and challenging problem which has unfortunately been underplayed by the media and health experts. If you are underweight, you will feel nervous or anxious easily. Your immune system becomes weak and you are susceptible to a lot of health problems. You must eat well and indulge in regular physical activity to build muscle tissue. If you are healthy and strong, you not only look attractive but you also acquire a healthy self image and a formidable immune system.
Homeschoolers are taught the importance of exercise and healthy eating right from childhood. Follow these healthy tips to know how a homeschool student can gain extra precious pounds:
Instead of the conventional "three meals a day", you should add three or more healthy snacks between those three meals. The three meals should not be rather heavy so that you accommodate the snacks in between.
Homeschoolers who are thin or anorexic should indulge in calorie rich food. Also, they should eat food which is rich in protein, vitamins and minerals. Also, protein is good for muscle build-up, and vitamins and minerals enhance your immune system. The calorie rich food includes bread, pasta, biscuits, cornbread, granola, bagels, rice etc. Indulge in a lot of dried fruits and savor fruit nectar and canned fruit. You can also indulge in vegetables, potatoes, peas, corn and olives to help you gain weight. Further, meat, fish, eggs, nuts, and peanut butter form rich sources of protein. Also drink milk, gorge on your favorite ice-cream, cheese, yogurts, custards and milkshakes. If your homeschooler child is thin, eating this food can turn out to be a privilege because he can savor the delicacies while gaining weight too.
The homeschooler should eat the following foods in moderation: butter, jelly, jams, grave, and cream cheese. These are more fattening than nutritious and may just add layers of undesired fat on the body. If your homeschooler does eat them, make sure that your child exercises well to burn off the fat.
The homeschooled students need to know their body weight equation so that they can consume more calories than they burn. Your homeschooler should always make it a point to add calorie rich ingredients to the food that he or she eats. For instance, a homeschooler who wants to add weight should add more salad dressings, potatoes or cheese to sandwiches.
In a nut shell, your homeschooler should eat soups, desserts, beverages and snacks which are rich in calories. Your child should ideally have snacks that add calories and rich nutrients at the same time. For example your child can have rich fruit custard or a milkshake with added fruits and ice-cream.
Teenagers these days, especially girls, are so conscious about having slim figures that they skip some meals, and most often breakfast. The result is dangerous as they may become anorexic or bulimic, embracing a lot of negative health issues because of sheer neglect of food. Thankfully, homeschoolers, whether they are boys or girls, are well-fed by their caring parents. Homeschoolers ought to know that a thin frail structure is never attractive. A healthy and a fuller, wholesome body are always attractive to the opposite sex, never mind what fashion magazines say.
A healthy body houses a healthy brain and gives the individual a healthy self image. Health conscious parents will always make it a point to see that their homeschooling child does not compromise his or her eating. Quite rightfully so, homeschooling children are taught about eating at the right time and exercising well so that their body looks healthy and athletic.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling parent, children's rights activist, author, and Founder and C.E.O. of online education company Learning by Grace, Inc. Rothschild and her husband of twenty-eight years reside in suburban Philadelphia with their eight children.
Feeling that “our current system of education has broken its promise,” Rothschild co-founded Learning By Grace, Inc. to provide families with Internet-based multimedia education to PreK-12 children all over the world.
In addition to her twenty years of experience as a homeschool mother, Rothschild has written a number of books dealing with education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Home Education Websites Blog consists of helpful online content and activities for Christian homeschooling families.
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