[doolarsva]

Hi again guys...

A very important question to me...

Do any of you know of any good literature about raising a low-carb family? I don't want to just feed my child on the same stuff that made me fat but I don't want to limit her food more than I should... some information is needed. How do I bring up a child without dousing her in too many carbs? Is there a book on this somewhere or a website?

Thanks again,

Sorry for all the questions but I keep thinking of stuff I need to know!

Shei

[Equackasous]

I don't have any reference sources for you.

I can tell you that by generally just eating good foods under Atkins you will be teaching her what food looks like. Sure, you can add some side dishes just for her, and allow the occasional trip to fast food... and birthday cake (or sugar free cheesecake - my daughter's preferred birthday treat.)

Monitor the kids' weight - if they are getting too light on a hight/weight chart - add some carby side dishes - if not - there are only a few things they may not get enough of with Atkins.

If they are young, I would still insist they drink milk for calcium and vitamin D. (I think all US milk is vit. D fortified - you might have to watch the cartons on organic milk to make sure.) Also, I belive a children's vitamin would be in order each day. Perhaps someone else can step in and comment on the specific nutrinets (B Vitamines?) that can be missing from an Atkins diet.[/img]

[smazibummigue]

I also think it is very important for a child to drink milk. My opinion if the child is not obese right now I wouldn't start doing only low carb foods for them just teach them the limit of carb (goodies) they can have. I can't imagine a child not being able to eat any carb foods. That would be to hard for a child. Just start by teaching how much of carb foods they can have and not to over eat on that. Again this is just my opinion.

[ultimda horaf]

Low carb like induction phase is more for people that need to lose weight.

What you need to be feeding and teaching the kid is portion and such.

Like, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich isn't bad... its just that for most of us, we ate 5 of them in one sitting.

[doolarsva]

That's what I'm trying to figure out... HOw many carbs should a 1 year old eat? You know? She's on the light side, at about 25th percentile of national weight for her age... so no need to slim her down, but I don't want to create a weight problem to begin with you know?


As for the vitamin D, she gets in the sun plenty so she has that no matter what, and milk is her drink of choice so I give her that and water. (We're cutting out juice since I learned it's just a junk food. She can eat whole fruits instead.)

Any other advice is appreciated and thanks all for your help so far!!!

[ultimda horaf]

I really dont think 1 year old is time to worry about anything really...

[Riprincattiva]

What's important (talking as a mom here) is what she SEES as much as what she eats. Model the behavior you want her to learn. If you don't eat cookies as an afternoon snack, she won't learn that habit. If you eat b'fast every day, she will learn that habit. Children are imitators... she will do what you do, she will say what you say. If your husband calls veggies gross, she will pick up on that, too.

As far as nutrition goes, make everything count. They eat so little that there's no room for junk in their day. Every bite needs to be nutritious. Good protein at every meal and snack (diced chicken, some fish (watch the mercury limits on fish), ground beef, cheese, etc). Because she's at the lower end of the percentile I would use whole milk. NO juice, like you're already doing. It's just sugar water. She should be eating fruits and berries. Veggies should be in all colors... orange, red, green, yellow. Beans are great kid food and can be considered a vegetable. Whole grains are good, too... like brown rice and oatmeal. It doesn't have to be wheat/bread.

Save "treats" for truly special occasions... like birthdays and holidays.

Establishing good eating habits early is such a gift to your child.

Good luck!

Tril

[doolarsva]

Trill has the idea Kyp

OMG Tril thanks so much for the advice!

I just have such a problem getting my daughter to eat meat. She doesn't like the texture and anything that has moisture to it seems to make her go "Eeew it's wet!" so if I put it on her plate without drying it totally she won't touch it. But who wants to eat dried meat? She only has 4 teeth so far so she can only eat really softened meats anyway. And she can be kinda picky over her food sometimes.

Well that's a toddler for you, right? But we're teaching her to go outside and get exercise and walk places and enjoy eating healthy. It's the best we can do for her!

Shei

[Riprincattiva]

Try to make the meat easy for her to chew/swallow... dice it up and mix it in with something else that she really likes. Most kids will eat chicken that way... ground beef cooked dry... anything they can eat with their fingers.

Make the food "fun" and colorful. For instance, I used to make "pig eyes" for my oldest son. Those a slices of banana (rounds) with a bit of natural pnb and two raisins on top (those are the eyes). He made it up and loved eating his pig eyes. Maybe you could make it fun for your daughter based on what she likes to eat. You could give her a bowl of oatmeal with "strawberry" eyes and a "mouth" made from blueberries. Get creative... it's FUN!

[doolarsva]

Here's my daughter this morning at breakfast:



She has apple pieces, honeydew melon pieces, cantaloupe pieces, baked chicken pieces, and one piece of cherry that she wouldn't touch. She had milk with this.

This is the kind of thing I try to feed her but she won't always eat everything I give her so she gets a variety and picks out what she wants... Like yesterday I gave her corn, carrots, green beans, potatoes and some chicken and noodles for lunch and she only ate the chicken and noodles. Go figure. But I try to keep her plate full of variety and as natural of products as possible. I opt for cutting her fresh apple pieces over giving her dried apples or canned fruit.

I'm trying to do what my friend (a great naturalist on her way to becoming a naturalist doctor with a doctorate in science already) Paula tells me... She says the closer we can come to eating the leaves off the trees, and the meat off the animals directly, the healthier it is.

But I want to make sure I don't set my child in the wrong direction on how much fruit and grain she eats... A few years down the road, I want to see her eating a variety of foods, with low to no added sugars and good protein. I don't want to see her chunky and addicted to sweets and breads... So I guess what I need to do is not give her sweets and breads right now? Is that the answer? It seems too simple.

I'm skeptical and suspicious where my daughter is concerned... very careful of her... so maybe I'm over-complicating but I wanna make sure I give her the best start to learning how to keep herself healthy that I can.

Thanks for your advices!

Shei

[ultimda horaf]

Theres plenty of fun things she can have that you can watch the sugars in but she'll love... someday she'll be a sloppy joe fan and you can make sloppy joe's without putting a ton of sugars etc in it.... whole grains are also good.... they're not horrible its just that we had to cut them out in induction.

I make my own pasta noodles, you can do that and make healthy pasta noodles without all the bleached white flour and then make home made hamburger helper... which is always a hit.

[Riprincattiva]

I would just feed her the foods you want her to love when she's older... fruit, whole grains, good proteins, etc. She'll eventually get "into" candy, cakes, cookies and ice cream. No sense in YOU being the one to introduce them to her. I NEVER served my kids soda. My oldest was 16 before he acquired a taste for it and even now it's not his first choice. He'll have water instead.

Speaking of soda... um... what's THAT on the floor beside her high chair?!? tsk tsk tsk

Tril

[doolarsva]

It's my friends' soda. We have 2 weekly game nights (we're roleplayers!) and there's always people coming over on those nights so they often leave a snack or a soda for next time if they didn't finish it. I don't touch the stuff. It's been habit among my friends for years, but now that we live in a smaller apartment we generally try to send that stuff back home with them and tell them to bring it next time. Unfortunately, the Faygos belong to a friend that isn't really coming around anymore so I left them there for some other friends and I'm hoping they'll drink it or take it with them tonight when they come home.

I will never serve sodas to my child. I don't drink sodas. My husband doesn't drink sodas. We used to have a coca cola if we went out to eat but we don't allow sodas in our home. We don't ask our friends not to drink them though, and those were abandoned accidentally lol

What you see in the floor that is HERS to drink is a can of V8

See?? It's not how it looks!!

Shei ^-^ haha!

[joanasevilyboaz]

We have a two year old and he loves broccoli, green beans, asparagus, even salad. When you have a little one in the house, it's like having a video camera on all the time. They observe carefully and pick up your attitudes as well as your actions. It's amazing how, at 2 years old, when he can barely speak, he can already imitate my voice and facial expressions!

I think that the trick to getting a child to eat healthy is to offer lots of different nutritious food and rarely if ever offer non-nutritious food. Also, as soon as they're old enough to pick up their food, they will like to dip it into things, so offer healthy sauces also.

It's important that you do not limit the healthy carbs for a growing child, though. Offer lots of whole grains, cut up fruit and veggies. They need lots of calories and they don't have a lot of extra fat, like we do. They need to get their energy primarily from healthy carbohydrates.

I cook what I can eat, but I always cook another high-carb dish for my daughter and grandson.

When your chld gets to school, it's a whole different ball game. I don't know how you keep the junk food away when the kids are trading lunches! And what they see on TV too! Maybe if you teach the child to love healthy food, the junk food won't look so appealing.

[doolarsva]

Thanks Karen!

Easy answer on the school thing: We're homeschooling. And we don't watch Tv in our home so no issue there. We don't intend to let commercialism strangle our daughter's imagination with flashy toys and materialism. We're Taoist/Buddhist spiritualists and we don't believe in those sort of things.

Rune (my daughter) is very picky about things being wet though. She won't touch food if it's moist and I can't get her to try dipping. I've tried letting her have french toast with applesauce to dip and she won't touch it once it's dipped. She'll barely touch the french toast because she doesn't like warm food either. I'm trying! lol

So I have let her eat a lot of the Gerber Graduates snacks because they seem really healthy for snacktime. Have you any opinion of those?

Thanks again!

[mas-dkt-sive]

Goodness! She is cute!

[doolarsva]

haha! Thanks Steph!

She's a real sweety. We know how lucky we are to have such a darling baby. She is really no trouble to us most of the time... she's a joy.


And she was born with all that hair o_X it's been cut 4 times already and wet it reaches her midback o____O lol


She's built like her father, thank god!