Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Food

Many parents have issues with kids and food. I have to say that running a family and making sure they stay healthy is not easy, especially when your kids are babies and your heart aches with them whenever they are sick.

I added the connection between food and health to my bible after a huge pain of trying very hard to get rid of Eden’s pneumonia when she was just an 18-month-old baby. By the time she was 2 years old, Eden had been sick with pneumonia 3 times already and had been constantly on antibiotics and inhalers. Before those scary 6 months, I had never thought about what I ate and had just gone to the supermarket and bought the same things my parents and Gal’s parents had.

One of my friends, who was trying to help me, told me Eden should eat certain things and avoid eating others to improve her health. I thought she was not normal (which was true, but in a good sense) and that food had nothing to do with germs and health problems. It was only later, when we discovered Eden was sensitive to dairy food, that I realized just how tight the relationship between food and health was.

Food, and only food, was the difference between having a very sick girl (with pneumonia that 6 months of antibiotics could not fix) and having a healthy girl that went to see the doctor only once in the following 20 years. Food, and only food, was the difference between being anemic and having a healthy iron level. During my second, third, fourth and fifth pregnancies, while every other woman had to take iron tablets, my iron level was strong and stable, even the doctor was shocked. Food, and only food, was the difference between Gal having sinus surgery to unblock his nose and not needing that surgery until today.

This post is part 3 of 10 in the series Ronit's Parenting Bible

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Supplement Your Life

Modern times have put us in charge of our health and wellbeing and as parents, of the health and wellbeing of our kids. Gone are the days of the good old doctor who knew everybody by name and actually cared about them. House calls are certainly a thing of the past.

– We must take responsibility for our own health, because nobody else will do it

– We must take responsibility for our children’s health, because it is part of the “job description” and they are important to us

– We understand that being healthy is a prerequisite to doing well at school and at work, to staying alive longer and to enjoying life

– We live a lifestyle that is faster than ever and far more stressful, which is bad for our health

– We eat food made to taste good, not to be nutritious, which means that most of us do not get what we need out of it

– We need to prevent physical and mental issues and keep ourselves balanced, rather than treat symptoms

– We already use chemicals to overcome our challenges and we are typically aware of their effects (good and bad) on our body and mind

So why not use food supplements?

We are not experts, but we have found value in some food supplements, despite having to overcome the feeling we are self-medicating. We have tried superfoods and spices, as well as pills and capsules. We have tried “natural” products and “artificial” ones, and we have not found the complete answer yet.

Maybe if we parents get together and discover the best ways to supplement our life and the life of our kids, we will all be healthier, happier and more successful.

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People are Dying!

My friend said to me, “Look around you. There are more sick people than there ever were. The food we are eating is not nutritious enough. There is too much antibiotics in meat, too much processed food and too much cancer. People are dying because of extra use of chemicals in their life. What’s your opinion?”

I had to make a decision on the spot. I knew she wanted me to support her for her kids to recognize it as something “all mothers think”, not just her being fanatic. The problem was that it was just her being fanatic.

I said, “Really?! I am looking around and I’ll tell you what I see. My dad is 77 years old and he is a pretty healthy person. My mom is 71 years old and loves doctors and medication. 6 years ago, she came to visit us and we travelled around the North Island of New Zealand for 12 days. We spent most of the day on our feet and even trekked (with then 3-year-old Noff) for about 6 hours. My mom did very well and she was 65 then. My dad did even better than she did and he was 72 years old. I am looking around and what I see is that those sick people who eat junk, food that is not nutritious enough, consume too much antibiotics with their meat and gobble up cancer-inducing processed food, those people live longer”.

Ouch!

Before you think I am crazy, here are the facts.

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Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (14): How to Keep Your Kids Healthy

Healthy kids are every parent’s hope and prayer. I remember during my pregnancy, while everyone was talking about the sex of our baby and our plans and wishes for its future success, the older people said, “The most important thing is that you have a healthy child”.

I am a very good example of a parent who thinks we can do something to change our kids’ health, although I did not grow up with that thinking. My mom raised 5 sick kids and she still thinks medication is the cure for everything. To her, “doctor” is a kind of god that must be obeyed, even when her doctor keeps her waiting, ignores her symptoms and gets things wrong. She has been sick all her life and she does not have any health strategy.

I believe that kids’ health (and their parents’ health) is an important part of parenting. I am in a constant search for tips and tricks to keep my kids healthy, so I decided to ask the Top Parenting Bloggers about their attitude towards ensuring their kids’ health.

This post is part 14 of 14 in the series Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss

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Anorexia: Model Parenting

We happened to watch a TV piece on top models’ body image, eating habits and self-inflicted damages.

Top model Jessica Gomes (24) said the pressure on models to be slim was enormous and that models are afraid to miss out on work opportunities in the highly competitive fashion industry, so they use some excessive methods to keep themselves trim. She said models run for days on a mix of lemon juice and maple syrup, which also “cleanses”. To keep their energy up and be able to work, they drink coffee and use Cocaine.

The article mentioned Ana Carolina Reston (see her in the pictures), a famous Brazilian model who died from Anorexia at the age of 21, weighing 40kg (88lbs). Her mother told the press Ana had eaten nothing but apples and tomatoes for 2 months before she died.

Although the article did a very good job showing models who decided to eat normally and still got excellent jobs, Ronit and I were left with a very painful question:

Where are those top models’ parents?

This post is part 2 of 8 in the series Anorexia

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Topsy Turvy World (2)

Last week, I wrote about some things that make our world seem to be operating upside down, including relaxing to accomplish more, exercising to have more time, giving to receive, listening to be heard and praising your kids so they will do better.

But life is so weird and wonderful, there are other examples of its topsy turvy ways and I just have to share them with you, because they have helped me and will likely help you too.

Is the sun bad for you?

Should you eat lots of protein?

Should you lose weight?

Should you be perfect?

Maybe this will help you choose, be happy and be a great parent too.

This post is part 2 of 4 in the series Topsy Turvy World

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Help! My daughter eats junk

From time to time, I get frustrated watching my youngest daughter Noff (8) eating junk. Inside my head, I hear the scream, “Help!” I am sure many parents feel like me when their kids eat junk.

This morning, I had a revelation!

You see, in our family, she is the odd one out. If you ask the older kids what is the best sandwich in the world, they will say, “A multigrain roll with tomatoes, lettuce, mayonnaise, avocado and alfalfa”. If you ask Noff, she will say, “Nutella (chocolate spread), Jam or Fairy Floss (Cotton Candy)”.

It is scary for me as a mother to watch her eat.

“Why would you put this poison in your body?” I ask her.

“Because it tastes great”, she says with gleaming eyes.

This morning, Noff opened the freezer, took out frozen blueberries and ate them in the car on the way to school. Then, I had a revelation.

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The Universe is Trying to Tell Me Something

Have you ever heard something over and over again from different, unrelated sources and you have said, “Wow, what a coincidence. I read about this yesterday” or “I got an email about this just last week”?

Well, when I get so many “coincidences” like that in a short time, I think the Universe is trying to tell me something.

One particular coincidental chain started a long time ago, when I was a kid. I listened to a “pirate” radio called “The Voice of Peace”, which played one commercial over and over again, saying “Water. Drink only water”. While they still played sponsored commercials for coke and other soft drinks, they ran this one more frequently than anything and did not get paid for it.

I loved the idea of that radio station, which promoted peace, and I loved the fact that they encouraged people to be healthy, unlike other stations that were selling air time to the highest paying advertiser.

When I was 18, I attended a workshop for girls about the world of cosmetics. Our presenter told us that if we wanted to have soft skin (“like a baby’s bum”), we needed to drink plenty of water, regardless of the price of the moisturizer we bought. Well, 3 of us experimented with this and, just like she said, after only a week, everyone commented on our wonderful, glowing skin.

But these things alone did not seem like they were going anywhere yet.

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TV Diet (2): Health Concerns

Many studies have been done on the influence of TV on viewers (in fact there have been 4,000 studies on the effect on children alone, which you should not read if you love watching TV). Excessive TV viewing raises concerns in five major areas: Health, Behavior, Outlook on life, Relationship and Education

This post is part 2 of 18 in the series TV Diet

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Stories: Fact or Fiction?

As an author, people ask me about the origin of my stories. Almost every person who has read my stories has asked, “Are they real?” Maybe this is a good opportunity for me to write how I came up with them, because some of the stories are so real it was painful. All my characters are based on real people whose personalities I borrowed without their knowledge, but some parts of the stories are twists I created to convey a message.

Read Stories: Fact or Fiction? »