Being healthy is often hard to do when you are trying to go about it alone. This makes it harder to stay motivated, and it means you are less likely to stick with goals. What that means is that you should recruit others to help, those others being your family.

Helping stay fit is not just about your personal needs, it’s about educating your family on how you can all dedicate the time to learn how to keep up with healthy habits. If your family is who you want to help get healthy with, here are some useful tips on how to achieve it.

Ditch the Takeout

Raising a family is not easy. Between all of the homework, practices, or part-time jobs, along with your own responsibilities, there isn’t much time for good, home-cooked meals. It might be hard to fit these into your airtight and hectic schedule, but you need to start prioritizing healthy food over takeout. The folks at BestHealth.org explained that greasy, high-calorie takeout is terrible for the body and only encourages lazy attitudes. You don’t need to be a world-famous chef, you just need to know the right food basics to go with for better family meals at home.

Take More Family Walks

Another little thing you can do is encourage your family to go on walks together. A good 30-minute walk every day is a good way to get out and stretch your legs instead of being cooped up inside watching TV. Going for walks helps de-stress the mind and get some fresh air too. You don’t need to go for a big hike, but gradually increasing the distance each time allows you to sneak in some much-needed exercise with a good view. Plus, it’s a great time to bond with your family to discuss how everyone is.

Limit Device Use

As mentioned before, you want to make sure that everyone is healthy and engaging in productive activities, and being glued to various screens is not one of those ways. The best solution you can do to help resolve these bad attitudes is to create a time limit on how much your kids (and yourself) should use devices. If it’s for work or school, that is fine, but try not to make it a habit of always watching a screen. This is not a good way to help be healthier, and it encourages falling back into bad attitudes.

Reward Healthy Behavior

Kids who are rewarded for their good behavior tend to continue that behavior as well. It is a classical conditioning method for a reason, and it’s important that you show them that their good deeds and behavior doesn’t go unnoticed. Give them more playtime or allow them more choice for dinner (within reason). It is important that kids feel appreciated and even showing them a little attention for choosing to eat an apple over a bag of chips is a good way to instill healthy behavior in them.

Create a Family Health Goal

It is also important that you build a plan for the whole family. The worst thing for your overall goal of achieving a healthier lifestyle is just winging it instead of writing goals down. Progress things like distance walked or ran, total hours of playtime achieved, count how much time you are cutting down on device use, and track how much good food you are eating. For parents, it’s good to keep the progress of weight, but it is not good to put that pressure on kids. You should encourage them to eat better and be more active, not focus on numbers on the scale.

Get More Involved in Sports

If walking is getting too mundane, you might want to pick up more sports. There are plenty of options from swimming to skiing, to tennis and soccer, that there is no excuse for finding a sport that the whole family can partake in, even just as recreational fun in the backyard. Find sports that are good for aerobic exercise and make sure that everyone is doing their part to have fun, most importantly. 

Being fit and healthy is harder when you take it on your own. With that in mind, you should recruit people to help join in on your goals, and who better than your family? Getting your loved ones involved helps make it more fun, more engaging, and more than likely easier when you feel motivated by their progress.