Those food habits you learn as a kid could be derailing your weight loss.
Retrain your brain and lose weight by getting rid of these habits for good.
"You can't get up from the table until you've finished your food." If you're like most people, this refrain was repeated over and over throughout your childhood, often encouraging you to continue eating long after you'd reached the point of satisfaction.
The numbers don't lie: according to the American Heart Association, more than 18 percent of American children and young adults aged 6 to 19 are now classified as obese, and a shocking 12.1 percent of children under 5 are, as well. And while genetics may factor into the increasing rates of overweight and obesity among children, what we're teaching them about what, when, and why they should eat plays a significant role. So, before you go to tell your kid that they won't get dessert until they've eaten every bite of their dinner or opt for the convenience foods your parents once fed you, consider whether or not you're simply repeating the unhealthy patterns you grew up with—and if you are, make a vested effort to fix them.
Luckily, it's easy to retrain both body and brain in no time: it starts by identifying these 40 fattening food habits we learn as kids.
Eating Bread at Every Meal
While bread doesn’t have to be off-limits to make losing weight a reality, the habit of having bread at every meal can make you pack on serious weight in no time. Even if you’re only eating bread on your sandwich at lunch and a roll at dinner, those extra calories can easily lead to a nearly three-pound weight gain over the course of just one month.
Making Every Meal Multi-Course
It may be nice to have a multi-course meal on a special occasion, but insisting upon multiple courses every day of the week can mean serious weight gain in your future. Instead of making every meal a multi-course affair, make your meals more satisfying by loading them with fiber-rich vegetables, which can keep you full for longer.
Making Certain Food Off-Limits
It’s never a bad thing to try to get your family to eat healthier, but allowing kids certain foods and then taking them away as a punishment for weight gain, lackluster grades, or bad behavior can make kids feel insecure and lead to secretive eating behaviors. If you’re worried about your children’s eating habits, don’t keep junk food in the house and you won’t have to feel like it’s necessary to take it away from them.
Watching TV at Meals
TV may be the preferred means of relaxing for many of us, but when we watch it while we eat, we set ourselves up for weight gain. Distracting yourself from your food with TV makes it harder to recognize when you’re full and makes it easy to eat way more than you intended. In fact, research published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity reveals that children who regularly watch television have higher rates of obesity than those who abstain, regardless of whether they watch during meals or not.
Buying Bad Food in Bulk
Buying food in bulk may be an easy way to shave some money off your grocery costs, but unfortunately, the food we’re buying jumbo-sized portions of is rarely the healthy stuff. Don’t load up on junk food just because it’s on sale; use the bulk bins at your local grocery store and load up on nuts, whole grains, and gluten-free flours instead. If you bring your own containers, many stores will discount the price even further. Of course, even with healthy food, you have to be vigilant about your portion size: research published in the Journal of Nutrition reveals that individuals served a larger portion of pasta ate up to 30 percent more than when served a smaller helping, even though they weren't hungrier.
Eating Your Meal Before Dessert
“You have to eat dinner before you get dessert” is so common a refrain that it might as well be the unofficial motto of parenthood. However, the idea that you have to eat a full meal before you can enjoy the thing you actually wanted to eat just means you’re eating way more calories than you need. If you’ve got a hankering for something sweet, indulge that craving in moderation, but don’t front-load it with hundreds of calories worth of food you didn’t really want in the first place.
Setting Food Combos in Stone
French fries and ketchup. Pasta and meatballs. Broccoli and cheese. We get so used to eating certain food combinations together that we get stuck in fattening food ruts that are hard to break. Instead of insisting on the same pairings over and over, try adding some healthier ingredients to your typically less-healthy choices. Make oven fries and serve them with mustard. Try adding some olive oil and protein-rich peas to your pasta. Serve that broccoli with some hummus—your taste buds and your waistline will thank you.
Using Veggies Are a Punishment
If you’re eager to make kid hate vegetables, there’s no better way to do that than forcing them as a punishment. Many parents insist their children eat vegetables instead of something they’d like when they’ve behaved badly. While vegetables should play a role in pretty much every meal, making them a consequence for bad behavior instead of a neutral food means their negative reputation will be hard to shake later in life.
Making a Big Deal About Little Food Choices
You may have heard all kinds of rumors about all the nutrients in bread being in the crust, but that’s simply not true, and making a big deal about eating it has only served to put kids off of it. In fact, making a big deal about any relatively inconsequential food habits rarely leads to them being adopted with gusto by kids.
Going Low-Fat
Low-fat diets were all the rage before the low-carb and paleo trends hit, but those low-fat and fat-free foods your parents pushed on you could be the reason you can’t lose weight as an adult. Researchers at the University of Toronto have discovered that many low-fat foods are not significantly lower in calories than their higher-fat counterparts, but are often eaten in larger quantities, meaning that any benefit you'd get from their reduced calories is eliminated. Instead of continuing this trend, opt for foods with healthy fat, like avocados, olive oil, and fatty fish, all of which can help keep you full for longer than low-fat foods while reducing your risk of heart disease and cognitive decline.
Making Healthy Food Seem Foreign
If the words “health food” send a shiver down your spine, you’re not alone. Many parents make too big a deal about designating things as healthy, often making those foods seem strange or icky to their little ones. To keep from perpetuating this habit in your own life, try not to put a moral judgment on food around your kids, friends, or family members. Many foods that kids love, from apples to peas, are healthy, but they only stop enjoying them when they’re designated as such.
Keeping Junk Food in the House
It’s hard to feed a family when you’re short on time and energy, but keeping junk food in the house is a habit that often extends into adulthood. To deter yourself from digging into bags of chips or frozen pizzas when you get home from a long day, try avoiding the interior aisles of the supermarket where convenience foods lurk and stick to your shopping list. And if you do bring something less-than-healthy home, make sure it's kept out of sight: according to research conducted at Cornell University, people are more likely to snack on unhealthy food if it's left out on a counter, and less likely if it's put away.
Eating Microwave Meals
Microwave meals may be the ultimate in convenience for busy families, but they have no place in your healthy eating plan as an adult. Many microwave dinners are loaded with salt, sugar, and preservatives, all of which can lead to bloating and weight gain. In fact, research published in Public Health Nutrition reveals that the availability of convenience food is inextricably linked to increased rates of obesity and diabetes. Instead of turning to convenience meals, try prepping healthy meals, like veggie-packed frittatas or healthy breakfast burritos, for the week and freezing them in advance.
Customizing Meals For Reluctant Eaters
Parents often feel like short-order cooks, thanks to the unrelenting food demands of their little ones, and making every meal to order can reinforce a lifetime of bad eating habits. Instead of caving to your child’s every food whim, set boundaries and don’t offer to buy them junk just because they won’t eat the healthy meal you’ve prepared—doing so only reinforces the notion that they'll get rewarded for refusing to eat what's good for them.
Not Giving Kids Any Choice
Kids love feeling like they’re in charge, but are so rarely given choices, especially when it comes to food. All it takes is offering a few options to kids to make them feel appreciated, involved, and eager to choose one of the healthy options you’ve presented them. The good news? Doing something as simple as letting them cook with you might help make their palates more refined. According to research published in the CDC's Preventing Chronic Disease: Public Health Research, Practice and Policy, allowing children to cook alongside their parents increased their intake of fruits and vegetables while making them less reluctant to try new foods.
Drinking Juice With Meals
Juice is little more than liquid sugar and has no place in a healthy diet. Unfortunately, this memo hasn’t gotten out to lots of parents and educators, who eagerly give little ones the stuff at every meal. Instead of high-calorie, high-sugar juice, enjoy some water with fresh fruit before meals—researchers at the University of Birmingham have discovered that drinking water before meals is an effective way to ditch some extra calories in your diet.
Quitting Foods After One Try
It can be hard to get kids to eat, but when we’re little, we’re often told that all we need to do is take a single bite of a food and quit if we don’t enjoy it. Unfortunately, that’s hardly enough exposure to form a habit. According to the Ellyn Satter Institute, it can often take as many as 20 exposures for children to start enjoying certain foods, so if you don’t like a healthy snack the first time, don’t be so quick to give up on it.
Having a Bite of Everything
As a kid, you’re forced to try out every food presented to you. As an adult, don’t feel obligated to do the same. Sticking to your guns when it comes to your food preferences at family gatherings can save you hundreds or even thousands of calories and afford you more room to eat the healthy foods you actually enjoy.
Giving Soda as a Treat
Soda is a huge contributor to rising obesity rates around the world and shouldn’t factor into anyone’s meal plan, especially those trying to lose weight and get healthy—in fact research published in Obesity Reports reveals a distinct link between the consumption of sugary beverages and the odds a person will become overweight or obese. And diet soda isn't much better: in fact, multiple studies have revealed a link between artificial sweetener consumption and increased waist circumference and weight gain.
Grazing All Day
Getting kids to eat can be a struggle, so it’s no wonder that many parents are fine letting their little ones graze all day as long as it means they’re eating something. However, this habit in adulthood can lead to tons of unnecessary calories sneaking into your diet and ending up around your waist. Try committing yourself to three healthy meals and a snack each day, or at the very least, write down what you’re eating — you might be consuming more than you think
Using Food as a Reward
Get a good grade? Time for ice cream! Win that soccer game? Let’s get some pizza! As children, food is often presented as a reward for good behavior, setting us up for a lifetime of associations between food and happy feelings. Instead, break up with the food-as-reward model and learn healthy ways to support yourself without snacking before it's too late—research conducted at Aston University suggests that using food as a reward with children may set them up for emotional eating behaviors later in life.
Eating Foods With Hidden Sugars
Just because a food doesn’t taste sweet doesn’t mean it’s not loaded with hidden sugars, but not everyone is savvy enough to know where they’re lurking. As a kid, you may have been fed pasta, crackers, sauces, and even supposedly healthy smoothies that were secretly loaded with extra sugar. To break this habit, make sure you check the label of any food you buy; considering that the average American consumes 82 grams of sugar a day—more than double the recommended amount—it's essential for your health and longevity that you do so.
Ignoring Portion Size
Your speedy childhood metabolism may have made it possible for you to eat virtually anything you wanted as a kid, but there’s no time like the present to break that binging pattern. As we age, our metabolisms slow down, meaning that tearing through a family-sized bag of snacks will only make your clothes feel a size too small.
Taking the Fun Out of Food
Let’s face it: despite the bright colors you’ll find in fruits and vegetables, lots of healthy food just doesn’t hold the visual appeal of its artificially-colored counterparts, and many adults just don’t feel inclined to make them more fun. Fortunately, you can up the wow factor for your favorite healthy recipes by grabbing some cookie cutters and food scissors and making scenes and shapes out of your food. A little novelty can go a long way, especially for kids.
Rehydrating With Sports Drinks
Feeling thirsty after a workout? Instead of swigging a sports drink like you did after a big game as a kid, enjoy some water instead. Although we continue to give sports drinks to kids to theoretically improve their electrolyte status, we’re really just giving them tons of unnecessary sugar, sodium, and potentially-carcinogenic food additives and colors. In fact, research published in Obesity reveals a link between consumption of sports drinks and increased rates of obesity in both men and women.
Using Meat as Your Sole Protein Source
You may have been given meat as a kid to keep your protein intake sufficient, but it’s far from the only tasty and protein-rich food out there. Enjoying some plant-based protein in your diet can help increase your fiber intake, reducing bloating and your risk of heart disease and certain types of cancer. We bet your burger can’t say that.
Eating in a Hurry
School lunch periods are getting shorter and shorter, parents are rushing their kids from the dinner table to bed, and a sit-down breakfast is an antiquated idea. Unfortunately, in all of our rush, we often don’t focus on the food we’re eating and can find ourselves hungry mere moments after finishing a meal because of it. The research doesn't lie: according to a study published in BMJ Open, individuals who ate quickly significantly increased their risk of obesity when compared to those who took a slow and steady approach.
Drinking Milk
Humans are the only animals who drink other animals’ milk, and it’s not as healthy a habit as your parents may have led you to believe. Dairy often causes bloating, weight gain, and digestive issues, while research published in the Harvard Nurses’ Health Study reveals that consumption of dairy doesn’t actually protect against fractures, as we've often been promised.
Not Reading the Ingredients List
We’re told not to judge a book by its cover, so why do we judge our food by its packaging? Plenty of us will eagerly buy a product that proclaims it’s organic, non-GMO, or has no added sugars without reading the label. Unfortunately that means we often fall for dubious marketing ploys while willfully ignoring unhealthy and fattening ingredients, like trans fats, preservatives, and sugar alternatives.
Making Treats Off-Limits
You can’t build a healthy diet on treats alone, but it’s hard for a lot of people to enjoy or stick to a diet where they’re off limits. In an attempt to have their kids eat better than they did, many parents will prohibit certain food groups or treats altogether, which can lead to secretive eating behavior and binging. In fact, according to researchers at the University of Tasmania, enjoying a cheat day from time to time can help you enjoy greater weight loss in the long run.
Using Energy Drinks
Just because that energy drink claims to contain natural ingredients doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Lots of kids whose parents don’t want them drinking coffee down energy drinks instead, which can have more caffeine than a cup of joe, as well as packing tons of sugar, artificial colors, and flavors. Just as frightening are energy drinks' other side effects: according to research published in the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, energy drinks are linked to everything from tooth decay to fatty liver disease to kidney problems.
Eating Until We’re Full
We may be used to heeding warnings from our parents not to fill up on snack foods before our meals, but you rarely hear the same about not filling up at your meal, either. The fact of the matter is, if you’re feeling full, you’ve probably already eaten too much. Instead of seeking to fill up, try to eat until you’re satisfied instead. In fact, multiple studies confirm that eating until you're approximately 80 percent full can help you slim down almost effortlessly.
Going Dressing and Dip-Free
Dousing veggies in ranch dressing or cheese won’t make them healthier, but eating them plain constantly can make them less-than-palatable to little ones. Offering healthy dips and dressings, like vinaigrettes, hummus, or infused olive oils, can make eating veggies a whole lot more exciting. And considering that researchers at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill have found that American toddlers are more likely to eat French fries than green vegetables on any day of the week, there's no time like the present to break this vicious cycle.
Eating When We’re Not Hungry
When you’re a kid, three squares and a snack are the name of the game. However, as adults, following this model can often mean we’re not listening to our hunger cues and forcing ourselves to eat when we don’t want to. Instead, wait until you feel hungry to eat and you might just discover that you’re satisfied with less food than you initially imagined.
Shopping the Whole Supermarket
It may have seemed like a good idea to your parents to head down every aisle of the supermarket to make sure they hadn’t forgotten any necessary items, but doing so often puts you face-to-face with fattening foods you don’t need. Stick to the edges of the supermarket, where you’ll find healthier, non-processed foods like produce and eggs.
Making Weekends a Food Free-For-All
If it seems like you eat healthily during the week but can’t rein it in on the weekends, you’re not alone. Many children come to see the weekends as a free-for-all when it comes to food, thanks to special occasions that come along with high-calorie snacks, like birthday parties, and parents who are too tired to cook after a long week at work. Instead of letting yourself go hog wild on the weekends, give yourself a single cheat meal to indulge without destroying your weight loss efforts.
Not Cooking
While it makes sense for safety reasons to keep kids out of the kitchen when food is being made, it can often make preparing meals seem like a daunting task. Even worse, it often means kids don’t know what’s going into their food and have a difficult time differentiating healthy food from junk. To reverse the trend, try preparing most of your meals at home over the course of a week—it might just make the whole family healthier. In fact, researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have discovered that people who cook at home most nights consume fewer calories both at home and at restaurants than their counterparts who eat out on a regular basis.
Opting For Other Sugars
In an effort to keep kids from eating too much refined sugar, parents often inadvertently end up feeding them tons of sugar anyway. Corn syrup, dextrose, fructose sweetener, fruit juice, cane crystals, and a whole host of other terms all mean the same thing: there’s a bunch of unnecessary sugar in your food and you might end up wearing it around your middle.
Having Dessert Every Day
Treats can easily be incorporated into any healthy living plan, but that doesn’t mean they should be a part of your meal plan every single day. If you’re already full after dinner, don’t follow it up with dessert just because that’s the model your parents set for you.
Joining the Clean Plate Club
Eating enough to feel satisfied should be your goal at meals, not cleaning your plate. Unfortunately, many parents and caregivers teach their children that a meal’s not over until everything’s been eaten, making it difficult to determine when you’ve had enough. Make a commitment to changing this habit as an adult by chewing each bite ten times, drinking water with your meal, and looking for hunger and satiety clues, rather than an empty plate, to tell you when the meal is over.
Retrain your brain and lose weight by getting rid of these habits for good.
"You can't get up from the table until you've finished your food." If you're like most people, this refrain was repeated over and over throughout your childhood, often encouraging you to continue eating long after you'd reached the point of satisfaction.
The numbers don't lie: according to the American Heart Association, more than 18 percent of American children and young adults aged 6 to 19 are now classified as obese, and a shocking 12.1 percent of children under 5 are, as well. And while genetics may factor into the increasing rates of overweight and obesity among children, what we're teaching them about what, when, and why they should eat plays a significant role. So, before you go to tell your kid that they won't get dessert until they've eaten every bite of their dinner or opt for the convenience foods your parents once fed you, consider whether or not you're simply repeating the unhealthy patterns you grew up with—and if you are, make a vested effort to fix them.
Luckily, it's easy to retrain both body and brain in no time: it starts by identifying these 40 fattening food habits we learn as kids.
Eating Bread at Every Meal
While bread doesn’t have to be off-limits to make losing weight a reality, the habit of having bread at every meal can make you pack on serious weight in no time. Even if you’re only eating bread on your sandwich at lunch and a roll at dinner, those extra calories can easily lead to a nearly three-pound weight gain over the course of just one month.
Making Every Meal Multi-Course
It may be nice to have a multi-course meal on a special occasion, but insisting upon multiple courses every day of the week can mean serious weight gain in your future. Instead of making every meal a multi-course affair, make your meals more satisfying by loading them with fiber-rich vegetables, which can keep you full for longer.
Making Certain Food Off-Limits
It’s never a bad thing to try to get your family to eat healthier, but allowing kids certain foods and then taking them away as a punishment for weight gain, lackluster grades, or bad behavior can make kids feel insecure and lead to secretive eating behaviors. If you’re worried about your children’s eating habits, don’t keep junk food in the house and you won’t have to feel like it’s necessary to take it away from them.
Watching TV at Meals
TV may be the preferred means of relaxing for many of us, but when we watch it while we eat, we set ourselves up for weight gain. Distracting yourself from your food with TV makes it harder to recognize when you’re full and makes it easy to eat way more than you intended. In fact, research published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity reveals that children who regularly watch television have higher rates of obesity than those who abstain, regardless of whether they watch during meals or not.
Buying Bad Food in Bulk
Buying food in bulk may be an easy way to shave some money off your grocery costs, but unfortunately, the food we’re buying jumbo-sized portions of is rarely the healthy stuff. Don’t load up on junk food just because it’s on sale; use the bulk bins at your local grocery store and load up on nuts, whole grains, and gluten-free flours instead. If you bring your own containers, many stores will discount the price even further. Of course, even with healthy food, you have to be vigilant about your portion size: research published in the Journal of Nutrition reveals that individuals served a larger portion of pasta ate up to 30 percent more than when served a smaller helping, even though they weren't hungrier.
Eating Your Meal Before Dessert
“You have to eat dinner before you get dessert” is so common a refrain that it might as well be the unofficial motto of parenthood. However, the idea that you have to eat a full meal before you can enjoy the thing you actually wanted to eat just means you’re eating way more calories than you need. If you’ve got a hankering for something sweet, indulge that craving in moderation, but don’t front-load it with hundreds of calories worth of food you didn’t really want in the first place.
Setting Food Combos in Stone
French fries and ketchup. Pasta and meatballs. Broccoli and cheese. We get so used to eating certain food combinations together that we get stuck in fattening food ruts that are hard to break. Instead of insisting on the same pairings over and over, try adding some healthier ingredients to your typically less-healthy choices. Make oven fries and serve them with mustard. Try adding some olive oil and protein-rich peas to your pasta. Serve that broccoli with some hummus—your taste buds and your waistline will thank you.
Using Veggies Are a Punishment
If you’re eager to make kid hate vegetables, there’s no better way to do that than forcing them as a punishment. Many parents insist their children eat vegetables instead of something they’d like when they’ve behaved badly. While vegetables should play a role in pretty much every meal, making them a consequence for bad behavior instead of a neutral food means their negative reputation will be hard to shake later in life.
Making a Big Deal About Little Food Choices
You may have heard all kinds of rumors about all the nutrients in bread being in the crust, but that’s simply not true, and making a big deal about eating it has only served to put kids off of it. In fact, making a big deal about any relatively inconsequential food habits rarely leads to them being adopted with gusto by kids.
Going Low-Fat
Low-fat diets were all the rage before the low-carb and paleo trends hit, but those low-fat and fat-free foods your parents pushed on you could be the reason you can’t lose weight as an adult. Researchers at the University of Toronto have discovered that many low-fat foods are not significantly lower in calories than their higher-fat counterparts, but are often eaten in larger quantities, meaning that any benefit you'd get from their reduced calories is eliminated. Instead of continuing this trend, opt for foods with healthy fat, like avocados, olive oil, and fatty fish, all of which can help keep you full for longer than low-fat foods while reducing your risk of heart disease and cognitive decline.
Making Healthy Food Seem Foreign
If the words “health food” send a shiver down your spine, you’re not alone. Many parents make too big a deal about designating things as healthy, often making those foods seem strange or icky to their little ones. To keep from perpetuating this habit in your own life, try not to put a moral judgment on food around your kids, friends, or family members. Many foods that kids love, from apples to peas, are healthy, but they only stop enjoying them when they’re designated as such.
Keeping Junk Food in the House
It’s hard to feed a family when you’re short on time and energy, but keeping junk food in the house is a habit that often extends into adulthood. To deter yourself from digging into bags of chips or frozen pizzas when you get home from a long day, try avoiding the interior aisles of the supermarket where convenience foods lurk and stick to your shopping list. And if you do bring something less-than-healthy home, make sure it's kept out of sight: according to research conducted at Cornell University, people are more likely to snack on unhealthy food if it's left out on a counter, and less likely if it's put away.
Eating Microwave Meals
Microwave meals may be the ultimate in convenience for busy families, but they have no place in your healthy eating plan as an adult. Many microwave dinners are loaded with salt, sugar, and preservatives, all of which can lead to bloating and weight gain. In fact, research published in Public Health Nutrition reveals that the availability of convenience food is inextricably linked to increased rates of obesity and diabetes. Instead of turning to convenience meals, try prepping healthy meals, like veggie-packed frittatas or healthy breakfast burritos, for the week and freezing them in advance.
Customizing Meals For Reluctant Eaters
Parents often feel like short-order cooks, thanks to the unrelenting food demands of their little ones, and making every meal to order can reinforce a lifetime of bad eating habits. Instead of caving to your child’s every food whim, set boundaries and don’t offer to buy them junk just because they won’t eat the healthy meal you’ve prepared—doing so only reinforces the notion that they'll get rewarded for refusing to eat what's good for them.
Not Giving Kids Any Choice
Kids love feeling like they’re in charge, but are so rarely given choices, especially when it comes to food. All it takes is offering a few options to kids to make them feel appreciated, involved, and eager to choose one of the healthy options you’ve presented them. The good news? Doing something as simple as letting them cook with you might help make their palates more refined. According to research published in the CDC's Preventing Chronic Disease: Public Health Research, Practice and Policy, allowing children to cook alongside their parents increased their intake of fruits and vegetables while making them less reluctant to try new foods.
Drinking Juice With Meals
Juice is little more than liquid sugar and has no place in a healthy diet. Unfortunately, this memo hasn’t gotten out to lots of parents and educators, who eagerly give little ones the stuff at every meal. Instead of high-calorie, high-sugar juice, enjoy some water with fresh fruit before meals—researchers at the University of Birmingham have discovered that drinking water before meals is an effective way to ditch some extra calories in your diet.
Quitting Foods After One Try
It can be hard to get kids to eat, but when we’re little, we’re often told that all we need to do is take a single bite of a food and quit if we don’t enjoy it. Unfortunately, that’s hardly enough exposure to form a habit. According to the Ellyn Satter Institute, it can often take as many as 20 exposures for children to start enjoying certain foods, so if you don’t like a healthy snack the first time, don’t be so quick to give up on it.
Having a Bite of Everything
As a kid, you’re forced to try out every food presented to you. As an adult, don’t feel obligated to do the same. Sticking to your guns when it comes to your food preferences at family gatherings can save you hundreds or even thousands of calories and afford you more room to eat the healthy foods you actually enjoy.
Giving Soda as a Treat
Soda is a huge contributor to rising obesity rates around the world and shouldn’t factor into anyone’s meal plan, especially those trying to lose weight and get healthy—in fact research published in Obesity Reports reveals a distinct link between the consumption of sugary beverages and the odds a person will become overweight or obese. And diet soda isn't much better: in fact, multiple studies have revealed a link between artificial sweetener consumption and increased waist circumference and weight gain.
Grazing All Day
Getting kids to eat can be a struggle, so it’s no wonder that many parents are fine letting their little ones graze all day as long as it means they’re eating something. However, this habit in adulthood can lead to tons of unnecessary calories sneaking into your diet and ending up around your waist. Try committing yourself to three healthy meals and a snack each day, or at the very least, write down what you’re eating — you might be consuming more than you think
Using Food as a Reward
Get a good grade? Time for ice cream! Win that soccer game? Let’s get some pizza! As children, food is often presented as a reward for good behavior, setting us up for a lifetime of associations between food and happy feelings. Instead, break up with the food-as-reward model and learn healthy ways to support yourself without snacking before it's too late—research conducted at Aston University suggests that using food as a reward with children may set them up for emotional eating behaviors later in life.
Eating Foods With Hidden Sugars
Just because a food doesn’t taste sweet doesn’t mean it’s not loaded with hidden sugars, but not everyone is savvy enough to know where they’re lurking. As a kid, you may have been fed pasta, crackers, sauces, and even supposedly healthy smoothies that were secretly loaded with extra sugar. To break this habit, make sure you check the label of any food you buy; considering that the average American consumes 82 grams of sugar a day—more than double the recommended amount—it's essential for your health and longevity that you do so.
Ignoring Portion Size
Your speedy childhood metabolism may have made it possible for you to eat virtually anything you wanted as a kid, but there’s no time like the present to break that binging pattern. As we age, our metabolisms slow down, meaning that tearing through a family-sized bag of snacks will only make your clothes feel a size too small.
Taking the Fun Out of Food
Let’s face it: despite the bright colors you’ll find in fruits and vegetables, lots of healthy food just doesn’t hold the visual appeal of its artificially-colored counterparts, and many adults just don’t feel inclined to make them more fun. Fortunately, you can up the wow factor for your favorite healthy recipes by grabbing some cookie cutters and food scissors and making scenes and shapes out of your food. A little novelty can go a long way, especially for kids.
Rehydrating With Sports Drinks
Feeling thirsty after a workout? Instead of swigging a sports drink like you did after a big game as a kid, enjoy some water instead. Although we continue to give sports drinks to kids to theoretically improve their electrolyte status, we’re really just giving them tons of unnecessary sugar, sodium, and potentially-carcinogenic food additives and colors. In fact, research published in Obesity reveals a link between consumption of sports drinks and increased rates of obesity in both men and women.
Using Meat as Your Sole Protein Source
You may have been given meat as a kid to keep your protein intake sufficient, but it’s far from the only tasty and protein-rich food out there. Enjoying some plant-based protein in your diet can help increase your fiber intake, reducing bloating and your risk of heart disease and certain types of cancer. We bet your burger can’t say that.
Eating in a Hurry
School lunch periods are getting shorter and shorter, parents are rushing their kids from the dinner table to bed, and a sit-down breakfast is an antiquated idea. Unfortunately, in all of our rush, we often don’t focus on the food we’re eating and can find ourselves hungry mere moments after finishing a meal because of it. The research doesn't lie: according to a study published in BMJ Open, individuals who ate quickly significantly increased their risk of obesity when compared to those who took a slow and steady approach.
Drinking Milk
Humans are the only animals who drink other animals’ milk, and it’s not as healthy a habit as your parents may have led you to believe. Dairy often causes bloating, weight gain, and digestive issues, while research published in the Harvard Nurses’ Health Study reveals that consumption of dairy doesn’t actually protect against fractures, as we've often been promised.
Not Reading the Ingredients List
We’re told not to judge a book by its cover, so why do we judge our food by its packaging? Plenty of us will eagerly buy a product that proclaims it’s organic, non-GMO, or has no added sugars without reading the label. Unfortunately that means we often fall for dubious marketing ploys while willfully ignoring unhealthy and fattening ingredients, like trans fats, preservatives, and sugar alternatives.
Making Treats Off-Limits
You can’t build a healthy diet on treats alone, but it’s hard for a lot of people to enjoy or stick to a diet where they’re off limits. In an attempt to have their kids eat better than they did, many parents will prohibit certain food groups or treats altogether, which can lead to secretive eating behavior and binging. In fact, according to researchers at the University of Tasmania, enjoying a cheat day from time to time can help you enjoy greater weight loss in the long run.
Using Energy Drinks
Just because that energy drink claims to contain natural ingredients doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Lots of kids whose parents don’t want them drinking coffee down energy drinks instead, which can have more caffeine than a cup of joe, as well as packing tons of sugar, artificial colors, and flavors. Just as frightening are energy drinks' other side effects: according to research published in the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, energy drinks are linked to everything from tooth decay to fatty liver disease to kidney problems.
Eating Until We’re Full
We may be used to heeding warnings from our parents not to fill up on snack foods before our meals, but you rarely hear the same about not filling up at your meal, either. The fact of the matter is, if you’re feeling full, you’ve probably already eaten too much. Instead of seeking to fill up, try to eat until you’re satisfied instead. In fact, multiple studies confirm that eating until you're approximately 80 percent full can help you slim down almost effortlessly.
Going Dressing and Dip-Free
Dousing veggies in ranch dressing or cheese won’t make them healthier, but eating them plain constantly can make them less-than-palatable to little ones. Offering healthy dips and dressings, like vinaigrettes, hummus, or infused olive oils, can make eating veggies a whole lot more exciting. And considering that researchers at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill have found that American toddlers are more likely to eat French fries than green vegetables on any day of the week, there's no time like the present to break this vicious cycle.
Eating When We’re Not Hungry
When you’re a kid, three squares and a snack are the name of the game. However, as adults, following this model can often mean we’re not listening to our hunger cues and forcing ourselves to eat when we don’t want to. Instead, wait until you feel hungry to eat and you might just discover that you’re satisfied with less food than you initially imagined.
Shopping the Whole Supermarket
It may have seemed like a good idea to your parents to head down every aisle of the supermarket to make sure they hadn’t forgotten any necessary items, but doing so often puts you face-to-face with fattening foods you don’t need. Stick to the edges of the supermarket, where you’ll find healthier, non-processed foods like produce and eggs.
Making Weekends a Food Free-For-All
If it seems like you eat healthily during the week but can’t rein it in on the weekends, you’re not alone. Many children come to see the weekends as a free-for-all when it comes to food, thanks to special occasions that come along with high-calorie snacks, like birthday parties, and parents who are too tired to cook after a long week at work. Instead of letting yourself go hog wild on the weekends, give yourself a single cheat meal to indulge without destroying your weight loss efforts.
Not Cooking
While it makes sense for safety reasons to keep kids out of the kitchen when food is being made, it can often make preparing meals seem like a daunting task. Even worse, it often means kids don’t know what’s going into their food and have a difficult time differentiating healthy food from junk. To reverse the trend, try preparing most of your meals at home over the course of a week—it might just make the whole family healthier. In fact, researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have discovered that people who cook at home most nights consume fewer calories both at home and at restaurants than their counterparts who eat out on a regular basis.
Opting For Other Sugars
In an effort to keep kids from eating too much refined sugar, parents often inadvertently end up feeding them tons of sugar anyway. Corn syrup, dextrose, fructose sweetener, fruit juice, cane crystals, and a whole host of other terms all mean the same thing: there’s a bunch of unnecessary sugar in your food and you might end up wearing it around your middle.
Having Dessert Every Day
Treats can easily be incorporated into any healthy living plan, but that doesn’t mean they should be a part of your meal plan every single day. If you’re already full after dinner, don’t follow it up with dessert just because that’s the model your parents set for you.
Joining the Clean Plate Club
Eating enough to feel satisfied should be your goal at meals, not cleaning your plate. Unfortunately, many parents and caregivers teach their children that a meal’s not over until everything’s been eaten, making it difficult to determine when you’ve had enough. Make a commitment to changing this habit as an adult by chewing each bite ten times, drinking water with your meal, and looking for hunger and satiety clues, rather than an empty plate, to tell you when the meal is over.
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