Tips for Keeping Your Family Healthy This Winter Season

The winter season can be cold and beautiful, but it is called “cold and flu season” for a reason! Many people associate winter with sickness, and not always just the cold and flu. Stomach “bugs” and mysterious, annoying illnesses seem to plague families in the winter. How can you avoid them? Is there anything you can do to prevent these nasty bugs from bothering your family this winter?

Yes! There are some things you can do to boost your family’s health and help keep illnesses at bay. Here are some tips.

Rest and Sleep

Many families have schedules that keep everyone running during the day and up late at night. But resting and getting enough sleep are very important for staying healthy. While it’s understandable that some nights are late nights, it’s not a good idea to make staying up late and being sleep deprived into habits. Help your children balance activities and homework so they will get to bed on time.

Eat Well!

During the winter, there is not the abundant produce that we have in the summer. But there are still whole, healthy foods that are available and affordable. Whole grains like brown rice, quinoa, and whole-wheat pasta are readily available in the winter. Other healthy foods you can include in your family’s winter meals include:

* Winter squash
* Sweet potatoes
* Dried fruits like raisins, dried apricots, apples, figs, dates, cranberries, etc.
* Citrus fruits
* Frozen vegetables and fruits are more affordable and nutritionally similar to seasonal, fresh produce.
* Salmon and other fatty fish are good sources of fish oil, which is considered important for immune system health
* Greens like kale and collards

Vitamins and Minerals

It may help a lot to have everyone in the family on some sort of vitamin and mineral supplement. What supplement is best depends on everyone’s age and lifestyle; generally, a vitamin and mineral supplement that corresponds to family members’ ages should be fine. Make sure the supplement includes Vitamin D3, a key vitamin in fighting off illness, sources say.

Get Outside When You Can

The weather is not bad all winter. Whenever there is a sunny or milder day, get the family outside to get some winter sunshine and activity. Fresh air is a nice break from germ-laden, indoor air, and sunshine exposure helps your body make that important Vitamin D. If there’s snow on the ground, have snowball fights and build snowmen, and go sledding if you have the right kind of terrain. Winter hikes can be fun, too.

Teens: Top Tips to Feel Good about Yourself

For teens, feeling good about yourself can be a special challenge. You are undergoing a lot of changes physically, emotionally, and psychologically – and, for many teens, this period in their lives brings academic and social change. There’s hardly an area of your life that isn’t changing! Just about anyone would find that much change stressful.

Where does your self-image end up in all this upheaval? For some teens, it ends up pretty low. Getting some ideas on how you can feel better about yourself may help. Read on for some tips.

Identify the Cause

Sometimes, it can really help just to figure out why you feel down on yourself. Is it something going on in your life? Are you struggling socially? Maybe you are dealing with body issues, like being overweight, underweight, or having acne. If it helps, write down your feelings and try to identify their cause. You may find that it’s something trivial, or, if it is something significant, you can identify it and get help in dealing with it.

Nix the Media

Many teens look at magazines or pictures online of models, trying to find someone they look like. Teens may feel that if they can find someone who looks like they do, it will affirm their looks. But surprise – not only do the people in the magazines not even look like that without major photo enhancement, they also devote their lives to their looks. You’re a normal teen! You don’t have eight hours a day to devote to working out and make-up and plastic surgery. Put down the magazines and steer clear of model pictures online and elsewhere, and look for affirmation in other areas. That brings us to the third point.

Get Affirmation Elsewhere

Ultimately, you’re the one who has the power to affirm your worth. So a good place to start it with your own talents and abilities. What are you good at? What do people like about you? Are you funny, artistic, mathematical, organized, a good reader? You don’t have to have some enormous gift that dazzles everyone; maybe you’re really good at finding bargains, or perhaps you have a gift for encouraging others.

Write down some things you like to do (you may find you have a strength in writing!), things you are truly good at. If you’re not sure, ask your parents. They probably know you better than anyone, even if you don’t want to admit it.

Take Deliberate Steps

The only person who can change you is you. You can’t change other people, but you can take steps to be a more positive, likeable person which will help you like yourself more. When people like you, it affirms your self-image. Some steps you can take are:

* Reach out to others – write friendly notes, invite a friend over for coffee, or just make a point to smile more and make eye contact.

* Exercise regularly – this doesn’t just help with body image; regular exercise may also improve your overall health and mood.

* Compliment other people and boost their self-image – give to others what you would like to receive.

Fitness Getaway Ideas for the Whole Family

Getting fit as a family is in these days. More and more families are choosing to take their family vacation time and make it a fitness adventure. If you’d like to take a fitness getaway with your family, here are some ideas.

National Parks

There are so many lovely national parks, and nearly all of them offer beautiful scenery and outdoor adventures. Book your vacation to include the activities offered by the park, such as horseback riding, biking, and hiking. Arrange your schedule so that each day involves being physically active.

Water Sports

Water sports are a great way to get the whole family in shape, and they are lots of fun. Here are some suggestions:

* Water skiing can be enjoyed at lakes, rivers, and oceans. All kinds of resorts offer water skiing. Your family can spend each day doing physical activity and having fun.

* Tubing is like water skiing in that it’s often available at water resorts. Tubing involves riding in an inner tube and being towed behind a motorboat. It does not require any special skill except the ability to swim, making it a fun family event.

* Scuba diving and snorkeling are fun for families with older kids who are proficient swimmers and experienced with the water.

* Kayaking is a fun, outdoor adventure that usually involves lovely scenery as well as physical activity.

Ranches

A ranch – or, more correctly, a dude ranch – is a great family fitness vacation spot. Dude ranches are deliberately planned as vacation spots, but they are modeled after traditional Western ranches. This is a fun one for horse lovers. The whole family can participate in chores and activities, and some dude ranches offer a fitness-oriented vacation package.

Turn Any Vacation into a Fitness Vacation

Think about it – with a little planning, you can arrange any vacation to have fitness at its center. Just schedule in daily activities. For example, a beach vacation can involve walking and/or running on the beach, biking, horseback riding, and water sports. A cabin getaway can involve daily hiking. Even a cruise can have fitness as its focus – most cruise ships have gyms on board, and you can make it a point to work out with your family each day.

Learn a New Activity

So you’ve never done anything like this before? Why not make it a learning experience? Find some activities you and your family would like to learn, and design a vacation around them.

For instance, maybe you or a family member have always wanted to learn how to ride horseback; plan a vacation that involves daily riding lessons. Find vacations where experts and guides are available and where the learning of the activity is the point. You don’t want to go on a learning vacation and be surrounded by others who have done this before.

A little planning and creativity can go a long way toward planning the perfect family fitness getaway.

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