It is really not too difficult to turn your home into a healthy home.

Creating a nutritionally healthy home is one of the most important steps you can take to ensure the health of your kids. To start, make smart food choices, and help your kids develop a positive relationship with healthy food. Your children will learn their food smarts from your example.

Below I have outlined ten tips for making sure that your children take in nutritional food:

1. Never restrict food from your children. Doing so actually increases your children\’s risk of developing eating disorders later in life, such as bulimia and anorexia. Also, food restriction tends to hinder growth and development, as well as leading to bing eating later in the day. Bing eating leads to weight gain.

2. Stock you home with healthy choices. Kids tend to eat what is easy for them to access. Take advantage of this fact by keeping fruit in a bowl on the kitchen table, rather than in the refrigerator. Limit the high calorie, high sugar, high fat foods that you keep around. Keeping healthy food choices will educate your children on making the healthy choices when it comes to food.

3. Don\’t label foods as \”good\” or \”bad.\” Instead, tie foods to the things your child cares about, such as sports, academics and hobbies. Let your child know that lean protein such as turkey and calcium in dairy products give strength to their sports and academic performance, the antioxidants in fruits and vegetables add luster to skin and hair and the carbs in whole grains will give them energy to play.

4. Praise healthy choices. Give your children a proud smile and tell them how smart they are when they choose healthy foods. Kids thrive on positive reinforcement!

5. Try not to get down on your children for unhealthy choices. If it is not a frequent occurrence, let it slide. Conversely, if your children are always choosing to eat unhealthy foods, then you need to steer their choices in the right direction. Replace candy with dried fruit. Instead of fries, try roasting potato sticks with a little bit of olive oil in the oven. Eventually, your children\’s eating habits will change for the good.

6. Never use food as a reward. This could create weight problems in later life. Instead, reward your children with something physical and fun — perhaps a trip to the park or a quick game of catch.

7. Make sure that you sit down and eat dinner as a family. This should become customary in your home if it is not already. The truth is that children who eat their dinner at the table with their parents not only eat more healthy, but are far less likely to get into trouble as teenagers.

8. Ration food portions for your children in the kitchen. This allows you to place healthy food portions on everyone\’s plate. In time, your children will be able to determine what is a healthy portion size.

9. Give the kids some control. Ask your children to take three bites of all the foods on their plate and give it a grade, such as A, B, C, D, or F. When healthy foods – especially certain vegetables — get high grades, serve them more often. Offer the items your children don\’t like less frequently. This lets your children participate in decision making. After all, dining is a family affair!

10. Try to consult your pediatrician. Always try and talk with your child\’s doctor before putting your child on a diet, trying to help your child gain weight, or making any significant changes in the type of foods your child eats. If weight change is recommended, seek the help of proper literature on the subject.

Burn more calories than you eat or drink to lose weight. Once the diet part is planned, get to stepping. This means 30 minutes a day seven days a week of aerobic work.

Walking is a tolerable, low impact way to accomplish this goal and more importantly to stick with it for a long time. Here are some good walking tips.

Forget the idea of only three or five days a week, aerobic exercise is something you need perform every day forever.

Once the walking is established do some other activities to increase your physical output. This can include simple things like raking leaves instead of blowing them, silly things like playing tag with your children, as well as other every day habits such as parking in the furthest space from the store rather than the closest.

Intervals can be added once the walking has been established. Intervals are short bursts of increased activity sprinkled into a normal routine. Start out by running for 30 seconds every 10 minutes of the walk. Gradually up this to a one minute run every five minutes, which goes like this:

Start out by running for 30 seconds every 10 minutes of the walk. Gradually up this to a one minute run every five minutes, which goes like this. You walk for the first four minutes, then run for the fifth, then walk the next four minutes, run the next minute, and so on for the duration of 30 minutes. Keep in mind that a run is not a jog, it’s faster, like a sprint. So if you have to work up to run with jog at first.

Walking to lose weight is healthy, no doubt. But it’s also a terrific way to get around the neighborhood, meet neighbors, and see things you probably never see while driving around everywhere you go. If it gets boring you can ask a spouse or family member to exercise with you. Make it a family affair, or get the whole neighborhood involved.