Teaching portion control to teens and let me stress CONTROL
We are trying to become a healthier family and portion control, especially with drinks, is our biggest problem. My teens have no control over how much they drink. I don't want to completely give up juices, teas, etc. but we def need to limit how much we drink. For instance, if we buy a gallon of chocolate milk, with a family of 3, the gallon is gone in less than 24 hours.
Any ideas for helping them control intake? With juices I have tried buying juice glasses but they don't use them...they always grab the bigger glass and fill it to the top. My next thought was having a bottle for each person, filling it with juice, tea or whatever at the beginning of the week and once their bottle is empty they have to drink water or milk for the remaining week. I like the idea because it would teach them to portion it out for the week but it will take up a lot of room in the fridge.
Tell them that for every beverage they drink, they have to drink an equal amount of water first!
Get cans and milk/juice boxes for a while first and tell them they can have one of each daily to help them get used to drinking less of it. Or you could also try putting the large glasses away for a while so that the juice glasses are all they have to drink from for a couple of weeks.
When I was growing up, we didn't have a lot of money so I was really only allowed flavorful beverages with meals. A glass of milk and/or OJ at breakfast, and a glass of milk, juice or (very, very, very rarely) a pop at lunch or dinner. The rest of the day it was all water.
Or just tell them that whatever you buy each week is all that they're getting, and if it's gone in a day then they'll have nothing but water until the next market day. Then they'll HAVE to ration it a bit, and they'll help police each other because nobody is going to want to get less than their fair share. That was the tactic my fiance and I had to take when we were trying to get a handle on our beverage habits. We made a rule that there would be no running to the gas station for a pop if we ran out, and we made a resolution that a twelve pack of cans would last two of us at least a week. That comes out to slightly less than one for each of us daily, and it's been just the kick in the pants we needed to start drinking more water.
To make any meaningful changes with teens, I think it's best to enlist their cooperation by making it a shared goal. Explain what you are trying to accomplish and the reasoning for it. When it comes to food, teens will get what they want when given their own money and the opportunity if you start putting too many restrictions at home.
I would teach your kids the concept of trying not to drink calories. And when they do drink them, they should be limited to really healthy drinks (i.e. white milk, limited quantities of juice) or really occasional treats.
Enlist your kids in helping to come up with the solutions and periodically evaluate with your kids what they think is working.
The same thing happens at my place, the teens just hook into the drinks. But I only shop fortnightly, so if they've drank all the juice or soft drinks, that's it til next grocery shop. I also buy individual bottles of water so they'll drink them - and these fly down their throat too. Maybe it's a teenage thing to drink so much! I guess we could try buying juice they'd drink less of - like prune juice - LOL! No premade choc milk in this house, plain milk and add your own flavouring, which they can't be bothered to do most of the time. Good luck!
Ok this might sound severe but GET RID OF ANY BEVERAGE WITH CALORIES!!!! Juice is the worst of all, I hate how they push it as being healthy!! It's not healthy, it's all sugar sugar sugar, they've removed all the healthy fiber from the fruit and use only the concentrated sugary juice. Chocolate milk? Just because it's got calcium does not mean it's good for you. You can get plenty of calcium from spinach, but you don't see people stocking their fridges with it - because they're really not interested in calcium are they? Nope, they're interested in sugar and just using the "calcium in milk" as an excuse to buy it. I don't buy into that. Soda is just about the most useless substance on earth, it provides nothing.
You need calcium? Eat kale.
You need fruit? Eat fruit.
You need vitamin D? Go outside
You need help with constipation? EAT a prune.
Sorry, this is a topic I feel strongly about because I have a toddler and everyone pushes juices on him and it really makes me angry. The fastest way to get a kid addicted to sugar is by letting them drink it. Those things are not allowed in my home. Since your kids already seem to have a big problem with this I would take severe measures to teach them about the effects of sugar and I would cut it all out.
Honestly, I have no idea, but I'm interested just to see others' input. When I was a kid, we weren't allowed soda, juice, or sweet beverages during the week, and drank one glass of milk during dinner.
My older brother and I were raised strictly like this, but my parents became lax when my younger brother was being raised since there is some distance in our ages. To this day, my older brother and I don't drink sweet drinks, and my younger brother does. It's very interesting.
Teaching portion control to teens and let me stress CONTROL
