One of the best ways to build strong confidence and a love for physical activity in children is by starting them off on the right foot. Ensuring they have a balanced diet, proper hydration, and lead active lifestyles will help them not only grow taller but stronger too. The importance of a balanced diet and lifestyle is indisputable. Achieving these habits early on will set our child up for success in all aspects of their future.
So how do we make sure our children are doing everything they can to be healthy and grow properly? The old saying “you are what you eat” is especially true when it comes to children. How children grow up to be of similar appearances and height as ours is incredible. But this does not mean that our children are doomed to a certain height. We can still help them reach their genetic potential by giving them all of the things they need to grow healthy and strong.
Importance Of Proper Nutrition
Good nutrition is the base for growth. It can make or break our child’s growth. Consuming a diet rich in fruits and vegetables gives their bones strength while protein is essential for building strong muscles in children’s growing bodies.
Our child’s growing body needs a lot of water to keep them hydrated. Water consumption is linked with bone strength, hair growth and proper brain development. We have to make sure to give children plenty of fluids throughout the day
What does our child eat? Vitamin and mineral content should come from more than just tacos and popcorn, that’s a hard fact. We must provide a solid foundation for healthy growth by providing our children with all the nutrients they need in their diets.
Appropriate Quantity Of Nutrients
While these nutrients are essential for growth, it is also important not to overload them because then they will become toxic to their bodies. An excess of anything is never healthy.
A balanced diet will contain specific amounts of vitamins and minerals for the child’s growth and this content requirement differs with age. For example, girls around the age of 18 need about 17 percent more iron than men in the same age group. This is why many prenatal vitamins provide more than twice as much iron for women. As much as we love for them to receive the proper nutrients to grow, it is also important that we do not overfeed them for this purpose.
For example, unless your child’s pediatrician suggests otherwise, do not give your toddler as many vitamin-fortified foods as their older sister. Keep in mind that adequate nutrition for one age group may not be as adequate for another.
The bottom line is this: While good nutrition is important to help children grow healthy and strong, you should not go out of we way to overfeed the child. It is always better to take a pediatrician’s help to suffice to their nutrition needs.
Lifestyle And Physical Growth
Our child’s height potential depends heavily on how active their lifestyle is. Children who are inactive during their childhood years have difficulty reaching their full genetic height potential. This is because their bodies stop growing when they have used up all of the nutrients that they can get from food.
The positive side here is that a child’s height potential can actually be increased if provided with a proper diet, lots of rest and plenty of physical activity. The main reason for this is that the more they move around, the harder their bones need to work by themselves and this increases their overall bone mass.
Even if our child is not growing at a normal pace, they can still reach their full growth potential when given the right diet to support bone growth and development.
The Kind Of Nutrition Needed
In order to make sure for our child’s bones to grow strong and healthy, good nutrition is vital. This means that we need to provide them with the right amount of protein, fat, carbohydrates and vitamins daily. A balanced diet should consist of: 70 percent carbs, 20 percent protein, 10 percent fat (sugar content as well).
The customized growth requirements and areas of focus also determine the types of nutrition required. If they are on a weight-maintenance diet, then they would need a carb and protein rich diet. If they are growing too fast, then you can always reduce their calorie intake by decreasing foods that are higher in fat or sugar. Every child’s growth pace is different. Children can often gain and lose weight very quickly during their growth spurt. In which case we should only try to maintain their current weight until their body reaches maturity. If our child’s body is growing too fast, they have to be fed accordingly.
All-in-all, nutrition is crucial to a child’s physical development and growth and it is always good to be well informed about the child’s specific needs. What we can do is be there at all times for our children while they take the challenges of life heads-on.
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