More In And Less Out: The perks of Summer Vacation
Summer is coming and your teens are excited to be rid of homework and getting up early every day to be somewhere they don’t always want to be. However, the lifestyle they yearn for is the same lifestyle that will put the pounds on faster than you can say, “First day of school.”
So just in case you were thinking your teen should just “hang out” over the summer, here are some healthier options to their dreamlike relaxing schedule.
1. Move it
This sounds easy. Exercise, exercise and more exercise, but to many teens exercise means walking around the mall and ending at the food court or walking over a friend’s house and eating hot Cheetos on their couch. Moving enough to make a difference in weight is more than what they teach in physical education. They have to increase their heart rate to 200 or more and they need to sweat a lot! Panting is fine when your teen is out of shape, but if there is a wheeze too you may want to see your doctor. You can help by having them bike or walk everywhere in the summer. The cost of not carrying a back pack and walking from class to class is a big part of maintaining weight for some teens so to substitute it with a daily training or sport schedule is more than enough to maintain or lose weight.
2. Healthy options
It’s great the deals you get on the warehouse store packaging, but your teen may take this as a challenge to finish the box before the week is out. You can help by buying healthy snacks to have around. This way if they’re going to snack on something naughty from the corner store they have to walk there and back to eat it! Don’t make it easy for them, buy smart with fruits and veggies and make it easy for them. If you buy fruit display the fruit in the center of the dining table or better, cut it up so it is very easy to grab and snack on instead of the bag of chips. You can also decrease eating out at restaurants and provide low calorie drinks to prevent drinking calories (juice or soda it doesn’t matter). These are smart changes they can maintain throughout the year and continue their weight loss or maintenance.
3. Summer Review
Yes, school is out, but this is when all the IQ (Intelligence quotient) points go out the window. Teens struggle in the first few weeks of school because they need to review the previous year’s school work in order to learn what they need to for the current year. Get your teen to tutor someone in an easier subject they can earn money or volunteer hours while they do it. Or, just get them reviewing old material in a structured format. This will give them a huge advantage when school starts and give structure to an otherwise too relaxing day.
4. Get Ahead
They can also take a course that advances the subject matter or is simply a subject of interest like in a desired field at the local university. The summer is no time to have your teen’s brain go to rot. And sure they need a break, but one course isn’t nearly as demanding as six or eight. Let them take a very hard course for the following year over the summer and take all the time they need to complete projects and lots of reading. They can learn a new manual labor skill like gardening, building or electrical work. These will also get your teen walking around and spending less time in front of your pantry.
5. Summer Internship
Summer is a great time to network for your teen. They may or may not have Donald trump money, but they can certainly schmooze like he does. If your teen is interested in something like architecture or law why not have them call a local office and ask if they can do something like answer phones, organize files or do some background research? These are opportunities for people in the field to get to know your teen on a personal level and potentially write letters for graduate or post-graduate school. It is also a smart way to try a career on for size and ask a lot of questions for free.
These are clever ways to get your teen moving and in doing so decrease their chances of putting on more weight. Because the only thing harder than losing 15 pounds is losing 20!
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