Erin’s Tips for Living a Healthy Lifestyle.

Hi, my name is Erin E. Malachowicz and I'm here to teach you how to live a good and healthy lifestyle. Every day I make good choices for my eating and activities so I can live an awesome life. And so over the summer I went to a camp called Camp Jump Start and it changed my life completely. It helped me learn how to eat healthier choices and be more active. And in this video I will be sharing some of the tips that I have learned. And I hope you will join me in this incredible journey and making better choices too. My overall tip is to make a plan. Everything is better with a plan. So make a plan for what you're going to eat and how you're going to stay active for the day. When you make a food plan you have to decide what you're going to have for breakfast, lunch, dinner, for snacks. And so you can talk to your parents, a staff member or other people to help you plan out your meals like my mom does every night. There is an app on my phone that I use to track everything. It's called My Fitness Pal. And My Fitness Pal helps me make sure I eat foods from all the food groups. I like to start my meals with a salad and that way I eat plenty of vegetables and I have my vegetable intake for the day. When you make a food plan decide how much you're going to eat. Portion control is everything. And I even talk to the Camp Jump Start staff about how much I should eat during the day. You can talk to your parents, staff and nutritionists and there are so many websites that can help you as well. So when I eat a meal or snack I use measuring cups to know how much food I'm eating. For example, one serving of brown rice is a half cup. And here I am demonstrating how to measure out a serving of brown rice. Measuring out my food helps me avoid overeating. And when you make a food plan decide when you're going to eat. During the school year I usually eat breakfast around 7 in the morning, lunch at 12 and dinner at 6. If I eat on my schedule I do not eat when I am bored. It helps me avoid overeating too. When you make an exercise plan think of activities that you like to do. It helps you. For example, I love to walk my doggies and I like to go bike riding. I also like dancing and sometimes I do aerobics, stretching and strength DVDs. The best thing that you can possibly do when working out is making it fun. I like to exercise while watching movies or listening to music and that's what helps me stay motivated. But everyone is different so find what motivates you the most. My next tip is to ask for support. Living a healthy lifestyle can be really difficult and so it's always good to ask for support and help. The one thing that's important to ask yourself is who are the people in your life that you can go up to to get support and help you. So for me it's my parents, my older brother, my boyfriend, all my good friends, my therapist and my teachers in college are the people that help support me the most. So for example, my mom helps me know what foods are good for me to eat and how much I should be eating. And my boyfriend supports me a lot by encouraging me to stick with my goals. He really helps me stick with it until I get the goal down. And my last tip is just be patient. It takes a lot of time to build new habits. Celebrate the healthy choices you make and keep on working on your healthy lifestyle. So good luck! This is Anne Alico out.