Hello, my name is Miss. Sonia and I'm with Dairy Council of California representing the Let's Eat Healthy Movement. Today, I'm going to be your nutrition educator. I'm excited to be here with you for today's lesson to talk about how to establish personal goals for improving healthier food choices and physical activity.

The Importance of Balancing Meals and Snacks

It is important to balance meals and snacks to ensure you are consuming a variety of nutrient-rich foods which contain the range of main nutrients that are needed to support health and development. Remember, snacks are mini meals and choices should be balanced in the food group foods and with adequate serving sizes as shown on the Serving Size Comparison chart. A smart snack means selecting a minimum of two food groups. While breakfast means following the three out of five food group model, and lunch and dinner mealtime is aiming for all five food groups on your plate.

Staying Physically Active

Another key part of a healthy lifestyle is staying physically active. Can you recall how many minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity is needed in each day. If you said 60 minutes, you are right on track. 60 minutes can be broken out throughout the day in smaller increments of physical activity like during recess or P. E. class. Can you help me recall examples of physical activities that are classified as moderate to vigorous. These are just some examples and there are plenty of other ways you can stay active and all that matters is moving your body so that you increase your heart rate.

Setting Goals for Healthier Food Choices and Physical Activity

By keeping track of daily food choices during mealtime and snacks, and understanding how many minutes of physical activity you are doing each day, you will be able to analyze your habits and create a plan to become healthier and more fit. This plan will include setting goals, identifying how to achieve them and tracking your progress.

What is a Goal.

A goal is the result or achievement towards which effort is directed. Meaning you are focusing your energy and time to improving on an area. The area you will be focusing on is exploring how to make healthier food choices and improving physical activity. Deciding what to include in your personal plan should include at least two goals. One focusing on food and the other on physical activity.

Monitoring Your Progress

The record log will help you compare what you ate to what you should have eaten such as a variety of food groups per meal, recommended serving for each food and be able to determine if you skipped a meal, didn't balance food choices like having too little of something or too much or even ate foods that didn't provide the body with little to no nutritional value. Foods high in fat, sugar and salt should be eaten in moderation. These are all different ways you can approach selecting the right nutrition goal. For physical activity, you can compare your daily minutes and type of activity you did to ask yourself, if you moved at least 60 minutes each day and does the activity count as moderate to vigorous movement. If you are low in minutes or needing to switch up activities these can be a great example of areas to improve on and write in your goal plan.

Conclusion

Through personal plans and goal setting, you can influence the decisions you make every day that have a lasting effect on your health. Start slow and build towards more challenging goals after tracking progress, modifying and accomplishing your first nutrition and fitness goal. Goodbye.