Healthy habit holidays

A new, free, school holiday program starting next week invites children and parents to learn tips and tricks for healthier meals and engaging the together family in exercise

The Marlborough Primary Health-organised Move More Eat Better family program these school holidays consist of two Tuesday nutrition sessions and two Thursday exercise sessions with Sport Tasman, opening up guidance to any interested families.

Green Prescription Coordinator Aleisha Smith says she’s excited to get the first holiday course of this type in Marlborough underway,

“The days will have lots of fun activities, like blind food tastings and an Olympics day, as well as specialist presentations and a whole heap of resources available in there for families to take home to set healthier habits.

“We understand diet and exercise options look different for every family, so having the whole family hopefully means the whole household can gain a bigger understanding and responsibility of their own health.

“If we can give families the toolbox to work with, they’ll be able to find sustainable habits that suit them because the impact of diet and exercise flows on to everything in our lives.

The Active Families and Green Prescription models have proven successful with individual families that Aleisha deals with daily, so she and her colleagues are pleased to have put together an opportunity the wider community to benefit from.

“We’ve been letting families know in school newsletters, but at this stage we have half existing Green Prescriptions clients and half who are new to the program.

“The dietary and exercise changes are great, but we’re increasingly finding social connection is just as important for mental health so having everyone together will be a great new step.

“But most people know what good diets and exercise look like, it’s just finding ways for Marlburians to implement them in their day to day routines’.

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