Small Steps Count—Week 4

Lesson Overview:  

Students shall learn how to set up goals and understand the importance of small steps in achieving success.

Lesson Objectives:

Students shall understand how to set up achievable goals in healthy eating and being physical active and take a step-by-step approach for success.

Lesson Activities:

1. Discuss goal setting process
2. Display posters from previous week in cafeteria line
3. Collect boxes from cafeteria staff
4. Analyze nutritional content of boxes

Lesson Plan:

A. Discuss goal setting process                                                                         10 minutes

A. Hang up posters / collect food boxes                                                            20 minutes

B. Analyze and discuss nutritional information                                                    15 minutes

C. Journaling – Implementation of last week’s goals                                           10 minutes

55minutes

Challenge3

            Convey nutritional messages and increase awareness of healthy foods using school newspaper, website, or announcements generated by participants.

            *Students are going to display posters made in wk. 3 in the cafeteria or other appropriate places.*

 Goal-setting tips:

• Decide on two or three specific, small changes in eating or physical activity at a time.
• Write your weekly goals down and keep track of your progress every day. Writing down your goals and referring back to them over and over again will help your stay on course.
• Keeping a daily food and activity log is a good way to keep track of healthy eating and physical activity goals. Each day, try to write down everything your eats and drinks and how much time is spent doing physical activities.
• Focus on accomplishments, not failures.
• Don’t expect perfection. If your goal is to take a walk five days a week, and you miss a day, that’s ok. What’s important is that you are making a healthy change.
• When you have turned a healthy change into a habit, it’s time for a reward! Reward yourselves with a fun physical activity, such as bowling, ice skating, miniature golf or canoeing.

General healthy eating goals:

1)   Eat a variety of food;

2)   eat three meals a day;

3)   eat more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and calcium-rich products;

      (Five servings of vegetables and fruits per day.)

4)   Eat moderate amount (not too much, not too little);

5)   choose lower fat foods more often;

6)   Drink water instead of coke.

General goals of being physically active:

1) Be involved in sports and exercising so that you worked up a sweat and breathed hard (such as basketball, soccer, running, swimming laps, fast bicycling, fast dancing, or similar aerobic activities) for at least 30 minutes and five times a week; or,

2) Engage in at least 60 minutes of moderate physical activity that did not make you sweat or breathe hard (such as fast walking, slow bicycling, skating, or pushing a lawn mower) five times a week.

3) Spend no more than two hours per day watching TV, on-line, or playing video games.

 Journal Ingredient Lists

Compare ingredient lists on any boxed or packaged food to the ingredient list in an apple.  This should tell you something.  Many of those extra ingredients in packaged items are there to preserve the product, protect it from rotting while sitting on the shelf for days, weeks, or months.  Those added ingredients offer you nothing when you compare them to the natural vitamins, nutrients, and minerals in every single freshly washed piece of fruit, every single fresh vegetable.  Think about all those extra ingredients and all those extra parts of your life you’d like to get a better handle on.

Make a list of the ingredient lists (nutritional and psychological) you’d like to simplify.  What can you do through developing your own leadership skills, choosing better health habits for yourself, or by substituting out fresher, higher quality foods from older, processed foods?

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