Nurturing teens’ health and wellness is an essential component of supporting their growth and development.
Considering the growing epidemic of teenage obesity, which has a prevalence of 19.7%, a healthy lifestyle can help reduce the risk of this chronic condition and maintain teens’ well-being. As such, the previous post outlines tips for parents to prevent teenage obesity by encouraging their children to eat healthy and exercise regularly.
These tips are especially useful, considering a 2023 study that underscores the role of parents in shaping their children’s health-related habits and behaviors. According to the research published in the journal Eating Behaviors, parents’ involvement in their children’s dietary intake and physical activity levels contributes to better health outcomes.
Thus, it’s a huge part of your responsibility to guide your teen in building better habits and ultimately invest in their long-term health and wellness. If you’re wondering how to start becoming more involved, you can rely on health and wellness ebooks that serve as accessible resources, as explained below.
Ebooks as accessible resources
To truly become a guiding force in your teen’s path to health and wellness, you must first improve your knowledge of key aspects like diet, nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress management, and the like. Ebook consumption is becoming increasingly common among US readers, so these electronic resources can provide you with the essential information you need to help teens form better, healthier habits.
A Pew Research study shows that about 30% of Americans read ebooks, and this can be linked to the accessibility of ebooks across different demographics. Not only are ebooks optimized for various devices to help you read on the go, but they’re also more affordable than their printed counterparts.
In fact, the digital library Everand provides unlimited access to its extensive selection of wellness ebooks upon subscription, allowing you to add trending titles on parenting and child care, such as How to Talk So Teens Will Listen and Listen So Teens Will Talk by Adele Faber. The subscription platform also has user-friendly features like book previews and synchronization across multiple devices, so you can easily incorporate ebook browsing and reading into your busy lifestyle as a parent.
The following section highlights health and wellness ebooks worth reading for more effective habit formation and behavioral changes for your teen.
Health and wellness ebooks to add to your library
Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy by Walter Willett and P.J. Skerrett
As explained earlier, diet and nutrition play a role in preventing diseases like obesity and improving overall health. In this light, Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating provides you with the science-backed information you need to teach your teen how to choose foods with essential nutrients like carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals. This extensive best-seller also contains easy-to-follow meal plans and recipes to further influence your teen and the rest of your family’s eating habits and choices.
Better Stretching by Joe Yoon
Like a nutritious diet, exercise can boost physical and mental wellness, thus making it essential for parents to encourage their teens to stay active. Whether or not your teen already lives an active lifestyle, you can draw lessons from Joe Yoon’s Better Stretching on how to incorporate 9 minutes of stretching every day for better mobility and enhanced performance. The book contains over 100 stretches and exercises ranging from static to dynamic, including ones that teens can easily do while sitting at their desks.
Mindfulness and Sleep by Anna Black
Research shows that teens tend to have shorter sleep durations and reduced sleep quality due to factors like extensive screen time. Aside from teaching your teen to regulate their electronic use, you can help them form better sleep habits through the tips and tricks shared by best-selling author Anna Black. By reading Mindfulness and Sleep, you can introduce 25 mindfulness practices and activities your child can practice every night, as well as daytime habits and exercises to help them improve their body clock. The book also explores the idea of starting a sleep diary to encourage your teen to keep monitoring their sleep patterns.
Yoga: A Manual for Life by Naomi Annand
As teens undergo different physical, environmental, and emotional changes during this phase, high stress levels may also impact their health. However, a research study published in Frontiers in Psychology notes that the practice of yoga can reduce stress and promote mental health and well-being among young people. This means reading Naomi Annand’s Yoga: A Manual for Life can help you introduce a stress management intervention to your teen, allowing them to feel calmer and more energized through breath-led movements and yoga poses.
Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg
As you impart all these health and wellness tips to your teen, you can also share BJ Fogg’s breakthrough method for building habits quickly and easily. In Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything, the habit expert shares advice that can help you guide your teen in starting small changes, designing habits with positive emotions, and celebrating small successes when sustaining healthy behavior in the long term.
Continue reading other posts in our blog’s Teen Health category to learn more about how to support your teen’s health and well-being.
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