By Marissa Vicario, www.mwahonline.com
 
Marissa Vicario is a NYC-based Wellness Coach, Healthy Living Expert and an aunt to the sweetest 9-year-old girl. She shares her own health secrets, get-fit tips and the cooking expertise that has inspired countless women to end their love/hate relationship with food and turbocharge their health to become holistically hot in way that’s fun and fearless. No crazy diets or all-juice cleanses required. Download her free eMag, How to Be Holistically Hot. Visit her blog at www.WhereINeedToBe.com.
 
I love spending time with my 9-year-old niece. Because she lives in Louisville, KY., and I’m in New York City, we don’t have the luxury of seeing each other often. So when we get together, I try to make it fun and memorable. As a Health Coach, I naturally want to leave her with little lessons that will instill a wellness mindset and because I don’t want her to become a childhood obesity statistic. Luckily, I’ve discovered a few kid-friendly ways to do it.
 
Movement

Like most children her age, I’m pretty sure my niece would rather spend all day on her iPad. When I’m visiting, I usually bring along some workout DVDs so I can squeeze in my own exercise. Once it’s on and she sees me doing jumping jacks and lunges, she’ll get up and follow along.
 
When the weather is nice, I like to take her outside to a local tennis court where we hit a ball back and forth. We usually end up running all over the court chasing the ball more than we can keep it in the air. Whatever we do, there are always lots of giggles and encouragement. I take the opportunity to remind her that being active is an important part of each and every day.
 
Nutrition

My sister is a single mom and I know she relies on fast food sometimes as a quick meal option. When I visit, I buy the ingredients for my favorite morning breakfast – a green smoothie. I keep it simple with bagged salad greens or baby kale, a banana, some frozen fruit like berries, nut butter, almond milk and ice. My niece likes to stand on a chair while I let her add the ingredients to the blender. Once finished, we all drink green smoothies!
 
The first time I did this, we sat at the kitchen table while we drank our smoothies and I had my niece write the recipe out a piece of paper that we hung on the refrigerator with a magnet. With the ingredients I left behind and the recipe front and center, my sister and niece were making smoothies together even after I left.
 
Eco-friendliness and Sustainability

My mom and dad have the luxury of space to plant flowers, vegetables and herbs in their backyard. My mom grows some tomatoes and basil to which she tends, and my niece has taken an interest. For one of her recent birthdays, I bought my niece a pretty children’s gardening kit complete with tomato seeds so she could plant and tend her own seeds with my mom’s help.
 
With so much packaged food around these days, it’s easy for kids to think that food comes from a factory or is sold in stores and restaurants. I wanted to offer a creative way for my niece to connect to the source of the food she eats by teaching her how to grow it.
 
With the help of these activities and many more, my niece and I have developed a special bond through the years and made a lot of memories. I hope she’ll carry this knowledge with her for the rest of her life so as she grows up and makes her own decisions, she’ll remember the lessons about health and wellness her Aunt Marissa taught her.

Photo: imagerymajestic
Published: April 30, 2013