Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard Use This Trick to Get Their Kids to Eat Healthier

The real trick to having a healthy relationship with food? Sometimes you've got to just let it go. 

And to hear Kristen Bell tell it, there are no rules for her or daughters Lincoln, 11, and Delta, 9. In fact, "I will sometimes suggest we indulge, because I want them to see me do it," the Frozen star explained in an exclusive interview with E! News. "I don't want them to have negative feedback loops if they want to have a crazy dessert once in a while."

Seeing no reason to hold it back anymore when it comes to digging into some cake, "We talk about it like it's something to celebrate," Kristen continued of her and husband Dax Shepard's policy. "It's like wearing a fancy dress is really fun, or high heels once in a while, but it's not something you wear to school every day. Because the reality is, what you consume are the building blocks of your body and your brain." 

So what does get tucked into the girls' lunchboxes on the regular are PLEZi's low-sugar, fiber-packed juice boxes. 

"I bought a pallet of it," Kristen said of deeming the sip a nutritional win after scanning the labels. And truly, she continued, the whole stash was gone in a matter of days: "They had been taking them to school and trading them. Apparently there's a big black market trade on the blacktop at recess. They were going like hotcakes." 

So The Good Place alum flipped at the chance to get more involved in the nutrition brand, co-founded by former First Lady Michelle Obama. 

Signing on to co-host the PLEZi Absurdly Good Games along with magician Sean Sotaridona, "We're trying to challenge people that this competition is all about movement," Kristen explained of the competition, in which families can show off their best moves on Instagram through July 8 for a shot at winning merch and cash prizes. "And we want to see everybody's fun, creativity, individuality and personality come out through the way that they move."

To get her squad on the go, Kristen will usually suggest a family walk ("If my husband and I say, 'Ugh, I'm feeling so sluggish, I really need to move my body,' they're much more likely to join") or a binge of their latest obsession, Netflix's reality series Physical: 100. 

"If you haven't seen it, literally quit your job, go home and watch," she joked of the show where 100 fit AF contestants compete in various physical competitions. "They're these semi-obstacle courses. And because we started watching that with the kids, we're monkeys, we want to imitate. So they started building obstacle courses at home. I think talking about it is really the first step before you instigate the rule of physical activity."

They tackle healthy eating with a similar strategy. 

"We talk about eating a lot of different colors," noted Kristen. "And so far, they've been pretty responsive to it." They also leaned into the messaging from the girls' preschool where "they had this really cute rule, which they made understandable to all the littles, which was, 'Eat your growing food before you eat your crunchies,'" detailed Kristen, "which just meant, eat your cucumbers before you eat your potato chips." 

Dax—who earned a degree in anthropology from UCLA—has also chimed in with his hard-earned wisdom.

"Anthropologically speaking, we crave sugar because it was so scarce throughout history and because nothing that's ever been poisonous has tasted really sweet," Kristen explained, reciting the knowledge she's gleaned from her husband of 10-plus years. "But the reality is, it doesn't make us feel good. So we talk about a lot about the outcome. And that's also where movement steps into the picture. We talk a lot about, if you're feeling sluggish, maybe it's because you haven't moved your body today."

But, mostly, they just impress upon their daughters that there's no need to be that perfect girl you think you have to be.

Said Kristen, "Allowing my kids to see that it's something adults struggle with, and that we have to fight the need for wanting ice cream all the time, it makes them feel like we're all on the same team."

In other words, let it go, let it goooooooo.