Archive for December, 2009

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

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Fast Food

How To Lift The Guise On Health­ier Choices

Reprinted from Mayo Clinic Nutri­tion Let­ter with permission

of Mayo Foun­da­tion for Med­ical Edu­ca­tion and Research,

Rochester, Min­nesota 55905

By chang­ing menus and meth­ods of cook­ing, fast-food restau­rants are mak­ing it eas­ier for you to eat more health­fully. But don’t be fooled by prod­ucts that sound healthy. Here are our sug­ges­tions for how you truly can trim calo­ries and fat:

n Be salad savvy — Avoid the mis­take of think­ing “salad” is syn­ony­mous with “diet food.” Sal­ads can be sneaky about fat and calo­ries. The taco sal­ads offered at Wend’s and Jack In The Box each deliver 500-plus calo­ries, more than half of which come from fat. The meat and cheese in chef sal­ads invari­ably over­power the veg­eta­bles to increase fat. Chicken and seafood sal­ads usu­ally are lower in fat and calo­ries, aver­ag­ing less than 200 calories.

It’s the dress­ings that pro­vide the crown­ing touch. They can add as much as 400 calo­ries to any salad. Watch out for pack­aged dress­ings that con­tain more than one serving.

The calo­ries and other nutri­ents are given for a one-half ounce serv­ing, yet some pack­ages hold up to 2.5 ounces. Ask for reduced or low-calorie salad dressing.

n Choose chicken care­fully — Chicken may be nat­u­rally lower in fat than ham­burger, but when breaded and fried, it loses its nutri­tional edge. At 688 calo­ries and 40 grams of fat, Burger King’s Chicken Spe­cialty has 100 more calo­ries and 20 per­cent more fat than McDonald’s Big Mac. Chicken chunks, strips and “stix” have fewer calo­ries than chicken sand­wiches, but still carry a heavy load of fat.

The lean­est chicken sand­wich we found is Jack In The Box Chicken Fajita Pita for 292 calo­ries and 8 grams of fat — if you skip the guacamole.

n Be sus­pi­cious of spe­cialty sand­wiches — Even non-fried sand­wiches made with lean turkey or ham can be deceiv­ing. Hardee’s Turkey Club packs more calo­ries and as much fat as McDonald’s Quar­ter Pounder. Gen­eral clues to keep in mind when decid­ing about this type of sand­wich are its size and the amount of cheese, may­on­naise or spe­cial sauces.

n Order burg­ers plain and non-imposing — You know you’re headed for calo­ries and fat if you order a burger billed “jumbo,” “ulti­mate,” “dou­ble” or “deluxe.” You may have to search the menu board a bit, but all major fran­chises offer a plain ham­burger for under 300 calo­ries. At Hardee’s and Roy Rogers, the roast beef sand­wich is one of the lean­est items you can order.

n Don’t read too much into the hype about health­ier fat — Switch­ing from ani­mal to veg­etable fats is one step to low­ered dietary cho­les­terol and sat­u­rated fat. But it doesn’t trans­form fried foods into healthy options. Large orders of McDonald’s french fries (cooked in an animal/vegetable blend) and Hardee’s french fries (cooked in veg­etable oil) have about 20 grams of total fat. Hardee’s fries have no cho­les­terol and a bit less sat­u­rated fat. But the key to your heart health is trim­ming total fat, and all fried fast foods still fail to do that.

n You make the call — Fast food has come a long way since the days of only burg­ers, fries and shakes. More food options can make it eas­ier for you to elude excess fat and calo­ries for speed and con­ve­nience. Nev­er­the­less, it all comes down to what you say when the per­son at the counter asks, “May I take your order?”

Here are the lean­est and fat­test fast foods you can eat

We* reviewed prod­ucts offered at six pop­u­lar fast-food fran­chises. In terms of fat and calo­ries, here are the best and worst choices you can make:

Burger King Chicken Ten­ders (6 pieces) 204 10

Hardee’s Chicken Stix (6 pieces) 234 10

Jack In The Box Chicken Fajita Pita 292 8

Roy Rogers Roast Beef Sand­wich 317 10

Burger King Whop­per with Cheese 711 43

Hardee’s Bacon Cheese­burger 556 33

Jack In The Box Ulti­mate Cheese­burger 942 69

Wendy’s Bacon Swiss Burger 710 44

Note: Calo­ries and fat are based on the most recent printed infor­ma­tion pro­vided to us by each company.

News For

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

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Turn­ing Obsta­cles Into Opportunities

Cop­ing With Adver­sity is the Key

Dr. Scoresby, Ph.D

Noth­ing in the world will take the place of per­sis­tence. Tal­ent will not; noth­ing is more com­mon than unsuc­cess­ful men with tal­ent. Genius will not; unre­warded genius is almost a proverb. Edu­ca­tion will not; the world is full of edu­cated dere­licts. Per­sis­tence and deter­mi­na­tion alone are omnipo­tent. The slo­gan, “Press on” has evolved and always will solve the prob­lems of the human race. –Calvin Coolidge

Some par­ents think they can make sure their child has good self-esteem if they can shel­ter or pro­tect her from tri­als, frus­tra­tion, uncer­tain­ties and set­backs. The oppo­site is true. Their con­tin­ual attempts to make their child happy and to pro­tect her from every poten­tial unpleas­ant­ness will most likely under­mine her self-esteem. Allow­ing your child room to grow, make mis­takes, deal with defeat and over­come prob­lems is essen­tial in the devel­op­ment of healthy self-esteem. You can­not bestow self-esteem, but you can help your child develop it by:

• Help­ing your child set goals
• Encour­ag­ing your child to chal­lenge him­self and improve his talents
• Giv­ing your child chores and respon­si­bil­i­ties appro­pri­ate to his age and ability
• Teach­ing your child that he is respon­si­ble for his own hap­pi­ness and accomplishments
• Pro­vid­ing aca­d­e­mic and psy­cho­log­i­cal support

By allow­ing your child a con­trolled amount of frus­tra­tion, you’re show­ing con­fi­dence in her. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should leave her to deal with a hope­less sit­u­a­tion alone. There are cer­tainly times she will need your assis­tance. You can con­tinue to be con­cerned and involved while encour­ag­ing independence.

Strate­gies to Pro­mote Self-Confidence and Self-Esteem

In School

If you believe your child lacks self-esteem and/or self-confidence because of prob­lems he is hav­ing at school, talk to his teacher. If he is hav­ing dif­fi­culty aca­d­e­m­i­cally, per­haps the teacher can sug­gest ways to give him oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve his self-confidence. For exam­ple, he could be encour­aged to work on projects that will uti­lize his tal­ents. School achieve­ment is very impor­tant in the devel­op­ment of self-confidence.

At Home

1. Cre­ate and envi­ron­ment in your home that encour­ages the devel­op­ment of self-esteem. Accord­ing to Dr. Ida Greene, an expert on devel­op­ing self-esteem, the ingre­di­ents of such a home are:

• Express love
• Encour­age goal-setting
• Com­mu­ni­cate honestly
• Encour­age independence
• Define your family’s values
• Cre­ate secu­rity and stability
• Estab­lish rea­son­able standards
• Be con­sis­tent in your discipline
• Cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for success
• Express faith in your child’s abilities
• Praise your child’s accomplishments
• Require age-appropriate responsibility
• Pro­vide emo­tional and aca­d­e­mic support

If these ingre­di­ents are present in your home, your child will feel more secure, will like and respect her­self, and will con­sider her­self to be worth­while and competent.

2. If your child’s poor self-esteem is chronic, she is prob­a­bly suf­fer­ing from emo­tional prob­lems. The rea­sons for these prob­lems need to be exam­ined in coun­sel­ing or psy­chother­apy. Accord­ing to Greene, “Seri­ous self-esteem deficits will not dis­ap­pear of their own accord. The child who dis­likes her­self and feels “bad” will most likely con­tinue to feel this way through­out her life unless she receives help from a men­tal health pro­fes­sional.” Aca­d­e­mic suc­cess will not pro­vide her much enjoy­ment or sat­is­fac­tion. If you get help for her before her bad feel­ings become per­ma­nent you will give her a brighter future.

— — — — — — — -

Dr. Scoresby holds a Ph.D from the Uni­ver­sity of Min­nesota in Coun­sel­ing Psy­chol­ogy and is the author of many books, includ­ing Teach­ing Moral Devel­op­ment, Focus on the Chil­dren and Some­thing Greater than Our­selves: The Exer­cise of Extra­or­di­nary Lead­er­ship. He is the direc­tor of Knowl­edge Gain Accel­er­ated Learn­ing Cen­ter and pres­i­dent of A. Lynn Scoresby & Asso­ciates, a lead­er­ship devel­op­ment firm.

News For

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

___________________________________________________________________

Eat­ing on the Road

By Linda Houtkooper, Ph.D., R.D. Linda is a Food Nutri­tion Spe­cial­ist at the Coop­er­a­tive Exten­sion Ser­vice at the Uni­ver­sity of Ari­zona. She was once the author of a question/answer col­umn in Swim­ming World mag­a­zine and she gave a pre­sen­ta­tion on nutri­tion at the ASCA World Clinic.

What should swim­mers eat when swim meet or vaca­tion takes them on the road? Should the foods for best per­for­mance be sac­ri­ficed for pop­u­lar, con­ve­nient, fatty foods or is there some­thing else they can eat?

Swim­ming suc­cess depends on abil­ity, top-notch train­ing, coach­ing, and good nutri­tion. Proper nutri­tion for swim­mers includes foods that pro­vide all essen­tial nutri­ents in the proper amounts for good health and performance.

Nutrition-conscious swim­mers know that they need high car­bo­hy­drate, low fat foods to per­form their best. The best diet for train­ing and per­for­mance is the VIM diet.

V= Vari­ety of whole­some foods that pro­vide the proper amount of nutri­ents to main­tain desir­able lev­els of body water, lean body mass, and fat. These foods will also main­tain good health.

I= Eat foods that are indi­vid­u­al­ized. Foods should reflect per­sonal like. They should also make it pos­si­ble to fol­low reli­gious food pref­er­ences. Avoid foods that cause aller­gic reac­tions, and those the body can’t tol­er­ate. Only use nutri­tional sup­ple­ments rec­om­mended by your doc­tor or reg­is­tered dietician.

M= Eat mod­er­ate amounts of foods that are high in fat, sugar, or sodium.

Use the sug­ges­tions below to main­tain your top-notch VIM diet “on the road.”

Break­fast

Order pan­cakes, French toast, muffins, toast, or cereal, and fruit or fruit juices. These foods are all higher in car­bo­hy­drates and lower in fat than the tra­di­tional egg and bacon break­fasts. Request that toast, pan­cakes, or muffins be served with­out but­ter or mar­garine. Use syrup or jam to keep car­bo­hy­drate high and fat to a low. Choose low fat dairy prod­ucts, milk, hot choco­late, etc. Fresh fruit may be expen­sive or dif­fi­cult to find. Carry fresh and/or dried fruits with you. Cold cereal can be a good break­fast or snack; carry boxes in the car or on the bus. Keep milk in a cooler or pur­chase it at con­ve­nience stores.

Lunch

Remem­ber that most of the fat in sand­wiches is found in the spread. Pre­pare or order your sand­wiches with­out the “mayo,” “spe­cial sauce,” or but­ter. Use ketchup or mus­tard instead. Peanut but­ter and jelly is a favorite and easy to make, but remem­ber that peanut but­ter is high in fat. Use whole grain bread and spread more jelly, while using a small amount of peanut but­ter. Avoid all fried foods at fast food places. Salad bars can be life­savers, but watch the dress­ings, olives, fried crou­tons, nuts, and seeds; or you could end up with more fat than any super burger could hope to hold! Use low fat lun­cheon meats such as skin­less poul­try and lean meats. Low fat bologna can be found in the stores, but read labels care­fully. Baked pota­toes should be ordered with but­ter and sauces “on the side.” Add just enough to moisten the carbohydrate-rich potato. Soups and crack­ers can be good low fat meals; avoid cream soups. Fruit juices and low fat milk are more nutri­tious choices than soda pop.

Din­ner

Go to restau­rants that offer high-carbohydrate foods such as pasta, baked pota­toes, rice, breads, veg­eta­bles, salad bars, and fruits. Eat thick crust piz­zas with low fat top­pings such as green pep­pers, mush­rooms, Cana­dian bacon, and onions. Avoid fatty meats, extra cheese, and olives. Eat breads with­out but­ter or mar­garine. Use jelly instead. Ask for sal­ads with dress­ing “on the side” so you can add min­i­mal amounts yourself.

Snacks

Eat whole grain bread, muffins, fruit, fruit breads, low fat crack­ers, pret­zels, unbut­tered pop­corn, oat­meal raisin cook­ies, fig bars, ani­mal crack­ers, fruit juice, break­fast cereal, canned meal replace­ments, and dried and fresh fruits.