Does your household pig out all the time? I have found that eating in moderation is the key to my own weight and the weight of my children in check.
As far as I am concerned, there are three simple concepts everyone should keep in mind about food: moderation, variety and balance. Moderation means keeping those portion sizes under control. Variety means eating different foods every day. Balance means choosing foods that provide you vitamins from each category.
The ideal of eating healthy is described by the Food Guide Pyramid. Found at http://mypyramid.gov/, The Good Guide Pyramid shows you exactly how to eat in moderation, in balance and also how to choose a variety of foods. This is a great site because it has personalization menu options that can help you create really healthy meals. It has certainly taught me ways to eat healthier both as an individual and as a family.\
In my experience finding balance with a diet is all about taking foods from each of the food groups and then making sure our bodies have adequate nutrients from delicious low crab foods rather than from processed foods.
I always get stuck for ideas on how to eat healthy when my brood and I go out to restaurants. It seems that hidden calories are everywhere -from breads and appetizers to the main course. Try grilled proteins instead of fried, and choose vegetables over starches. Every day, try to incorporate a healthy balance of grains, vegetables, fruits, and a small amount of fats and oils into your diet.
It is really bad news to eat the same thing day after day. Ingesting a variety of foods also ensures that we get all of the required nutrients we need, since there is not a single ‘super food’ that has everything we need in it. Eating the same thing over and over also only initiates a desire to stray away from a healthy eating plan. I would never serve my kids salad day after day because they simply would get bored and sneak off to MacDonald’s to get a fish filet or something.
Of course if the aim of eating healthy is to lose weight in a short time you might want to cut calories yet at the same time keeps up a variety of foods. Moderation is equally important, since there are no “bad” foods out there, but “bad” foods are those that get eaten way too frequently and cause us to gain weight
My family and I have a treat once in a while, but we do so in moderation. We eat meat portions the size of a deck of cards, cheese the size of four dice, grains the size of a tennis ball, vegetables the size of a fist, potatoes the size of a small computer mouse and we make sure we never hiver more than a teaspoon of oil on our salad. That is the quick way to visualize how to stay healthy.

I was all for putting my teenage daughter on a contraceptive until I found out that it causes muscle wasting. Many young ladies use oral contraceptives, yet its effect on their body composition and exercise performance has not been thoroughly studied. Research has shown that contraceptive use can make your girl weak and also affect her hormone levels so that she is less healthy.
The study I am talking about is called “Oral Contraceptive Use Impairs Muscle Gains in Young Women. It was conducted by Chang-Woock Lee and Steven E. Riechman, Department of Health and Kinesiology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX; and Mark A. Newman, Human Energy Research Laboratory, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.
In this study examined generally healthy women between the ages of 18-31. The girls were assigned to two groups and both completed a 10-week program of whole-body resistance exercise training . Group One consisted of 34 women who used oral contraceptives (OC). Group Two consisted of 39 women who did not take birth control pills (non-OC). The women were encouraged to consume at least 0.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day (a third more than is called for by the U.S. government nutritional guidelines) to make sure they consumed enough calories and protein to encourage muscle growth.
The participants exercised three times per week for ten weeks under the supervision of exercise physiologists. They exercise to included chest presses, lateral pull downs, leg extensions, triceps extensions, arm curls and sit ups. Body composition was determined using hydrostatic weighing and blood samples were taken.
The researchers found that there were significant differences in lean mass gains, Those OC users had reduced DHEA hormone at the end of the training period. By contrast, the other participants’ levels did not change. This could lead to muscle wasting.

In the study the researchers say they were surpised at the magnitude of differences in muscle gains between the two groups. The ones that were not on birth control had a whopping sixty percent more muscle than those who were on the oral contraceptives. That is not a small effect on the human body and something to really be noted if you or a daughter are on this type of birth control.

A lack of muscle mass can cause problems with weight in the future so I am going to encourage my daughters not to stay on oral contraceptives if they can help it and seek an alternative means of birth control. This is because lean muscle burns a lot more fat that just plain tissue. Without lean muscle the body does not burn fat efficiently and you end up being obese!

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We all know how difficult it is to eat right. The kids run around all over the place making it hard to spy on what they are eating. Half the time what we end up eating is just not that nutritious. I can’t spy on them all of the time so I do what I can by following a few simple loose rules.

The other problem is that kids do not necessarily like healthy foods. So I take care to take baby steps and introduce them to those nutritious foods slowly as to not to shock them.

I guess it is all just a game about testing, researching and learning all aspects of diet and nutrition and then troubleshooting what your kids really want to eat. I have been surprised several times when my kids have actually liked a food I never dreamed they would end up enjoying – like mashed up squash with cinnamon which is jam pack full of Vitamin A.

For one thing I do know it is important to avoid eating crap. To me crap is anything with refined sugar, sodium or gluten in it. I also reduce the crab load whenever I can. I will give my kids cucumber slices with salt rather than potato chips with salt to slake their cravings. Cucumber slices are a negative calorie food.

I also think it is absolutely crucial to drink plenty of water. It is like the lube that greases your wheels so you can keep going… It also helps elimination and keeps the kids hydrated. I give them lots of limeade and lemonade and in the summer make sure they are well hydrated by feeding them popsicles.

Of course it goes without saying that in order to remain healthy that my kids must dump all fast foods. This means eating whole unprocessed foods wherever possible. My kids are better off eating shepherd’s pie with a bit of grated cheddar cheese on top rather than a cheeseburger from MacDonald’s!

I also try to eliminate as many toxins from our daily life as possible. There are lots of toxins in food additives and preservatives, dry cleaners, pesticides and chemicals. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, the average human body contains over 116 different types of toxins a day!

I also make sure my kids are not stressed when they are eating even if it means filling them up in front of the television set. At least if they are sitting in front of the television they are a little more relaxed than standing up and snacking with the refrigerator door open. This is just better for their digestion which of course helps them absorb nutrients more efficiently.