In a couple weeks, we will be leaving for our annual 4th of July family vacation.  I have been traveling with toddlers in tow for 4 years now and consider myself a semi-pro when it comes to the daunting task of kid-friendly packing.  Here are 5 tips to keep in mind to keep your travel stress to a minimum:

The Basics

If you have ever left the house with a child before you are well aware of the basic travel necessities.  For extended travel, just picture the diaper bag on steroids. Lots of extra clothes, diapers, wipes, pacifiers, drinks and an endless assortment of dry snacks.  I am not an advocate for shoving food in a kids face when they start to get irritable but I make an exception to  that when we travel.  We are on vacation after all.  The key to remember with your basics is to have everything packed within arms reach.  You don’t want to stop the car and unpack everything your husband so diligiently shoved in the trunk to get to the drink boxes.

Bags, Bags and More Bags

I am not talking about your luggage here.  The 3 types of bags I never travel without are ziploc, mesh and grocery.  The  large ziplocs will hold all the items that would otherwise wreak havoc in your suitcase if a potential leak should occur.  The mesh is a useful place to store underwear items and bathing suits.  The grocery bag can be used for wet clothing and of course provides a home for the massive blown-out diaper that occurs as soon as the plane takes off.

Childproofing

Whether a vacation home or a hotel room, your destination is most likely not childproofed.  Bring along a baby gate, outlet covers and cabinet locks to lower your anxiety level over safety concerns.  Blue painter tape comes in handy for a variety of reasons.  It will cover outlets, secure cabinets and bind a washcloth over a sharp furniture edge without leaving any residue after removal.

Medical Supplies

Pack a medical supply box that keeps all first aid and toiletry items in one place. Be sure to have an ample supply of any prescription meds, and bring along the basics like band aids, antiseptic cream, pain reliever, and thermometer. Travel sized baby shampoo, toothbrush/toothpaste and sunscreen should be included as well.

Entertainment

The portable dvd player has saved my sanity.  It is a must-have for my kids if we are traveling more than an hour away. An iPhone works well too and is definitely less bulky. Don’t forget to bring a manageable amount of books and toys.  It may be a pain to pack but you’ll be thankful later.

Written by Lea Barlow • 1 Comment

Some of these are obvious and some are just down right ridiculous but none of them involve sex or walking up an amount of endless stairs.  I wanted to give you more unique ways to burn a few extra calories in the day.

1. Indulge your inner dork and do 27 underwater handstands.

2. Push a grocery cart for 45 minutes.

3. Put a 42-pound 4-year-old in the child seat and it’ll only take half an hour.

4. Carry five grocery bags from the car to the kitchen and put the food away, take out the trash, wash the dishes, and wipe down the kitchen counter.

5. Eat chili for a couple of days: Research shows that chili peppers boost your metabolic rate, burning 50 more cals a day.

6. Hula-hoop for 22 minutes.

7. Wash, halve, and seed two acorn squash, then watch them bake for 30 minutes.

8. Play “Chopsticks” on the piano incessantly for 41 minutes.

9. Sing the Grease original soundtrack from start to finish.

10. Degrease by scrubbing in the shower for 15 minutes, then spend 7 minutes shaving, 3 minutes toweling off, 4 minutes moisturizing, and 20 minutes blow-drying and styling your hair.

11. Have fun when you get back to work: Twirl 123 times in your office chair (try not to puke).

12. Shop during your lunch hour while carrying a 7-pound hobo bag (and, naturally, a few new purchases).

13. Kick off your Sunday shoes and dance to the first four songs off the Footloose soundtrack.

14. Drink 3 cups of green tea in 24 hours: Researchers say it can increase energy expenditure by 106 calories.

15. Play interactive Wii Tennis for 13 minutes.

16. Do 780 jumping jacks. Yes, 780.

17. Spend 29 minutes mopping over any scuff marks.

18. Sweep your floors for 15 minutes, then vacuum for 15.

19. Now read 30 pages of Hugo’s Les Misérables (or how about just lifting that book a few times!)

20. Take in the greenery: Sit in lotus position and breathe deeply for an hour and 42 minutes.

21. Email 68 times.

22. Carry a cooler stocked with three bottles of water, a six-pack, four PB&Js, two oranges, a bag of tortilla chips, and 12 servings of cool cucumber salsa for 22 minutes.

23. Slather on lip balm 765 times

24. Swing a lasso over your head 375 times

25. Play fashion show and try on 16 different outfits (one every 3 minutes). – my personal favorite

Source:  womenshealthmag.com

Written by Lea Barlow • Leave a comment

The fat doesn’t stop with the pregnancy weight.  These kids keep bringing it – just in sneakier ways. Usually, I can keep the extra pounds at bay through my daily cardio regimin.  But with summer break looming typical routines will likely change potentially leading to a few fattening habits. Children’s Health Magazine brought to light several parent fat traps many of us fall into without realizing it’s sabotaging our dieting efforts.

Fat Trap No. 1

You polish off your kid’s fries/scrape the last spoonful of chocolate pudding/lick the peanut butter off the knife.  I do all of these!

Skinny Fix
Don’t overload your child. In one sitting a typical toddler will eat just one-quarter to one-half the amount of food a grown-up will. If you keep servings age appropriate, that means fewer leftovers for you to pig out on. Your kid can always ask for seconds.

Graze on grown-up goodies. If you feed the kids separately (because who wants dinner at 5 p.m.?), have something healthy and filling to munch on while they eat, like a handful of almonds, hummus and baked pita chips, or edamame (in the pods, so you have to take time to pop ‘em out). Bonus: All of these snacks are high in the monounsatured fats that help melt belly flab.

Waste not. A triangle of PB&J, a couple of untouched chicken nuggets, even a handful of veggie chips can be saved for your kid’s snack the next day. Serve with fruit and some milk or greek yogurt.

Fat Trap No. 2

You cook to please your tot’s picky palate–which means a regular diet of starch plus dairy (mac ‘n’ cheese, grilled cheese, cheese pizza…).

Skinny Fix
Get rough(age): Use whole-wheat pasta, whole-grain breads, brown rice: They have more fiber, which speeds weight loss by binding with other foods and escorting them out of the body. It also helps you feel full longer.

Know your cheeses. Opt for  low-fat in sandwiches, on grass-fed beef burgers and in mac ‘n’ cheese.  White cheeses are typically lower in fat, calories and sodium.  We are big fans of Baby Swiss in my house.

Go halfsies. Make two versions of a dish–one they’ll eat, and one you’ll like. Serve your grilled chicken on a bed of steamed spinach; the kids can have theirs sliced with baby carrots and honey mustard for dipping. Or pimp your pasta with lots of veggies.

Fat Trap No. 3

You’re on the soccer/gymnastics/ballet/baseball mom diet: constantly caught empty-bellied and forced to succumb to the snack stand.  A recent study in the journal Obesity found that dieters consumed an average of 36 percent of their weekly calories on Saturdays.

Skinny Fix
Be prepared! Keep a stash of snacks on hand: a mix of almonds and dried apricots in a mini plastic bag, or an energy bar or protein drink with less than 200 calories.

Stay active.  Get out of the chair or bleachers and walk around. Fast.

Fat Trap No. 4
You barely have time to take a shower in the morning, much less shovel down breakfast.

If you regularly skip your a.m. meal, you might as well send excess pounds an engraved invitation to take up residence on your butt. Researchers know that morning fasters are more likely to be fat than morning eaters.

Skinny Fix
Always Eat Breakfast. Prep in the p.m.  Make yourself a peanut butter sandwich with sliced banana while you make school lunches at night.

Additionally, have some egg with that toast.  An all-carb (or very low-carb) diet will increase your carb craving and slow your metabolism, research has found, so be sure your morning meal includes a lean protein.

Fat Trap No. 5

Your pantry is stocked with kid-pleasers like cookies, chips, and soda.

Skinny Fix
Dump the junk.  Yes, I realize you have to have some treats around but severely limit the stock.
If I have potato chips hanging around I will eat them. Not one, all.  Limit decadent calories to around 150 a day.

WATCH OUT FOR THESE:

1 bite of a PB & J: 47 calories

1 chicken nugget: 46 calories

1/2 small order of fast-food fries: 115 calories

2 spoonfuls of chocolate pudding: 46 calories

3 spoonfuls of Kraft macaroni and cheese: 82 calories

1/2 hot dog in a bun: 134 calories

2 big swigs of 2% chocolate milk: 47 calories

*Remember, all it takes is 50 extra calories a day to put on five pounds in a year.

Written by Lea Barlow • Leave a comment

Nutrition Facts, thank goodness, are on practically everything in the store nowadays. Today, in Part 2 of the Shop Smarter series, each line of the label is broken down for you. Once you learn how to read the information on the package and, more importantly, interpret it, you can make better and more informed choices about what you are purchasing and feeding your family.

This line reflects the amount that the average person eats at one helping. Serving size is expressed in kitchen terms – cups, spoons, slices, and also in grams. Serving size is set by the F.D.A., not by the manufacturer, for all similar products (e.g., all yogurts) so you can make comparisons without having to do a lot of math. But be aware that your average serving may be more or less than this amount.

The next line tells you how many servings the package contains, enabling you to compare similar products on the basis of cost per serving. Multiply this number by the serving size and it should equal, or come close to, the total volume of the package.

This line tells you the number of calories per serving. Remember to adjust this (and other nutrient amounts, too) if your idea of a serving size is different from that stated on the package. If a half-cup serving has 50 calories, but you usually eat a one-cup serving, you’ll be getting 100 calories. When shopping, compare the nutrient values to the total calories of the same size serving of each food. For example, a cereal that contains four grams of protein in a 100 calorie serving would be more nutritious than a cereal listing two grams per 100 calories. Also, a food listing four grams of protein in 100 calories would be less nutrient-dense than one listing three grams of protein in a 50 calorie serving of the same volume.

This line tells you how many calories in each serving are from fat. Use this and the “Total Fat” line below to decide if the food fits your goals for fat consumption. If this food gets a lot of its calories from fat, you’ll want to eat it sparingly or not at all.

This section tells you what percentage of the total recommended daily amount of each nutrient (fats, carbs, proteins, major vitamins, and minerals) is in each serving, based on a 2,000 calorie per day diet. If you eat more or less than 2,000 calories, adjust this value proportionally. The average woman (non-pregnant and no-lactating) needs about 2,000 calories per day. The average man needs around 2,500 to 2,800. An athlete may burn between 3,000 to 4,000 per day. These daily values are for adults and children four years of age or over. These values cannot be applied to infants or children under four.

This line tells you how many grams of fat is in one serving and what percent this is of the recommended daily value (DV). For example, “Total Fat 1 gram, 2 %” means that one serving would contain one gram of fat and two percent of the total recommended daily intake of fat.

This subheading under “Total Fat” tells you how much of the fat in each serving is saturated fat and what percent this is of your daily recommended value (DV). Current nutritional recommendations are that less than one-third of the fat in your diet (less than 8% of your total daily calories) should come from saturated fat.

Trans fat When you read a nutrition label remember that companies are allowed to list the amount of trans fat as “0 grams” if it contains less than .5 grams of trans fat per serving. This means that your food can contain some trans fat even if the nutrition label says “0 grams” per serving. Always check the ingredient list for trans fat, which may be listed as “hydrogenated vegetable oil” or “partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.” Trans fat is usually found in commercially prepared baked goods, fried foods, snack foods and margarine.

This line tells you how many milligrams of cholesterol and what percent this is of the recommended daily value.

Total carbohydrate: Tells you how many grams of carbohydrates are in each serving and the percentage of the Daily Value this represents. This number includes starches, complex carbohydrates, dietary fiber, added sugar sweeteners, and non-digestible additives. The following three carbohydrates all add up to the total carbohydrate value.

Dietary fiber: This figure represents the number of grams of fiber in each serving.

Sugars: This figure represents the number of grams of added sweeteners, which may appear in the ingredients list as: sugar, corn syrup, honey, brown sugar, and so on.

Reading between the lines. As a general guide, the greater the discrepancy between “total carbohydrates” and “sugar,” on the label, the more nutritious carbohydrates the food contains. This means that the package contains more of the food’s natural sugars than added sugars. The closer the number of grams of “sugar” is to the “total carbohydrates” in each serving, the closer the food gets to the junk quality.

This line tells you how many grams of protein are in each serving. You will notice that the percent DV is missing from the protein label because protein insufficiency is not generally thought to be a problem. The average daily protein requirement for most people would be between 50 and 75 grams a day. So, a serving that contains three grams of protein would give you around four to six percent of the DV for protein.

This list includes the percentage of the recommended daily allowance for vitamins A and C, calcium, and iron in each serving. The food may provide significant amounts of other vitamins and minerals, which may also be listed, though not required by law.

The ingredients list tells you, usually in fine print, what ingredients the food contains. These are listed in order, starting with the ingredient found in the largest amount, by weight, and progressing to the ingredient present in the smallest amount. The ingredients list may be the most important information on the box to someone with food allergies or to a parent wary of the effect of food colorsor preservatives on a child’s behavior. Here you can find out if a food contains eggs, soy, milk, corn, or whatever you must avoid eating. It’s important, even critical, to know the lingo. Casein, caseinate, lactalbumin, whey or whey solids are all derived from cow’s milk, though their names don’t reveal this. Albumin comes from eggs. Dextrose and glucose may originate in corn. Hydrolyzed vegetable protein starts with soybeans, and some of the products used to thicken or stabilize food texture, such as acacia gum, are legume products.

Pay attention to where and how various kinds of sugar are included on the ingredients list. Use your good sense. Ketchup, for example, should contain mainly tomatoes. Tomatoes, not sugar, should be first on the ingredient list. A cereal in which sugar is the first, second, or third ingredient, would certainly be less nutritious than one in which two or three types of grains are listed before the sugar.

Source: askdrsears.com

Written by Lea Barlow • Leave a comment