Let's Help Our Teens

"Teenagers and dieting are not a good pair, according
to a recent study that followed the eating habits
of more than 2,500 teens over a period of several
years. Researchers from the University of
Minnesota in Minneapolis found not only that
teens who dieted were more likely to try unhealthy
tactics to drop pounds quickly, but also that they
were far more likely to be heavier five years later
than those who didn't diet! What's worse, their
risk of developing a lifelong eating disorder
like bulimia or anorexia was six times higher
than that of the kids who didn't diet!

Health professionals have long said that putting
a child or a teen on a diet is a bad idea. So
how can you help your child deal with a weight
issue? Start with a trip to your doctor, they
say. Together you can develop a healthy--and
long term--plan of attack. As this study clearly
shows, unhealthy eating habits can start young,
and can haunt your child for years to come. So
keep your teen off the fad-diet roller coaster,
and teach him or her how to eat smart for life".

I got this article from Denise Austin's
Morning stretch site and I must say
that it is a very helpful piece as
I have a child that is struggling
with weight issues and wants to
try some of the loose weight quick
diets. I tell him that the weight
didn't go on fast and it should not
come off fast. Change your teens
eating habits is the first step.

The best way is to get them to
eat six small meals a day. I
know that sounds like a lot but
it helps keep your metabolism
going and it helps to burn off
calories. Substitute junk food
for fresh food. There are many
creative ways to work with food
to make it fun to eat and with
this blog site, I will search
every where to help find way
to help our teens with their
weight issues.

If you have any questions please
feel free to use the comment tool
to get them to me. If I don't know
an answer and will certainly find the
right resources to answer it.

Until then have a great day and
take care of yourselves and your
teens.

Food Can Be Our Friend

Even though most of us fight daily with food, trying to keep the weight off,
food can also be our friend. Food keeps us strong, provides the vitiams we
need, even provides the fluids we need. The best part of food being our
friend is that there are several foods that help to fight cancer.

By eating healthy we can help ourselves fight off one of the deadliest
diseases we have today. That is one big reason to keep our commitment
to ourselves to either continue to or to begin to eat right.

The experts at the American Institute for Cancer Research have said
that foods that help us manage our weight can also significantly reduce
your risk of getting cancer. How? Nutrient-rich foods are packed with
compounds that protect your cells from the type of damage that can lead
to cancerous mutations. While fresh fruits, vegetables, beans, and
whole grains are beneficial, the following foods are especially
recommended for their cancer fighting properties:

Fruits: Red and purple grapes and graped juice, strawberries,
raspberries, and blueberries.
Vegetables: Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussel sprouts, bok choy,
kale, spinach, romaine lettuce, leaf lettuce, mustard greens,
collard green, chicory, swiss chard, tomatoes, and garlic.
Beans: Lentils, soybeans, and peas.
Whole grains: Brown rice, whole wheat, oatmeal, air-popped popcorn, wild rice,
kasha, and tabbouleh.

So load up your plate with "super food" and you will combat your cancer risk
and slim down at the same time. It's a win-win situation.

Are You Taking Care Of Yourself?

These days women try hard to be able to do it all.
We work, take care of our homes, families and a
whole list of other things. With all that we do
we usually do not listen to our bodies when it is
trying to tell us something. If we feel a little
pain here or there we just suck it up and keep
going because there are so many that depend on
us and there are so many things that as women
we feel we must take care of. But the bottom
line is that we have to take care of ourselves
because no one else will.
It is a frightening reality that many of us do
not take that preventative measure to keep our-
selves healthy and in the end we pay a high price.
I am writing this today because it has been just
a little over two months that I lost my best
friend to cancer and this morning like all
mornings I was thinking of her and how we did
so many things together and now we can't.
It is important to take the time to listen
to what our bodies tell us so that we may be
able to be with our loved ones longer.
Cancer claims many lives each year and the
sad part is that most, if caught early,
can be cured. For example, cervical cancer.

Cevical cancer is one of the most preventable
types of cancer. Because of the Pap test, the
number of cervical cancer cases has dropped over the
past twenty or so years. Unfortunately a lot of
women still develop cervical cancer. It is a
fact that over 9,000 women in the U.S. develop
this cancer every year.
Although some cervical cancers can't be prevented,
there are still things that we can do to help
lower the risk of getting this cancer.
I found a list of 6 ways to help reduce your risk
of cervical cancer.

Much of what I'm writting is a direct quote from
an article from about.com. This site has an area
of information just about cancer. This is the
list I found there.

"1. Get a regular Pap smear. The Pap smear can be
greatest defenses for cervical cancer. The
Pap smear can detect cervical changes early
before they turn into cancer. Check with your
doctor to find out how often you should have
this done.

2. Limit the amount of sexual partners you have.
Studies have shown women who have many sexual
partners increase their risk for cervical cancer.
they also are increasing their risk of developing
HPV, a known cause for cervical cancer.

3. Quit smoking or avoid secondhand smoke. Smoking
cigarettes increases your risk of developing many
cancers, including cervical cancer. Smoking combined
with an HPV infection can actually accelerate cervical
dysplasia.

4. If you are sexually active, use a condom. Having
unprotected sex puts you at risk for HIV and other
STD's which can increase your risk factor for
developing cervical cancer.

5. Follow up on abnormal Pap smears. If you have had an
abnormal Pap smear, it is important to follow up with
regular exams or colposcopies or whatever you doctor
has decided for you. If you have been treated for
cervical dysplasia, you still need to follow up with
some sort of exam as dysplasia can return and if it
goes undetected it can turn into cervical cancer.

6. Get the HPV vaccine. If you are under 27, you may be
eligible to receive the HPV vaccine, which prevents
high risk strains of HPV in women. The vaccine, Gardasil,
was approved by the FDA to give to young girls as young
as 9. The vaccine is most efective when given to young
women before they become sexually active."

I hope that those of you who read this will take the time to
take care of yourselves. It is not just one more thing to do,
it's one thing we all should do.

Check out the site about.com for any questions you may have
about this subject. It is a site I highly recommend.

Take care and I'll type at you soon.

It's Been Awhile

Sorry that I haven't updated in a long while. Time goes by to
fast anymore and if you don't stop and smell the roses some
times you could miss something. That is what I have been doing.
I have found some interesting things to do and I thought it
was about time to share them with you.

For one I have started a couple of correspondence courses.
One for becoming a writer. That is fun. and one for becoming
a medical transcriptionist. Both are interesting one you can
make an in home business and make real good money. The other
is for the creative side of you. It is real easy to find
things like these courses. If you ever seen these ads where
you can get items for free for signing up friends and completing
a few free trials that's where they are. And you can actually
make money for answering those free trial offers. I found
a site called Swapper Referrals and there are people there
who are trying to get the free gifts and they offer money
to those who are willing to help. I have made extra gas
money by doing this and it is a great way to meet new people.

The other thing I have found is that Denise Austin has
a website, of course, but what I did not know is that she
has an area for children. It talks about how to get them
to exercise and how to get them to eat better and things
like that. I found a couple of recipes I would like to
share with you and I will also give you the address because
there were several recipes I think would be fun for you
and your children to make together.

Banana Blasters

2 bananas
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup wheat germ
crushed coconut, cereal, nuts or granola

Cut the bananas into 1 inch thick slices. Push a fork or
popsicle sticks into a banana slice. Dip it into the orange
juice and the roll it around in one of the fun crunchy foods.
Freeze until they're hard and then enjoy.


Flay away fruit salad

2 pineapple rings
2 thin slices of apple
2 raisins
celery stick
Vanilla or fruit flavored yogurt
Teaspoon of peanut butter

Start with the celery stick for the body of the butterfly.
Place 1/2 of the pineapple ring on either side of the celery
stick for wings. Then spoon yogurt into the holes in the wings.
Place 1/2 teaspoon of peanut butter on each raisin and use these
for eyes. Finally, use the apple slices to make the antennae.

You can find more fun recipes and information at
www.deniseaustin.com/fitkids/recipe.asp?id=3

Have a great day and will type at you soon.

Can Mealtime Be Easy?

I have always found mealtime to be so very frustrating.
I see families sit down to meals together and I wonder
Where did I go wrong?

That's easy enough to answer. As a working mother
it was easiest just to feed the children first and
then worry about what my husband and were going to
eat. Actually, it was more my husband since he used
to get off work earlier than I would. So our children
grew up having a seperate meal from us and so today
mealtime is like the battle of Gettysburg! One child
wants one thing, the other wants something else and
there is no compremise between the two. We used to
try to the "you don't leave the table til you eat
trick", they went to bed hungery. Then it was " Try
at least one bit, if you don't like it you don't have
to eat it" trick, they went to bed hungery. What is
a person to do with such strong willed children. Make
mealtime more enjoyable by making food fun. I learned
this when I was studing for my certificate. When they
were little I used to make faces with the food or tell
stories about were the food came from so that they would
be more interested in it. It was still an uphill battle
so now that they are older I get their input about what
they would like to eat. Sometimes it is still a fight
and one has his meal and the other a different meal, but
now the oldest of our two is trying more foods and
because the youngest doesn't want to be out done he too
is trying more food, thank my lucky stars. Now to keep
this roll going I have investigated several websites and
found some tips on how to make the family dinner fast and
simple. This is a direct quote from an eDiets.com article.

"First set aside time on the weekends to make foods in advance
and freeze them. Connect with a friend, double the recipes and
split up the meals for both families.

Don't schedule your kid's day so heavily that it intrudes on
time to prepare dinner. Instead, invite them into the kitchen
and teach them a few things about cooking--it's a life skill
that they will cetrtainly thank you for some day.

Invest in a slow-cooker. This is a fabulous machine for busy
families. You can prepare your main dish in the morning and
come home to a delicious ready-to-eat meal. (My own suggestion
to this is to also invest in a Tupperware all in one cooker.
Your main meal goes in the bottom container, then your starchy
food in the middle and your vegetable on top cook for about an
hour in the microwave and ta dah you have dinner).

Buy pre-washed veggies in the produce section of stores. The
clean and prep is often the most time consuming part of cooking.

Buy "no-cook" items like apples, pears, avocadoes and tomatoes.
A fruit plate or veggie salad makes a terrific side dish.

Keep it simple. There's no need to strive for gourmet everyday.
It is often the simpler dishes hat have the best flavors, too.

Share the burden. Team up with a friend and have a family dinner
at their house one night and switch to your house on another.
For a different twist on the same concept, divide up the menu
between families and share the work.

Plan your menus and make a grocery list. These two steps require
finding spare time, but they will save time in the long run.

Buy a few cookbooks with titles like 30-minute meals, slow-cooker
recipes or five ingredients or less. These types of books are
geared toward getting meals on the table quickly and easily.
Look for books that offer shortcuts, pre-written shopping lists
and menu ideas.

Make extra for leftovers. It goes without saying: Leftovers
make great llunches and snacks. If you're making a family
favorite, double the recipe and freeze a portion for nextweek."

It's funny how simple this list is. Wish I would have thought of it,
I could have saved myself years and years of frustration.

I hope you all find this helpful, I know I did and things are getting
somewhat better. I guess ony time will tell.

Have a great day and I wil type to you soon.

Put Your Metabolism to Work

With all the hussle and bussle of today
there should be no overweight people.
What with house work, jobs, children,
errands it should stand to reason we
should all be thin. So why aren't we?
That pesty metabolism is just one
culprit. As children our metabolisms
are naturally geared up, but as we get
older, it slows down just like everything
else. So how do we kick it up?

For starters, excerise is one way to
perk up. When I was taking better
care of myself, I use to excerise
an hour everyday. That's right, one
full hour.
I did't start that way. When I started
I could only work out 10 minutes to
Richard Simmons Sweating to the oldies,
but I kept at it and I began to feel
better. I didn't feel like I could use
a nap everday anymore. What I didn't
know is that while I was doing all
this excerise each morning I was
jump starting my metabolism.
I had this extra energy all
day long and didn't understand
why. I thought since I would get
up at 5 a.m. every morning and
would work out any where from
20 - 60 minutes I should be
dog tired by the evening. Then
while waiting at the doctors
office I was thumbing through a
magazine, and there was this article
about how the best time to excerise
was in the morning, because your
body automatically gets geared up
to face the day. By excerising you
set your metabolism on high and it
naturally will stay that way all day.
The problem with excerising in the
late afternoon is that that's the
time of day your body is programmed to
slow down so the boost your give your
metabolism isn't as great because your
are going against what must naturally
take place.

Here is a little bit of information that
I got from the e-diets newsletter that
fits with what I am talking about.

"Your metabolism is genetically programed.
However, you can change your metabolism by changing
your body composition. Build lean muscle mass
through light weight training, and make yuour
body more metabolically active.
Muscular people burn more calories sitting
still than those with less muscle mass and
more body fat."

I hope this little bit of info helps.
I also want to say that since starting
my little adventure I have lost 20 lbs.

Tomorrow I will have a new recipe for you all.

Have a good one :-)

What Causes Dark Spots On Our Skin

Hyperpigmentation (a fancy name for dark spots)
are common to our skin and as with anything else
there are different elements that cause the spots.

Spotting (as I call it) usually begins around our
middle ages and are most common on our face, arms,
neck and hands. Thee are several skin diseases that
cause these spots, but I don't know exactly what they
are or even how to pronounscce them, but I will list
them anyway.

**Linea Fusca
**Riehl's Melanosis
**Erythromelanosis Follicularis
**Melasma
**Poikiloderma of Civatte
**Post Inflammatory Hyperpigmentation

Feel free to look them up. That's what I'll
have to do so I know what I'm talking about.
There are also certain medications that cause
spotting: being out in the sun without sun-
screen causes spotting (it's the UVA rays that does this),
and other conditions and diseases cause spotting.
Here's a couple of examples:
**Pregnancy
**Liver Disease

Our skin is the largest living tissue we have and
it is very important we take care of it. To do
that you should always put on a good sunscreen
read the side effects on any medications you
may have to take and most importantly talk to
your Doctor if those dark spots become larger
discolored or seem abnormal to you in any way.

Hope everyone has a great day and take car of
yourselves inside and out.