Associates in Nutrition & Sports Specialty

Back-to-school means back to the courts and fields for student athletes. Reaching peak athletic performance doesn’t mean you have bulk up on carbohydrates or chug the latest sports and energy drinks. Student athletes have unique nutritional needs, requiring approximately 2,000 to 5,000 calories per day, depending on body composition, amount of exercise and other health factors.

Here are some tips for fueling your body for optimal strength and energy:

-Eat a variety of foods including protein, carbohydrates, fats, calcium, minerals and vitamins; lean proteins, fruits and vegetables and dairy for calcium provide a balanced diet

-Avoid supplements and steroids, which can have negative side effects on your health

-Avoid extreme diets. Youth athletes require the proper amount of nutrition and depriving your body of proper nutrients can cause decreased energy, muscle loss and sometimes, more serious health problems

-Hydrate with water; avoid caffeine and sugary drinks
Before practices and games:

-Be sure to eat a small, balanced meal approximately 2 to 4 hours before the event and include proteins and carbohydrates such as a turkey sandwich, or pasta and tomato sauce

-No time for a meal? Eat a light snack less than 2 hours before the event such as low-fiber fruits, crackers or yogurt

-Hydrate by drinking plenty of water before, during and after sports activities; avoid caffeine

Because body sizes and activity levels vary from person-to-person, you need to alter your diet to fit your individual needs. For more information, visit http://www.mypyramid.gov/ and create a personalized plan that works best for you.

Nutrition Notes: Improve snack habits

Elaine Hastings • Special to news-press.com • September 1, 2009

When it comes to nutrition, the school year brings a new set of challenges for teachers, parents and children who are moving at a fast pace. By planning ahead and structuring schedules, you can improve snacking habits.

Snacking doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but you need to know how to make better choices. Eating healthy snacks throughout the day can be beneficial by preventing overeating at mealtime, increasing your energy level throughout the day, keeping you more alert and controlling hunger pangs.

The best way to ensure that you are making healthy snack choices is to plan ahead. This way, when the “snack attack” hits, you won’t reach for those potato chips or cookies.

By selecting healthy snacks, having them readily available when you are hungry, and limiting the quantity of snacks to support a balanced diet, you are better prepared to snack more healthfully.

Remember that while snacking can be healthy, you must remember to watch your total calorie intake per day in order to maintain a healthy weight.

— Elaine Hastings is a registered dietitian and owner of Associates in Nutrition and Sports Specialty in Florida. Contact her at AssociatesinNutrition.com or Elaine@AssociatesinNutrition.com.

© Copyright 2009 Elaine Hastings, RD. All rights reserved.

We are portion distorted. That is most of us, despite our best intentions, seriously underestimate how much we are eating. In fact, this is one of the biggest roadblocks to weight loss success that I see in the people I counsel as a registered dietitian.

Restaurants and grocery stores have programmed us to have a “more is better” mentality when it comes to food. Fast food restaurants entice us to super-size our meals for just a few additional cents, and sit-down restaurants serve huge plates stacked high with pasta and enough meat for three people.

Package sizes for individual bottles of soda, salty snack foods and frozen meals have slowly grown bigger over the decades.

But because the only way to maintain long-term weight loss is portion control, we need to know what a true portion should look like.

Simply speaking, a portion is a designated amount of food for one person at one seating – or a serving size. The purpose of a serving size is to give people healthy and appropriate nutrition information and guidelines.

Serving sizes also help to standardize what you see on Nutrition Facts labels and allow government agencies, such as the USDA, to recommend amounts of different types of foods for optimal health and weight control.

One way to determine portion size is to weigh all of your food; however, that is impractical for most of us.

I have found in my experience that the next best thing is to use the following visual tips as guidelines:

- 1 cooked pasta serving (1Ú3 to 1Ú2 cup) = the size of a tennis ball sliced in half.
- 1 meat, poultry or fish serving (2 to 3 ounces) = the size of a deck of cards
- 1 milk or yogurt serving = approximately the size of your fist.
- 1 natural cheese serving (11Ú2 ounces) = 4 dice stacked on top of each other or the average thumb
- 1 serving of fruit = a tennis ball sliced in half. (With whole fruit, a serving is a medium-sized apple, banana, orange, or pear – keep in mind most of what we see in grocery stores is portion distortion. We tend to get large to extra-large varieties. If it’s chopped, cooked or canned, the serving size is one-half cup.)
- 1 serving of grains cooked, such as oatmeal = one-half cup an ice cream scoop.
- 1 serving cold cereal = 3Ú4 to 1 teacup or a fist.

Avoid portion distortion
1. When looking at the Nutrition Facts label on a product, get in the habit of glancing at the serving size (this may be futile; sometimes it’s in grams or another unit that’s not user-friendly) and automatically double or triple the calories, carbs and other nutrients you check to see how it all adds up when you eat more than a single serving.
2. At restaurants, send half your plate back to the kitchen to be put in a doggie bag as soon as you can. It is not rude.
3. Take out your measuring cups and train yourself – using water, dry rice or beans, a deck of cards, ice cream scoop, tennis ball, dice and some Play-Doh – to know what recommended portion sizes look like in your everyday bowls.
4. Train yourself to order only small or kid’s sizes when ordering anything at a restaurant, snack bar, etc.
5. Use a smaller plate when eating at home, and away from home, always leave some food on your plate.

- Elaine Hastings is a registered dietitian of Associates in Nutrition in Florida and was recently named president of the Southwest Florida Dietetic Association. Contact her at Elaine@AssociatesinNutrition.com or AssociatesinNutrition. com.

Every month, I’ll be posting nutrition myths and giving you the skinny on the facts. This month, it’s the long-held nutrition myth that all fats are bad. But the fact is that we all need fat. Fats aid nutrient absorption and nerve transmission, and they help to maintain cell membrane integrity – to name just a few of their useful purposes. However, when consumed in excessive amounts, fats contribute to weight gain, heart disease and certain types of cancers.  Not all fats are created equal. Some fats can actually help promote good health, while others increase the risk for heart disease. The key is to replace bad fats (saturated fats and trans fats) with good fats (monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats).    Click here for more information: http://www.healthcastle.com/goodfats-badfats.shtml. Be sure to visit  http://www.associatesinnutrition.com/ for more information on nutrition and healthy living.

My column in The News-Press began running today! Check it out at http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009908110311