Too Much Food For Kids: Candy Canes Drive Me Mad

candy canes drive me mad

Dear School Principal

 

My son has just completed kindergarten at your school. He is not yet 6 years old. Over the past 2 weeks leading up to the end of the school year, he has recieved some lovely Christmas wishes from many of the children in his class. Most of these Christmas wishes have come in the form of a card and what many people call a “treat”. This has resulted in him receiving the equivalent of 350gms of candy canes and in excess of 120gms of chocolate.

 

And that’s just what I know about! He and his brother have an understanding with us that they will bring home any food they are given at school, and my husband and I can help them to decide if they should eat it or not, so thankfully he has not eaten all of this.

His brother who is 8 years old, whilst not receiving quite as much candy, has also had an excess of food coming from the school over these last couple of weeks, including a class party on the last day of school, just in case the children weren’t going to get enough to eat over the Christmas period.

My six year old’s haul of goodies yields the following:

 

350 gms candy cane: 1400 kilocalories (yes, kilocalories, not kilojoules)

120 gms chocolate: approx 600 kilocalories.

 

That is a total of 2000 kilocalories, well in excess of the recommended daily energy intake for an average adult female! What’s even more scary is that for the most part, if kids are eating this stuff, they are eating it over and above their other food. Let’s face it, a candy cane or two certainly doesn’t fill you up like a nutritious bowl of lentil caserole and brown rice would!

To balance out the extra energy a child would take in if they ate 2000 calories, they would have to not eat for at least a day and a half, or do the following exercise over and above their current exercise levels, during the 2 week period they were consuming the sweets:

  • 2 hrs of cycling
  • 2 hrs of running
  • 3 hrs of walking

No six year old is going to do either of the things necessary to counteract the extra calorie intake. We don’t expect our kids to stop eating for a day and a half to two days, nor do we expect them to exercise for an EXTRA 7 hours over and above what they normally do in a two week period. Mine already run/jump/cycle/surf/swim themselves ragged.

So what’s the solution?

This is a request for you to show leadership on this matter and implement a policy which greatly restricts the amount of food children are given in our wonderful school. That would mean:

  • Eliminating food to be sold as fund raising
  • Moving Australia’s biggest morning tea to actually be at morning tea time, rather than before school, meaning kids have breakfast, cake and cordial at 9am, fruit break morning tea, lunch etc
  • Celebrate childrens’ birthdays withouth bringing in cupcakes
  • Sweet free lunch boxes
  • An overhaul of the canteen menu
  • Eliminate the practice of teachers giving children food as reward for good work or good behaviour – I was totally surprised about this one

This is a very hastily written note which only touches on the surface of my concerns and ideas for what we, as a school community could do to turn things around, so I would be very pleased to discuss this further with you.

 

Wow – what an eye-opener

If you have concerns about how much food your kids get at school, add your voice below!

Gold Coast Marathon 2013

One of the major events we’ll be focusing on next year will be a trip to the Gold Coast for the Gold Coast Marathon (and half marathon, 10km, 5km, and 4km and 2km kids’ dash)

Early in the New Year you’ll be given an opportunity to join our private Gold Coast Marathon Facebook page. We’ll also be putting together some complimentary training programs for each of the distances for you, which will include fun runs in Sydney we’ll be targeting leading up to the event.

Keep your eye out for more info in the New Year.

Take a look at the Gold Coast Marathon site.

If you’re interested in any of the races, particularly the longer distances, use the next few weeks to make sure you are training consistently. Set aside 3 or 4 days of the week that you will train, and stick to that. You should be aiming for 1-2 interval training sessions/week, 1 session/ week which will be a longer run, or become a long run, and 1-2 shorter runs per week.

For anyone just starting to think about stepping up to a longer distance (which could be any distance really, depening on where you are with your training at the moment)your training up until the New Year might look something like:

 

Day one: interval training group session

Day two: 10-20 min run @ 5-6/10

Day three: 20-30 min run @ 3-410

Day four: 30 min run @ 3/10

Day four will gradually build up to a much longer run, so you need to pick a day on which you can spend up to a couple of hours training, and keep that day for your long run. Whilst it’s not a long run yet, it will be.

 

We love the Gold Coast event because:

  • You head north for the sun in the middle of winter
  • The temperature is great for running. Not too hot, not too cold
  • It’s a pretty flat course, so if you can mentally handle the out and back nature of the course, you are likely to do a pretty slick time
  • It’s well organised
  • It’s a great opportunity for a road trip
  • There are lots of distances, so everyone can have a go. If you set your sights too high, you can always drop down a distance
  • An easy, flat course for kids in the 2km and 4km
  • Lots of theme parks (though I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing)
  • Lots of inexpensive accommodation

 

Favourite Interval Training Session

Richard, what is your favourite interval training session?

“That depends on what I’m training for, and what stage of my training I’m at. My main focus is usually a 10km race, so I like to pull out this session every so often. It’s a great speed endurance workout, and terrific for helping you to run on how you feel, rather than any set time. The key is to really take notice of how you’re feeling in your warm up”

Warm up

10 min easy jog followed by 6 * 100-200m run throughs at the desired pace for the session. The main part of the session is run at perceived current 10km pace – ie the pace you could race a 10km fun run right at the time of the training session.

You can use these run throughs to help you determine how fast you should do the main part of your session. Either use a Garmin to measure your distance and pace, or do the session on a track.

Run through a couple of 200’s at an effort that you feel you could run your 10km at. After the first few, you should have a good feel for what sort of pace you’re on for the session. Then you can assess what pace you’re running at, and apply that pace to the main part of your session.

So, to clarify (hopefully).

Easy run for 10 mins

2 -4 * 200m run throughs at a pace that you feel you could race a 10km in, based on how you feel right now, when you’re running, NOT based on previous times, PB’s, or times you’re hoping to achieve in the future. In fact, not based on time at all, just on how you’re feeling.

Once you’re comfortable that you’ve got the pace you can race 10km in, have a look at the actual pace you are going. Do another 2 or 3 * 200 and either using a Garmin or other GPS device, look at the pace you are going, or time the 200m and multiply by 5 to get your KM pace.

Core Session

10*1km @ perceived 10km pace (as assessed in warm up)

30 sec standing recovery between each 1km interval

Cool down

10 min easy jog followed by some stretching.

 

Tell us your favourite running session.

Low Fat Christmas Recipes

I thought I might get into the Christmas spirit and share a few healthy Christmas recipes with you, so I turned to that trusty source, “the internet”, and duly typed in “healthy Christmas recipes”. The entire front page of the search results was devoted to low fat Christmas recipes, which got me thinking.

Why do we still equate healthy food with low fat food? Hello people out there in Google land, fat is good for you. Yes, you heard me right. Fat is good for you. The right sort of fat of course. Generally, animal fats should be eaten sparingly, except for fish and fats found in unfarmed kangaroo, and to an extent free range beef (which is pretty much all beef farmed in Australia) which are high in omega 3 and omega 6 fats. Good fats are also found in vegetable oils such as flaxseed oil, olive oil, hemp oil, nuts and seeds, avocado, to name a few. A great book on fats is Fats That Heal, Fat’s That Kill by Udo Erasmus. There is a bit of biochemistry for you to digest, but on the whole, a pretty easy read and very informative.

Anyway, my point is, as a population, we need to stop thinking that all fat is bad for you, and that if a food is low fat, it must be good for you. There are so many other factors to take into consideration. Mostly, low fat foods are high in carbohydrates, which is not necessarily always a bad thing – look at carrots, capsicum and peaches, just to pick three foods at random.

Processed foods which have a low fat label, are generally high on processed carobhydrates. Something needs to give the food the yummy flavour which brings us back to the packet, clammering for more!

The other thing I noticed when I looked at a few of the recipes was that yes, some of them were not only low in fat but also low in calories per serve. But who can eat just one tiny midgy little shortbread, so small that it only yields 31.5 calories per biscuit? Not me, that’s for sure.

My plan for eating healthily at Christmas time is simple.

Eat what I like on Christmas day.

Eat too much of all the wrong things.

Eat chocolate money and ham on toast for breakfast.

Piles of Christmas pudding with brandy butter and my mum’s excellent coffee icecream, all the turkey I can look at.

It’s just one day of the year, and honestly, if you’re worried about putting on weight, or in fact taking it off, one day of the year is not going to make or break you. But that’s the key. If you’re going to overindulge, it needs to be just one day. And that’s where many people fall down. I’ve been fasting 1-2 days a week for the last 4 weeks now, so I know I can do it. And yes, I do get hungry. If you’re planning on it, be aware it’s not for the faint hearted. (Quite literally – don’t even consider fasting if you have any type of medical condition, or if you are pregnant).

If you know that you find it almost impossible not to eat when you start feeling really hungry, you’re better off just to eat small portions of your favourite food, and don’t risk getting to the end of Boxing Day and reaching for the leftovers in a half crazed manner.

I don’t plan to be eating and picking at bits and pieces for the weeks leading up to Christmas (well not much anyway), and I do plan to fast on Boxing Day, and possibly the next day as well-ready for New Year’s Eve. I’ll be more than doubling my daily caloric intake on Christmas day-more than enough to see me through till the end of the week I should think!

I’ll throw in a decent run as well, and voila, there you have it. Reasonably healthy Christmas eating. And I really don’t have to think about it.

 

What are your plans for avoiding excess energy intake over the Christmas period?

Running With The Kenyans

Running with the Kenyans by Adharanand Finn, is a great read, and is now one of my ‘Top Shelf’ books.

Despite his rather “un-anglo” name, the author is an anglo-saxon English guy who felt he never quite reached his potential as a runner and is keen to find out ‘the Kenyan secret’. Even though he’s not what you would call a top runner (38 min for 10K), he and his family move to the town of Iten, in Kenya, to live and train with some of the fastest distance runners on earth, Finn’s keen to see if he can work out exactly what makes the Kenyan’s so good. As you’d expect, it’s not a simple answer.

One of the keys to the success of Kenyan running, is Brother Colm, who Finn spends some time with. Brother Colm is an Irish priest, who came to Kenya in the 1970’s to teach at a local school. He inherited the athletics coaching position, even though he knew absolutely nothing about the topic, but he has since produced dozens of Olympic Gold medallists, World Champions, and World Record holders from 800m to the Marathon. You could say he has an abundance of ‘fairly’ good talent to choose from, however he’s obviously used it wisely.

There are plenty of great anecdotes throughout the book. A favourite of mine is when the author is trying to phone a 2hr 4min marathoner..He happens to call the wrong number, but not to worry, the person who picks up the phone is a 2 hr 5 min marathoner, so he’ll do. In most parts of the world, 2 hr anything marathoners are fairly hard to come by! Talk about a concentration of champions. Of the 4000 people living in and around the town of Iten, 1000 are full time athletes!

I found this book very easy to read. It flowed along nicely without getting bogged down in the detail of his daily life. Throughout the story the author gradually builds the relationships he is developing with his ‘team’ of Kenyans who are training for the Lewa Marathon with him, Finn’s first. Running your first marathon is intimidating enough, but add to it the hazards of running through the open African savanah (read: LIONS!), and you’ve got a real challenge on your hands.

Finn’s descriptions of his early morning runs evoke wonderful images of runners making their way to the meeting spot in the pre-dawn African light. Nothing needs to be pre-arranged. Everyone knows where to meet. You just show up at 6am, and (if you’re a white guy), hope you can keep up the pace.

Anyone interested in running and/or wishing to improve their running will get a great deal from the book, through inspiration, some technical advice, and finding out the secret to what makes these Kenyans so good.

Happy Reading

You can grab a copy of Running With The Kenyans from the Book Depository. Right now the soft cover edition is 40% off, at $18.71. And you receive free shipping worldwide.

Fact or Fiction

These days there’s heaps of information being fired at us from all directions about all sorts of topics, and the health and fitness area is no exception. We thought it would be helpful to look at some fitness facts and fictions. Which of the following list are fact, and which are fiction?

  • As long as I exercise for 30 minutes three times per week, I will continue to get fitter.
  • I will bulk up if I lift weights.
  • Now that I am exercising, I can eat more and not gain weight.
  • Exercising on an empty stomach will improve weight loss.
  • Working in the “fat burning zone” will increase fat loss.
  • I need to warm up before exercise.
  • I need to stretch before exercise.
  • A training diary is a waste of time.
  • I need one of those new wizz-bang GPS type workout recording gadgets to be really effective with my running training.

How Did You Go?

As long as I exercise for 30 minutes three times per week, I will continue to get fitter. Fiction

Getting stuck in a training rut is probably the most common training error of all. Yes, 20 minutes on the treadmill and three sets of 10 reps with 5kg weights might be fine when you start out – but if you fail to increase either the length or intensity of the run, and the weight or number of repetitions that you do, the improvements will plateau out. In fact, one study found that in beginners, aerobic fitness began to plateau in as little as three weeks when the training load was not increased. So, to continue making progress in fitness, you have to keep moving the goalposts every time they get close enough to touch – every six weeks at least, but ideally more often. This is why your sessions with us never seem to be getting any easier. It’s not that you are not getting fitter. You are! We are just working you harder.

I will bulk up if I lift weights. Fact and fiction, it depends on the weight.

Increasing Muscle Size: If you want to increase the size of your muscles, you need to be lifting a heavy weight, one which you are able to lift no more than 12 times. For good muscle hypertrophy (ie bulking up) you need to be lifing weights which you can lift 4-6 times (or even less in some cases). You shouldn’t try this sort of lifting on your own. Enlist the help of someone who knows what they are doing- yes, that would be us- and always have someone “spotting” you when you are lifting heavy weights.

Muscle Toning: Muscles consist of long, thin fibres which come in two principal varieties: ‘type 1’ fibres, which are highly resistant to fatigue and recruited mainly at low intensity; and thicker, more powerful ‘type 2’ fibres, which only kick in when the going gets tough. The fibres within a muscle are always recruited in the same order – type 1 first, then type 2. So, if you only ever lift light weights, (no matter how many times), you will never work the muscle in its entirety, nor engage the type 2 fibres. What will happen, however, is that as the fibres within the muscle grow bigger, they will fill some of the empty space within the muscle sheath (an untrained muscle contains lots of space between fibres). The result? The muscle will become firmer and denser, but not bigger.

Now that I am exercising, I can eat more and not gain weight. For the most part, fiction.

You can eat more and not gain weight, but only if you are burning more calories than your extra eating puts into your system. Imagine you are a car, and your food is petrol. If you drive to Brisbane, you will need more fuel than if you drive to Newcastle. If there is not enough room in the tank to hold all the fuel you want to put in, the tank will overflow. Think of that overflow as fat, as that’s what happens to all the extra fuel you put into your body, no matter what time you eat it, no matter whether it is protein or carbohydrate, fruit or chocolate. Too much food turns to fat! Since running for about an hour will burn approximately 500 calories, and your average cheese sandwich is about 300 calories, it doesn’t take much to tip the scales the wrong way.

Having said that, exercise does burn a lot of calories especially if you are training for longer distance running events. If you intend to get up and do it all again the next day or even if you have a life to lead and need to be on the ball for your family and work commitments,  then you will need to ensure your glycogen stores are replenished post-workout. Your muscles use glycogen for energy and when the muscles are depleted they need to be refuelled quickly to maximise the training effect. It is important to refuel within half an hour of completing exerise, but be careful not to consume more calories than you have just burned. Some people refuel soon after their exersise session is finished, and then go home and have a meal as well! If you are training in the morning and have not been exercising constantly for more than 1 hour, going home to your normal breakfast should be sufficient, as long as you eat as soon as you get home. Likewise for dinner. If however you have been on a longish run of more than about 50 minutes, we recommend Endorox R4 to aid with recovery. I haven’t come across anyone who hasn’t said this is the best thing since sliced bread for preventing exhaustion and that inability to satisfy hunger after long duration exercise. Ask us about this fantastic training aid.

Exercising on an empty stomach will improve weight loss. Fact and fiction

Scientifically speaking, this is a fitness fact, however in practice, is is more a fiction. Performing cardiovascular exercise first thing in the morning before you’ve eaten, means that insulin levels are at their lowest, while another hormone, glucagon, is at its hightest.  Your body s then encouraged to draw on its fat reserves for fuel, seemingly increasing fat loss. HOWEVER……. fat metabolism is dependent on the availability of carbohydrate, when carb stores are low, fat metabolism is compromised. Exercising feels much harder, so you may tire sooner, or slack off and end up burning fewer calories – and less body fat – overall. You could also end up losing muscle as you start burning protein – as well as fat – for fuel. So exercising on an empty stomach is counter productive. Be sure to have at least a small amount of carbohydrate- eg fruit or a sandwich-an hour or so before you exercise.

Working in the “fat burning zone” will increase fat loss. Fiction

The idea that you only burn fat when you are exercising in a particular ‘zone’ of intensity – usually between 60 and 70% of your maximum rate went out with the ark. We actually burn fat 24 hours a day, but  the percentage of fat we use for energy varies at different levels of intensity. A greater proportion of fat is burned during low-intensity exercise, which is where the idea came from that we should exercise more gently – but while the percentage of fat contributing to energy expenditure may be lower during more vigorous activity, it is the overall number of calories burned that really counts when it comes to fat loss. More vigorous exercise will require more energy, and therefore more calories will slip away. This is not to say you should try for a 2 hour run at high intensity – you won’t be able to do it, but adding some more intense workouts (such as interval training) to your overall training programme will definitely help with energy expenditure.

I need to warm up before exercise. Fact

This one is a fitness fact, however it is the type of warmup which is important. Skipping a warm up will make things harder for yourself. Warming up reduces the risk of injury and improves performance. One study found that warming up reduced the accumulation of lactic acid in the muscles, and other research has showed that just five minutes of warming up enables runners to exercise for longer than those who did not warm up. 5-10 minutes is fine. Try to do a gentler version of the exercise you will be doing during the main part of your session. So if you are going for a run, walking briskly for a minute or two, then gentle jogging for up to 10 minutes should do the trick. If you are in for a weights session, 5 minutes of walking, slow jogging, then run through all the exercises you will preform either with no weights, or very light weights. If you are training with a group, don’t be late, or you may miss one of the most important parts of the session!

I need to stretch before exercise. Fiction (mostly)

There has been quite a debate around stretching before exercise in the last few years. Opinion is definitely lining up on the “no need to do it” side. That doesn’t mean you can neglect stretching altogether though. Stretching isn’t necessarily about lengthening muscles, it’s about restoring them to their natural length after all the shortening involved in exercise. Imagine an elastic band attaching two pieces of stick (representing your bones). If the elastic contracts (ie gets shorter) the sticks come closer together. That is how your muscles work. They contract to bring your limbs closer together. Think of the simple biceps curl. Your biceps contract, bringing your forearm closer to your upper arm. So why do you need to stretch this muscle BEFORE it needs to get shorter? You don’t, however you do need to stretch after exercise.

Stretching is also about putting joints through their full range of motion, which is important for keeping cartilage nourished and healthy, reducing stiffness, and maintaining correct alignment between the muscles and the skeleton. Stretch muscles when they are warm, holding for 30 seconds – and do it after every workout.

Having said all of that, there are some injuries which need to be stretched gently after a warm up and before the main part of the session. Many people feel they need to stretch their calves after warming up to prevent cramping, shin splints or plantar fasciosis. If you are one of those people, or if you have been told by your medical practitioner to stretch prior to exercsie, then keep doing doing so.

A training diary is a waste of time. Fiction

You may not be an elite athlete, but you should be keeping tabs on your fitness regime, otherwise you have no way of knowing if it is working, or whether you are getting fitter. If you are struggling keeping up with all of your planned training sessions, a training diary can help you to pinpoint which sessions you are finding hardest to get to. Then you can start asking yourself why? Is it because your boss always seems to call a 5 o’clock meeting every Monday, or is it because you don’t like the session you have planned? Keeping a diary is also a great way of staying motivated!

I need one of those new wizz-bang GPS type workout recording gadgets to be really effective with my running training. Fiction

It’s great fun pressing buttons and finding out how fast you are running, or how far you’ve run, or what your heart rate is etc etc, and it can help with motivation, but let’s face it, all the modern gadgetry in the world is not going to do the work for you. Bottom line is you still have to put in the hard yards. Your workouts can be very effective just going on the way you feel. Using the Rating of Perceived Exertion (a 1 to 10 scale of how much you are exerting yourself) can be just as effective as a heart rate monitor. A “workout gadget” can be helpful if you are having trouble running at a steady pace, but for the most part, you can certainly be effective with your training with no more than a stop watch.

Gluten Free Orange and Almond Cake

This beautifully moist orange and almond cake will be a winner…..if you take the time to blend the oranges well. If you don’t, you’ll end up with some very bitter bits of orange peel in your cake.

Using whole oranges, little sugar and almond meal, this is a great lower GI cake. The almond meal helps to lower the GI.

Click here for the  Orange Cake Recipe

Let us know what you think of the finished product!