Food And Healthy

You already know how important it is to make healthy food choices for you and your family. But how can you fit the best choices into your busy life?

You'll be pleased to discover that a hectic life doesn't mean that every meal has to be fast food on the run! Sometimes it's difficult to make healthy changes, but with a little planning and know-how, it can be done.

Here are some strategies to help you and your family make healthy choices:

1. Avoid temptation. It's so easy to walk into the store with good intent, but walk out with bags full of unhealthy foods. Unfortunately, our wills are weak, especially if we've trained ourselves over the years to buy junk foods.

* Never shop when you're hungry. This way you won't pick out unhealthy choices because they look good at the moment.?

* Get rid of the unhealthy foods in your home. If they aren't around, you won't be tempted to eat them.

* Think of healthier alternatives to your family's favorite unhealthy foods. Rather than high calorie chips, try trail mixes or rice cakes. Low calorie puddings or frozen yogurts are better alternatives to higher fat ice creams.

2. Eat fast and healthy meals at home. When you're tired at the end of the day and you realize you still have to feed the family, it's easy to go to a fast food chain and throw fast food on the table. It may save some time, but it won't save your health – or your pocket book!

* The great thing is that there are many easy, fast, and healthy foods you can make at home. This takes some planning, but you'll be more satisfied, save money, and be healthier as well.

* Look online for quick and easy recipes made with all natural ingredients. Many recipes can be made in 30 minutes or less and only have 5 ingredients. Taking the time to do some recipe research will save your sanity in the long run. Then once you find a "hit" with the family, store the recipe in a book or on your computer.?

* When you cook, make large batches and freeze the leftovers. This way, you'll already have meals in the freezer that you can just thaw, heat, and serve. No muss, no fuss! This is the opportune way to enjoy "fast" food at home.

3. Eat Slower. Since the brain takes about 20 minutes to get the signal that the stomach is full, if you eat too fast you'll pack in a lot more food than you need. When you're still thinking you're hungry, it's easy to make the wrong choices about food. If you slow down while you're eating, you'll eat less and you'll still feel full.

* Set a calming mood before sitting down for a meal. Avoid having the television on or eating as you're rushing the kids out the door to another activity. Sitting calmly at the table will allow everyone to relax and enjoy their meal.

4. Make dinner time a social experience. Dinner should be about enjoying your company and taking pleasure in the foods you're eating.

When you begin to look at mealtime as a social experience, it becomes easier to make the right choices about healthy foods. Suddenly you aren't so worried about rushing through and making it quick.

Dinner becomes a great experience when you're able to enjoy healthy foods together. Take time to eat as a family and enjoy a real conversation with each other. Talking will naturally slow down your eating pace, while also reconnecting you with your family members.

Using these techniques will bring all kinds of healthy benefits to your family and teach your children a healthy lifestyle. Healthy food choices are a possibility in your busy life if you take the time to plan ahead and make dinner time a priority in your home.

Adolescence seems to be synonymous with erratic eating habits as the typical teenager's life fills up with friends, sports and homework. Yet, adolescence is also a time of rapid growth and development that makes healthy eating habits even more important. Therefore, it is critically important that teenagers are encouraged to make nutritious food choices.

What can you do to improve the health of your teenager?

Teens have the freedom to make their own choices, and are eating out more, visiting fast food restaurants more often, and getting their lunches from school vending machines.

Expecting teenagers to bring a brown bag lunch to school when their friends are eating at fast food restaurants, or to snack only on carrot sticks when everyone else is eating chips, probably is not realistic.

With teenagers, it works best to teach them how to make better choices (even if they are not perfect choices) whether they are eating at home, school or in restaurants. Improving eating habits among teens is crucially important for two reasons (among others): building strong bones and preventing obesity.

• The foundation for a lifetime of strong bones is built during the teen and young adult years until about age 30. This represents their peak bone mass - the strongest their bones will ever be. Yet, research indicates that teenagers are not getting nearly enough calcium to build strong bones and that can lead to osteoporosis later in life.
  
  
• Maintaining normal weight is critically important since obesity often leads to diabetes-type 2, high cholesterol and high blood pressure, conditions once seen most commonly in adults. For adults as well as children, the best way to treat and prevent these problems is a combination of healthy diet and exercise. In addition, positive eating patterns fostered during the teen years are very likely to last a lifetime.

Tips for parents

• Teach teenagers that eating "healthier" does not mean giving up their favorite foods altogether. For many teenagers, it means cutting down on portion size and adding foods with nutritional value to their diet - having a smaller bag of chips along with an apple or switching from higher fat chips to pretzels, for example.
  
  
• Acknowledge that teenagers will eat fast foods, yet encourage buying the smallest portion sizes available or sharing a super-sized meal with a friend. Also, encourage teenagers to make beverage choices that are nutritious, such as milk, rather than always selecting sodas.
  
  
• Model good behavior - eat well, exhibit a healthy attitude toward food, display a good body image and lead an active lifestyle yourself!
  
  
• Encourage nutrition label reading. Emphasize key teen nutrients that may be in short supply - such as calcium and iron. Starting the day with a bowl of cereal with milk is a great way for teens to get more calcium.
  
  
• Remind teenagers to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. Skipping meals does not help with weight loss and it might keep them from getting all the nutrients they need.
  
  
• Encourage teenagers to choose an activity they enjoy and to exercise for at least 30 minutes to 60 minutes most days of the week.

At times, it may be hard to believe that teenagers will grow up into individuals who will make good decisions about their nutrition and activity choices; however, your nutrition education efforts will go a long way toward helping them to do just that.

Sleeping and Personality

 Sleeping and Personality

Do you sleep on your back, your stomach, or your side? A recent study by sleep expert Chris Idzikowski, director of the Sleep Assessment and Advisory Service, suggested a correlation between six common sleeping positions and the personality traits of the sleepers themselves. Preferred sleeping positions are seen as a sort of subconscious body language that reflects our inner traits. The study was commissioned by a large hotel group.

The most common sleeping positions (and corresponding personality) identified were: 

Fetal Position (41%) Curled up on your side, holding the pillow. The most popular sleeping position, this one was favored by 51% of the women in the study. The personality of these sleepers tends to be shy and sensitive, though they may present a tough exterior to the world.

Soldier Position (8%) Flat on your back with arms at your sides. Indicates a quiet and reserved personality who sets high standards.

Starfish Position (5%) Lying on your back with arms and legs outstretched. Indicates a good listener who makes friends easily, but prefers not to be the center of attention.

Freefall Position (7%) Flat on your stomach with arms at the head or ears. Indicates a brash and gregarious exterior who may inwardly be nervous and sensitive to criticism.

Log Position (15%) On your side with legs outstretched and arms at your sides. Indicates a social, easygoing personality.

Yearner Position (13%) Similar to the log, but with arms outstretched. Said to indicate a suspicious and cynical personality.

Professor Idzikowski went on to say that the freefall position aided digestion, while the starfish and soldier sleeping positions were more likely to lead to snoring and an overall bad nights' sleep. But it may be as difficult to change as your personality itself; fewer than five percent of people slept in a different sleeping position every night. 

Sleep and Who You Are

Freud called dreams the “royal road” to the unconscious—and at least as far back as biblical times, dream interpretation has been used in attempts to predict the future or discover hidden truths about our inner lives.
While modern research on sleep and dreaming makes smaller claims, it turns out that you can learn more than you’d expect about both health and personality by looking at various aspects of your sleep and dreaming life.

The Late-to-Bed, Late-to-Rise Sleeper

If you’re more productive, alive and energetic at night, you’re an owl. Your alarm clock—if you even have one—is likely buried under a pillow. Smolensky describes a classmate who would call wake-up services, set multiple alarms to ring and blast music, yet was still unable to get out of bed in the morning. Even though he forced himself to stay in when he had morning classes, he still couldn’t fall asleep early at night—and had to drop out of graduate school. Fortunately, most owls aren’t that extreme.
Owls are best left undisturbed before they've had their cup of coffee. In contrast to larks, low moods typically occur upon awakening, but mid-morning and late evenings are creative peaks.  
“Owls seem to be more outgoing and social,” says Smolensky, “They also tend to be risk-takers.” 
Teenagers are notorious owls—at puberty, the body clock changes and even those who tend to be lark-like become more nocturnal until their mid- to late 20s, when they revert to their more usual patterns.
Though most owls are able to adjust to the 9-5 work routine, extreme night owls may feel completely out of synch in such an environment. Consider a night shift, or a job you can do from home, on your own schedule.

The Long Sleeper

Another way in which our sleep styles vary involves how long we like to sleep. If you crave a lot of sleep—even more than eight hours per night—it's likely you fall into the category of “people who need people,” as the Streisand song goes.
Norah Vincent, Ph.D., an associate professor and clinical psychologist at the University of Manitoba in Canada, conducted a large study examining the relationship between sleep and personality in nearly 6,000 Americans.
"People who were more reliant on others for good feelings about themselves tend to sleep significantly longer,” she says, noting that there's nothing abnormal about this, it's just a measure on which people vary significantly.
However, long sleepers do have a tendency toward depression, a condition that is also very sensitive to the amount of social support people have in their lives. Staying in close touch with family and friends improves health for virtually everyone—but long sleepers should keep these ties strong and active.

The Necessity Sleeper

Are you the type who rarely sleeps eight hours? In fact, you can't imagine staying in bed that long? According to Vincent’s research, many individuals who sleep fewer than eight hours a day have a tendency to be highly self-critical. This could be because "you’re having harsh thoughts about yourself when you wake up during the night and when you attempt to fall asleep," she says. 
Alternatively, the connection might be a result of being anxious in general. "You might tend to sleep shorter because you are in a chronic state of tension," she says.
Both over-sleeping and under-sleeping are associated with a higher than usual risk of death.  No one has explained the connection with long sleep—but short sleep is known to increase blood pressure, which raises the risk for heart disease and stroke.
To improve short sleep linked with anxiety and self-criticism, Vincent suggests separating "worry time" and bedtime.
"We ask [patients] to schedule a time to have worrisome thoughts several hours before bedtime," she says. "It sounds very simplistic but even just the act of focusing on the thought makes it easier to defer having it." Patients tell themselves, 'This isn’t the time to deal with this, I’ll postpone it till tomorrow when I have set aside time to deal with these kinds of thoughts.'"

The Peaceful Sleeper

If you sleep like a log, you probably have an attitude of gratitude. A study of 161 people published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research found that those who focus on what they have—not what they lack—fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly. Grateful people are also less tired and more functional during the day.
Why would being grateful affect your sleep? The researchers found that this was related to the thoughts people had as they drifted off. Being thankful led to faster, deeper sleep.
“People who are feeling more grateful are less tense and anxious, because the two are incompatible,” says Vincent. “A mental state like that at bedtime would be helpful for your sleep.”

The Restless Sleeper

If you find yourself counting sheep, watching late-night TV, swinging from branch to branch in your thoughts, or working into the night because you can’t sleep, consider your need for perfection or control.
While a perfectionist may be successful in many situations, this trait isn’t useful in the realm of sleep and relaxation. A controlling nature may also set the stage for long struggles when it comes to difficulties sleeping.
“We found that certain aspects of perfectionism are elevated in people with chronic insomnia,” says Vincent. “People who expect a lot of themselves and who don’t meet their own personal standards are more likely to have insomnia.” A perfectionist approach to sleeping itself—like an exaggerated sense of one’s ability to control things—can cause problems.
"If you believe that you are responsible for most outcomes and then you don’t have success in one area, there is a tendency to engage in self-blame and self-deprecation," says Vincent.  This produces greater anxiety, which makes it even harder to fall asleep.
To break the cycle, recognize that there are only some aspects of your sleep environment that you can control. “We use a cognitive-behavioral approach and talk about what parts of sleep are controllable,” says Vincent, “You can’t control when you get sleepy but you can control whether you have a lot of coffee in the evening and the amount of light in the bedroom.”
If you struggle with insomnia, begin with recognizing your limits and accepting them as a normal part of life. Focus on the positives of your day as you prepare for bed, and you may find that sleep comes easier. 

The Dreaming Sleeper

Can you vividly recall your dreams each morning? Your sleep style indicates that you are likely highly creative in your waking life.
"People with an intensely high level of dream recall have something called 'thin borders,'" says James Pagel, M.D., director of the Sleepworks Laboratory in Colorado Springs, Colo. "That means that for them, everything is in shades of gray, there's not whole lot of black or white. They’re not purely Democrats or Republicans; they are not quite asleep or awake; and they define much of their lives in that way."
Such people tend to be odd and quirky—and although most are perfectly normal, they are at higher risk than others for schizophrenia.

The Dreamless Sleeper

Until recently, it was widely accepted that all people dream—except, perhaps those with certain brain injuries. However, researchers have discovered that there are some people who appear to have no dreams at all—or at least, they never remember any. While you may worry that something is wrong with your memory, research indicates there’s no connection.
“Nine percent of people will say they don’t have dreams,” says Pagel. “When we specifically question them, 'Do you really not dream?'” most will say, 'Well, my last dream was years ago,' but a small number of people—2 in 1,000—say they have never ever dreamed.”
Pagel compared a group of non-dreamers to rare dreamers in a sleep lab, waking them up during various stages of sleep. About 10 percent of the rare dreamers did report having at least one dream—but the others did not. 
“One was a math professor,” says Pagel. “Most of them had jobs and were very functional.  There was nothing wrong with their memory, no abnormalities.” 
So, if you don’t dream, don’t worry. It’s not known if people who never remember dreaming truly don’t dream, or just can never remember any elements of dreams—but it doesn’t seem to be a problem.