Recently I wrote about electrolyte drinks to shed some light on what’s helpful vs. what’s hype. The next step in the series is a small but significant one … into the world of juices. Let’s check out some hidden ways you could be gaining weight from ever-popular juices, along with my best tips and strategies to keep enjoyment in the glass while maintaining your best health – for life.
This summer, my daughter proudly crowed a phrase she picked up in first grade: “I’m a scientist, Mama!”
Scientists, she learned, observe, gather information (and specimens, which could account for the 20 different bugs she’s collected in her outside “workshop”), ask questions and then make decisions or come to conclusions.
For a mother continuously gearing up to shield her daughter from those forces that beckon her to develop poor eating habits, this proclamation was one key to my summer strategy for continuing to develop my daughter’s internal compass about food.
My daughter was the last to walk in her group of toddler friends. She was also the last to potty train, but the first to talk. She learned to tie her shoes more than eight months ago, and still struggles with that skill, but in only three months has adopted a perfectly formed “claw” for capturing three-note chords when playing the piano. She is nowhere near being able to whistle.
Kids take months and years to learn and refine their many skills and talents. Good eating habits are no different. Yet, we sometimes expect our kids to be instantaneously good or healthful eaters because we either model good eating or we tell them (what feels like a million times) that they can’t have ice cream before dinner, or seven juice boxes in a day.
My daughter turned to me the other night while eating her dinner: “Mama, our pizza tastes better than the pizza in the store.”
Simple statement, but I nearly cried for joy. But as many experienced parents know, if you make the reaction too big, it can backfire: Children freeze when they smell a situation where it seems they’ve inadvertently done exactly what their parents wanted — they note it and do the complete opposite the next time. Just for the heck of it. It’s developmentally ensured.
So, I modulated my reaction, kept it to a “thank-you” and a hug, and asked her why: not so cheesy and salty, she said, followed by the simple declarative of a six year old, “It just tastes better, Mama.”
For me, this represented a triumph for my need to cook with basics (and with less cheese), and fast, but still feed my daughter well. Read More | Comment
People told me I was crazy to begin a graduate program three months after giving birth. But graduate school offered me an opportunity that my full-time job did not — to give up only four or five hours of daylight time with my daughter to one-on-one care while I pursued my degree. The tradeoff of working long nights (into early mornings) was well worth it. Essentially, by being in graduate school, I was able to stay home enough hours to avoid daycare until she was almost two and a half.
Of course, her delight in attending preschool did not completely ease the nervousness of leaving my child every day in a facility that was not my home. At home, I could direct and monitor all her care and her needs, including when she napped, how often her diaper was changed and when and what she ate.
As a kid, I was a tomboy. The goalie of our 5th grade soccer team, I usually ended fall season games covered head to toe in mud. I played basketball and tennis competitively into my teens, when I turned toward long-distance bicycle touring — six-week-long bicycle trips, in the days of five gears (tops! Anyone remember three speeds?) and steel behemoth bicycle frames. Later, there were the 100-mile-per-day rides.
But, even as I was athletic, I wasn’t always healthy. True confessions: I frequently topped off a five-mile mountain climb with a cigarette (of course, stopping in the middle to light up).
