How Girl Athletes Become Amazing Women

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Did you know that the nation celebrated Girls & Women in Sports Day at the beginning of February? This day honoring female athletes epitomizes what Title IX gave us in 1972 when it made it illegal to exclude anyone from any educational program on the basis of gender. While I don’t think this holiday is celebrated enough, it doesn’t mean that its value can’t be recognized during the other 364 days in the year. As a college cheerleading coach and former athlete, I see the value of sports for women every day.

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How Many Diets Have you Tried?

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If you are like most people, I’m sure at some point in your life you have “tried” to be on a diet. Take a second to think about and add it up. Most adults can list the many experiences they have had with one diet or another, while some are so deeply identified as “dieters” that they would do better to try to remember the few times they weren’t on a diet. Imagine how happy that makes the diet industry! Then consider how sad it is that a basic need like eating has become so tangled that we need a multi-million dollar company to “teach” us how to do it.

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Parents! Market to Your Kids

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Kids are exposed to almost 8,000 food advertisements each year. That means that they are seeing about 21 ads for food every day. Most of these ads are for junk foods or those that are high in sugar, salt and fat and low in the nutrients that promote healthy growth and development. Studies show that the more time a child spends in front of the TV, the more likely that they will be overweight or obese. With 1 out of every 3 children in the U.S. being overweight or obese, reducing TV and screen time can help to improve the health of our children. What can be done to help our children with screen time?

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Hungry for a Healthy Weight?

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As I hope we all know by now, there is no magic bullet when it comes to losing weight. The solution is simple, but certainly not easy to do. To lose weight we need to create an imbalance in the body’s caloric energy equation, or in plain English, we need to eat less (calories in) and move our bodies more (calories out). Many weight loss programs promise you won’t be hungry while you are eating less. From my point of view, I am not sure why feeling some amount of hunger is considered such a bad thing. Feeling hungry is a signal we can put to use to help us manage our weight.

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Nutrition By the Numbers: How Much?

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I had a conversation with a client today that started with answering her question on how many grams of carbohydrates she was supposed to have in a day. It evolved into a discussion about how to figure out nutritional numbers (calories, grams, ratio of carbohydrates, protein, fat). I thought that some of you may benefit from that information as well.

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