The following articles on nutrition was composed by Tracy Moreno who is a certified personal trainer at the Michigan Athletic Club in East Lansing. Tracy has been overseeing fitness training for over 20 years. During this time she has trainied multiple individuals and populations including but not limited to athletes, seniors, adults, and youth.

ARTICLE ONE

When helping athletes, both competitive and recreational, clients often ask that burning question, “What can I eat to become healthy or perform better for my sport”?

convenient and healthy

snack and meal ideas

Does this sound familiar? You dash out of work to picking up the kids, rush to get your player to practice, and finally scuttle home to realize you had no plan for dinner? For beneficial changes to be made by you and your family, you must plan and develop new and healthy routines.

1.       Plan your meals 2-3 days in advance

2.      Have healthy foods available at home and at work.

For example, water, fruit, cut up veggies, raw nuts, whole grain cereals, energy bars, whole grain breads, natural peanut butter, and low fat, organic yogurts.

BEVERAGES

Bottled spring water

Smart Water

Vitamin Water

RW Knudson juices

Fat Free, 1/2 %, or 1% organic milk

Soy or rice milk

ENERGY BARS

Lara Bar

PURE bar

Kashi bars

Luna bars

Clif bars

Kids Z bars

CRACKERS

Annie’s,

Kashi TLC crackers

Wasa crackers

Kavli crackers

Whole grain pretzels

CHIPS

Garden of Eatin Tortilla chips

Kettle chips

Terra chips

DAIRY/PROTEINS

Mozzarella cheese sticks

Greek yogurt

Stoneyfield Farms Organic yogurt

Homemade smoothie (frozen fruits, fat free milk, 1-2 T soy or whey protein powder)

HEALTHY FATS

Natural peanut butter

Almond butter

Raw almonds

Raw sunflower seeds

Peanuts

Raw walnuts

Note: These heart, healthy fats will help satisfy your hunger as well as have many health benefits. However, you must keep the serving sizes on the small size to eliminate taking in too many calories.

SAMPLE SNACK BEFORE SOCCER PRACTICE

Cut up fruits

Whole grain crackers

Low fat cheese

Water

Yogurt

Almonds

Whole grain cereal with low fat milk

Water

Whole grain breads/crackers

Natural peanut butter

Low sugar jellies/banana

Water

Raw nuts

Raisins

Water

Grilled/baked chicken

Brown rice

Water

Cut up veggies

Hummus

Water

Smoothie

Water

All of these examples will satisfy the lightest eater to a person that requires more calories before play.

Make these changes today. Your soccer players and family are counting on you to help them make the best choices. Good luck in the 2009-2010 Chill soccer season.

ARTICLE TWO 

Living day to day, our kids and families typically survive in a culture of hectic schedules, “picky” eaters, and loads of quick fast-food options. “How about a candy bar or Oreo cookies and milk before practice?   The kids like the taste and they can eat it on the way to practice”. Why not just pick up that burger and fries after soccer practice? It’s easy and is little effort when headed home for the evening. Very convenient!

There is nothing wrong with this. We all need and deserve convenience, but we often sacrifice healthy meal options for the sake of convenience and find the kids or ourselves nowhere near optimal performance.  Therefore, we need to find options that will make everyone happy and this is not always easy.  In order for us to get a new mind-set, we have to be willing to do some initial homework. It’s not going happen over-night, so take your time and see what works for your family.

If you’re not sure you need these changes, take a step back and look at your child.  Is he or she frequently tired or acting sluggish on the field?  Perhaps your child is not recovering after games or practices in a timely manner. Possibly you witness poor attention span during homework assignments, gaining a few pounds, irregular or unhealthy bowel movements, or frequent acts of moodiness. All of these issues can potentially result from an unhealthy diet and dehydration.

Plenty can be said for saving time with limited shopping, cooking, or meal preparation, but worse is a household of tired, sluggish, cranky, and unmotivated bodies.  The following pages will give everyone (including kids!) quick, easy, healthy, and good tasting food ideas the entire family will learn to love.

Initially, this change in lifestyle will take time, but when everyone finds what they like, it will be a breeze.  Take some time and have fun with your family while making the right food choices everyone can enjoy.

Good luck!

FOOD PLAN FOR THE MICHIGAN CHILL SBC

Items to avoid:

1. High Fructose Corn Syrup
2. Trans-fatty acids
3. Partially Hydrogenated Fats 

These all are items added to increase shelf life and to improve tastes of foods.  The big downside to these products is that they will cause blood sugars to fluctuate too much and are also detrimental to heart health.

Our goal, as parents and guardians, is to put high quality, high energy foods into our kids.  Our children play hard on the practice and game fields. Coaches, parents, and players expect great things out of these kids.  But these kids can only perform as good as the fuel in their bodies allows them to.

Below are sound nutritional examples for breakfast, lunch, and snacks that will help to correctly fuel their systems.

BREAKFAST (Easiest if prepared the night before)

Ø      Yogurt with cut up fruit

Ø      Bread (toasted or not) with natural peanut butter or almond butter

Ø      Eggs (2 egg whites and 1 whole egg)Veggie or turkey sausage

Cold cereals (choose products low in sugars, high fructose corn syrups, and partially hydrogenated fats)

Try oatmeal with some chocolate protein powder mixed in (tastes like Malt –O-Meal)

LUNCHES (Easiest if prepared the night before)

Sandwich ideas:

Ø      Use a variety of breads. This will give the child more variety make lunches much easier. For instance, try buns, rolls, crackers, sliced breads, pitas, tortillas (rollups).

Ø      Chicken (easy from the night before).

Ø      Tuna salad

Ø      Sliced Boarshead turkey, ham, or roast beef.

Ø      Egg salad

Ø      Natural peanut butter or almond butter – can add bananas on top, jelly, or honey.

Ø      Peanut butter on crackers.

Finger foods:

Ø      Pretzels

Ø      Crackers

Ø      Raisins

Ø      Fresh fruit – peaches, plums, apples, bananas, grapes, pears

Ø      Little cups of fruit – sugar-free applesauce, mandarin oranges, peaches, pears

Ø      Make your own trail mix for the week: peanuts, almonds, raisins, and “MnM’s”. Make sure you only put about 1/4^th of a cup in a zip lock bag.

TREATS

Ø      Chocolate or regular animal crackers

Ø      Graham crackers (no cinnamon – just plain or honey)

Ø      Sugar free pudding

Ø      Homemade goodies low in sugars and additives.

BEVERAGES

Ø      Bottled water

Ø      Milk (skim or ½ percent)

SNACKS AFTER SCHOOL

Ø      Fresh fruit – alone or on yogurt or cottage cheese

Ø      ½ of sandwich – different than what they had for lunch. Peanut butter is a great energy food.

Ø      Cut up apple with peanut butter

Ø      Cheese stick with a Boarshead meat wrapped around it.

Ø      Raw veggies, pita, pretzels (alone or dipped in hummus)

Buying items in the health food section that contain low sugars and no hydrogenated fats would be optimal, but do the best you can.  Trying to be balanced between eating “healthy”, “border line healthy”, and “unhealthy” is the most realistic way to go. As long as the unhealthy only occurs 1-2 times per week, while a majority is healthy eating. Breaking it down it would look like this:

“Borderline healthy” will probably be 1/4^th  of the time.
“Unhealthy” eating will be the next  1/4^th of the time.

“Healthy” eating will be1/2 of the time.