My OH MY!

I saw on a commercial the other day that children now need 90 minutes of exercise a day to prevent the risk of being overweight.  Wow.  That's almost ridiculous.  My kids lose focus after about a 1/2 hour. I've got a better idea.  How about cutting out the high fatty foods and highly processed foods from their diets?  Go here to read the stats...http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/childhood/index.htm

If you've just joined me on my blog, I posted earlier about keeping a food journal.  This is an important step to making a health change.  It's a big eye opener to see how much we eat and don't realize it.  If you don't do it already start writing down what you eat and how much.  Get an idea of how many calories a day you are taking in and how many your kids do as well.  Here's a good site I use: http://pediatrics.about.com/library/bl_calorie_calc.htm    How many calories do you think a kid needs each day?  Check out the link and see.

I started being more aware of the calories I intake and my children intake.  Portamus Prime is 7 and he looks like he's 10.  He's a foot taller than everyone in his class and is big boned.  He also loves to eat.  He's got my husband's mold.  My husband is a big AND VERY HANDSOME guy.  Love you honey. (check him out on this site http://www.thefatshed.blogspot.com/  Anyways, I know if my son came home from school and there were chips or donuts or other high fatty and processed foods in the cupboard or if the dinners I made were from boxes or driving to a  fast food place that he'd be overweight.  He's just got that body structure and metabolism.  I'm giving him this gift and knowledge now so that he doesn't end up with a disease down the road from being obese. 

On average a boy between the ages 4-8 needs 1400 calories. If you eat 3 meals and 3 snacks each day then that is around 233 calories each. (Did that one in my head.  My math skills are superb!!!  Good thing since I teach math).  However, usually our meals are a bit more calories then snacks.  So I usually figure that a meal will be 350 calories and snacks will be between 100 and 150 calories.  Think about what you are feeding your kids.  

Let's say you have pizza for dinner.  A slice of pizza has around 300 calories more or less depending on the restaurant.  I've seen my kids eat 2 pieces at a sitting and try to eat more.  That's almost 1/2 of the daily calorie needs right there at one meal.

Take a Happy Meal at Wendy's.  It's close to 350 calories for the Happy Meal with apples and milk.  Double that for the pop and fries and frosty--that's around 700 calories. AHHH!

A peanut butter sandwich on white bread is close to 325 calories.  If it were on whole wheat it's closer to 250 calories.

Go here to add up the calories you eat.  It's easy all you do is type it in.http://caloriecount.about.com/

SO TIP OF THE DAY!!!! START TRACKING THOSE CALORIES.  IF YOU CHOOSE HEALTHY ALTERNATIVES THEN IT'S POSSIBLE TO STAY WITHIN THE DAILY CALORIC NEEDS.  IF YOU DON'T THEN YOU WILL MOST DEFINITELY GO OVER... WAY OVER.