Nutrition Corner

The following article was copied from www.usaswimming,org and it is a great article about nutrition for the the growing athlete. It is imperative that each of you not take any short cuts in your nutritional needs. A short cut here could cause some potential problems down the road.

By Jill Castle, Registered Dietitian & Child Nutrition Expert

Calories provide the energy your young swimmer needs for everyday activity, swim performance and growth.

With hints of calorie intakes in excess of 10,000 calories per day, Michael Phelps blew the competition away in 2008 and blew our minds with his over-the-top calorie consumption. And it produced the nagging question in parents’ minds, “How much does my young swimmer need to eat?”

Children aged 9–13 years need about 1,500-2,400 calories each day, depending on age and gender, to support the demands of normal growth and development. Add the energy burn of a regular two-hour swim practice, and the energy needs can skyrocket to the tune of 2,700 – 3,600 calories or more per day.

Impressive.

Martinez and colleagues (Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 2011) recently found that young, amateur swimmers on semiprofessional teams (year-round club teams) had low energy consumption compared to what they needed. They also found these young swimmers were overdoing protein and missing the mark on other important vitamins and minerals.

What happens if kids don’t get the calories they need? Fatigue, impaired focus and concentration, low physical performance and perhaps a delay in physical development (lag in muscle building, slowed height growth and/or delay in adult development) may occur when calorie intake is less than needed over time.

As parents, it‘s our job to make sure that kids get the energy they need, and from the proper food sources. Avoid the mistake of delivering high calorie, nutrient-poor foods from the fast food drive-through. Not only are they excessive in fat, salt and sugar and under-deliver important nutrients like iron, calcium and B vitamins, they set the tone for future food cravings and selections that won’t support good health when swimming is over.

Sound complicated? It’s not.

Here are some ways to assure your growing child gets the right amount and type of calories he needs as an active swimmer:

• Stock your kitchen with good quality nutrition: whole foods in their natural state, such as low fat dairy products, lean meats and other protein sources, vegetables, fruits, whole grains and healthy fats. These are the foods that should be a part of every healthy, growing child’s diet.
• Make sure your child gets three nutritious meals a day. No skipping! A meal should include at least 3-4 of these foods: a protein source, dairy, fruit, vegetable, healthy fats and/or a whole grain food source.
• Aim for two snacks each day that include a protein source. Meats, beans and bean dips, nuts and nut butters, cheeses, yogurt, milk or milk substitutes, and protein-rich whole grains such as quinoa are great sources of protein for the swimmer. Unsweetened cereal and milk; yogurt, fresh fruit and nuts; whole-wheat toast and peanut butter are all examples of a healthy protein-rich snack for your school-age athlete.
• Timing is everything. Kids perform best in all aspects of life when they eat regularly. Try to provide a meal or snack every 3-4 hours, and avoid sending your swimmer to practice on an empty stomach.

With a little bit of planning, it’s easy to assure your young swimmer gets enough nutrition to cover all his needs. The benefits of that are worth it, keeping your swimmer healthy, growing and energized for performing in the pool.

From the US Government's USDA website "ChooseMYPlate.gov the following tips are recommended:

10 tips for healthy meals

tips

Nutrition Education Series

A healthy meal starts with more vegetables and fruits and smaller portions of protein and grains. Think about how you can adjust the portions on your plate to get more of what you need without too many calories. And don’t forget dairy—make it the beverage with your meal or add fat-free or low-fat dairy products to your plate.

1make half your plate veggies and fruits Vegetables and fruits are full of nutrients and may help to promote good health. Choose red, orange, and dark-

green vegetables such as tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and broccoli.

2add lean protein Choose protein foods, such as lean beef and pork, or chicken,

turkey, beans, or tofu. Twice a week, make seafood the protein on your plate.

3include whole grains
Aim to make at least half your grains whole grains. Look for the words “100% whole grain” or “100% whole

wheat” on the food label. Whole grains provide more nutrients, like fiber, than refined grains.

4 don’t forget the dairy
Pair your meal with a cup of fat-free or low-fat milk.

They provide the same amount of calcium and other essential nutrients as whole milk, but less fat
and calories. Don’t drink milk? Try soymilk
(soy beverage) as your beverage or include
fat-free or low-fat yogurt in your meal.

5avoid extra fat
Using heavy gravies or sauces will add fat and calories to otherwise healthy choices. For example,

steamed broccoli is great, but avoid topping it with cheese sauce. Try other options, like a sprinkling of low-fat parmesan cheese or a squeeze of lemon.

6take your time
Savor your food. Eat slowly, enjoy the taste and textures, and pay attention to how you feel. Be mindful. Eating

very quickly may cause you to eat too much.

7 use a smaller plate
Use a smaller plate at meals to help with portion control.

That way you can finish your entire plate and feel satisfied without overeating.

8take control of your food
Eat at home more often so you know exactly what you are eating. If you eat out, check and compare the

nutrition information. Choose healthier options such as baked instead of fried.

9

try new foods

Keep it interesting by picking out new foods you’ve never tried before, like

mango, lentils, or kale. You may find a new favorite! Trade fun and tasty recipes with friends or find them online.

10satisfy your sweet tooth in a

healthy way
Indulge in a naturally sweet dessert dish—fruit!

Serve a fresh fruit cocktail or a fruit parfait made with yogurt. For a hot dessert, bake apples and top with cinnamon.

DG TipSheet No. 7

June 201

In order for you to sustain both growth and a high level of physical activity you must get the right amounts of sleep, fluids and nutrition. If you are short changing any one of these then don't expect to perform at a high level when it is needed the most. Your body isn't much different than an automobile that you depend on to get you to work, school or play. If you short change the care of your car, or put the wrong gas in it, or fail to rotate the tires, keep the fluids filled and the engine in tune then the car will eventually break down and require some major repair work. Keep your body growing and performing at high levels in all you do-school, classroom and pool by taking care of yourself through nutrition, hydration and rest.

Motivational story

Here is a recent story from CNN about a very accomplished and determined young lady. I hope you'll all read it and enjoy.

Athlete swimming to greatness after paralysis

(CNN) -- Hope was stirring in Mallory Weggemann just 11 weeks after she lost movement below the waist.

Weggemann, who didn't even try to make a college swim team when she could walk, was at a Minnesota pool with a club coach she'd just met. The teen wanted to know if she could return to the sport she knew as a girl -- only now with absolutely no kick.

Her father told two of her old high school swimming friends -- only half kidding -- that they'd need to save Mallory should she start drowning.

"I didn't know if she was going to float or what was going to happen," Chris Weggemann recalled of that day in 2008. "But she took off swimming, and she got to the wall, and she said, 'All right, what do I do now?' "

What she's done in the three years since is smash world para-swimming records, collect an ESPY Award, swim on an NCAA Division I college team and put herself on course for what she hopes is a historic run at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London.

Heading into this week's Pan Pacific Para-Swimming Championships in Edmonton, Alberta -- where she's won three golds in the first two days of a five-day event -- she held 15 world records in her physical ability class. Of the seven solo events to be held in London in her class, she is world champion in six.

Update: Another world record

"When I got back into the water, it was a real turning point for me -- for my mental state, my physical state, everything," Mallory Weggemann, 22, of Eagan, Minnesota, said this month. "It brought back the emotion that I have and the passion that I have for the water."

The transition from an able-bodied girl who had hung up her goggles to a world-beating para-swimmer began with an injection three years ago.

Weggemann began having severe lower back pain in high school following a case of shingles. After several unsuccessful treatments, she was prescribed three epidural injections over a number of months, and the first two brought pain relief. But after the third, in January 2008, numbness in the college freshman's legs didn't recede, her family says.

She was transferred from a clinic to a hospital. About three weeks in, doctors told her she needed to learn how to use a wheelchair. Complications from the procedure had paralyzed her from the waist down.

It was an unusual result: Though the risk of paralysis stemming from epidural injections varies by type and location, paralysis from epidurals in the lower back is exceedingly rare, said a physician not involved in her care, Dr. Steven P. Cohen, a pain medicine specialist at Johns Hopkins and director of pain research at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Grieving and slow to accept the paralysis, Weggemann made a list of things she would do -- but only when she could walk again: Return to class. Travel. Even try out for a college team.

"I was down in the dumps, kind of confused, and asking 'why-me' questions, not knowing what was going to be next," she said, recalling her return home in a wheelchair after weeks of rehab.

Then one of her sisters, trying to cheer her up in April 2008, took her to the University of Minnesota to watch the U.S. swimming trials for that year's Beijing Paralympic Games.

Weggemann, who started swimming at age 7, saw athletes leave their wheelchairs and crutches and do their thing in the water. She went down to the pool deck and talked with coaches, including Jim Andersen, a longtime club swim coach who only recently had started guiding disabled athletes.

Suddenly, Weggemann wasn't thinking about goals for a time that might not come. She wondered what she could do now.

A few days later, she had her first practice with Andersen, launching a partnership that would see Weggemann -- viewing swimming as something to pour her energy and grief into -- test the limits of her newly constrained body.

"When Mallory gets in the water, she feels normal. And I think it made her grow up," Andersen, 60, said of her return to the pool. "I can't imagine how devastating it would be to have happened what happened to her, and what my mental mind-set would have been. But (swimming) was a great thing to enable her to recover."

The beginning wasn't easy.

Not all para-swimmers are unable to kick. Some have dwarfism; some are missing a limb; others have a number of other disabilities but can move their legs. Weggemann's challenge was not only propelling herself solely with her upper body, but also making turns and starting off a block.

Instead of a flipping and kicking off a wall, she learned to push off with her hands, redirecting herself in a semicircular motion. On the starting block, she can crouch and dive into the water, but does so by grabbing the block and swinging her upper body forward, rather than pushing with her legs.

She found her initial competition at able-bodied club meets. At the first one in May 2008, Weggemann, then 19, looked at her 9-year-old competitors and then shot a glance at her dad.

"She looks over with this look of, 'If these guys beat me,' " Chris Weggemann said. "And they did."

Undeterred, she saw chasing the able-bodied as a game: See how close she could get, chase them for faster times.

Soon, she was not only keeping up with the competition at disabled meets but also beating able-bodied collegians.

She transferred from her small school near Eagan to Gardner-Webb University in North Carolina in January 2009. The kid who thought she wasn't good enough for a big program before paralysis was now a full member of a Division I team.

Weggemann didn't win any races at the conference meet in February. But she beat some able-bodied competitors in preliminary heats and electrified her team, Gardner-Webb coach Mike Simpson said.

Beating able-bodied athletes was just an extra, because she was focused on improving her times, Simpson said. But spectators "were pretty blown away" when she beat some swimmers in her 500-yard freestyle heat.

"She added a lot to the team," he said. "When you have people swim way faster than their best time, that creates momentum and energy for the rest of the team. ... (Her performance) got everyone else really excited."

After that, para-swimming records fell and ambitions rose.

At a USA Swimming meet in Minnesota in May 2009, she swam 1:26.20 in the 100-meter butterfly, breaking the old top U.S. mark in her class, 1:28.12.

That summer in Edmonton, she broke three long-course world records, including in the 400-meter freestyle. Her 5:12.30 time in that event beat the record, which had stood for nine years, by almost five seconds.

She transferred to the University of Minnesota that fall -- not to join the team, but to train again with Andersen. She broke several other world records in following months, but her signature moment came the next summer.

At the long-course para-swimming world championships in August 2010, Weggemann took eight gold medals and one silver, and broke nine world records, in individual races and relay events with her U.S. teammates. Her record time in the 100-meter freestyle was 1:08.45. "There's a lot of able-bodied swimmers who can't swim that fast," Andersen said.

And she swam the 100-meter breaststroke final in 1:35.51 -- four seconds faster than a world record that a competitor had set in a preliminary heat.

For her performance in Eindhoven, Netherlands, Weggemann last month won ESPN's 2011 ESPY Award for best female athlete with a disability.

Back in 2009, she told Swimming World magazine that she hoped to win a gold medal at the 2012 Paralympic Games. Now she wants all seven individual golds -- a feat last done at the 2004 Athens Paralympics by American and two-time ESPY winner Erin Popovich.

And Weggemann -- a public relations student on leave until the 2012 games -- wants to set world records in each of those events along the way.

"This falls into being a mental game for me," said Weggemann, who credits Andersen and her family for her success and ability to carry on. "If I can win one (gold), I don't want to stop at one. I want two and then three. I want to push my body as hard as I can push it."

Weggemann has been a role model for able-bodied and disabled alike, said Jim Hanton, administrative vice chair for Minnesota Swimming. She has lobbied high-profile state meets to include heats specifically for disabled athletes, and she's made herself available to young swimmers, speaking to high school teams and showing kids around the aquatic center, he said.

"I'm a big fan," Hanton said. "She always has a smile on her face. I think of all the athletes who are grumpy and everything else -- she's happy."

Weggemann is working herself back into shape following illnesses in late 2010 and early 2011, and will hope to be in top form for the U.S. Paralympic trials in March in Bismarck, North Dakota.

If she's happy, it's partly because she found her way back to familiar surroundings so quickly after her paralysis.

"It's something where I can get out of my chair, and it's just me and the water, and I can move about freely," she said. "Even when my competitive days are over, I'll still need that, because it's a big part of who I am and what I know."

Recognition Banner

This banner is hanging in the front lobby of the American Fork Fitness Center. I hope that we will add two to four more names to this banner. Remember our motto, "Four More in Four". Who wants to go? It can be done! Go HAST!!!!!