Safe Walking.

Walking together as a family is an ideal opportunity for teaching children road safety and to reinforce safety codes promoted by Ray Foan, Accident Risk Reduction Programme Manager for West Berkshire Priority Care Service – NHS Trust.

   During your family walks talk about road safety to your children and impress upon them the need to do the following:

·         Walk on the nearside of the pavement away from the road edge

·         Cross the road at lights or at a recognized crossing point

·        
           Look both ways twice before stepping out into  the road and make sure there is time to cross without hurrying

·         Watch out for other oncoming pedestrians who may not give way to you, forcing you to step off the pavement onto the road

·         Learn to recognize the sounds of other road users – can, buses, trucks, cyclists and motor cyclists

·         At all times follow the basic highway code: STOP, LOOK and LISTEN

USING AN UNPAVED ROAD

o   Walk facing incoming traffic, so you can see them and they can see you

o   Day or night, wear bright clothes or fluorescent strips so you can be seen by other road users

o   Use your senses, sight, sound and smell – if in doubt stop

We hope that we have persuaded you that walking is the easiest and safest exercise for your kids and the best way to keep healthy as a family.

The Family Walks.

Walk Together/Talk Together

It’s fun, it’s the easiest way for for all the family to get fit together. Escape from the stresses and strains of modern indoor life-the television, the telephone, the computer, the feeling of living on top of each other – and get outside in the open air and walk together.

   ‘Walking is an exercise, available to everybody. I encourage regular family walks –at least a half an hour a day. It’s a good way to spend time with your kids and a healthy habits, says Dr Leo Galland, an international nutrition expert.

     In our modern urban society, families are spending less time together. Jobs often force parents into long hours commuting; children are in school much of the day; parents and children are involved in separate activities in the evening. As a result, meals are eaten separately and there is little interaction and communication between family members.  

           Even exercise can get in the way of family interaction, with dad going for a agame of squash and mum off to an aerobics class, children’s fitness is often ignored, with parents thinking that the school will look after it. And as we have already seen, this is far from the truth.

      The answer to the problem is for families to find ways of being together – to share common experiences and co-operate with each other. Often it’s difficult to find an activity which all the family can do together. Not everyone has the same skills and motivation to play ball games or take part in sports activities, but one activity that everyone can take part in is a family walk.

         Walking is the only activity where everyone starts out on an equal footing! After all, we all walk, even our grandparents, so it’s just a master of getting the family together and deciding to walk regularly.

    Walking is one of the few physical activities that lets you concentrate as much on each other as on exercise. Not only will walking build a strong healthy body but it will also build a strong, healthy family bond.

       Whether your goal is get the family talking together or to get them active, the key is to make it fun. Kids often have a short attention span so it’s essential to vary your walks so that they don’t get bored and want to give up. When it comes to fitness, boredom is one of the biggest excuses for people giving up. So you must make it fun. The following are fun ways in which you can keep your children’s interest:

·         Tell your kids ahead of time so that can look forward to a special outing. Anticipation keeps kids’ attention and they be more motivated to walk when the time arrives.

·         Vary the route as much as possible. Alternate walks in the local neighbourhood with walks to the park, and trips to the countryside or seaside at weekends when you have more time.

·         Nature walks, both in town and countryside, can provide an opportunity for kids to look, find and learn more about the world around them. Spotting birds and identifying flowers and trees are all ways to heighten children’s aware-ness and appreciation of their environment. On their walks they can learn more about the weather, history, geography, vegetation, science and animals.

·         Walk to a surprise destination – a zoo or a playground, or visit a castle or museum. For a treat, let your kids decide where they would like to walk. Let them take a friend with them.

·         Bridge the generation gap-take grandma and granddad. A family walk provides time and relaxation for everyone to get together and share experiences.

      Walking is an activity that can be enjoyed every day and kids should be encouraged to walk most days. Any amount of walking, however short, is healthy and is better than no exer-cise, but too much soon can result in sore muscles and a loss of enthusiasm.

     Kids should build up their walking gradually, increasing the speed and length a little at a time. At first, it is more important to walk regularly than to try and walk too far. Slower, long walks can be alternated with faster, short walks, giving low and high intensity workouts. Kids, like adults, should warm-up before walking briskly. The best warm-up is slow walking.                                                                                                                                                                                            

                    Walk with your family- you’ll rediscover your feet and you’ll rediscover each other. The family that walks together talks together.

Why Your Child Should Walk?

‘Walking is far better for children than running,’ says Dr Lyle Micheli, director of Sports Medicine at The Children’s Hospital in Boston. ‘Because of its low impact, it prevents the injured tissue and joint injuries we’ve seen in children while exert two-and-a-half to five times their body weight while running.’

      Walking works because it is a low-impact, low-stress activity and is the safest aerobic exercise for kids, since their feet strike the ground with only 1-1.5 times their body weight. Walking is a moderate exercise, so the strength of kids’ legs and cardiovascular endurance improves gradually without stain or injury.

        Children who walk regularly develop in much the same way as adults- they increase their stamina, strength and flexibility. Although aerobic capacity increases regardless of training as a child grows, children who walk regularly will achieve greater aerobic capacity than sedentary kids. And that’s not all that walking will do for your kids:

WALKING…..

·         Helps develop good posture

·         Firms and tones muscles, improving body shape

·         Burns stored body fat and helps weight loss

·         Promotes strong bone growth, reducing the risk of osteo- porosis in later life

·         Reduces the risk of heart disease and back pain

·         Makes kids physically and mentally more alert

·         Fosters independence and self-reliance

·         Encourages kids to think for themselves

·         Increases confidence, self-esteem and self-image

   

Walking is a non-competitive activity, doesn’t require any special equipment and can be done equally well by boys and girls. Regular walking can enhance a child’s reading, writing and other skills, and their increased aerobic fitness will help them cope with the pressures of school and examinations.

Walking is one activity that your kids can keep up for a lifetime.

How Active is Your Child?

The minimum recommendation in Britain for children’s fitness is that they should exercise vigorously (get out of breath) for at least 15 minutes, 3 to 5 times a week. In the USA the America Academy of Pediatrics and America College of Sports Medicine both recommend that children should engage in 20 to 30 minutes of vigorous exercise each day. So how active is your child? Does your child:

·         Sit in front of the TV or computer screen for hours on end?

·         Get out of breath walking up stairs?

·         Prefer to have a lift in the car rather than walk short distances?

·         Live on a high-fat diet?

·         Seem to be putting on excess weight?

·         Lack motivation to exercise regularly?

·         Get bored easily?

If this is what your child is like then you have a problem, because your child is on a fast track to becoming an unhealthy adult. According to research conducted by the institute for aerobics Research in Dallas, USA, ‘at least 30 to 35 per cent of school-age are at risk for heart or circulatory disease and for premature death as adults’. Dr Kenneth Cooper, of the Aerobics Institute, advises: ‘Starting a lifetime aerobic exercise programme now will greatly reduce your child’s risk of dying from sedentary living as an adult.’

    Since walking is the easiest way for children to exercise aerobically, then should get your children active as soon as possible – and get them walking.

Fit Kids Fitness for All The Family

                           Train up a child in the way be should go: and when be is old, be will not depart from it

                                                                            PROVERBS 22,6

We have all seen the cartoon highlighting our inactivity and telling us that most of us are couch potatoes. Well, take a look again – for increasing numbers of our children are also couch potatoes. And it’s official.

         A study of nearly 24,000 youngsters, whose ages ranged from 12 to 16, carried out by the schools Health Education Unit at Exeter University in England, found the following disturbing truth: nearly half the girls and one-third of the boys take less exercise than the equivalent of one- minute brisk walk a week.

     And a two-year fitness survey by education chiefs in peter-borough, Cambridge shire, involving 800 youngsters from seven junior schools, discovered that many children were so out of condition that they were unable to take part in playground games such as skipping, running and hop- scotch. One comment made was that: ‘Children have more facilities to play indoors. They don’t go out often as they should.’

     And a recent study in the USA by the Department of health and Human Service found that 40 per cent of children between the age of 5 and 8 were shown to exhibit at least one of the following heart disease risk factors: obesity, hypertension and high blood cholesterol, ad the reason give was inactivity and a sedentary lifestyle.

           Dr Kenneth Cooper, author of Aerobics, says that ‘kids are heavier and less fit aerobically now then 15 years ago’ and this is due to ‘sedentary living and poor nutrition’.

  In the UK and the USA, with up to 90 per cent of health. It seems that children are following in their parents’ footsteps. With the increasing use to the motor car to ferry children around; with some children watching up to 25 hours of television each week; and with video and computer games taking the place of sorts and fitness activities, is it any wonder that increasing numbers of children are overweight and unfit?

    Many people, of course, are hoping that schools will keep children active, but unfortunately school physical education programmes are failing to do the job. Tight school budgets and lack of playing fields and sports facilities all contribute to the problem, and even where schools have good sports facile-ties, there is often a focus on competitive on competitive team games rather than individual activities which promote long-term health and fitness.

    Emphasis on skills needed to play soccer, rugby, netball and cricket takes precedence over cardiovascular endurance, suppleness, strength, flexibility and body weight maintenance – the requirements for a fit and healthy body. We teach children the 3 Rs and how to compete, but we don’t teach team the sample skill of regular fitness walking: the easiest and cheapest way for children of all ages to get fit and keep fit for life.

   With increasing evidence that physical inactivity in children increases the risk of heart disease, and with schools increasingly unable to provide suitable activities which foster long- term fitness and health, the force behind motivating children, must come from parents.

     In 1987, The National Child Youth Fitness Study in the USA revealed that sedentary parents tend to have sedentary children and active parents tend to have active children. And a recent University of Pittsburgh study found that overweight children have greater long-term success controlling their weight if they are involved in a family-based exercise and diet programme. So the moral is that your children are more likely to keep fit and watch weight if you do. And it’s never too late for them to start.

    Dr Neil Armstrong in charge of Exeter University’s Physical Education Research Center said: You are never going to persuade all children to do aerobic, but 80 per cent can do more walking.’ And Arnold Schwarzenegger, the film star, who is chairman of the President’s Council on Physical fitness and Sports in the USA, offers the following advice: Parents must make fitness a family affair. How can Mom and Dad help? They can participate in exercise activities with their children. They can turn off the TV encourage all family members to get out into the yard or on the street for a brisk walk.’  

The Whole Body Workout

Work up a sweat once a day - Spartan Saying, circa 430 BC

Aerobic walking will give you stamina and endurance (aerobic fitness), a strong heart and lungs, develop your lower body and tone some of your upper body muscles, but it cannot provide all the exercise you need for whole body fitness. Whole body fitness requires stamina, strength and suppleness, and performing the exercises in the Whole-Body Workout three a week will provide with this:

STAMINA- As you improve your stamina you increase the efficiency of your cardiovascular system: your heart and circulatory system. As the heart muscle becomes stronger and more efficient, it beats at a slower, more powerful rate, giving it less work to do in everyday life. These stamina building exercises are additional to the stamina that walking gives you.

STRENGHT – these exercises involve the repeated action of muscles against resistance. Regular local exercise is needed for the development and maintenance of good muscle tone, strength and endurance, giving you the ability to sustain pro-longed activity becoming tired. Stronger muscles mean that can lift and carry with greater ease.

SUPPLENSS- Suppleness is about flexibility. Good flexibility will enable you to use muscles and joints throughout the full potential range of movement – to bend, reach, twist and turn with case. After an initial warm-up, the best way to stretch a muscle is through a relaxed sustained stretch and not by forcing or bouncing your body into any position. Always stretch within your own capabilities- never stretch to the point of pain. The stretch should be applied gradually. Ease into the hold position and remain relaxed. A mild tension should be left- this should decrease as you hold.

Stretching is performed as two different levels. The easy stretcb, included in the warm-up, is pre-lengthen and prepare the muscles for work. The developmental stretcb, included in the cool-down, involves holding your static stretch for longer to help improve flexibility and range of movement.

Walking is a moderate exercise which allows you to build up to an aerobic level without straining yourself. Similarly, these exercises have all been designed to help you build stamina, strength and suppleness without straining yourself. The number of repetitions and the length of time that exercises are held is only a guide- if necessary, reduce them to what you find comfortable.

As an individual your level of fitness is unique. If you are unfit or overweight and have poor muscle tone and flexibility, then you must progress gradually with the exercises. You should never feel pain. You movements should flow naturally. Never force- keep within your own ability, learn to listen to your body and you will not go far wrong.

Whole-body fitness allows you to do the things you want to do when you want to do them. And it helps you control your weight, ease away stress, sleep better, feel more confident about yourself and look better, too

Radical Advice – Step Up on A C E Foods

Experts have long suspected that there is a link between cancer, heart disease and diet and 35 per cent of all cancers are now thought to be linked to diet. Cancer and heart dis-ease are thought to start with damage to cells caused by ‘free radicals’, destructive by-products of oxygen which attack our blood vessels and vital organs causing irreversible cell damage. Vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene, a from of vitamin A, can protect against cancer and heart disease by eliminating free radicals. These vital vitamins are known as anti-oxidants or free radical scavengers and they mop up the destructive reactions caused by free radicals.

Leading government health agencies now advise that the best protection against cancer and heart disease is to eat more foods rich in the ‘ACE’ vitamins. ACE vitamins are found in the following:

Beta-carotene: dark green leafy vegetables, yellow and orange vegetables and fruits such as spinach, broccoli, peas, cress, aspara-gus, carrots, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, apricots, peaches, cherries, mangoes, cantaloupe melon

Vitamin C: citrus fruit, strawberries, blackcur- rants, kiwi fruit, raw cabbage, green leafy vegetables, green peppers, potatoes, Swedes, parsnips, tomatoes nuts, seeds, whole grains, soya beans, vegerable oils especially sunflower oil, fish liver oils, green leafy vegetables

Three good portions of vegetables and two of fruit each day is the best way to ensure that you get enough of the ‘ACE’ vitamins

Doctors at Harvard Medical School also believe that anti-oxidants present in beta-carotene may reduce the effects of LDL, or ‘bad cholesterol’.

Cutting Cholesterol

Cholesterol is a substance that is found naturally in all human and animal tissues. Manufactured in the liver, cholesterol is essential to a number of body processes such as the metabolism of fat and the formation of hormones. Most of the cholesterol in the bloodstream is made in the body, but some foods which we eat contain cholesterol (dietary cholesterol).

Cholesterol is carried in the bloodstream by special proteins called lipoproteins. They come in two types- high density lipoproteins (HDLs) and low density (LDLs). HDLs are sometimes called ‘good’ and LDLs ‘bad’ cholesterol. The higher your HDL level the lower the risk of heart disease.

You can affect your total cholesterol level by reducing your intake of saturated fat. This is found in fatty meat products (pies and sausages), full fat dairy foods, biscuits and cakes. High cholesterol foods include shellfish, egg, offal and dairy foods.

The best way to lower total cholesterol and to lose boost HDL levels is to makes lifestyle changes-particularly diet and exercise. Follow The Walk Slim Diet by cutting saturated fat and eating more complex carbohydrates, fruit, vegetables, fish and white meat. And walk aerobically at least 4 times a week for 30 minute at a time

Stay Slim Forever

Using The Walk slim Diet, you will easily be able to lose 3 to 4 pounds a week until you get back to your goal weight. Then it’s simply a matter of following the rules of healthy eating and walking a minimum of 4 times a week for 30 minute at an aerobic rate to maintain your weight and ling term fitness.

The Walk Slim Diet

DAY LIGHT MEAL                                                                     MAIN MEAL

1.        Garden Salad (p 124)                                                                               Chicken Provencal (p 153)

2.        Curried Potatoes and Petits Pois (p 127)                                              Baked Fish with Toasted Almonds (p 148)

3.        Tuscan Salad (p 127)                                                                                 Sweet and Sour Courgettes and Peppers (p 143)

4.        Egg mayonnaise with Prawns and Grapes (p 132)                               Mexican Turkey (p 158)

5.        Tuna and Leek Salad (p 128)                                                                    Vegetable Pilau (p 141)

6.        Chicken with mango (p 123)                                                                    Pasta with Smoked Salmon (p 138)

7.        Red Cabbage and Apple Mayonnaise (p 125)                                       Turkish Lamb (p 145)

8.        Italian Salad (p 118)                                                                                   Bean Ragout (p 145)

9.        Carrot and Tuna with Oranges (p 123)                                                   Chicken Val Bon (p 154)

10.     Mushroom and Pepper Omelette (p 132)                                              White Fish with Tomatoes and peas (p 149)

11.     Mediterranean Salad (p 122)                                                                    Pasta Amatriciana (p 137)

12.     Poha (p 136)                                                                                                 Cantonese Chicken (p 156)

13.     Mexican Praw (p 131)                                                                                  Daube D’Aubergines                                             

14.     Vegetable Kebabs (p 131)                                                                           Pork in Red Wine (p 159)

15.     Spanish Salad (p 119)                                                                                   Retatouille (p 145)key Koftas (p 157)

16.     Avocado with Orange (p 134)                                                                     Prawns with Rice (p 142)

17.     Watercress and Bean Salad (p 126)                                                          Tropical Chicken (p 157)

18.     Mangetout and Harn omelette (p132)                                                     Vegetable Goulash (p 146)

19.     Russian Salad (p 127)                                                                                  Turkey. Koftas (p 157)

20.     Aubergine with Mozzarella (p 131)                                                          White Fish with Leeks (p 148)

21.     Stuffed Tomatoes (p 130)                                                                          Beef with Peppers (p 161)

22.     Spring Salad (p 124)                                                                                     Pasta with Tuna and Walnuts (p 138)

23.     Marinated Courgettes and Mushrooms (p 122)                                     Normandy Chicken (p 138)

24.     Pepper Salad ( 119)                                                                                      Prawn Korma (p 150)

25.     Samon, Apple and Cashew Nuts (p 120)                                                  Pasta Siciliana (p 137)

26.     Wheat Porridge (p 125)                                                                               Fish with Pine Nuts and Sultanas (p 151)

27.     Eggs Florentine (p 129)                                                                                Scampi Provencal (p 151)

28.     Ham and Cheese Crostini (p 136)                                                               Lamb with Courgettes (p 161)

29.     Upma (p 123)                                                                                                 Spicy Vegetables ( p 144)

Pasta and Bean Salad                                                                                   Moroccan Chicken (p 155