Shake it like a salt shaker

An article published on the New York Times Web site today stated that American Medical Association officials are declaring an "urgent need" for Americans to lower the amount of sodium in our diets. The problem isn't the salt we're putting on our foods, but the amount of salt that is already in the food we're eating.

According to the A.M.A., if Americans cut their sodium intake in half, they could lower deaths from heart disease and stroke by 23 percent.

The average American takes in 4,000 milligrams of sodium per day, but the average person under 50 only needs about 1,500.

The article had a link for a table listing the sodium content of some processed and packaged foods. One order of lasagna has 2,000 milligrams of sodium, well over the amount of sodium one person needs. Two tablespoons of soy sauce have anywhere from 1,840 to 2,520 milligrams of sodium.

The article made me think about the "Hawaiian chicken" I had for dinner tonight, and the three spoonfuls of soy sauce I poured on my rice. Not to mention the salt I put on my rice. Sodium is an aspect of my diet that I don't consider at all when I decide what to eat. I worry about fats, sugars, oils and the amount of greens I'm eating, but I usually don't think about sodium.

Reading this article will make me more conscious of my food choices when it comes to sodium content. Most of the sodium we eat come from restaurant and processed food, so the best way to cut down on sodium would be to eat out less. Trying to eating less sodium will hopefully help me save more money by skipping out on restaurant meals.

Late night eats: unnecessary and awkward.

Let's not kid ourselves people. You don't have to be under the influence of anything but hunger to get a little craving for some late night Pita Pit, Five Star Pizza, Jimmy Johns or even Whataburger. But immediately after eating you might get the familiar remorseful feelings, I know I do.

"Where did all that cheesy bread go?"

"Why did I eat that Number Seven with extra cheese?"

"I wonder how many calories are in a tacquito."

I don't have to get on my soapbox to tell you how bad eating fast food late at night is for you. But when you live in a place like Gainesville, late night eating takes on a whole new dimension. It's a small enough town just with the people who live there, but when you mix visitors in with the students it gets even smaller.

So, I warn you, if you're not ready for an awkward run-in, please don't leave your house in the middle of the night to hit up one of those popular late-night eating establishments. Especially if you are in your pajamas. There is a 99.9999 (and that's a legitimately made-up statistic) percent chance that you will run into someone you know and do not want to see.

So hopefully this post encourages you to stay home, no matter how loud your stomach is growling.

It's D'Lite-ful

Marketplace Plaza, on Northwest 16th Boulevard, is home to one of the most popular places in Gainesville. No it's not a bar, a club, a clothing store or even a real restaurant. It's D'Lites Emporium; a store that serves up tasty soft-serve treats at only 80 calories for an 8 ounce cup.
I love D'Lites for a little after dinner snack, along with almost every other sorority girl on campus. Tuesday through Thursday nights after dinner is over is the prime time for sorority girls to hit up D'Lites, myself included. I think every night, someone stands up at dinner and says, "we're going to D'Lites after dinner if anyone wants to come."
It's a great place to go and socialize with girls from other chapters, a tasty snack after the gym, and a guilt-free way to have great dessert. I know I sound like an ad for D'Lites but I just love it that much.
D'Lites is healthier than TCBY, another delicious low-fat dessert choice, and even though it's a little bit further away, totally worth it. D'Lites has a ton of flavors and they rotate every day, with chocolate and vanilla as constants. For example, a just a few of the flavors they have this week are Baby Ruth, chocolate pudding, hazelnut, strawberry cheesecake and butterscotch.
I had never had D'Lites before moving to Gainesville, but apparently they have stores in Orlando and South Florida. I've grown to love it but I don't think I can find an equivalent in the town of Burnsville, NC, where my parents live.

Orange and Blue

Last week Gator fans were asked to "blue out" the stadium by football coach Urban Meyer. Because we were playing the Tennessee Volunteers, whose color is a particularly heinous shade of orange, Meyer wanted all Gator fans to wear blue. The effect was awe-inspiring. As I looked across the storied Florida Field into the shady alumni section, all I saw was a mass of blue, peppered with a few (who obviously hadn't gotten the memo) wearing orange.
As I looked at the 70 rows behind me in the student section, I also saw a lot of blue. But another very noticeable color was orange. This wasn't the orange of a Gator polo or University of Florida T-shirt; but the orange color your skin takes on when you've been standing in the sun for too long.
Urban asked us to wear blue, but most people were sporting a nice orange glow. I realize I should have learned from the first game against Western Kentucky (and countless years of living across the street from the beach) that when you're out in the sun for that long, a little sunscreen never hurt anyone.
Sunscreen is a vital part of any pre-game ritual. As much as I love a tan line from my sunglasses and whatever style of dress I happen to be wearing that week, the amount of sun students are exposed to during games is highly dangerous. On a day like Saturday, when the clouds were few and far between, the sun beats down on the student side of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium like the Gators beat down on the Vols. We stand on the bleachers for four hours on a Saturday afternoon to cheer on our beloved boys without realizing the risk we're posing to ourselves.
So Gator fans, I ask you: when we play Auburn on Sept. 29 (the day after my birthday!), please wear an SPF that's at least as high as you want the Gators' score to be.

Bad Posture

While reading Core Performance, a book about a workout program developed by Mark Verstegen, I saw a section written by Mia Hamm in which she commented on how the workout helped her improve her posture. This made me feel a little bit better about myself, if an amazing athlete like Mia Hamm slouches, how bad can it really be. I got to thinking a little more in depth about my own posture.

When I was in middle school, or maybe early high school, my grandmother paid for modeling classes for me in hope that it would improve my posture. Just imagine me, slightly chunky for my age, in a modeling class at our local cultural center, learning how to walk in high heels and fancy dresses with all the pretty girls from my school. As I’m sure you expected, this horrifying experience did little to perfect my posture.

Every day that I see my mom, she comments on my posture. “Stand up straight. Stop slouching. Put your shoulders back.” It never ends with her. In high school I blamed in on my heavy backpack, but now that I go to an average of 1.2 classes per day, I can’t really use that excuse any more.

But what is my bad posture really doing to me? I don’t just mean physically or medically; what is it doing for my appearance? Does it affect the way I represent myself to other people? As a student of the great University of Florida and a member of various organizations I am a representative of lots of different people, and if I’m slouching I might be giving off a negative impression. Am I visibly slouching when I talk to people? Probably. Does it affect these people’s opinion of me?

My posture is something I’ve always wanted to change, and reading about how Core Performance helped athletes like Mia Hamm and baseball player Vernon Wells inspired me to try some of the exercises. I’ll keep you posted (that’s a little blogger humor right there) on how it goes.

An Unhealthy Past

A recent New York Times report brought some interesting information to my mind. People talk about how horrible Americans’ diets have become and the dangers of convenience food, but they seem to ignore the fact that our diets weren’t all that great to begin with. The article states:

"'The meals we romanticize in the past somehow leave out the reality of what people were eating,” he said. “The average meal had whole milk and ended with pie.... The typical meal had plenty of fat and calories.'"

The America of the past wasn’t some super healthy place where vegetables were eaten with every meal and kids never gained any weight eating tater tots in their school cafeteria, I mean McDonald’s had to start somewhere, right?

That was something I had never thought about before, every day I eat pizza, fast food or some other equally unhealthy food, I experience pangs of guilt. But when was McDonald’s founded? The first restaurant opened in 1955 and only got bigger from there. Americans have been unhealthy eaters for quite a while, probably since we discovered the deep fryer and its ability to make any food more delicious.

The report blamed America’s sedentary lifestyle for its poor health. A 20-minute walk might burn 100 calories, but there are 3,500 calories in a pound.

DM at UF

I’ve just finished my application for Dance Marathon Captain and began to contemplate whether or not another year will be hazardous to my health.

For those of you who don’t know, DM at the University of Florida is a 32-hour endeavor during which hundreds of students stand on their feet. Yes, standing, for 32 hours. I did it last year and regretted doing it for about three weeks, until I came to the conclusion that it may have possibly been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.

I guess I’m making it out to be worse than it really was. You don’t have to dance for all 32 hours, but you do have to be on your feet. Dance Marathon is a fund raiser for the Children’s Miracle Network and all the money raised at UF goes directly to Shands Children’s Hospital. In 2007 DM at UF raised $362,378.17.

So Dance Marathon really is an amazing cause to be a part of, but is standing for 32 hours dangerous to my health? I’m on a quest to find out.

They have lots of health care at Dance Marathon, a first aid station, foot massages, doctors and nurses on call. A girl on my team last year broke her foot playing basketball (they offer lots of things to do to entertain you into the late hours of the night) and she had to be taken to the emergency room. Another friend of mine had broken her ankle a few months prior to the event and it swelled up to almost the size of a fist after about 20 hours. She had to go to the nurse’s station and actually got to sit for a few hours to get the pressure off of it.

After all these horror stories, DM sounds like an orthopedic nightmare just waiting to happen, doesn’t it? Over 600 University of Florida students left the event unscathed, with just a few cramps in their legs and blisters on their feet. If those are the only sacrifices made for such an amazing amount of money raised, then I say sign me up for one more round.

In this blog I referred to information from floridadm.org.

See Jane Run

Here is the link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/health/nutrition/30Fitness.html?_r=1&ref=health&oref=slogin

See Jane Run

I read an article on the New York Times' Web site today about women becoming faster runners as they get older. The article listed statistics from various races that showed that women in older age groups had faster times than women in the younger age groups.
When I go to the gym with my mom, who is 29 years my senior, she can work out for longer than I can and work harder than I can. Even during the summer, when we were spending equal amounts of time at the gym, I was still struggling more than she was, not to mention during yoga she is more flexible than I am. I remember looking over during one spinning class when I was out of breath and my mom was just biking along, not having any problems.
The article stated that older women may be faster because they have more committed goals, which was surprising to me, because younger women, in the 20-25 age group at least, are at the point in their lives when they are making goals and trying to achieve them in their professional and personal lives. Older women grew up during a time when track and cross-country teams were mostly men and they are only recently discovering what they're capable of.
That is similar to the situation my mom is in. Growing up she was never able to go to a gym or even work out every day so she is more motivated when she is at the gym now.