Sugar can be difficult to pass up, especially when you’re a kid. Today’s children are regularly subjected to sugary diets and uninformed eating habits. Although parents may not be giving their children foods that are high in sugar intentionally, there are steps that can be taken to help kids avoid the pitfalls of sugar, such as obesity and dental disease.

• Monitor snacking choices. Provide healthy foods to eat. Ration empty-calorie foods such as sugar-packed sweets. Instead, offer healthy alternative snacks such as fresh vegetables and fruits and low-fat yogurt with no added sugars.

• Beware of the juice box. Most fruit drinks are low in vitamins and high in sugar. And many contain less than 10 percent real fruit juice. Look for low- or no-sugar substitutes or provide water when kids are thirsty.

• Use oral care probiotics. Sugars are going to find their way into young mouths eventually. In addition to regular brushing and flossing, incorporate an oral care probiotic, like EvoraKids into their oral health routine. Oral care probiotics work by flooding the mouth with beneficial bacteria, which adhere to tooth surfaces, including pits and fissures in the chewing surfaces, leaving less room for the harmful bacteria that feed on sugars to grow.

• Involve children in meal-time planning and prep. Take advantage of meal preparation to help your child understand the importance of good food choices. Including them in the preparation process can be an important step for children who take more interest in hands-on activities.

• Keep a positive attitude. When your child makes healthy food choices, recognize his accomplishment. Be consistent with verbal praise and rewards when they make good choices. As is the case with many children, behavior is often repeated when there is a positive response.

• Be a role model. Probably the most important step is to practice what you preach. Most children learn by watching their parents. When you try to teach a child good behavior, incorporate these same principals into your own everyday actions. Words that conflict with your actions can be confusing to developing minds.

With the start of the new year, we’ve all become a little older and wiser. So, why not put some of that wisdom into making healthier decisions over the next year? Healthy eating and regular physical activity will give you energy and help you lower your chances for developing diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

The Weight-control Information Network (WIN), a service of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health, offers the following tips for older adults:

Healthy Eating

• Don’t skip meals. Skipping meals may slow down your metabolism or lead you to eat larger amounts of high-fat foods later in the day. To keep yourself on track, eat with a friend or someone whose company you enjoy.

• Eat just enough for you. Do not eat more food than your body will need. Make sure you are consuming enough vitamin D and vitamin B-12, as many seniors have trouble getting enough of these nutrients. Limit high-fat and high-salt foods. Try to get enough fiber into your diet.

• Prepare meals in advance. Cook ahead, and then freeze meals so that you have easy meals on hand for when you don’t feel like cooking.

Physical Activity

• Start with 10 minutes of slower activity, and build up to 30 minutes of more brisk physical activity.

• Try different types of exercise. Different types of activity benefit your body in different ways. For example, aerobic activity may help you maintain weight and increase your energy, while strength training keeps your muscles and bones strong.

• Be active with family and friends. Having a buddy can help you stay active.

For more information, call WIN at 1-877-946-4627 or visit www.win.niddk.nih.gov and read the free brochure, “Young at Heart: Tips for Older Adults.”

By Denis Faye I like this article from the Team Beachbody newsletter archive.

Is there no luxury on the road to fitness? The Coke and Fritos snacks? Gone. The hours spent on the couch watching Twilight Zone marathons? Finito. The candies, cookies, and ice cream? Done, over, kaput.

But past the sweating and grunting and celery, there is one thing you are allowed. In fact, it’s a luxury you’re actually encouraged to seek out: massage.

The most obvious benefit of massage is stress reduction. It’s a tough world out there. A good rubdown can help both your body and mind face it. Furthermore, the more stressed-out you are, the more likely you are to succumb to illness. An obvious example of this is herpes. While the ailment itself is a virus, the sores are brought on by stress.

But the benefits of massage go even further than that. Over the years, researchers have found massage to be beneficial in treating everything from asthma to post-traumatic stress disorder, back pain to eating disorders, cancer to juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

For athletes, including you Beachbody athletes, the soft-tissue manipulation aspect of massage promotes blood circulation, which, in turn, revitalizes your muscles and leads to faster recovery.

With this in mind, it’s important to remember that massage won’t do you much good immediately after exercise. Your heart’s pumping and your blood’s flowing just fine. It’s not until two to six hours after a workout that a massage benefits you by getting that blood flowing again.

There are hundreds of types of massage, all with different benefits. Probably the best known in the United States is Swedish massage. Its kneading and long strokes move in the same direction as the blood flowing to the heart and have the primary purpose of relaxation through improving oxygen flow in the blood and releasing toxins from the muscles.

Another well-known form of massage is Shiatsu, one of the many Asian acupressure techniques. Shiatsu comes from Japan and literally means “finger pressure.” It’s done by pushing a series of pressure points, similar to acupuncture, to promote chi, or life energy, flow. Although it can benefit muscles, it’s more intended as a healing massage for just about any ailment.

For the more masochistic, there’s deep-tissue massage. As its name indicates, deep-tissue massage is a deeper, slower massage. It works against the grain of muscles to relieve chronic tension.

Similar to deep-tissue work in application, sports massage speeds muscle recovery, and is an excellent treatment for minor injuries such as strains. Every athlete, professional or not, should add this method to their fitness regimen.

Although it’s nice to get a proper massage therapist to work your aching muscles, self-massage is also an excellent tool. While you and I don’t have the expertise of a professional, we certainly know what hurts and what feels good on our own bodies. Rubbing that aching calf for five minutes can go a long way towards recovery. You can use long strokes in the direction of your muscles and also shorter strokes that work across your muscle fibers. Either way, when you actively work your muscles, you create better circulation and speed up the healing process. So next time you’re sitting in front of the boob tube, maybe a savory snack isn’t such a good idea—but giving yourself a much-deserved rub certainly is.