Fit For Life: Back to School

Saturday, August 25, 2018

Matt Espeut, GoLocalProv Health +Lifestyle Contributor

 

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It’s that time of the year for parents to rejoice.

Back to school for the young ones.

You get to see them get excited about new clothes, sneakers, and being back with their friends.

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A couple things that kids don’t care about, but you should is;

1) their nutrition.

2) their training (especially if they play sports)

Realistically, most school lunches are loaded with processed, cheap or extremely poor-quality food, and most kids that play sports, do not get enough organized training to prepare them for their specific activity.

I will give you a few tips on how to combat both dilemmas. first let’s talk nutrition.

Start with a fundamental question:

What will I absolutely not include in their sacks?

This is an important query.

Folks will find their own way, but many of the items advertised for lunch boxes are processed nonfoods masquerading as sustenance.

Look at snacks with cheese and others that claim to be healthy:  It may have “as much calcium as an 8 oz. glass of milk,” but Food manufacturers don’t trumpet the trans fats, artificial dyes and other nasty stuff in the ingredients.

That isn’t the nutrition you want your kids gobbling, so you should not be including anything like this in their menu.

Once we have that framework of what to avoid, then we discuss what we will include.

I ask two questions:

Will it make you proud to feed them these items?

Will they eat them?

I understand the balance between healthy and convenient, flexible and diligent, aware and open. you can pack the world’s healthiest lunch, but it does no good if your kids won’t eat it.

Now that we solved some nutrition issues, let’s talk about athletics.

Think on the pro level.

What do the pro’s do in the offseason...?

They train.

Not only for strength and performance, but for conditioning and injury prevention.

Why treat kids differently??

When an untrained athlete takes the field, they are doubling their chance of injury.

These issues can be solved by implementing a simple training program, so if you want to have your child be competitive, and injury free, include some good nutrition and training to that back to school schedule.

I am in my 6th year of training a high school football team, and my biggest accomplishment isn’t the 2 super bowl berths, and 3 playoff appearances, but the LACK of injuries!!

So just because your kids won’t be with you all day, and you won’t be able to supervise what they eat, you can have a piece of mind by sending them off with healthy options in their lunch boxes.

And if your child is playing a sport, and needs conditioning before the season, visit me at Providence Fit Body Boot Camp.

We have all the tools to prepare them for battle!!

 

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Matt Espeut, GoLocal's Health & Lifestyle Contributor has been a personal trainer and health & fitnesss consultant for over 25 years. He is the owner of Fitness Profiles, a one on one, and small group personal training company, as well as Providence Fit Body Boot Camp, located at 1284 North Main St., on the Providence/Pawtucket line. You can reach Matt at (401) 453-3200; on Facebook at "Matt Espeut", and on Twitter at @MattEspeut. "We’re all in this life together – let’s make it a healthy one.

 

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