FitSugar

Sale Alert: 25 Percent Off at Sports Authority

FitSugar — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 08:00:00 PDT

Time to stock up on new gear. Sports Authority is having their annual Friends and Family Sale. From August 14 - August 17, 2008 you can get 25% off any single item. Just print out the coupon and head to a store near you or enter the code TSAFFAUG when shopping online.

It's the perfect time to get yourself a nice reward for all the hard work you've been doing, or to get ready for back-to-school. I've got my eye on this Polar F6 Heart Rate Monitor ($110). Happy shopping!

Shaquille O'Neal's Mom Opens Up About Education, Sports, and Keeping Kids Motivated

Yahoo Shine — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:02:33 PDT

We're happy to present this article from one of our favorite sites, Yahoo! Shine:

When basketball star Shaquille O'Neal was still a kid, he knew that he had to get good grades before he could to play sports.

"In our home we had a rule: No pass, no play," his mother, Lucille O'Neal, told Yahoo! Shine in an interview. "If you didn't pass the grade, then you weren't allowed to play the extracurricular activity." That dedication to his studies is still strong: On May 5, the four-time world champion and 15-time All Star player earned his doctorate in education from Barry University in Miami. That's earned, mind you, not honorary. According to The Miami Herald, Shaq, 40, spent the past 4 1/2 years working toward a doctoral degree in organizational learning and leadership with a specialization in human resource development, studying before and after NBA games and between segments as a sports analyst on TV.

Keep reading to hear Lucille's advise for parents.

Brad Meltzer Talks About His New Heroes For My Daughter

Rebecca M Gruber — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 03:11:19 PDT

"Where's my book?" In the two years since Brad Meltzer released Heroes For My Son, that's what the New York Times best-selling author has heard over and over from his daughter. Now, just a month before Mother's Day, Brad reaches out to his daughter and mothers everywhere with Heroes For My Daughter.

In his new book, the father of three profiles 56 people who he believes are worthy of the hero title. The collection of biographies and photographs spans Amelia Earhart and Lucille Ball to Mahatma Gandhi and Judy Blume. He's also introducing a line of inspirational clothing pieces featuring caricatures of the heroes. I recently spoke with the author about the new book; here's what he had to say.

LilSugar: Are there any crossovers between the heroes you picked for your son and the ones you have selected for your daughter?
Brad Meltzer: I did 50 brand-new heroes for my daughter. But there were six heroes that I felt were worth repeating from Heroes For My Son - a sort of hall of fame that I felt needed to be there for my daughter: Rosa Parks, Amelia Earhart, Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Lucille Ball. Plus, I again included my mom. C'mon. It's my mom!

LS: What were the criteria you used to make your selections? What did it take for them to "make the cut"?
BM: To pick a hero, it's like the Supreme Court definition of pornography: you know it when you see it. But in the book, there's one thing every hero has in common. They all had to do this: help someone. Some people help thousands of people directly, like Marie Curie or Susan B. Anthony. Others help us by inspiring us, like Amelia Earhart. But you do have to help someone.

It’s the dream that links every single hero I picked for her. As I now often tell my daughter Lila, no matter what stage of life you're in, when you want something - no matter how impossible it seems - you need to fight for it. When you believe in something, fight for it. And when you see injustice, fight harder than you've ever fought before.

Keep reading for more about Brad's picks, including some little-known facts about the heroes.

Could My Post-workout Snack Be Making Me Fat?

Shape — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 04:37:39 PDT

We are pumped to share one of our fave stories from Shape here on FitSugar. This week Shape turns to nutritional consultant Mike Roussell, PhD, for some help!

Q: Could my post-workout snack be making me fat? I've read that chocolate milk is a great post-workout drink, but is that still true if I just took a beginning Zumba class (or did a similar low-intensity workout)?

20 Foods That Can Ruin Your Workout

A: No, your post-workout snack is not making you fat. In fact, quite the opposite. The holy grail of nutrition is to be able to preferentially send the nutrients in your food toward your muscles for energy and repair and not to your fat cells. Exercise is the one thing that can do this. Exercise causes your muscles' cells to actively pull sugar out of your bloodstream and into your muscles with much more fervor than any other time of day.

Find out if chocolate milk makes the best recovery snack after the break!

How to Avoid New Mom Comparisons

BabyCenter — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:00:57 PST

We're excited to share this post from our partners at BabyCenter! Every week, we will be bringing you the best parenting and lifestyle stories from the experts at BabyCenter, including this post from Evonne Lack about avoiding the dangerous trap of competitive parenting.

The comparison game is one new moms know well. Even when we try to avoid the "does your baby do this yet?" questions, it's pretty impossible not to notice when, say, a friend's 5-week-old is smiling and yours isn't. As mom Heather Cianciolo says, "Doesn't every mother compare her kids?"

Blame it on our survival instincts, says Kathy Seal, coauthor of Pressured Parents, Stressed-out Kids: Dealing With Competition While Raising a Successful Child.

"We're hardwired to push our kids to compete. After all, our ancestors' children had to be strong enough to get that last piece of meat or outrun that dangerous animal," Seal says. "It's also natural to want our kids to acquire skills, so we compare for reassurance."

Normal as it is, comparing can be a recipe for stress. It can also prevent us from fully appreciating what our kids are accomplishing. Here are some common comparison traps - and how to sidestep them.

Related: Developmental Milestones

Milestone & Developmental Comparisons
Babies vary widely when it comes to hitting milestones like sitting up, crawling, and walking, which makes this comparison trap a particularly easy one to fall into.

"I remember sitting in music class, watching a 10-month-old demonstrate physical milestones that my 19-month-old was just getting around to. It was hard," says Cianciolo.

As moms, we're encouraged to watch for any development problems or delays and to get help right away with anything we notice. So it's no wonder we're constantly wondering what's normal and what's not.

Sidestep the trap: Research shows that as long as your child is reaching milestones within the normal range, how quickly he reaches them has no bearing on his later skills.

So if your 18-month-old says only one or two words compared to your same-age nephew's dozen, it doesn't mean your child won't eventually gab your ears off.

"Milestone development has very little to do with a child's future potential, so I encourage parents not to worry if their children are late bloomers or seem to be at the outer limits of normal," says Darshak Sanghavi, a pediatrician who's also an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and author of A Map of the Child: A Pediatrician's Tour of the Body. "It's tempting to think that what a child does when he's young is going to control his destiny, but everyday experiences don't bear this out. We can't determine a child's destiny based on what month they started walking," Sanghavi says. Enjoying your child's current skills and tricks can help ground you in the present and prevent you from fretting about the future.

"It's hard to hear my 15-month-old niece saying more than my 2-year-old daughter. But it helps to focus on the special things my daughter does - like when we get ready to read, she gets the blanket and pillow and sets it all up, which really makes my heart melt," says Kim Lybrand.

Finally, remind yourself that while we can certainly help our children learn new things, we can't force them to reach milestones before they're ready. When we attribute our kids' development to our superior parenting skills, it can come back to bite us.

"When others noticed how well my son got around, I felt like we must have done something great to facilitate his excellent gross motor skills," remembers Jennifer Parker. "But then I'd hear other children speak so clearly, while my son wasn't yet talking at all, and I'd feel like such a bad mom."

More on no-competition motherhood after the break.

Run Like a Mother

espnW — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 04:06:07 PST

We are excited to share one of our fave stories from espnW here on FitSugar!

By Dimity McDowell and Sarah Bowen Shea

The Run Like a Mother authors, Dimity McDowell and Sarah Bowen Shea, provide words of wisdom for balancing training and motherhood - minus the guilt.

Running résumé:
McDowell and Shea are co-authors of the book, Run Like a Mother: How to Get Moving and Not Lose Your Family, Job, or Sanity (Andrews McMeel, 2010) and Train Like a Mother: How to Cross Any Finish Line and Not Lose Your Family, Job, or Sanity, which will be released in mid-March.

McDowell has two kids, has finished two marathons and has her eye on an Ironman in 2013, while Shea, mother of three, has crossed seven marathon finish lines and will cross her eighth at the 2012 Boston Marathon in April.

Olympic hopeful Erin Taylor-Talcott readies to race the men

Sage advice:

Don't think, just go. The hardest thing about being a mother runner is finding time to train - and having your running cause as few ripples in the family schedule as possible. Early morning runs are usually easiest, but motivation can be hard to find when the bed is warm and the sky is pitch black. Lay out your clothes and anything else you need - pre-run banana, water, Garmin - the night before, and when the alarm goes off, say to yourself, "Don't think, just go." Then do it. (The same four words also work when it's later in the day and your kids are begging you not to run. Don't think about guilt. We promise: They'll survive the hour or so you're gone.)

Tune into your breathing

Keep on reading for more advice on running.

What You Never Knew About Procrastination and How to Cure It

Emily Co — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:18:24 PST

Some people may wonder why procrastination advice seems to never work for them and if there is a deeper issue at hand. Well, for 20 percent of the population who are chronic procrastinators, it is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, according to Joseph Ferrari, a psychology professor at DePaul University and a leading expert in the study of procrastination. For those 20 percent, telling them to just "do it" is like "telling a clinically depressed person to cheer up," says Ferrari, author of the book Still Procrastinating?.

It's a serious problem if . . .

So how do you know if you're a chronic procrastinator? "You find that you procrastinate at home, at school, at work, in relationships. You don’t pay your bills on time . . . You miss sporting events, concerts because you never got the ticket," says Ferrari. "You’re late for any social gathering, you’ll miss doctor’s appointments because you're never there on time, the refrigerator is empty because you never restock it in time, food goes bad because you never eat it on time. If you do all those kind of things, you probably are a chronic procrastinator."

Read on to find out how people become procrastinators.

Heart Braid Is a Sweet Valentine's Day Hairdo

Rebecca M Gruber — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:35:38 PST

Who needs a sleeve when you can wear your heart on the top of your head! While some tots will be sporting their Valentine's love with their clothes, lil ones with long manes can fashion their hair into the ultimate symbol of love with a heart braid. Cozy Friedman of New York's Cozy's Cuts for Kids and the author of Cozy's Complete Guide to Girls' Hair ($9), shared the sweet holiday look with us. If you know how to create a French braid and have 15 minutes to spare, your child can sport this sweet style. Just follow these step-by-step instructions.

Images Courtesy of: Jennifer Playford and Alexandra Grablewski

5 Surprising Health Benefits of Being a Sports Fan

Prevention — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:19:15 PST

We are excited to share one of our fave stories from Prevention here on FitSugar!

By Cristina Goyanes, Prevention

It’s no wonder your friends aren’t available to hang out on Sundays in the Fall and Winter - according to a 2005 Gallup Poll, 64 percent of Americans claim to be professional football fans, and as of 2010, women make up 44 percent of the NFL fan base.

Being a sports fan doesn’t mean you’re expected to know all the players and stats of your hometown teams and destined for a beer gut - it’s about coming together in the name of good times as part of a community.

“Bonding over sports - the highs and lows of the game - strengthens ties, helps us feel supported, and makes it easier for you to open up about personal things,” says Renee Clauselle, PsyD, who runs a private psychology practice in Long Island, NY.

Seventeen Unexpected Side Effects of Exercise

Rooting for the same team creates an immediate sense of family, says Daniel Wann, PhD, a Murray State University professor who has been studying the psychology of sports fans for over 20 years. “If you identify with a local team, you build an instant connection to others around you,” he says.

Beyond the bonding aspects, watching sports can motivate you to pump up your own workouts - and even burn a few extra calories when you jump, cheer, and clap during the highlights of the game. Find out more ways being a sports fan is a winning situation for your health.

Keep reading to learn how being a sports fan benefits your health.

How to Get Your Metabolism Moving

Health — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 03:03:06 PST

We are pumped to share one of our favorite stories from Health.com here on our site.

Does your metabolism grind to a halt after 35? Can certain foods rev it up? Answers ahead — and they're good.
By Paige Greenfield

Here's something to feel good about: your body is a calorie-burning machine. You'll even torch a few while reading this article. The point is, every single thing you do — from breathing to eating to sleeping — uses energy. The number of calories it would take just to lie in bed all day is called your resting metabolic rate. And just like your curly hair or warm personality, yours is unique.

"There are so many factors that determine your metabolic rate," says Janet Rankin, PhD, professor of human nutrition, foods, and exercise at Virginia Tech. Among them: your height and weight (bigger people burn more calories), your gender (women have slower metabolisms than men), your age (your metabolic rate declines as you get older), how much muscle or fat you have (muscle burns more calories than fat does), and your DNA.

Health.com: Little Ways to Lose Big Pounds

Although you can't rewire your double helix or switch back the clock, there's still plenty you can do to be a fast burner, Rankin says. All you need to do is remember these four research-backed truths.

Cardio Revs Your Metabolism For Hours Afterward
Resistance training often hogs the metab-boosting spotlight. It's no wonder, since a pound of muscle at rest fries three times as many calories as a pound of fat. However, cardio is every bit as crucial for keeping your metabolism humming.

New research explains why: In a study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, people pedaled a stationary bike as hard as they could for 47 minutes.
The finding: They slashed 190 calories above their resting metabolic rate for 14 hours after their workout. Add that to the 519 calories, on average, the cyclists scorched from the workout itself, and that's one heck of a sweat session.

"If you do just two to three vigorous bouts of exercise per week for 45 minutes, you could lose a pound of fat every two weeks from the combination of calories expended during exercise plus what you burn afterward," says study author David Nieman, PhD, a professor of exercise science at Appalachian State University.

So how can you tell if you're pushing hard enough? Any sweat-inducing activity you can sustain for 45 minutes will do the trick.

More useful tips after the break.