Start Your Preschooler Off Right - Provide Healthy Snacks

Everyone loves to snack, but for youngsters, snacking plays an important role to overall nutrition intake.

Small tummies cannot consume large amounts of food as adult stomachs can. Children need to have small frequent meals and snacks in order to get the proper calories and nutrients that they need.

For this reason, it is important to provide at least two healthy snacks to children every day, in addition to three balanced meals. Be thoughtful of the snack choices you provide since these snacks will provide a large portion of the childs total daily nutritional intake. Snacks can be simple and nutritious. Sometimes parents think they do not have time to offer healthy snacks. Snacks can be simple and nutritious. Use the guidelines here to get off to a good start.

GUIDELINES TO HEALTHY, NO STRESS SNACKS:
Limit sweet snacks such as cupcakes, cookies, gummy snacks, or snack cakes to birthdays only. If you do want to provide a sugary snack, do so in the afternoon. Children receive nearly 70% of their nutrition by lunchtime, so we need to take advantage of morning snack time and make it nutritious.
Dont think it always has to be homemade. Young children enjoy simple snacks. Many packaged products are okay, such as low fat wheat crackers, animal crackers, graham crackers, and dry cereal.
If you do have time and desire to bake, small baked muffins, such as blueberry or banana, are usually a hit. Again, add a serving of fruit on the side.Use the five food groups to plan snacks. The Milk Group, Bread/Starch Group, the Fruit Group and Vegetable Group are basics for snack building.
When planning snacks think: one choice from the Bread Group and one choice from the Fruit or Vegetable Group. Add a beverage and you are set.
Remember to provide low fat milk as your snack beverage. Low fat chocolate milk is fine too. Fruit juice is okay, but try to provide juice that is 100% fruit juice. Milk still provides superior nutrition over juice for growing bones. Milk also provides protein.
When you have time, slice apples- children will often eat bite-size fruit over whole. Offer what the child prefers.
Dont worry that my kid wont like this. Chances are, if they dont like the fruit choice, they will like the starch choice instead. Research shows that it takes up to twelve exposures for a child to even try a new food. It is our responsibility as parents and educators to expose children to a variety of foods; it is the childs responsibility to eat them. Do not force a child to eat, theyll try it when they are ready.
Yogurt tubes or small cups of low fat fruit yogurt, while a bit high in sugar, still provide a simple nutritious snack alternative for children.

SNACK COMBINATIONS:
1. Bite-size Graham Crackers, bowl of grapes, low fat milk
2. Mini bagels, cream cheese and margarine or peanut butter to spread on, low fat milk
3. Small apple muffins, low fat milk, fresh strawberries (2-3 per child is enough)
4. Small Wheat crackers, chunks of milk cheddar cheese, cranapple Juice
5. Sandwich-type cheese crackers, apple slices, Grape juice
6. Honey wheat pretzel sticks, raisins, low fat milk.

These snack ideas will not only provide a healthy option for your preschool child, but are good choices that the whole family can enjoy. By planning healthy snacks for your children, you will be getting them off to a good start. In addition, your childs school will thank you for your cooperative spirit and helping to provide a safe and healthy environment for your children!

(c) 2007 Rosanne Rust

Rosanne Rust, MS, RD, LDN
Registered Dietitian
Nutrition Consulting, Writing, Lectures
Licensed Provider for Real Living Nutrition Services

Tired of dieting?
Try a new approach to weight management:
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Persistence - The Secret to Success

If you refuse to quit - you will succeed. We have all heard this basic advice that persistence is your key to success and making your dreams come true. It is your ability to remain committed to your goals, dreams, and aspirations despite many obstacles along the way. Persistence involves applying steady effort to your goals in spite of any difficulty or discouragement.

Putting a continuous effort toward your goals is very important. However, when you are pursuing big goals, like losing weight, overcoming emotional or stress eating, or moving beyond depression or sadness, it can be easy to feel like giving up. Your path to success may seem quite long and even overwhelming at times. We all hate to hear it, but there is no super-easy path to triumph. However, by learning how to strengthen your ability to persist, you can achieve great success.

Consider the idea that perseverance is not something that you are born with, but a skill that you can nurture and develop. To help you develop a solid life-changing decision to keep going no matter what until get you to your goal, follow the tried-and-true tips below.

The Big Picture
Changing your weight or eating habits, learning to cope with emotions or stress, or overcoming depression is a decision that requires you rearrange your life in a major way. The first action step you can take is to develop a long-term vision of how you want to live your life and the large-scale goals that you want to achieve. Write your overall goal down and fill in the details, draw your concept on paper, or create a visual picture board of you living your dream. Taking these actions will develop the potential and possibility of your new life. Encourage your new potential to grow by feeling yourself already living this wonderful new life. Each time you come back to your big picture, you strengthen the bond between you and the potential of your new life. While your potential may grow and evolve, it is essentially unchanging. As such, it serves to keep you anchored to a solid foundation for success, no matter what obstacles you encounter along your journey.

The Little Picture
To turn your big picture ideas into physical reality, it is necessary that you break down your vision into smaller, achievable, daily action steps. Chunking down your overall goal into doable activities helps prevent the feeling of overwhelm or hopelessness. It also moves you beyond wishful thinking. While your big picture goal remains solid and unchanging, revise your daily action steps regularly to meet your changing needs.

Take Action
Decide to take action every single day. This keeps your attention and energy focused on your goal, places your needs and desires on the top of your daily priority list, and allows motivation to expand. If your level of persistence is low, choose any small, doable action that comes to mind. Pick something easy that will allow you to feel successful immediately. When you choose a doable action, follow through, and achieve success, you feel good. When you feel good, you are more likely to stay motivated and keep going. If you cannot think of where to start, step back and review your big picture. Taking action includes simple, yet highly effective strategies like envisioning yourself successful in your goal, giving yourself an encouraging pep talk, or writing down all the reasons your dream is important to you.

Be Flexible
When some plan or action does not work, be prepared to adjust your course. Stay committed to your original destination, but experiment with finding a new way to get to where you wanted to go. Perhaps one path turned out to be a dead end, but look around and see if there is another path. Be flexible and try new techniques and strategies to get where you want to go.

Focus on Your Accomplishments
Keep a checklist of all the successful, wonderful things you did today. Learning to focus on your efforts and accomplishments gets you where you are going. Chart your achievements. If you do not have a tracking process, you cannot see how far you have come. And if you can't see that you are making progress, you are more likely to quit. Develop daily success lists to keep you motivated. The more monitoring you do and feedback you give yourself, the more successful you will be.

Celebrate
Celebrate your achievements often. If you wait to celebrate until you have done it all, you may never get there.

One Day at a Time
What is one thing you can do here and now that will move you one step closer to your goal? Start from exactly where you are in this moment and be willing to take one step at a time. I once found a humorous quote from a "Deep Thoughts" greeting card that reads, "If you ever teach a yodeling class, probably the hardest thing is to keep the students from just trying to yodel right off. You see, we build to that." It is human nature to want instant results. However, your success is a journey. Gain strength from your big picture, and bring that strength into an action that helps build your persistence. What is one action that you can take in this now moment that will keep you on track and moving forward? You don't have jump off a cliff or make a super-human effort. Instead, be willing to be exactly where you are right now, and take the action that is right for right now.

Think of persistence as a muscle that needs training. The next time you hear that little voice in your head saying, "I give up" just remember that that one more try coupled with the actions above might just be enough for you to achieve the success you want and deserve!

Dr. Annette Colby, RD can help you take the pain out of life, turn difficult emotions into joy, release stress, end emotional eating, and move beyond depression into an extraordinary life! Annette is the author of Your Highest Potential and has the unique ability to show you how to spark an amazing relationship with your life! Visit www.LovingMiracles.com to access hundreds of content filled articles and sign up for a Free subscription to Loving Miracles! newsletter.

You Might be Throwing Money Away!

Did you know that some laser printer cartridges are worth over $20.00 each? Many people are throwing money down the drain. I'll tell you how you can make money or even start a part or full time business. The cartridge remanufacturing business is growing by leaps and bounds. There are now Franchises setting up businesses across the US By the thousands. Empty ink and toner cartridges are in high demand and the demand is growing rapidly even some of the small ink cartridge empties are selling for $6.00. Some empty toner cartridges are worth over $20.00. There are companies that specialize in buying empty toner cartridges. You can easily find them by doing a search on Goggle or any Search Engine. Just type in Cartridge recyclers and several will show up. Some of the companies will even give you a business plan and tell you the best methods for collecting the empties. Typically they will buy in small or large quantities. Sign up is free and they will have a price list that you can print out. This is one business that you can start with virtually no money.

Not all cartridges are suitable for recycling. Type one has the print head built into the cartridge this is the one to collect as they are the expensive ones suitable for recycling .You can tell these by the brass colored electronics on the back of the cartridge and the brass colored print head Type two is just a plastic container with a sponge in it. Ink is injected into the sponge these are very inexpensive to produce and several companies make compatible cartridges that is very inexpensive. Hewlett Packard and Lexmark are the main one that you will need to find. Lexmark makes many printers for other companies like Compaq and Xerox for example. So these are the good ones also The ones to ignore are Epsons, Brothers, most Canons and some Xerox cartridges. I have found one company that takes Epson's.

So far we have been talking mostly about ink cartridges. There's probably more money to be made in recycling the toner cartridges. These are the cartridges used in laser printers and many businesses use as well as some home printers almost all of these are recyclable. You can get a list from the company you sign up with. You can companioned with a recycling company to stockpile and recycle empty printer inkjet cartridges, and empty toner cartridges from laser printers and copiers. For every empty cartridge that is sent, you will receive you payment and usually All shipping supplies and fees are pre-paid by the recycling company so there is no cost to you.

Nearly a million "empties" are thrown away in the United States every day, so they shouldn't be hard to find. Don't hesitate to be creative! Here are a few examples of how some people have gotten involved. A member in Ohio ordered a tabletop baggie aerosol dispenser and printed several of them She made a small display in the waiting room of her dentist's office promoting awareness and support . A family in New Jersey has been gathering empty toner cartridges and inkjets from the local school district. There are several buildings in the district and they all use printers and copiers. They collect the empties every week or so from the schools and send them in. To date, they have gathered and shipped ended 1,000 empties! Several people have taken collection boxes to their work place. Generally, people are very supportive of the recycling effort and are excited to participate. Why recycle cartridges? Recycling unceasingly large amounts of plastics outof landfills. Every year over 300 million cartridges are thrown away. This means for year-end cartridge, about 2.5 pounds of plastic is thrown into a landfill. It will never go away!

Recycling saves natural resources. To imagine a single new laser cartridge, over 3 quarts of oil are used. In contrast, a recycled cartridge only requires 1 quart of oil to be able to be reused. Recycling saves two quarts of oil per cartridge. This year alone, toner cartridge remanufacturing will save over eleven million (11,000,000) gallons of oil.

Richard Sherland http://www.economyinkjets.com

Richard Sherland has been in the ink cartridge business six years and owns http://www.economyinkjets.com