That's Fit

Here are some "kick butt" tips for keeping fit, active and regret free on the Fourth of July from KickYourButtIntoGear.com. As KickYourButtIntoGear.com is owned and managed by a fellow expert in the field of fitness, Exercise Physiologist, Tracy Benham ... the tips are awesome advice for you and you family to adhere to!

• Sports and summertime go together. Plan an activity early in the day. Play baseball, touch football; go to the local pool or beach.
• Get outside early and see if you can think of and do more than four activities before four o'clock to celebrate the Fourth.
• Eat a bowl of fruit before you head for the barbecue goodies. Tons of fruits are in season. Make a Fourth of July fruit cocktail. Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries...
• Use a plate. You will be less tempted to mindlessly snack.
• Skip the cheese and the Mayo on your burger and load up on lettuce tomatoes, pickles, onions and relish.
• Alternate cocktails and other caloric beverages with a glass of water. Or ... just avoid the high calorie beverages all together!

Looking to pump up your protein intake but aren't exactly thrilled with the idea of eating canned tuna? Fear not, you chicken of the sea -- there are plenty of much tastier foods out there that offer a heaping helping of this macronutrient.

The current issue of Maximum Fitness magazine serves up these fine alternatives to the usual protein suspects:

Beans. Score a solid 18g of protein from a cup of kidney beans, which take only a few minutes to cook up in a saucepan or microwave.

Eggs. Large eggs contain about 6.5g of protein each. Not a whole bunch, but most people don't just eat a single egg. It doesn't take a degree in advanced mathamatics to figure out that a hearty egg breakfast can hook you up with a healthy dose of pro.

Sounds impossible, doesn't it? Who in the world ever thought of going to Disney and eating healthy? Crazy talk, right? Wrong! Your loving online Fitzness Expert (me) who has extremely high standards on what I put in both my children's mouth and my own can spend a day at the Magic Kingdom or EPCOT and eat as well as I would in my own home. Disney has made grand efforts to improve the healthfulness of the foods they offer, and has even gone overboard with an abundance of fresh fruit stands located throughout each theme park.

I just spent a week at Walt Disney World in Florida and returned home half a pound less than I was the day before vacation. Want to eat right while enjoying the magic with Mickey Mouse? Read on.

• Mickey makes mealtime easy on the fitness fan. Every restaurant I ventured through offered several menu options based on lean grilled meat, veggies, and/or fruit. Even the children's meals come standard with side items like: grapes, carrot sticks, and unsweetened applesauce. They also come with bottled water or skim milk. Sweet! Parents would have to go out of their way to substitute french fries and soda for their children instead of the healthy stuff. Eww! You the fitness fan, certainly wouldn't do that!
• Sit down dining restaurants offer Egg Beaters cooked without oil in lieu of regular scrambled eggs. I enjoyed this perk while dining with Minnie and Goofy at Disney's Yacht Club Resort.
• Resort dining facilities offer endless refrigerators full of fresh fruit, veggies, yogurt, dried fruit, nutritious snack bars and more.
• Seek out healthier desserts. Anywhere they are served, Disney has made efforts to make reduced fat, low sugar or fresh fruit treats available.

As I've been leading you through the paces of enjoying the best Walt Disney World has to offer, without trashing your health and fitness habits, this is one of the easiest days to master. On our second day of vacation we headed to the holy land of wholesome family fun, The Magic Kingdom. Ahhh yes! This is the place where children squeal, Mommies well up with tears of joy on a regular basis, and Daddies shout like kids themselves on the roller coasters. It's also a place where every last visitor is likely to do a ton of physical work. In fact ... read on and you'll learn exactly how many calories we burned during this day. It's insane!

So! Our day consisted of pushing the kids in the double stroller, then watching the castle show. Did I mention each of my children weigh almost 40 pounds? Then we pushed the kids in the double stroller some more, and rode some rides in Fantasyland. In fact, before we even stopped for lunch, we pushed the double stroller again and rode rides in: Fantasyland, Tommorowland, back to Fantastyland, Mickey's Toontown Fair, Adventureland, back to Tommorowland and finally landed back in Adventureland for lunch. Then we ran circles in the water squirters at both Ariel's Grotto and Pooh's Corner to cool off for about an hour. The latter half of the day resembled the first half, except it seemed even busier.

I'll admit it, I don't like cooking. While I'm not bad at it, I'm just not a creative cook and I can think of any number of other things I'd rather be doing. When it comes to chicken, I'm even less creative. I have a few variations and recipes that are yummy, but most of the time I marinade a boneless, skinless chicken breast and bake it. Boring, boring, boring.

Women's Health has a great article with 50 ways to cook chicken breast. Best of all, each recipe uses pretty basic ingredients and none of them take longer than 25 minutes. They sound like winners to me! Check out the gallery to see some of my favorite ideas from the article.

Not being much of a chef, I generally eat baked chicken breast and vegetables almost every night for dinner. Sometimes I'll go a little nuts and include a side of brown rice. Watch out, Emeril!! Generally speaking, everything eventually ends up in the oven, and because I'm also not much of a maid, I try to make clean-up as easy as possible by cooking my meal in aluminum foil.

And so it went in this fashion for quite some time; that is, until I just yesterday came across a study from Ondokuz Mayis University in Turkey, highlighting the danger involved with cooking food in aluminum foil.

Researchers found that baking meat in foil increases its aluminum content by 378 percent. What's more, when other, more acidic foods are also cooked -- such as certain types of vegetables -- causes an even greater degree of corrosion.

Suddenly I don't feel like chicken tonight.

Now that you're so diligently participating in America Takes It Off (you are, aren't you?), you're probably considering healthier dining options. And what's healthier than a salad? Salads are filled with low-cal veggies and they're usually low in carbs and fat. There's only one problem though -- while most of the ingredients in a salad are healthy, there's one important one that usually not: The dressing.

But will salads really do that much damage to your diet? They very well could if you don't choose wisely. Let's put our diet detective skills to work and figure out the facts on one of my favourite salads: The Chicken Caesar Salad.

What do you think?

I was so disappointed when I first learned what the true definition of "free range" was. I was comfy and secure in my naivete thinking that the chicken I was buying was at least treated ethically while it was alive. But, alas, that's not necessarily the case. And, with the videos that have hit the Internet in recent months, we know that ethical treatment of cows is not necessarily the case, either.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has long promoted vegetarianism. But now, they're offering a $1 million prize to the first person to make in vitro chicken meat and sell it to the public. According to PETA, more than 40 million animals are killed inhumanely each year in the US. In vitro meat production would use animal stem cells to grow an edible meat product without ever having a living animal. A truly humane solution for hard-core carnivores.

Here at That's Fit, we're forever grateful for the service, courage and sacrifice made by the heroic men and women who serve as military, law enforcement officers, and firefighters. We're so grateful, that we'd like to dedicate some features to both showing our heroes off, and learning a little bit in the process as well. If you serve your country courageously, are a veteran or know someone who does, please return this form completed to Fitz along with a photo and we'll share your story with the world.

Name: Erik J. Fritz

Age: 19

Occupation: Bulk Fuel Specialist at the Marine Corps and Navy Reserves Unit

If you're in the military...where are you? Green Bay, WI,

How often do you exercise? Almost every day

What type of exercise do you do? Running outside and on the treadmill, lifting weights, and a lot of push-ups.

What gets you to workout, even when you're feeling lazy? Knowing that I have to stay in good shape to pass my PT.

If you love the worst of Italian, which is the creamy fatty white stuff...I'm going to be your new best friend. This is a recipe I discovered a really long time ago at a time when I was desperate to have some alfredo in my life...while still trying to stay slim. Often those to desires clash and crash.

Visit page 3 of my recipe section at Fitzness.com and give this dish a try. If you want to go super healthy and cut a bunch more calories, ditch the pasta all together. Usually I enjoy my almost fat free alfredo sauce over grilled chicken or steamed vegetables. That combination provides the magnificent tast of alfredo with actual nutrition. Hard to beat. Enjoy!

Chicken is usually thought to be one of the healthier options out there. And there are many ways to eat chicken, but the general rule of thumb is this: as long as it's a lean cut (such as the breast), you eat it without skin, and it's not breaded or deep fried (or both), your chicken is healthy. But this isn't necessarily true in all cases.

Consider, for instance, a meal that was--in my family anyway--a standby for evenings when my parents were running late at work: Chicken pot pie. They're easy to make (just pop in the oven and voila!), they contain veggies and they are tasty enough to satisfy a discerning child's tastes. Plus, they just seem wholesome, the kind of meal you would associate with non-dysfunctional families who chat amicably over the dining room table.

Wholesome, yes. But healthy? That's another question all together.

Fitzness Fiends is a section devoted to you, the reader! We all have learned so much on our path to becoming more fit, and now it's time to learn from and inspire each other! Fitzness Fiends are constantly working to better themselves. Some are perfect, some are not. All have health on the mind. Please send Fitz your answers to these questions with a photo of yourself. Time for you to be the motivator!

Name: Barbara Tripp

Age: 41

Occupation: Dental Office Manager & single mom

How often do you exercise? Five times per week.

What type of exercise do you do? Aerobics, walking, jogging, hiking, bike riding, weight lifting, and most recently added to my routine, yoga. I love it!

Although the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicated to chicken giant Tyson Foods over the summer that it could begin using "raised without antibiotics" on its products, the federal agency has now reversed that position.

Apparently, the USDA did not catch the inclusion of a very specific item it classifies as an antibiotic, although Tyson indicated that the FDA does not classify the substance -- ionophores-- that way.

Tyson will now probably have to scramble to remove these labels from possibly millions of fresh chicken products. Why the USDA and the FDA disagree on the classification of ionophores seems odd, but hey -- it's the federal government, right?

I was alerted to this article, The Meat We Eat, from this post on our sister blog, Parentdish, and like Kristin, I haven't been able to get it out of my mind. Does the idea of animals spending their entire lives inside a shed, never seeing the light and of day and being injected with antibiotics to prevent the spread of disease appeal to you? Because that's where those cheap supermarket cuts of meat probably come from. Although it's hard to know just where your meat comes from -- unlike past generations, when meat was bought from a butcher who knew the rancher by name.

The point is, it's worth it to buy organic, free-range meats -- that is, if knowing that the animal your eating lived off the earth like it was supposed to is important to you. Otherwise, you don't know what you're getting, and you can bet it didn't come from a naturally healthy animal. And after all, we are what we eat, right?

I don't usually buy organic meats. In fact, I don't usually buy meats at all, but if I do, the budget usually wins out and I go for the non-organic stuff to save money. What about you? Do you eat organic meats?

I'm always on the lookout for healthy restaurant menu items. And while it takes quite a hunt to locate a safe bet, I'm slowly arriving at a few good picks. One of them -- a Low Fat Chicken Noodle Soup -- comes from Panera Bread.

One eight-ounce serving of this scrumptious soup comes with 100 calories and two grams of fat, neither of which fall into the saturated or trans fat categories. Complete with 15 mg of cholesterol, 15 grams of carbohydrates, one gram of fiber, one gram of sugar, five grams of protein, and 1080 mg of sodium -- here's the trade-off -- this soup gets a thumbs up by me.

Accompanied by a French baguette that pumps all these details up a bit, this soup is a yummy fare. And now that I've scoured the Panera menu, I know it's just about the healthiest option at this establishment. There's also lots of other good stuff. When I say good, I mean loaded with, at minimum, lots of fat -- The Fuji Apple Chicken salad (sounds healthy) has 570 calories and 30 grams of fat. But for those looking for a trimmed-down selection, the soup is it.

Bon Appetit!