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What’s in it for Me?
Calorie In, Calorie Out, Repeat
Starting Over: Learning How to Eat
Defensive Linemen - Grains
Linebackers – Vegetables and Fruits
Defensive Backs – “Milks and Meats”
The Safety – “Oils”
Getting in Formation
For some odd reason, a particular lecture in my Psychology 101 class in college still stands out in my brain. It was about the “Hierarchy of Human Needs” from physiological (basic human functions) to self-actualization (the desire for maximum fulfillment). Sounds complicated, but it really couldn’t be simpler.
Some dead guy (okay, it was Abraham Maslow) developed a theory that roughly these needs were important to humans in this specific order: breathing, food and water, sleep, personal safety, love and belonging, self-esteem and confidence, creativity, and maximum self-fulfillment.
So, the theory goes, if you can’t breathe, you’re not going to be able to eat or drink. If you can’t eat or drink, you won’t be able to sleep. If you never sleep, you’re not going to feel safe and secure. If you can’t feel safe, you can’t experience love and belonging. If you can’t experience love and belonging, you can’t have self-esteem and confidence. If you don’t have self-esteem and confidence, you can’t be self-fulfilled. Three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree!
The point is - your physical health (breathing, eating, drinking, sleeping) is the foundation of everything else. If you aren’t healthy, you can’t fully enjoy the other parts of life.
Okay, you say, but I’m not really striving for self-actualization, I just want to live a good, long, happy life. Perfect. Paying attention to diet and exercise will give you the best chance to live that good, long, happy life.
Being overweight puts excess stress on your body and can increase your risk of developing (believe it or not) cancer, diabetes, gallbladder disease, heart disease, high blood pressure, respiratory problems, osteoarthritis, asthma, bladder control problems, depression, gout, menstrual irregularities, pregnancy complications, stroke, emotional suffering, and the biggest of the biggies – premature death.
To put Maslow’s theory in a football example, pretend you are at the Superbowl. Your team has a comfortable lead in the fourth quarter and your defense just sacked the opposing team’s quarterback on fourth and goal. Life is perfect, right? Now imagine the same situation but you are there because the Make A Wish Foundation brought you as you were dying of diabetes, gout, high blood pressure, and you have bladder control problems. Not quite the same, eh?
Okay, we are guilty of “piling on” to make a point, but the underlying truth is that you can live longer and get more out of life and feel better about yourself if you have good health.
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Some people who play Fantasy Healthball may already be physically fit and just want to stay motivated by competing against the pros. The majority will be overweight. Since all bodies are different, your health care provider is the best person to advise you if you are overweight and on how much weight to lose.
For a general rule of thumb, the following is a table of healthy weight ranges from the “Report of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2005.”
As we have said, we are not doctors, nor do we play one on TV. Make sure you do yourself a favor and consult with your health care provider before starting ANY new diet or exercise program, especially if you are particularly at risk for health problems. You may also want to see a nutritionist.
With that said, we will offer you some facts and some of our opinions and strategies about diet and nutrition. Much of this stuff is just plain old common sense and not complicated. For example, to lose weight, you have to think about calories you are taking in versus calories that you are burning (see Exercise).
That’s about as complicated as an episode of Three’s Company.
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Dieting in our culture often implies starving yourself. Eating right isn’t about starving yourself. You don’t want to do something unhealthy for your body (starving it) in an attempt to make it healthy. It just doesn’t make logical sense. We think starving yourself is an over-reaction to the desire to lose weight. It makes about as much sense as not exercising for a year and then running a marathon to make up for it. You want moderation and good choices over the long run, not intermittent over-reactions.
Starving yourself to lose weight is like treating your body like the enemy. It is like you are punishing your body for the poor choices your mind has made! Or like being mad at the official for throwing the flag after your blatant late hit out of bounds. The point is, there is a better way, and that way is to be smart about your choices in the first place - to eat when you are hungry, but to eat smart.
Learning how to eat smart starts with the food pyramid. We love the concept of the food pyramid because it is simple, and we love simple. Though conceived earlier, it was released formally in 1992 by the US Department of Agriculture.
This food pyramid attempted to illustrate proportion (notice the “Bread, Cereal, Rice & Pasta Group” at 6-11 servings is shown much larger than the “Milk, Yogurt & Cheese Group” at 2-3 servings per day), variety, and healthy food choices and was studied in classrooms across the country.
In 2005, the food pyramid got a face-lift. Its new look emphasizes exercise (hard to miss the person running up the steps of the pyramid!) and different dietary needs.
The current pyramid:
The different sizes of the colored bands are intended to show the proportion of food from each food group. Orange is for grains (still the largest proportion), green is for vegetables, red is for fruits, blue is for milk products, purple is for meat and beans, and yellow is for oils (note it is the smallest band). To demonstrate that “one size does not fit all,” this new pyramid comes in 12 different variations depending on how many calories you need and how active you are! The website (www.mypyramid.gov) requests your age, sex, weight, height, and level of physical activity and then provides the pyramid that is suited for you.
But this is Fantasy Healthball. A bunch of colored bands doesn’t really excite us. We’re not going to use the 1992 version or the 2005 version in the way Uncle Sam presents it. We live and breathe football! So, we introduce to you something even better, the Fantasy Healthball “Food Formation.” It is a way to keep track of the foods you eat by thinking of them loosely tied to a standard defensive football formation.
The Fantasy Healthball Food Formation is your defense against poor food choices and unhealthy eating. So get out those oversized D’s and those white picket fences…DEEEEE-FENSE!!
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Okay, the base of your defensive formation is your linemen. Where it all starts. Think Fearsome Foursome. Steel Curtain. You got no linemen, you got no defense. They outnumber the other defenders. Noseguard, tackles, ends. In the Fantasy Healthball Food Formation, these are the grains a.k.a. the “Bread, Cereal, Rice, and Pasta Group.” You need more of these than other types of foods. They are going to be your base.
Examples of this group are whole-wheat bread, whole-grain cereal, crackers, bagels, muffins, cornbread, brown rice, corn tortillas, flour tortillas, pretzels, popcorn, and pasta. For each of these items, you can find healthy and unhealthy versions. There are whole-grain bran muffins and then there are chocolate chunk muffins. There is natural, air-popped popcorn and then there is popcorn with movie theater style butter and salt. Which kind is in your pantry right now?
So you need to think about the food group, but also not forget that nutrition label to tell what is really in it.
So exactly how many servings from the “grains” group do you need in one day? That is a little like asking how many defensive linemen you need. It depends! As a general guideline, the 1992 pyramid recommended six to eleven servings per day with the lower end for very inactive females and the high end for very active males. Serving size examples include: a slice of bread, a half muffin, a few large crackers, a half cup of cooked rice or pasta, an ounce of cereal.
The 2005 pyramid tries to simplify a bit by counting all grains in ounces. It gives a recommended range of between 5-8 ounces a day for adults who don’t get a lot of exercise, with half of those whole grains, with a slight variation for age, sex, and level of physical activity. An “ounce” is defined similarly to how a “serving” was defined in the 1992 pyramid – as a slice of bread, a half muffin, 3 cups popped popcorn, a small tortilla, a half cup of cooked rice, pasta, oatmeal, etc.
You can see how different body sizes makes something like “serving sizes” kind of an inexact science. For grains, 5-8 ounces a day probably makes sense for most people, with a bit more for those that are very active. The point really isn’t so much about the exact number of servings, as much as it is about the proportion of this group in relation to the others. Whole grains should be your base.
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The next group is your linebackers. Everyone knows the importance of linebackers. Jack Lambert, Dick Butkus, Mike Singletary, Lawrence Taylor, Ray Lewis. Along with the linemen, the linebackers are the foundation of your defense. They are your heavy hitters. In our Fantasy Healthball Food Formation, these are the vegetable group and the fruit group. Your body needs a lot of these. Like linebackers, these are packed with power and energy you need to be successful.
Vegetables and fruits have vitamins, minerals, and fiber and luckily they are found almost anywhere. There are so many, you could probably go to a good produce market and fill your cart with fruits and vegetables you have never tried before. We think you should try them all and focus on your favorites.
Some of our favorite fruits are oranges, cantaloupe, honeydew, pear-apples, blueberries, cherries, grapes, and mangos. We often stash unsweetened, dried papaya spears or dried pineapple in our desks or backpacks as a snack.
Vegetables get a bad rap because they are what your parents made you finish before you could have the cupcake or ice cream. Many a sentence has started with, “Finish your vegetables, and then you can…” But vegetables are our friends. We think of them as an “anti-cancer food.” Make vegetables a best buddy.
Veggies got your back, while say a chocolate donut is just going to stab you in the back!
So exactly how many servings of fruits and vegetables do you need in one day? As a general guideline, the 1992 pyramid recommended 3-5 servings per day of veggies and 2-4 servings of fruit. The 2005 pyramid varies the number based on age, sex, and level of physical activity and puts it in terms of cups. Generally, it recommends 2-3 cups of veggies and about 2 cups of fruit for adults who don’t get a lot of exercise.
Examples of a cup of veggies include: two medium carrots, a cup of chopped broccoli, a medium sized baked potato, two large celery stalks, a large tomato, and two cups of raw leafy greens. Examples of a cup of fruit include: an apple, a large banana, 32 seedless grapes, a large orange, a large peach, a medium pear, two large plums, eight large strawberries, a small wedge of watermelon.
As you can see, getting enough fruits and vegetables takes a little bit of forethought! An example of a day’s worth of servings for an average adult (that doesn’t get a lot of exercise) is: two carrots, a large salad with a good amount of tomatoes and cucumbers, a large banana, and a couple large plums. Not too hard to eat if spread out over a day.
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Behind the linebackers are the defensive backs. There are fewer of these because you expect your linemen and linebackers to make most of the tackles. The defensive backs in the Food Formation represent the “Milks and Meats” or more precisely the “Milk, Yogurt, and Cheese Group and the “Meat, Poultry, Fish, Dry Beans, Eggs, and Nuts Group.”
Make no mistake; the defensive backs are very important players. They are crucial to the success of the team, just as their food group counterparts are crucial to your health. But there are fewer of them and they tend to play deeper. If you coach football and your defensive backs are making the majority of your tackles, you likely have a problem. It means the other team is routinely making it past your linemen and linebackers.
In the same way, if you are eating mostly from these groups, you are missing out on what should be your foundation: the grains and the fruits and veggies. It takes all of the players playing their specific role well to make a successful defense. And it takes all the foods in their specific roles to make a healthy diet.
The “Meat, Poultry, Fish, Dry Beans, Eggs, and Nuts” group contain foods that are generally high in proteins, vitamins, and minerals. Be careful to select the leanest cuts of meat and go for the skinless turkey or chicken breast. Our favorites in this category also include black beans, shrimp, crab, peanuts (especially with a cool beverage at a football stadium), and peanut butter. You do have to keep an eye on fat content though.
How much? Of course, it varies. The 1992 pyramid recommended 2-3 servings per day of the “milks” and 2-3 servings of the “meats.” The 2005 pyramid puts the “milks” in terms of cups and recommends about three cups a day. It puts the “meats” in terms of ounces and recommends about 5-6 ounces a day for adults who don’t get a lot of exercise.
Examples of a cup of “milks” include, well, a cup of milk. Also: a regular (8 oz.) container of yogurt, 1/3 cup shredded cheese, 2 cups of cottage cheese, a cup of frozen yogurt, and one and a half ounces of cheddar, Swiss, mozzarella, or parmesan.
Examples of an ounce of “meats” include: an ounce of cooked beef, pork, ham, chicken, turkey, or fish. For reference, a small lean hamburger or steak is about 3-4 ounces as is a can of tuna or a small trout. A small chicken breast half is about 3 ounces. As you can see, it doesn’t take much before you hit your recommended daily servings of meats.
Other examples of an equivalent of an ounce of “meats” include: one egg, 12 almonds, 24 pistachios, 7 walnut halves, a ½ ounce of seeds, a tablespoon of peanut butter, a quarter cup of cook beans or peas, a quarter cup of tofu, and two tablespoons of hummus (yum!).
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The last player in the Food Formation is the safety. The safety, for us, is the “Fats, Oils, and Sweets” group. A football coach wants to use the safety sparingly. The safety can make an occasional tackle when necessary, but that usually means the ball carrier has made it past the linemen, linebackers, and other defensive backs. Just as you want your safety to make tackles occasionally, you want to eat from this food group occasionally. You do need some of these foods, you just need a lot less than the other groups. Remember, safety = sparingly.
Examples here include butter, mayo, cream, salad dressing, candy, jelly, frosting, lard, and margarine.
Oils are just fats that are liquid at room temperature. Solid fats have more saturated fats and/or trans fats than oils. Go for unsaturated fats (olive oil, canola oil, peanut oil, corn oil, soybean oil) rather than saturated fats as much as possible. Saturated fats and trans fats tend to raise bad (LDL) cholesterol in the blood, which increases the risk for heart disease.
When it comes to how much you should eat, the 1992 Food Pyramid just said “Use Sparingly.” The 2005 Pyramid puts it in terms of teaspoons and recommends between 5-7 teaspoons a day for an adult that doesn’t get a lot of exercise. That doesn’t mean go grab a spoon and head for the tub of Betty Crocker Chocolate Cake Frosting, because there is oil in many foods we eat – such as fish and nuts. You can get your whole day’s serving in a couple ounces of peanuts or sunflower seeds! In other words, “use sparingly!”
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Just as the whole defense has to play together as a team to be successful, the whole Food Formation works together to create a healthy diet. The Food Formation isn’t really about the act of counting your servings. It is more about the overall ratios and proportions (getting more fruits and vegetables than fats and oils) and getting a variety of healthy foods in your diet.
You may find that if you eat your recommended amounts of fruits and veggies, whole grains, meats and milks, and drink all your water, you may not feel hungry for unhealthy snacks. There might not be enough room in your stomach with all those carrots and apples down there!
Again, the amount of servings is often expressed as a range because people have different activity levels, metabolisms, etc. If you are active and not trying to lose weight, you might use the upper end. If you are less active or trying to lose weight, you might try the lower end.
Remember, football players don’t just haphazardly run out on to a field and stand in random places. They have set formations that put them in position to succeed. Now you do too!
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