Ah, summer: sunshine, lazy afternoons, family vacations and crickets chirping in the cool evening air. This year, take advantage of all the season has to offer: let the luscious taste of in-season berries dance on your tongue, dig your hands into the dark, sweet earth in your garden or snuggle into a sleeping bag and watch the constellations in the night sky. Here are 101 ways to captivate and nourish mind, body and spirit this summer.
Get active
1. Strap on a helmet and knee and elbow pads and ask your children to teach you how to in-line skate. You'll tone your inner and outer thighs, says Jared Lloyd, a certified fitness consultant at Haldimand Hills Spa in Grafton, Ont., and have a few laughs with your kids.
2. Find a local tennis court (or the side of a building, such as a school) and practise hitting balls.
3. Start your own neighbourhood walking group.
4. Start training for a fall five- or 10-kilometre race.
5. Help your kids enjoy being active. When 11-year-old Louis Savard of Ottawa found out that a good friend enrolled in a summer hockey camp, his mom, Marianne, helped him sign up, too.
6. Add muscle-toning intensity to regular brisk outdoor walks with light ankle and wrist weights. With each step, lift from your knees and swing your arms.
7. Involve children in chores. Mowing the lawn, painting a fence and rearranging furniture are more fun if you do them together, and you'll all get some physical activity, too.
8. Set activity goals with your children, such as “We will bike, walk or swim at the local pool for at least 30 minutes every weekday this summer.”
9. Explore different leash-free parks –- you and your dog get a walk and a change of scenery.
10. Leave the car at home whenever you can. Walk or bike instead –- and tell your kids what you've done. Active parents usually have active kids.
11. Burn some calories with your kids in a game of Frisbee.
12. Order a free copy of Canada's Physical Activity Guides for Children and Youth by calling 1-888-334-9769 or visiting www.healthcanada.ca/paguide.
13. Equip everyone's bike with panniers so you can carry groceries and other items instead of taking the car. (Be sure each bike has a lock, too.)
14. When your son or daughter asks you to drive them somewhere, suggest that you walk together instead.
Avoid injuries
15. Prevent golfer's elbow by strengthening your forearms every day. Squeeze a tennis ball firmly in your hand for three seconds, then relax. Repeat until your muscles get tired (up to five minutes), then repeat on the other side.
16. Warm up before any activity. For gardening: do shoulder circles, trunk rotations and heel-toe rolls.
17. After bending over and pulling weeds in the garden, stand up and arch backward to counteract the strain on your back.
18. Keep neck and upper back muscles from tensing up when you cycle with this quick stretch. Do a chin tuck, then look down and tip your ear toward your shoulder. Hold for five to 10 seconds. Repeat on the other side.
Eat well
19. Eat more potassium-rich fruits and vegetables, especially orange ones (such as papayas, peaches and sweet potatoes) and bananas –- studies show that we need more potassium in our diets. And relish all the disease-fighting nutrients and phytochemicals you're getting in the process.
20. Grow your own vegetables in containers or a garden and get the whole family to pitch in planting, weeding and picking. It's a great way to teach children how food grows –- and just wait until they taste tomatoes fresh off the vine.
21. Take the kids to a local farmer's market and let them choose the food they want to eat. It's fun, and they'll gain a better understanding of where food comes from, says Jayne Thirsk, regional executive director of Dietitians of Canada in the Alberta and territories region. Do an Internet search to find farmer's markets and farmers in your area.
22. Cut down on junk-food snacking during road trips by bringing ready-to-eat fresh vegetables and fruit in an airtight container.
23. Take advantage of ripe seasonal fruit. At their scrumptious peak through July and August: strawberries, raspberries, cherries, blueberries, pears and peaches.
24. Make healthy eating fun for kids. Thirsk taught her 11- and 13-year-old sons how to use the blender to make yogurt-and-fresh-fruit smoothies after they picked their own fruit.
25. Log on to the Dietitians of Canada website at www.dietitians.ca for information on healthy eating and physical activity.
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