Here are some clues to the importance of water.  The earth’s surface is over 70% water.  Most of the human body is water.  Drinking water delivers nutrients, removes toxins, regulates body temperature, cushions organs and joints, and according to the Harvard Medical School, it lowers the risk of bladder cancer and kidney stones.  Are you feeling me yet?

And lack of water leads to dehydration.  My body lets me know when it is dehydrated by sapping my energy and giving me a throbbing headache.  The worst is trying something “bouncy” while dehydrated like jumping jacks or running.  That demonstrates pretty quickly how important water is to your system. 

Just like everything in medicine, exactly how much you need to drink each day is a matter of disagreement.  The most honest scientific answer we can give you is:  it depends.  But the rule heard most often is 8 eight-ounce glasses a day (8×8) for the average adult.  This comes from the idea that we need about liter of water per 1,000 calories burned.  You’ll need more if you exercise a lot, burn a lot of calories, or live where it is hot and dry.  Not all fluid needed by the body must be from beverages as there is also water in foods (such as fruits).  And if you are taking our fruit challenge, you are eating plenty of those!  You might get about 20% of your daily water needs through foods and the rest through beverages.

At Fantasy Healthball, we stick by the 8 eight-ounce glasses a day as a general rule of thumb.  An easy way to do this is to carry a liter of water with you and make sure you fill it up twice throughout the day.  It is part of our culture nowadays to see everyone walking around with their liter of water.  Water bottles are now a big business.  My personal favorite is this one but you are bound to find one you love.

If you still have questions, you can check out what the Mayo Clinic has to say or talk to your doctor.  Most people can use the 8×8 as a rule of thumb and then adjust based on your body size, lifestyle, climate, and if you happen to be running a marathon that day or not!  Choose fresh, clean, filtered water and choose it again and again!  Select our water challenge if you have trouble fitting water into your daily life.  You should drink more water than any other beverage with its 0 calorie goodness!  -  Jim Ballard

It seems these days that America’s symbol has changed from “mom and apple pie” to “work and coffee.”  Cities are no longer measured in population, but rather in numbers of Starbucks.  Coffee is everywhere.  In 2008, Starbucks alone has about nearly 17,000 stores in 49 countries.  If your vacation plans take you to South Korea, Kuwait, Turkey, or Malaysia, never fear, a Starbucks is near.  We can increasingly also find it along our waistline due to the array of specialty coffees available. 

A typical cup of black coffee may only have a few calories.  Interested in the grande Caramel Chocolate Frappuccino Blended Coffee?  That will be 400 calories.  How about just the grande Caffe Mocha with whole milk and whipped cream?  412 calories.  Why not add in the peppermint brownie?  440 calories more.  Crumble berry coffee cake?  Oh, no, you didn’t!  

If you can skip the specialties and the treats, coffee isn’t all bad.  To be fair, the tall basic coffee at Starbucks has 9 calories.  Also, caffeine may have some health benefits such as improving memory and decreasing fatigue and even helping to prevent some diseases.  However, there are some significant downsides such as high blood pressure, speeding the heart rate, dehydration, and making you feel jumpy and restless. 

The word on coffee from Harvard Medical School, and the Mayo Clinic, and also your grandmother, is “moderation.”  At Fantasy Healthball, we have a challenge for those of you who drink too much coffee.  If you are a heavy coffee/caffeine drinker, we suggest limiting it to 2 servings or less per day on our Daily Challenge Team Roster Scorecard.    And for heaven’s sake, just get the coffee and not the chocolatecaramelwhippedchemicalsyrupcrazedsugarfunbatch (a gazillion calories) and that little innocent looking Caramel Pecan Sticky Roll (730 calories – that’s more than a Big Mac!).  They may just have to sticky roll you out the door. 

Of course, caffeine isn’t just found in coffee.  It is also in chocolate, tea, some diet pills, some sodas, and many energy drinks.  Oh, and also in some alcoholic beverages which the FDA is now threatening to pull from the shelves.  So think about how much coffee you drink, the caffeine, what else is in the coffee, and your own health goals.  Also, check out our diet and nutrition info. and our exercise info. and get in our game!  — Jim Ballard

Well, we turned 100 today with our 100th blog post.  Thanks for visiting our site and for coming back for tips, advice, news, recipes and more in the worlds of fantasy sports and health/nutrition.  We’ve had almost 20,000 visits to this blog with more and more of you checking it out each day.  In fact, our biggest day ever was in the past month.  So keep coming back for the latest on Fantasy Healthball..and tell a friend! 

You may want to check out our Top 5 most popular posts of the last 100.  They are:

Nutrients Made Easy

Calories Made Easy

What’s A Good Score

The World’s Healthiest Foods

Our Reviews

If you love fantasy sports and you want to be healthier, you WILL find what you are looking for at FantasyHealthball.com.  Thanks again for visiting us over these past 100 posts, and check back often.  — Jim Ballard

Dinner as the major sit down meal in our culture probably adds to our overall health problem.  Instead of skipping breakfast and gorging at lunch and dinner, we should eat all three meals in a similar way and sprinkle in healthy snacks to keep us going. 

What to eat for dinner is as varied as the types of foods in the Fantasy Healthball Food Formation.  Lean meat and poultry, beans, and fish are all good options.  Think about how they are prepared and choose accordingly:  two pieces of battered fish with tartar sauce?  Let say about 550+ calories.  Grilled trout with lemon juice? Less than half the calories.   Check out this post for the World’s Healthiest Foods.

Yum!

One way to think about dinner is to think about what you had for breakfast and lunch and what you are missing in terms of servings.  Had a ham omelet for breakfast and the meatloaf for lunch?  You may have met your meat needs and want to focus more on a bit of pasta and veggies.  If you had a piece of cake at the office birthday party, you probably would benefit by skipping sweets as a desert and have fruit instead.  In this way, you can kind of back into what to have for dinner.  Haven’t had a salad yet today?  Now’s the time!   Make sure you are getting all the nutrients your body needs!

People “feel full” at different times and after eating different amounts.  It is that full feeling that tells our brain, “hey, stop with the face feeding, the belly getting crowded” or something to that effect.  If you are trying to watch portion size, try drinking a glass of water or more before you eat.  The water combines with the food to make you feel full faster.  Even if this doesn’t work for you, water is always good for you!  You can also try eating more slowly, so your body has a chance to tell your mind that it is full.  At Fantasy Healthball, we believe in listening to your body.  If it is complaining after you eat, you probably ate too much or the wrong things.  Check out our nutrition and exercise challenges, and make your body happy today!   – Jim Ballard

 It seems like almost everyone is sick right now and the NFL has not been spared.  The AP reported last week that Receiver Buster Davis was inactive for the Chargers game against the Chiefs due to the flu bug that hit LaDanian Tomlinson and other Chargers too.  Browns center (and former Cal standout) Alex Mack said of his performance last week that he would have liked to have more practice time before the game but that he was “out with the swine flu. I thought that kind of hurt me.”  In all, about 12 Browns missed parts of the week’s work.  The NFL Commish this month issued a new policy giving teams roster exceptions if enough players have H1N1, formerly known as swine flu. 

Also this week, the Healthball Hulks (okay, that’s me) was sick.  I had a sore throat then sinus congestion and finally a day of nausea and fever.  Probably just a virus and not H1N1, but it kept me in bed anyway some days.  So how did I score this week?  Not very well.  I racked up 72 points.  And I thought a lot about how hard it is to perform when you are under the weather.  2 points total for the week for exercise (I managed one long hilly dog walk which I counted), 0 points for my stretching/yoga challenge, 2 points for my situps challenge which I wrote in under the “other” category. 

So is diet and exercise a lost cause when you are sick.  Should it be all comfort food and television re-runs?   I watched six episodes of “The Munsters” marathon on Friday, and btw, that Herman Munster is a real softy under that hardened exterior!

Most importantly, listen to your doctor and listen to your body.  It is probably telling you to get lots of rest and lay low which you should do.  But physical exercise is only one of the seven challenges for the week.  I went six for six in the “Drink Adequate Water” category.  In fact, my doctor told me to drink plenty of fluids and I sure did.  Water and Gatorade.  Since my stomach was not feeling well, I didn’t have much trouble with “Eat adequate portion sizes” either!  Went six for six there!  So many of our challenges are things that are good for you whether you are sick or healthy. 

So don’t abandon your health challenges for the week if you are sick.  Think about which ones will help you get back to normal (most of them) and which you might need to cut back on until you are better (the physical ones).  If you just have a stuffy nose or light cold, you might feel better after a brisk walk or a little stationary bike time.  Check out this short article about exercising while sick.

Meanwhile, wash those hands with lots of soap and hot water, sneeze into your elbow, give larger personal distances to sick people, and keep thinking about your health!  Even NFL players miss some time now and then over illnesses, so you can expect to as well.  But keep following healthy habits and you will be back on top soon!  And now we’ll see if my 72 healthpoints gets me clobbered this week, I’m playing the HanStars and they (led by Adrian Peterson, Tony Romo, Steve Slaton, Andre Johnson) are predicted to score in the triple digits…… – Jim Ballard

After the first 7 weeks of NFL football, my ”Healthball Hulks” stand at 4-3 in the fantasy football standings and I stand at 5-2 for my Fantasy Healthball scores.  My most painful healthball loss was week six where I scored a very respectable 124 healthball points (surely enough to win, right?) and my fantasy opponent, the Malvern Manglers, scored 143 points.  The Manglers had Matt Schaub passing for 392 yards and FOUR touchdowns and Maurice Jones-Drew adding three more touchdowns on his 133 yards.  Oh, and two of Shaub’s TDs went to the Manglers TE Owen Daniels – WHO, by the way, only had 2 touchdowns all of last year, but he decides to go on a tear and the Manglers total 143. 

Looking back at my 124 healthpoints that week, I had an amazing Monday through Thursday and I started to fall apart on Friday and Saturday.  I got cocky and thought I had scored enough points to win.  On Friday, I only met 3 of my 7 challenges and on Saturday I met 2 of 7.  I needed to follow our health advice and our exercise advice.  This is a great reminder about consistency.  Had I finished strong, I might have even beaten the 143 points from the Manglers.  I coasted in the “4th quarter” of the week and it resulted in the “L.” 

Let this be a reminder to the Healthball Hulks and also to you.  Meeting your health goals is an everyday challenge.  You can’t coast and be as successful as you want.  You only meet 2 of your 7 challenges and you probably deserve the “L!”  Push it out, finish strong, and you are likely to record the “W” for your health. 

Am I fearsome?

Oh, and one more thing, I picked Matt Forte as the #2 pick in the entire draft and was proud to have the great Chicago Bear who I could watch with pride all season.  Now he looks like Gnat Forte as in “couldn’t hurt a gnat.”  Ugg!  – Jim Ballard

Here in 2009, we are bombarded each day with marketing and advertising and sound bytes.  Think of how many commercials you hear on radio or television, ads you see on-line, over your phone, in your email, your mailbox, or in the paper, everywhere we turn we run into someone or something trying to make us buy something, do something, or have a certain opinion.  We’ve long been at the point where it is tough to tell truth from fiction.  So how do you reach people who have trained themselves to tune out most of those messages?   Well, you could use a big electronic reader board!

Former Bay County (Florida) Health Department Director Dr. Jason Newsom had 1) an important message, and 2) a big electronic reader board and even THAT fortuitous combination may not get you noticed until you start taking on major American businesses like Dunkin’ Donuts and KFC.    Dr. Newsom, fed up with diet habits of average Americans, launched his campaign with gusto and wit.  And, as the old saying goes, “the electronic reader board is mightier than the sword.”  Scrolling across the board were his sayings, “Sweet Tea (equals) Liquid Sugar,” “Hamburger (equals) Spare Tire,” “French Fries (equals) Thunder Thighs,” and he parodied the “America Runs on Dunkin’” campaign with, “America Dies on Dunkin’.

He was given the choice of resigning or getting fired after “a county commissioner who owns a doughnut shop” and “two lawyers who own a new Dunkin’ Donuts” were less than amused.  It is a good thing too, before he came up with more such as:  “Eat a double fudge sundae and meet your maker,” or “Six cookies (equals) six feet under,” or even, “Hot dogs are kinda gross when you think about it.”  But, alas, we can only wonder what that reader board would have led to. 

Just so you don’t think Dunkin’ Donuts doesn’t have a sense of humor, you can even buy a “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink Starbucks” pre-shrunk, cotton, t-shirt on their website.   We’ve checked and they offer other t-shirt sizes besides triple extra large. 

At Fantasy Healthball, we don’t have an electronic reader board, but you can check out our nifty slogans on our website.  And though linking major companies to a certain death may not have been Dr. Newsom’s brightest idea, if you read our nutrition section you won’t find us advocating for donuts or fried chicken.  Okay, well maybe on special occasions.  Yes, our lawyers made us say that.  — Jim Ballard

In Fantasy Healthball, you’ll see we give the biggest bonus for consistent exercise.  You’ll get 10 extra points if you exercise three times a week and a huge 25 point bonus if you can fit in an exercise each day.  On our exercise page, you’ll see “what counts” as an exercise.  It is really not that much.  The secret is consistency.  Another tip is joining a gym.  I would be lost without mine.  Sure, it is an expense that has to be budgeted for, but it pays off in so many ways.  You might call it – your “sure thing” investment. 

Your Needs

Think about your needs before you start taking a look at gyms.  I find the closer the gym is to your house or your office the better.  But proximity is not the only factor.  What is the monthly rate, what deals do they have going on, do they have enough of the type of equipment you would like to use?  Take a look during the time period you would typically go.  Are there long lines for the things you’d want to use?  If you are motivated by a group, do they offer group exercise classes that fit your schedule (spinning class, pilates class, aerobic dance, kick boxing, yoga)?  Can you shower there?  Do they supply clean towels?  Are the bathroom/shower facilities clean or do they make you feel like you may become a host organism for some crafty fungus looking to “see the world” while attached to your foot or worse. 

Signing the Contract

One reason why you want to check it out so thoroughly is that you want to know you are sure before getting into the contract.  Most gyms will let you work out one or more times for free while you consider joining.  You should do that.  Most will give a free orientation and maybe even a free training session.  Beware, the membership coordinator is likely to be the kind of smooth operator that makes “Square Deal Sam” down at the used car lot look like Mother Teresa.  Just stick to what you want and you’ll be fine. 

Square Deal Sam

You can bargain.  Especially in these economic times.  Ask for no initiation fee.  Ask for a senior discount, a student discount, a Virgo discount, whatever.  Some gyms have variable rates based on how often you will use it for what time of day.  Look on-line for savings.  If you have a 24-hour Fitness near you and are considering it, Google “Costo 24-hour Fitness.”  As of this writing, you can get a $12.50 monthly rate by signing a 2-year contract.  That is a key buy if you are okay signing up for 2 years. 

DO NOT worry about your current body size when starting out at a gym.  You WILL find people there of all shapes and sizes.  You are all there to get healthier.  Talk to your doctor if you are new to an exercise program.  Gyms/health clubs are a great way to help you establish routine in your exercise.  Sure, you can walk outside or do sit-ups in the basement, but it is nice to get to a place too where you can get motivation from the people working out around you and maybe has some equipment you enjoy.  If you can’t afford it now, start saving up and reward yourself with a membership when you can. 

Remember, joining a gym isn’t the only way to exercise.  But, for many people, it offers the resources and environment that inspires them to exercise.  Also remember just being a member isn’t enough.  You have to use the gym (more tips to come) and practice the other healthy lifestyle points at our site.   Good luck, and write us a comment or email if questions.  — Jim Ballard.

A reader recently sent us the “For Losing Weight, Diet Beats Exercise” article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Erin Allday.  Erin did a nice job reporting the news, it was just the news that was stupid.  In this post, we’d like to take the opportunity to debunk some of this junk with some good old fashioned common sense.  You will notice that in Fantasy Healthball, exercise is the ONLY mandatory challenge in the bunch.  We have a great many health and diet related challenges, but exercise is the only mandatory challenge.  You won’t win much at Fantasy Healthball if you don’t exercise, and we think you won’t win much at life either.  As our reader said, “Being healthy is a whole body job.”  We couldnt’ have said it better. 

The article starts out by saying exercise is not a key ingredient to weight loss.  An excerpt:  ”Is exercise good? Absolutely. But not because it burns calories,” said Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF Children’s Hospital. “Diet is about weight. Exercise is about health.”

Fantasy Healthball:  Huh?  Say that again Doc?  “Diet is about weight and exercise is about health.”  Yeeeah, oookaaay, but isn’t weight about health?  Doesn’t being overweight or obese lead to tons of health problems?  We think this is less about splitting hairs and more about splitting an atom.  Diet and exercise need to go together.  Split them and bad things happen. 

Fantasy Healthball:  Good point doc.  Some do.  But our readers know you can’t sit pedaling a stationary bike while eating a banana split and hope to lose weight and build a strong healthy body.  For that, you need both diet AND exercise.  And you need a little motivation and inspiration.  Some competition is a great motivator.  That is where we come in.  – Jim Ballard

So your first week of Fantasy Healthball (Monday through Saturday) is now behind you.  Your Scorecard for the week should have a little “2″ written in where you met the challenge for the week and a “0″ where you did not.  Add up all your points with any bonus points and get your total score for the week.  This is the score that you will now pit against your fantasy football opponent for the week.  Did you do enough to beat them?  You’ll know soon!

Meanwhile, let’s talk about your week.  Which 7 challenges did you pick?  What did you find hard?  Easy?  If you found some things hard, that is good – getting into great health is not going to come to you on a silver platter.  You need to follow our nutrition advice and exercise input and focus yourself to keep it up.  Even if you start out this week with a loss, you can bounce back next week with a win to move your record to 1-1.  Put together another good week and you are 2-1.  Once you start stringing some victories together, it gets easier and easier.  Questions?  Let us know.  You want to make good decisions during the week so that you have a good chance of scoring higher than your fantasy opponent and winning the week. 

Most of changing your habits and losing weight and getting into great shape is mental.  Fantasy Healthball helps you change your attitude by focusing your football passion into health passion.  But we know how emotional it can be and how years of poor health habits can’t be changed overnight like flicking a switch.  Many people go through steps similar to the 5 steps of grief process. 

1.  Denial - Not a problem for me.  I like being fat and happy. I’ll work this weight off later.  Being overweight is just me.  Besides, my spouse doesn’t mind.  It is no big deal.

2. Anger - Quit pressuring me, jerk!   I eat what I want when I want.  But how did I gain so much weight?  I’m mad at that person in the mirror, who is that?  It is not fair.  My life doesn’t allow me the time to exercise or think about nutrition. 

3.  Bargaining - When I hit 40 (or 50) years old I’ll start getting serious about health.  I’ll cut down on sodas but I will not give up my double mochas with whipped cream. 

4.  Depression – What’s the point?  I’ve never going to fit into those shorts from college anyway.  Eating better isn’t going to change the fact that there is a history of health problems in my family.

5.  Acceptance – I really can do this.  I can drop some pounds and get into healthier shape.  I do feel better when I’m not filling my body with junk.  I can feel good again. 

Where are you on the above?  No matter your stage, it is time to check us out and give it a try.  — Jim Ballard