Q: How can I encourage my child to exercise more?
A: Try these tips to get your children off the couch:
Take part in fitness activities with your children. Parental attention is a big motivator. Set a particular time for a half-hour workout as a family group.
Start gradually and build over time. Five minutes of exercise each day, six or seven days a week, is right for getting the habit going. Then work up over 10 weeks to 30 minutes a day, three to five days each week.
Keep a record. Participation logs will help your children visualize their improvements. As an example, if you are jogging, try using a mileage map of your state to show how far you go. Update with each workout.
Emphasize participation, not performance. Give lots of reinforcement and recognition. When children reach goals, reward them.
Encourage sports parties --- skating, hiking, vigorous playground games --- and get your child involved in community recreation programs.
Consider sending your child to a youth sports camp.
Q: I run three days per week and do the StairMaster and weights the other three days. I weigh 142 with approximately 14 percent body fat. I cannot decide how much protein I should eat (in grams) in relation to my carbohydrate intake. Any suggestions?
A: As ''Nancy Clark's Sports Nutrition Guidebook'' ($16.95, Human Kinetics) points out, the protein requirements of active folks isn't precisely defined, because of variation among people and their needs. The Recommended Dietary Allowance is .4 grams per pound of body weight, which for you works out to 56.8.
Clark, a nationally known sports nutritionist and director of nutrition services at SportsMedicine Brookline in Massachusetts, considers it to be the standard for sedentary adults and offers further guidelines, which indicate that you might need between 71 and 106 grams. Others can multiply their body weight by these gram percentages to find their ranges:
Adult recreational exerciser: .5 to .75
Adult competitive athlete: .6 to .9
Growing teen athlete: .8 to .9
Adult building muscle: .7 to .9
Athlete restricting calories: .8 to .9
Maximum usable amount for adults: .9
As for protein intake in relation to carbohydrates, different recommendations range from 15 percent to 30 percent of calories from protein and 40 percent to 60 percent from carbohydrates.
Q: I have used a Tunturi exercise bike for a number of years. What I have liked about it is the simplicity and durability, so I have been looking for a newer Tunturi model, but I have been unable to locate dealers, and the other brands don't seem as durable, though much quieter. Also, I am wondering whether a recumbent bike would provide the same level of cardiovascular workout.
A: The Finnish company's U.S. subsidiary, Tunturi Inc., closed its Bellevue, Wash., headquarters two years ago. North American distribution now is handled by Wynne International of New Dundee, Ontario, Canada (519-696-2256). You can find distributors worldwide, and you can check out Tunturi's entire line of bikes on the Internet (www.tunturi.sci.fi/). And yes, despite the added comfort from a wider seat and back rest, recumbent bikes provide at least as good a workout as upright, and perhaps a bit better, because legs pedaling more out than down find more resistance from gravity. Recumbent bikes also tend to involve the hamstrings more than upright bikes do.
Q: A friend of mine is wearing 1-pound cloth weights on his wrists, and he thinks if he wears them for four to eight hours a day it will be like exercising his arms. I want to know if this will make much difference in increasing muscle size, or if it will have much effect on number of calories burned during the day.
A: Wearing 1-pound weights all day probably won't increase muscle mass, which needs more of an increase in load rather than repetitions. It probably would burn a few more calories and might increase muscle endurance or tone.
A caution relating to wrist and ankle weights: They might put undue strain on joints, tendons and ligaments, in this case wrist, elbow and shoulder. Also, the farther from the joint the weight is carried, the more stress is placed on that joint.
