Diving/swimming/weight

Question
Dear George Weber,
       Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I have a few questions just so you know, and I would greatly appreciate if all of them were answered. Some are about my height and weight and if it is right for a person my age so here is that info:
Age: 11 years old
Weight: 90 pounds
Height: 4 foot 7 inches
Ok, here are my questions:
1. I am nearsighted and need contacts. Should I wear my contacts to swimming practices and meets?
2. I am in a sprint swimming league and I wanted to know, what type of weight should I be? How do I achieve that weight if I shouold change my weight?
3. When I dive, I always dive down towards the bottom of the pool. How do I dive out farther, but without doing a belly flop?
4. Should I do any other excersizing? Examples?
5. What type of food chart should an eleven year old sprint swimmer like me use? I practice every weekday for one hour and fifteen minutes, and I have meets every Tuesday and Thursday, which I in fact have one tonight.
6. How do I improve my swimming times? My times are usually a minute or over in races and most of my other friends in my age group have times a bit less than thirty seconds.
Thank you!
                           From,
                              Hunter

Answer
Hunter--
Sorry it took so long.  You've got a lot of questions.
1.  Contacts is a personal preference, if you feel confident wearing your goggles when racing, go with the contacts.  Otherwise it's up to you.
2.  Your weight seems a little heavy, but it also depends on whether it is muscle weight or body fat weight.  Someone your age and height should be a lean(muscular)80 to 85 lbs.  
3.  The key to diving farther out is to put an arc on your dive so you are diving up and out rather than down to the water.  This is easiest to learn if your pool has a deep section so you can work on it without worrying about hitting the bottom of the pool.
4.  Yes, you can be doing other exercises.  Jogging, walking, riding a bike are all good aerobic exercises that build endurance and burn fat and calories.  Swimming is good for burning calories, but does virtually nothing for burning body fat.  
5.  There is no food chart that you should follow.  What you need to do is eat three normal meals(don't overeat) with small healthy snacks between.  Stay away from chips and candy and try to stay away from soda.  Even diet soda doesn't help with losing weight.  Stick to water and 2% or low fat milk.  Stay away from energy drinks(very high in sugar and calories).  If your looking for snacks try fruits and veggies.
6.  The easiest way to start improving your times is to improve your starts and turns and the streamline positions out of them.  With good starts and turns you can drop large amounts of time.  Also remember, you are faster either out of the water(start) or under the water(turns and streamlines) so those parts are important to be efficient at.  Being efficient with your strokes is also important.  You don't go faster by taking a lot of fast short strokes, you go faster by taking long, strong efficient strokes.
If you had a chance to watch olympic trials you saw the best.  They don't take a lot of strokes, they take good strokes.  Watch the olympic swimming if you can.  You can learn a lot by watching the best in the world.
Hope this helps,
George
Good luck