obesity | ClickAClass Blog ::: Find What Moves You, Mama! (tm)

Posts Tagged ‘obesity’

Grow Your Brain (and Biceps) With Screen-Free Week!

Monday, April 22nd, 2013

Screen-Free Week — also called TV Turnoff or Digital Detox – begins on April 29 this year!

Originally the brainchild of a non-profit environmental and anti-consumerist firm in British Columbia, Screen-Free Week later came under the wing of another organization urging people to use electronic screen media responsibly.* The movement has undergone a few name changes to keep up with the changing face of our media, but “screen-free” seems to capture it for the foreseeable future.

In 2010, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) became the home of Screen-Free Week at the request of the Board of the Center for SCREEN-TIME Awareness (CSTA), which ran the initiative since 1994 (first as TV-Free America). CCFC launched a new website and developed a new Organizer’s Kit, fact sheets, and other materials for Screen-Free Week 2011 and beyond. The Screen-Free Week Organizer’s Kit is available as a free download.*

Over 70 other organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Heart Association, the American Medical Association and the YMCA, support Screen-Free Week and multiple countries thoughout the world participate annually.* The White House supports limiting screen time via its Task Force on Childhood Obesity and the “Let’s Move” initiative. And the CCFC has a free, handy organizer’s kit.

Now you have the background on it — what will you DO about it?

What are your current boundaries around screen time for yourself and/or your family? Exactly how many screens do you have in your family? Um, YES, smartphones count — as do tvs, readers, tablets, laptops, monitors, and all the rest. If it lights up and shows you a picture, it counts. (Bet the number will surprise you! We have only 1 tv, but a total of SIX screens! Whaaaaat?? That’s nuts, y’all.)

Your brain is still reeling just from counting the number of screens you own.

You need ideas about how to turn them off without losing your mind, and you’ve come to the right place.

Yes, of course I have suggestions — and of course, they involve getting up and moving. You wouldn’t recognize this as my writing if I didn’t throw those in, right?! Try these on for size:

1. Play Spin-Fit instead of sitting on the sofa! It’s springtime, and there’s no more perfect time to be outside!

2. Get the family involved in making dinner. Even moving around the kitchen is still more MOVING than sitting on the couch.

3. Turn the music up and dance it out! Remember the main characters’ “therapy” on Grey’s Anatomy? A good ol’ fashioned dance-off really will cure what ails you.

4. Play charades. Bonus points for depicting ACTIVE scenes! Try Twister, Flippity Frogs, Cat In the Hat’s I Can Do That, or Don’t Scramble The Egg too!

5. Go for a walk. Walk to school. Walk to your after-school stuff. Or just walk around the block. Bonus points for a follow-the-leader “wacky walk” game while you’re out!

6. Take a new class! You can even do it at a discount (in the Atlanta area) if you check out ClickAClass.com!

7. Let your kids be the boss for a change. Let them be “Simon” in Simon Says and see if you can keep up with their crazy antics. They’ll love getting to order you around, and you’ll get a workout without feeling like it. Or, get together and try these dare-you-to-keep-a-straight-face challenges!

8. Head down to the park — and don’t just sit there, play along!

9. Check out some other ideas from my friends at Nourish Interactive.

I could go on, but now it’s YOUR turn! Tell us in the comments below how YOU will approach Screen-Free Week.

Will you participate at all, and if not, why not?

If so, what will you do differently — and do you think it’s sustainable for more than just a week?

*Wikipedia on Screen-Free Week

Note: this post contains some affiliate links from people/products I know personally and trust with complete comfort to recommend to you!

Tags: active, child, children, commercial, couch, digital detox, exercise, family, fitness, free, fun, health, kids, let's move, obese, obesity, play, screen, screen-free, shape, television, turnoff, tv, tv turnoff, walk, week
Posted in Family, Health and Fitness, Workout Routines | No Comments »

What’s “Walkability” and Why Should I Care?

Tuesday, March 26th, 2013

Photo by Dan Burden
http://www.pedbikeimages.org/largeimages/wi.madison.bikers3-large.jpg

What’s “walkability” and why should I care about it? Why should a mom or a fitness trainer care?

That’s the same question I had, too — and then I had the privilege of being invited to participate in a walkability study in my city.

To borrow from Walkable Communities, Inc., a walkable place gives residents safe transportation choices and an improved quality of life. Think of historic cities and towns — and think of the history behind them (i.e., we haven’t always had cars, remember?). They’re the places where and the ways that people lived before cars made it so easy to get across town.

I should tell you here that one of my biggest dreams — even before I knew I ever wanted children — was to live in a place that kids (any kids!) could walk to school. Yes, I grew up watching the “Andy Griffith Show” and reading “Dennis the Menace” in the weekly comics. Don’t judge me. Those things were shown because that’s how people lived, that’s what they did, and I thought it was good. It was happy. Simple. Clean. Comfortable. Fun. (Think of the trouble Opie got into on the walk to and from school!)

photo courtesy of answers.com

Eventually, I found myself living in a modern-day Mayberry (well, almost). There’s a barber shop on the corner; people have lived here for generations and married grade-school sweethearts; neighbors scold each others’ kids when needed; nobody uses turn signals because you already know where everyone’s turning. And, thanks to The Museum School, there’s an amazing school we walk to every day. (I even helped organize an annual fundraiser there, Family Fun Fitness Day, which happened over the weekend. That explains why I haven’t posted much lately!)

BUT.

That doesn’t make it walkable.

There’s also other traffic from outside the city limits — and y’all, it’s fast. Fast and loud. The sidewalks need help, and the downtown area is working on a facelift. Nobody gathers in the city center right now because it’s noisy and there’s not enough commerce to draw people there and fight the noise. It’s scary to cross the major 4- lane street separating the residential area from the commercial district — scary even for adults, let alone allowing kids to do it independently.

Turns out, my dream of walking to school is a bona fide component of a walkable community. Their Healthy Development Checklist even says so!

Can the majority of people walk safely and comfortably in ten minutes (2500 feet), and without crossing dangerous intersections to an elementary school?

So here’s how this all ties into ClickAClass.com and its mission to get families moving:

Walking is one of the best and most accessible ways for the majority of people to get up and move — it’s one of the best modes of exercise there is.
Walking in your own neigborhood (not driving to a trail or a track but simply walking out the front door) is the most convenient way to do that.
Walking outdoors isn’t just good for the body, it’s good for the mind.
It’s good for families, because accountability (in a family or any group) promotes adherence to any exercise program.
Adherence to exercise leads to dropping rates of obesity and its attendant horsemen of the health apocalypse.
IT JUST PLAIN HELPS HEALTH.

Is your city walkable? Find out by comparing it to this list of 5 traits.

Do you want it to be more walkable?

What could you do, starting today, to make it more walkable?

Tags: childhood, children, community, Dan Burden, exercise, fitness, health, kid, mom, mother, obesity, parent, path, school, walk, walkability, walking, wellness
Posted in Family, Health and Fitness | 8 Comments »

Uncle Sam Says Your Kid Is Fat.

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

Do you really need the government to register your kids’ weight and height, labeling them “fat” or not?

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder seems to think so. He’s announcing a new plan to have pediatricians measure childrens’ BMI and report it to a state registry. Check out the Forbes/AP story linked below.

BMI stands for “body-mass index.” It’s a very simple formula relating weight to height. In fact, it’s so simple that many health and fitness professionals believe that it’s not useful in and of itself — only as part of a complete analysis of body composition. For example, a clearer picture of body composition (and health) might include circumference and skinfold measurements and weight distribution. Measuring BMI alone and relying on it as an arbiter of “fat” vs. “healthy” is dangerous because it’s so easily skewed. A short and muscular kid will often register high on the BMI comparison with his peers, and a doughy kid can easily fall within the “normal” range because muscle weighs more than fat. Clearly, short and muscular is a lot healthier than pudgy and weak.

The initiative seems well-intentioned: Michigan is the eighth fattest state in the nation, so they’re trying hard to comply with the First Lady’s program for kids’ fitness. It even has some advantages. For instance, having a pediatrician measure height and weight is likely to be more accurate than having harried school nurses doing it. But is it really necessary to spend government resources to register and track every child?

Another potential advantage noted in the article below is that putting doctors in charge of kids’ BMI gives them a chance to offer counseling to the parents of kids deemed overweight. That’s also great — but then, why register it with the state? The doctor can provide counseling without taking the extra step of reporting it (which, by the way, adds an additional burden to overstretched medical staff that eats away at time spent with patients). And will the 15 or 20 minutes that a pediatrician typically spends with a patient really give meaningful, substantive support to a family truly dealing with overweight issues?

To me, this seems like a bunch of political point-scoring on the backs of kids who may or may not be overweight. How about first taking a look at the public schools’ physical education programming? (Many states have reduced or cut such programs in recent years, trying to fit in extra academics.) What about inviting Jamie Oliver and his crew to overhaul school lunches and teach families about healthy food? Or how about even a good old-fashioned grassroots campaign on exercise and eating right?

Your comments are welcome – let’s get a discussion going!

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/09/14/business-us-healthier-michigan-obesity_8678034.html

Tags: BMI, body fat, body mass, children, fat, fitness, government, health, kids, Michigan, obesity, overweight
Posted in Health and Fitness | No Comments »

MyPlate — Better or Worse than the Pyramid?

Sunday, June 5th, 2011

I’m pretty fired up about this one, guys.

The First Lady and the USDA have unveiled the replacement for the good ol’ Food Pyramid, claiming that the pyramid was too complicated to help the average person. Remember when the pyramid was arranged horizontally, and then became a vertical model with a figure running up the side? In my view, that was an improvement if for no other reason than the inclusion of an exercise symbol. The new Plate is another story altogether.

I get that it’s simpler, and I’m usually a big fan of simplicity. But I think the matter of getting and staying healthy is too complex and too important to be over-simplified.

But my biggest issue with this whole deal is that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, First Lady Michelle Obama and others have claimed that even they couldn’t understand the old pyramid. Really? These are supposed to be some of the country’s best and brightest — and they had trouble comprehending what it means to eat 2-3 servings of dairy? It’s just not that hard.

Then, there’s Joe Q. Public, who would love to blame something or someone else for being overweight. When Mrs. Obama says, “we can’t be expected to measure…or look up…[food portion sizes]“ it’s the perfect scapegoat. In my opinion, if you’re serious about your health, it’s your responsibility to know what a portion size is. And there are so many EASY guides to do it — you don’t have to carry a scale with you! Three ounces (one serving) of chicken is the size of a deck of cards, for instance. One serving of pasta or rice? Half a tennis ball. Come on — boiling water is more complicated than knowing general portion sizes.

The oversimplification also leaves out a few important points: the grains on your plate should be whole grains. The protein on your plate should be lean protein. And the vegetables, fruits and dairy (if you’re really convinced by the dairy lobby that you need some every day) should be organic whenever possible. And, by the way, you need to get your rump off the couch and exercise.

I’d be fine with using MyPlate as an adjunct to the Pyramid, but as a replacement altogether? It falls far short of truly informing or helping the people who need it the most.

Tags: food, health, my plate, nutrition, obesity, pyramid, USDA, weight loss
Posted in Health and Fitness | 1 Comment »