Fit Communications

Here’s an interesting story from the Associated Press that makes me wonder what the teens in question are eating at home. I probably know the answer to that, and it isn’t vegetables and fruit.

The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey has been trying to help teenagers learn to like vegetables and has been serving things like steamed carrots, greens, vegetable stir-frys, and so on. Some of the kids literally spit out the carrots. Vegetables don’t taste like food to them, apparently, and it isn’t the kids’ fault. Clearly they haven’t been getting carrots and broccoli at home—and just as clearly, those haven’t been the mainstay of school lunch programs.

It’s time for schools to get extremely serious about removing all the junk food from both machines and the cafeteria. Now I sound like an old person: When I was a kid, you either ate the school lunch, brought something from home, or went hungry. You didn’t have the option to buy burgers or pizza (unless that was the cafeteria meal of the day). And you shouldn’t have that option.

Schools operate for the public good, and they’re not obliged to give the youth in their charge non-nutritious food simply because that’s what kids prefer.

Anyway, here’s the link:

Eating healthy is a hard lesson to teach teens
New Jersey program holds out hope it’s never to late to set good habits

I hope soon to provide some information about what Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, Tenn., is doing to improve children’s health. Memorial is working on a pilot program with some Hamilton County schools in order to combat the child-obesity epidemic. The program may eventually be expanded to additional schools. Let’s hope so. Our kids need it.

MSNBC.com has posted a Forbes article called "How we gain weight and keep it on."

Here’s the blurb:

Weight-gain is not a head cold or a boil that magically appears overnight. Like muscle, it’s something that increases gradually with time and with your complete awareness and collaboration.

The amusing thing is the deck to the story: "Think it’s just Twinkies, beer, and sloth? Guess again." Actually, I did think those were primary factors.

The piece goes on to explain that, um, junk food, excess alcohol, and lack of exercise are factors that encourage obesity. Makes you wonder who wrote the deck and what he or she was thinking.

Yes, the article mentions other factors as well—aging, stress, frequent restaurant meals. But the bottom line is what you already know: eating too much and moving too little will make you fat.

Well, I’ve had to set some new goals, as I’ve achieved most of those I set a year ago (having to do with pants size, scale weight, and bodyfat).

Since sometime in April I’ve been holding steady. Having gotten to 130 pounds, it was a relief to just maintain for a while. I didn’t count calories or do the zig-zag most of that time, and when I went out to eat, I tried to make healthy selections but didn’t restrict myself unduly. Kind of nice just to maintain.

Workouts, same thing–holding to the pattern of weights and cardio three days a week, plus the 30-minute dog walk most mornings.

The great thing about all this is that maintaining this weight is pretty easy. As long as I’m working out, I can eat (within reason) whatever I want. Big caveat: that almost never includes junk food. Most of the time what I want is decent quantities of good stuff–grains, whole-wheat bread, milk, fruit, vegetables, cheese, chicken, etc.

Having gotten to this point, I want to take things a bit further. I’d like to increase my strength level in lifts that mean something to me (pullups, dips, bench press), and I also want to shed a little more bodyfat.

Estimating from my (wildly fluctuating) Tanita bodyfat-measuring scale and my Accumeasure calipers, I believe my bodyfat is 17 or 18 percent. I’d like to get to 14 or 15 percent.