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Shape Up America! Newsletter
Greetings!
Weight Loss – How to get there from here
When you diet, have you noticed the first thing you
lose is your temper? Well let me tell you a little
story. Audrey was in her 30s when her
marriage “blew up” and the emotional distress caused
her to lose a great deal of weight over a period of
several months while the separation and divorce
agreements were being hammered out. At that
stressful time in her life, Audrey felt that her weight
loss was the only good thing that happened to her
and she crowed about how happy she was to be able
to “eat whatever she wanted” yet still be thin. A
few years later, she was back to her pre-divorce
weight and suffering from high cholesterol levels to
boot! She is now taking expensive medications to
bring down her cholesterol levels and continues to
search for quick diet fixes. Despite the advice of
medical professionals, she spent six months on the
now discredited high fat Atkins Diet, despite her high
cholesterol levels.
It is true that determined dieters who ultimately
succeed in taking weight off and keeping it off can
not “eat whatever they want.” They have to remain
vigilant about what they eat – choosing foods wisely
and eating smaller portions. To keep the weight off
they have to pay careful attention to diet and to
how much they exercise. To maintain the weight
loss, they will have to do this for the rest of their
lives. Some people argue that the need for constant
discipline “proves” that diets don’t work. On the
contrary, we would argue that diets do work as long
as you are willing to work at them. Dieting is like a
good marriage – it takes work and it takes a daily
investment of care and thoughtfulness. If you are
not ready to make the commitment to your own
healthy diet and lifestyle, then don’t waste your
time. Wait until you are ready and resolved to make
a healthy weight and lifestyle a top priority in your
life.
“Get Hip and Get Fit” – a program to help families be more active
When they are very young, children learn first and
foremost by watching the behavior of their parents.
Recent research shows that children are very
sensitive to the emotional context of their parents’
behavior; they absorb unspoken messages about how
parents feel about food and eating. So it should be
no surprise that parents play a primary role in
shaping their children’s eating and exercise
preferences and patterns.
The 2005 Institute of Medicine report, Preventing
Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance, discusses
the fact that large portion sizes contribute to
overeating in both adults and young children. Also, if
a bowl of fruit or cut up veggies is available for
snacking, that is what children will choose to eat.
As for physical activity, it is clear that reducing
access to TV, DVDs , gameboys and videos to a
maximum of two hours a day (and moving the TV out
of the bedroom) is a helpful obesity prevention
strategy – especially if you can tell a child to turn off
the TV and send him or her outside to play.
There are many things parents can do to influence
and encourage their children to engage in
recreational activities and sports. But busy parents
can use a little help planning activities to influence
their children to make better lifestyle choices. That is
why Shape Up America! teamed with Cumberland
Packing Corporation, the manufacturer and marketer
of Sweet’N Low zero calorie sweetener, to design a
new national program called “Get Hip & Get Fit.” The
program aims to help parents make healthy choices
for the family, choosing activities that promote
physical activity. To assist parents, a “top of mind”
poster entitled “20 Tips For Getting Your Family On
Track” is available for free, while supplies last.
Ordering information is available online (see below) If
poster supplies run out, or if you want still more
ideas, not to worry. You can access the same
poster, plus two others (providing a total of 50 tips
in all) in a pdf format, suitable for downloading and
printing.
So go online, print ‘em out and hang ‘em in the
kitchen, bathroom, classroom or clinic—wherever
family activity ideas are needed. Parents, teachers
and health care professionals can find these helpful
tools online at www.shapeup.org/fittips and
www.sweetnlow.com/fittips. As parents, we can do
more to reverse the trend of obesity in America, and
we will! Together, let’s promote a healthy lifestyle
for our children – one that balances food intake with
plenty of vigorous physical activity.
What’s in the foods you eat ??
Have you ever wondered what exactly is in the food
you eat? If the answer is yes, and you want a FREE
way to find out, check out the latest product from
the Food Surveys Research Group at the
USDA. "What's In The Foods You Eat--Search Tool"—
is located at http://www.ars.usda.gov/foodsearch
This new search tool provides easy online access to
nutritional information about typical foods that
Americans eat every day. You can easily search a
database of 13,000 foods, view and select portions
and weights for a particular food you are interested
in, and then view the nutrient values for the portion
size you selected. Each result can be printed if you
wish.
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