Aug
23
2010
My friends, we are back to school. Summer has come to an end and the fall school schedule quickly approaches. In many parts of the country, school has either started or is about to today! That’s right, those yellow Thomas school buses will be crowding the streets. The slow speed school zones are in force and kids are crossing the streets-so watch out! Lunches and snacks are being prepared at home. Please make them healthy! After school activities are being scheduled. And parents, the driving begins again! OMG! Another season is upon us. It seems that this summer went quicker than most. I guess it was because it was filled with so many activities. There was barely enough time to enjoy the peaceful time off the road. Oh well, here we go again.
So I begin my new season with another issue that has caught many by surprise as we all go back to school-there is a new push to eliminate “unstructured” playtime-also called recess and morph it into structured time-like physical exercise (PE). The reason-from the “more exercise time will help stop childhood obesity” side-is just that. These advocates feel that our children need to burn off more calories in a structured exercise program to balance the calories/food being consumed. There is a good point there-balance. Remember as I have said in many articles, the calories-as food that are consumed must ...
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Aug
07
2010
How many times do we say, “I need to exercise,” in any given day. Okay, maybe not say it out loud but think it. A hundred, a thousand, more? We all say it-mostly after a big meal. Sometimes we get the motivation and go into the gym at the end of the day or maybe an evening run for a few miles-and it feels great. But how many times do you think about taking a long walk to get your metabolism moving? Probably less than 5 % of all of our exercise thoughts focus on walking. Most of us think that walking can’t burn off as many calories as running. And that’s correct. Usually we burn about 100 calories for every mile we walk. Now if you run, maybe at a pace of 6 miles an hour, you may burn off 150 calories for that same mile. That’s really pretty close. In fact several studies (the original concept from Dr. Hatano in Japan-circa 1965) have revealed that walking 10,000 steps daily was equivalent to walking approximately 5 miles. And, if you walked 10,000 steps, these studies (D. Basset-University of Tennessee, C. Tudor-Locke- Walking Behavior Laboratory, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, LA) showed that you were able to reduce your body fat, control diabetes and reduce waist to hips ratios. So there it is, walking, preferably a long walk at ...
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May
29
2010
I have always felt that doing some type of physical activity is important. In fact my cardiologist, who is really my primary care doctor, and is truly a fantastic doctor, has always advised me that if you can spare ten minutes-take it and do something, do anything, but do it for ten minutes. Of course he also said that it’s better to do the exercise for 30, 60-or even 90 minutes a day, but ten minutes is good too! I read all of the exercise recommendations for kids and adults from the different organizations and don’t feel that they are addressing the American public. For people that work, time is money. Now that’s not an excuse. It’s the truth. Some people wake up at, well let’s just say darn early and have to be at work early! Stay all day at work, come home and if they don’t have a second job that they have to go to, their second job begins at home. Take care of the kids, go food shopping, prepare dinner, clean the house, write checks for the endless bills that come in, clean clothes or even take care of elderly parents. It doesn’t stop. And now, the exercise recommendations come along that say to exercise for 30-60 or 90 minutes a day. Oh, let’s not forget the nutrition recommendations that we should follow: eat five servings ...
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