May 5th, 2010 — Fit Girl, Victims & Dangers
My husband was just informed by a police officer that he would call child protective services on us. He gave us a warning, this time.
Our crime?
We let him ride his bike outside in front of our house. In a residential neighborhood with dead-end streets.
Is it actually illegal to let a kid ride their bike outside?
I doubt it.
In the meantime, we live in a town with 60% fat kids. It appears that endangering a child’s life by sitting them in front of the TV with a bag of Sonic everyday is not considered child endangerment, though exercise and play is.
Never mind that this same officer likely rode his bike all freaking day long when he was growing up, and relished in the freedom and fun of it. Probably on this same street.
Back to the TV for you kid. It’s “safer.”
Visit Free Range Kids.
image from iamway2fat.
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February 19th, 2010 — early puberty
According to an article, Puberty gap: Obesity splits boys, girls on MSNBC.com, new studies have indicated that the current obesity epidemic among children is causing boys to hit puberty later than previous generations.
Girls appear to be hitting puberty one to two years earlier than previous generations.
Theories on what might cause late puberty in overweight boys center on hormones produced in fat cells. Obese males have higher levels of estradiol, a relative of estrogen that may interfere with the male hormone androgen, states the article.
One doctor also provides parents with the solution to early or late puberty in their children:
At a time when so many children are overweight, parents should be more concerned about obesity than puberty, said Dr. Laura K. Bachrach, a professor of pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
“They should be worried about the food they’re putting on the table.”
Fit Girl Series: Whose Body Is It Anyway
Fit Girl Series: We Did It
Fit Girl Series: Accept Your Body
Fit Girl Series: Friends, Strangers With Candy
Fit Girl Series: Comparing Children
Fit Girl Series: Exercise Poll
Fit Girl Series: Eat This, Not That!
Fit Girl Series: BIG FAT LIARS!
Fit Girl Series: Obese Teens on Oprah
Fit Girl Series: Weight = Moral Failure
Fit Family = Fit Girl
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January 18th, 2010 — Body Image & Self Esteem, Media, Marketing and Advertising, Politics & Legislation
December 2nd, 2009 — Body Image & Self Esteem, Fit Girl
From Time Magazine’s article The Year In Health,
A session of yoga for teens with anorexia, bulimia or other eating disorders may provide more than spiritual and physical boost; it could also help them get over their illness, according to a new study of 50 adolescents, mostly girls. The girls were seriously ill – nearly half had been hospitalized because of their eating disorder – and were being treated at an outpatient clinic at Seattle’s Children’s Hospital. While the non-yoga control group showed improvement, they relapsed a month afterward. In the yoga group, improvement started slowely, but a month later, the teens were showing steady gains. The researchers suspect that yoga may help by reducing obsessive concern about weight associated with eating disorders. One participant said, “This is the only hour in my week when I don’t think about my weight.” A larger study is planned to confirm the findings.
In my experience, what Yoga did for these young women, what it did for me, and what it can do for anyone with any type of disordered eating or any other addiction or habit is stop the cyclic negative thinking that imprisons the person in their addiction. It creates a new pathway in the brain, where the previous pathway kept using an addictive substance or behavior to resolve the same issue or cyclic negative thought. Yoga, in my experience, is brain training and produces a more disciplined mind, primarily by teaching it how to be still.
Just watch, yoga will be scientifically proven to prevent and cure a whole host of physical ills, addictions, psychological diagnosis and conditions.
Two great resource for yoga (including free world-class yoga practices) include Hillary’s Yoga Practice and Elsie Escobar’s Yoga Kula.
For more information about how the brain creates pathways and the phenomenon of addiction watch What The Bleep Do We Know.
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November 2nd, 2009 — Fit Girl, Mentors, Role Models, Peers
Picking up speed, finish line in sight, bursting through my personal barrier of “I can’t run”, on my Race for the Cure 5k this weekend I congratulated myself for finally filling my life with positive peer pressure.
Now, how do I translate the infinite value of surrounding one’s self with positive people going in the right direction to my daughter?
I wasted a huge portion of my life surrounding myself with negative people going nowhere. Druggies and addicts, bad boys, snarky mean girls, people whose ambition is to lay on the couch and complain for the rest of their lives, people who just don’t appreciate me.
Peer pressure is inevitable. You can’t avoid peer pressure.
The key is, I finally realize, to choose your peers carefully.
Find some people who are not perfect – never the perfect ones who make you feel fake, less-than, inauthentic and never good enough, the “perfect pretenders” are as toxic to one’s soul as drug addicts, never them – but people who are impeccably flawed and willing to try their best anyway.
I congratulate myself these days on attracting people who make me question my limiting beliefs about myself like, “I hate running, I can’t run a 5k.”
Having friends who say, “Let’s run a Race for the Cure 5k, it will be fun” makes me think, “well, what if I can?”
I can. I did.
While running, I was thinking of my three friends running with me, not racing each other, but racing themselves to do their own personal best, and I thought, “That Jennifer is running the whole thing! I want to run the whole thing!”
The other day, I told my husband, “I can’t run a 5k but I know I can walk-run-walk-run it because I do that all the time.”
He said to me, “You can run it, you just believe you can’t.”
“Is that true?” I thought.
“I want to run the whole thing.” I thought during corpse pose in the yoga class we had taken the day before. “What if I can do that? That’s a huge personal barrier – a ginormous limiting belief that
‘I can’t run.’ A limiting belief built up since ,what? high school P.E. and Fitness for Life in college? A limiting belief that
isn’t serving me. I can run it. I don’t have to do it fast. If I do it all all, take all day, as long as I’m running and not walking. I can do that.” I visualized it.
“What if I let all my limiting beliefs go today?” I thought as a jogged and concentrated on my breathing. “What if I can run a 5k? What if I can write and publish an amazing book? What if I can learn to promote my book? What if I really can do anything I decide to do?”
I visualized myself crashing through all my stupid limiting beliefs about what “I can’t do” as I neared that finish line. There was my friend Jennifer cheering “GO TRACEE!!!!” and waiting to slap my hand the nano-second before I crossed that personal barrier.
I let out a belly laugh after I crossed. I turned to cheer on my friend Crystal who was about 10 seconds behind me and we hugged and couldn’t believe what kind of adrenaline rush we were having, it was her first 5k race. We asked someone to take our picture. Then we cheered and hugged our dear friend Alexis as she crossed the finish line.
We spent two hours standing at the finish line of Race for the Cure cheering and congratulating strangers and family members and survivors of breast cancer and family of breast cancer victims. I imagined everyone had some kind of demon, belief or out-of-reach goal they were confronting in that final moment.
Rather melodramatically a single tear fell down my cheek as I congratulated myself for being so profoundly blessed to be surrounded by good people who love me for myself, want me to be my best authentic self, will cheer me on as I do my best to scale, dig tunnels, go around, detour, chip away at and blow up any brick walls I happen to put in my own way, perfection not required.
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