3 TIPS FOR GETTING TO A HEALTHIER WEIGHT

WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS

"Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have."                  -- Winston Churchill

This past week, the Growing Healthy Kids project has been teaching people of influence about healthy foods and fitness (see last week’s column about Instant Recess).  Our goal is simple:  to improve health literacy and prevent obesity-related diseases.   

Starting conversations about our relationship with food and fitness is fundamental to achieving this goal.  In a class last week for staff of a regional local food bank, I instructed a man how to cut tomatoes for the quinoa recipe we were preparing (see below).  I noticed that he was cutting off,and discarding, almost half of each tomato.  While I silently freaked out about how much he was wasting, I interrupted him and matter-of-factly said the tomatoes were hydroponically grown and had been harvested just several hours earlier that afternoon.  I asked him if he had tasted the tomato.  Of course he said no.  So I gave him permission to pop a slice into his mouth.  He did, then exclaimed with joy about how wonderful it tasted!  I simply asked him to respect the work and effort that when into growing the tomatoes I had brought for the dish he was learning to prepare and told him that at my house I am very careful about how I cut the core out of the tomato.  After he tasted this beautiful tomato, he totally changed how he was cutting them.  Health literacy is a beautiful thing!

The lessons I taught to the staff of the regional food bank are the same as those I teach to parents every day and eating good foods to prevent obesity-related diseases.  Getting to a healthy weight is easy when you use these 3 tips every day:

1. Eat less of the bad foods (foods and drinks high in sugar, fats, and salt) and more of the good foods (fresh vegetables, fruits, grains, whole grains, and lean proteins). Choose locally grown foods when available.

2.  Drink enough water.  Cut back on the soda and juice.

3.  Get enough sleep.  Adults need 7-8 hours, kids needs more.  

QUINOA is a great grain for kids!

Speaking of eating more of the good foods, here is my recipe for a simple, delicious, easy-to-make salad.  Quinoa (pronounced “keen-wa”) is the only grain which is a complete protein.  It is easily digestable and high in dietary fiber (yeah!!).

GROWING HEALTHY KIDS:  Our Recipe Collection

Quinoa Salad

INGREDIENTS:

• ·        1 cup quinoa, rinsed
• ·        2 cups water (or low sodium chicken-broth)
• ·        1 cup grape tomatoes, cut in half
• ·        1 medium zucchini, diced
• ·        ½ red onion, sliced thin
• ·        Fresh cilantro, parsley, or mint, chopped
• ·        Salt and pepper to taste
• ·        Juice of 2 lemons
• ·        1/3 cup Braggs apple cider vinegar
• ·        2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

DIRECTIONS:

Combine quinoa and water in small pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer and cover. Cook about 20 minutes or until liquid has been absorbed. Let cool completely.

In a large mixing bowl, combine cooled quinoa with remaining ingredients. Toss to mix thoroughly.

Serve chilled on a bed of locally grown greens.  This makes a great lunch for kids at school and parents at work!  

To learn how you can support your local food bank, go to click here.

In gratitude,

Nancy Heinrich

Founder, Growing Healthy Kids, Inc.

INSTANT RECESS, FAITH, AND FITNESS

WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS 

“No matter how great your idea is, you’re just a lone nut until someone follows you and transforms you into a leader.  Thanks from the bottom of my heart for following me to start the real momentum behind Instant Recess.  Now if every one of us shares this idea with others, we’ll have a real MOVEment on our hands!  That’s my wish for the New Year – that Instant Recess becomes an unstoppable MOVEment helping us to turn around the obesity trends in this country.” 

(from an email sent by Dr. Yancey to colleagues at the beginning of 2013)

                                     Toni Yancey, MD, MPH

                                      1957-2013                                                                                     

                                                                                            

Believing that you are on the right track is important, no matter what your goal.  Solving America’s obesity epidemic will be done by setting goals and finding the right track to achieve them.  Have faith that achieving your fitness goal or goals is important for parents.  

How do you get to a healthy weight?  One way is to eat less of the bad foods and more of the good foods.  Another way is to eat smaller portions and to not skip meals and snacks.  You can eat less and exercise more.  To STAY at a healthy weight, however, requires increasing the amount of regular exercise you get.  Without the exercise, most people who lose weight tend to gain it back. This has been verified over and over again in the key habits of successful losers, a national database of people who have lost weight and kept it off for more than a year.

I strongly believe that as parents, we must be good role models for children.   Especially when it comes to fitness.  The funny thing is, when we have a Growing Healthy Kids education project and we talk about what the physical activity recommendations are (60 minutes a day for kids, 150 minutes a week for adults), the kids always ask why the recommendation for adults is less than half what it is for kids.  Great question.  Maybe we would be healthier as a country if adults set the bar higher for their own fitness goals.

Did you know that a minimum of 10 minutes of exercise gives you cardiovascular benefits?  A lot of people I talk with say, “I don’t have any time to exercise.”  What we teach parents is to break your 30 minutes a day recommendation into either three 10 minute or two 15 minute exercise period.  Finding 10 minutes to take a walk then becomes an easy goal to set and keep.

The fact is that most Americans are getting far less exercise than our bodies require to work right.  Many diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, can be prevented by staying at a healthy weight.  Dr. Toni Yancey has been working in the field of public health to educate churches and communities that fitness is essential to the prevention of obesity-related diseases.  She was a nonsmoker who died April 23 at the young age of 55 from a year long battle with lung cancer.  Dr. Yancey believed in short bouts of exercise, just 10 minutes, and she created a MOVEment called Instant Recess because isn't recess the best part of school that everyone looks forward to?  

Dr. Toni Yancey, creator of "Instant Recess"

The Growing Healthy Kids movement to reverse, halt, and prevent childhood obesity pays its respect to Toni Yancey.  We have lost a leader who fought to protect public health.  Her MOVEment and her message lives on.  To learn more about Instant Recess, click here.  

Now, I'm off for 10 minutes of Instant Recess.  On with the walking shoes and that's me out the door!

In gratitude,

Nancy Heinrich, MPH

Growing Healthy Kids, Inc.

SUGAR - BY THE NUMBERS

WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS

“To improve health outcomes, we must get better at improving health literacy.” 

                                      --Nat Irvin II, DMA, M.A.

                                                                 Professor of Management

                                                                  University of Louisville, College of Business

Professor Irvin was making his final remarks at last month’s Health Equity Summit held at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky.  The meeting was about bridging the gaps in the health of residents of Louisville, but his message applies to every city in this country. 

Improving health literacy is central to the mission and education projects of the Growing Healthy Kids movement.  Which is why we had a very important date with 40 elementary age children recently to talk about ketchup.

Hold on there.  Did you say ketchup?  Yes, ketchup.  The kids went nuts when they walked into the art room at the Boys and Girls Club in Sebastian, Florida and saw a bottle of Hunt’s “No Preservatives” tomato ketchup on the front table.  I heard kids say, “I love that stuff!”  and “Can I have some?”  An American staple, right?  Ketchup is made from tomatoes, but what parents often don’t know, or take the time to notice, is that it also contains added sugars and added salt.  

Teaching kids about sugar at the Boys and Girls Club (see the bottle of ketchup?)

As the kids learned, a serving size for ketchup is 1 tablespoon.  Next time you use ketchup, measure out 1 tablespoon and see how little that really is.  Then ask yourself, "Will I have one serving or will I be having 3 or 4 or 5?"  When I occasionally use ketchup at home, like when I make oven-baked sweet potato fries, I have more than 1 tablespoon.   But I don’t eat it every day or every week.  All the kids who eat chicken McNuggets every day are getting lots of hidden, added calories from the added sugars in the ketchup they are piling on the McNuggets.  That’s where we are getting into trouble with extra calories and extra weight.

How do you teach kids, or parents for that matter, that sugar is what we call the “evil empire” ingredient?  A little bit is OK for most people but it is easy to eat too much of it.

Let’s look at sugar by the numbers.  15-4-0-0-0-0-75 

One teaspoon of the white stuff has 15 calories.  

One teaspoon has 4 grams of carbohydrates.  

One teaspoon has no protein.  

One teaspoon has no vitamins.  

One teaspoon has no minerals.  

One teaspoon has no nutritional value.  

One teaspoon of sugar contains calories but no nutritional value.  

There are more than 75 names for sugar.  

The fact is that eating too much sugar leads to obesity, depression, diabetes, acne, tooth decay, inflammation, and other health issues.

A 12-ounce can of soda has around 44 grams of sugar.  That equals 11 teaspoons of sugar.   That’s 165 calories with no nutritional value.  What Growing Healthy Kids is asking parents to do is to start looking at the sugar content of the foods you are buying for your kids (and you).  Choose foods with less sugar, not more.  Drink water, not soda.  

A special thank you to Ella Chabot, Art Director at the Sebastian Boys and Girls Club, and Jordan Adams, Branch Director, for inviting Growing Healthy Kids to teach the children you serve.

In gratitude,

Nancy Heinrich, MPH

Founder, Growing Healthy Kids