The World Health Organization reported that in 2017, 2.8 million people died from obesity. On this day 4/22/2020 it has been reported that there have been 178,371 deaths from Covid19 complications. Besides age being a risk factor, they are also saying there is a direct link to deaths from Covid19 and obesity. This should not be a surprise to anyone actually. I'm not taking away from the heartbreak of deaths from this horrible pandemic, but I am hoping the United States is going to wake up to a more severe epidemic that is obesity. 2.8 million!!! Only a mere 12% of our population is metabolically healthy! We have become weak and sick from the food we are eating each and every day. Unfortunately, I fear we will eventually get back to the status quo and will go on with our lives, treating obesity like it is just an inevitable side effect of life. Our billions of dollars spent on autoimmune diseases, cancer, diabetes and metabolic diseases due to obesity seems to be overlooked by most. Is it because it is a slow death and not a quicker one like a virus? Is it because of our relationship with the foods we eat? Is it that we can't fight big food companies and their power? These are questions I ponder as I sit at home working on online teaching and trying to keep a gym operating during quarantine. There are opportunities for growth in all disasters. My hope from this tragedy is that we all grow in knowledge and awareness of what we put in our bodies and how it effects our health in so many ways......
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What a crazy, unsettling time is upon us. It is so scary to not know what our future brings and if we will have access to supplies, necessities, and non essential items. For those of us with small businesses what will this mean for our future? I keep taking a deep breath myself and trying to stay calm and realize that generations before us, for as long as humans have existed, have dealt with worse! Plagues have always been around and technology and resources have never been this available.
I was reading facebook and my thoughts are it brings out the best and worst in people. So many are generous and grounded yet others are negative and angry. Parents are faced with homeschooling their children which can be a real challenge. I am also a teacher so believe me I know what it is like to have some of these kids stay focused and learn. However, I also know how much they actually crave learning. Students in high school want to learn life skills more than anything at this point. How do I pay my taxes? How do I write out a check? How do I interview? How do I shake a hand properly? I teach this stuff in my classes because it is valuable. We have gotten away from the basics in our society in our quest for the best education possible. Sometimes the best education includes life skills, social graces, morals, and learning how to do things around the house. Even older kids will value a list of things to do to help during this time. Talk to your kids, ask questions, learn from them. I miss my students. They make me laugh everyday and I learn so much from them. Give them general guidelines for the day. Do a home project and make them help! Why are we so reticent to have our kids work with us? We need to make them work. We are in this together! I am going to be posting workouts of the day on my youtube channel for students during our social distancing time. I hope families also join in! Check it out… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7ZOfEZCvB0&t=120s Getting back from Florida this weekend and back into the groove. I love going to some warm places in the winter as a getaway. As many of you know Florida is a very popular snowbird spot. From the gulf coast to the east coast, retirees abound. I was looking around and I thought how nice it must be for these couples or singles to enjoy their later years being in the warmer climate. It brought to my attention how important our health is so that we can have that life later. Some people were playing pickleball, tennis, golf, walking, riding bikes etc. If we don’t take care of ourselves now we will not have the opportunity to retire and be active in whatever it is we would like to do.
The oldest of the baby boomer generation turn 75 this year. This is my parents' age group. We are supposedly the first generation to not live as long as our parents. Our diets and lifestyles need to be taken more seriously. I look at my life and luckily love what I do, however the thought of retiring and enjoying my time on my own schedule is so appealing. I want to make sure I am healthy and can live an active lifestyle when I get to that point. Consider how hard and long we work our whole lives and for what exactly? When I ask myself why people don’t stay active, I wonder what they say to themselves. Here are some of my thoughts on staying active as we age…
 Have any of you ever gone to Life Alive? This is an unbelievably delicious and healthy place for a great lunch. I have gone a few times and each time I go I wish I had the recipe for their delicious sauce they put on their dishes. Sarah and I found this recipe online that is so close to their ginger nama shoyu sauce and it is so quick and easy to make! Check this out from Sarah Fit Life Alive Ginger sauce . Last night I put some of this sauce on kale, quinoa, and roasted sweet potatoes for my lunch today and it was AMAZING! The key for me to eat healthy is to plan and prep. It is not easy to eat clean if you are rushed, hungry and have nothing to grab quickly. I’m trying to stay focused this week as next week is Florida and vacation!!
Welcome to my blog! I haven’t written in such a long time but a topic recently inspired me to write.
About Me I am a proud mother of 3 young adult kids, a daughter, a sister and a friend.. I am a physical education teacher, business owner, fitness instructor, personal trainer, athletic trainer, EMT, and realtor! My goal is to talk about what we go through as parents, and as women in this crazy life. So back to my current inspiration. In my profession, I follow many fitness, health and wellness professionals. I am a seeker of information because I am passionate about what I do. One thing that I find humorous and somewhat irking are the myriads of so -called 20 something year old fitness experts. Sorry ladies but just because you have a kick ass body in your 20’s does not suddenly make you a fitness expert. Working out in the gym a few days a week does not entitle you to give people advice. Can they view your cute selfies on Instagram? Certainly they can but don’t give advice to us who have been in the trenches. It's one thing if you have gone to school and trained to be a fitness consultant but even then in your 20's your body is at it's peak. Until you are postpartum with loose skin suddenly appearing where there was once tight abs don’t tell us how easy it is to get a six pack. Until you are sleep deprived from a vomiting child, ankle deep in dirty diapers and wondering how you will even get to take a shower during the day, please don’t show us your iced latte selfies telling us how you got a great productive two hours in the gym today. Until you have hit your 40’s and your metabolism seems to have shit the bed, don’t tell us that we can eat 6 meals a day and still have a rockin body. I want to see and read from real live women who have gone through tough times and were able to crawl, scratch or climb through. Life is real and life is tough. I want to be the best that I can be and learn from others who have been through stuff. Quite honestly it’s hard to look at these pictures, which by the way are mostly filtered, photo shopped, and at angles that are super flattering, and not feel bad that you just polished off an entire bag of family sized potato chips. We are all human beings doing the best we can. Let’s celebrate that we are real and work through our trials and successes together, not comparing ourselves to an unrealistic image. Let’s celebrate age and wisdom and life experiences. So instead of me going through post after post of posers in skimpy crop tops and leggings, I am going to continue to do the work, keep up the fight and live the best life I can live. Join me on my journey and if you feel unhappy with yourself ask yourself what it is you don’t like, take note and write a goal on how you will change it. Make the goal specific and measurable. For example if you feel you have gained weight and don’t feel as good as you could don’t just say,”my goal is to lose weight.” Set a specific weight loss goal and write down how you plan to accomplish this and in what time frame. Our first goal should always be to accept and love ourselves first. Congratulate yourself on your successes in life and then move on to get yourself to feeling the best you can. Every day look at your goal and work towards that. If you have poor eating habits and you would like your goal to be eating healthier then pick a specific action you will take each day or week to accomplish this goal. Do not live your life waiting to be happy, be happy in your journey. As a fitness instructor and physical education teacher, I am obviously focused on my students’ ( both younger and older) activity levels and their physical fitness. I don’t proclaim to be a nutritionist, however, nutrition to me is such an incredibly large piece of the puzzle that I would be remiss in not stressing the importance of this to all my clients and students.
I was accused by my husband of being judgmental several years ago when we took a family trip to Disney World. I couldn’t help commenting on the amount of motorized carts being used by obese, young people who could no longer walk. It wasn’t being judgmental necessarily, it was utter sadness that we Americans are unknowingly making ourselves sick with our Western diet. When I was little if you saw a really fat person, and you were a typical unrefined rude young kid who didn’t know better, you would gawk. However, now I find that people will gawk at fit people and fat people are the new norm. We are experiencing a health crisis in this country that is out of control. It is not just one particular illness we are dealing with, it is diabetes, cancer, arthritis, colitis, and many other chronic diseases that are not caused by some crazy virus or flu or some horrible strain of mosquito but these horrifying illnesses are caused by the very thing that we love to do - eat. It isn’t the fact that we eat, because eating is historically known for its social basis and elemental comforts as humans. Eating is a social urge stronger and more frequent to humans than sex.(Fox, n.d.) It is very often shared. It is It is how a mother nourishes her child. So it is not that we love to eat, It is the fact that we eat crap. We, as Americans, have been exploited and duped, perhaps even unknowingly if I give these large food companies the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they didn’t know that by making processed foods with additives, chemicals, and artificial ingredients that is was actually, slowly killing us. Childhood obesity is at a steady 17% in our country affecting 12.7 million children and adolescents. (“Childhood Obesity Facts | Overweight & Obesity | CDC,” n.d.) Armed with this disturbing knowledge, I began a program last year with my freshman Fundamentals of Fitness classes. This class is a requirement for high school freshmen and it mostly entails the basics of learning how to workout in a safe, balanced and effective manner. I decided nutrition was essential to this course. I began with having the students log their food intake for a week in a journal. The results were pretty devastating. The majority of these students ate hardly any fruit or vegetables in the course of a week. Eighty percent ate mostly starches like pasta and pizza and processed mac and cheese day after day. Why is this happening? Do parents not care? I don’t believe that. I believe parents don’t know. They don’t have the knowledge that what they are giving their kids is setting them up for a life of struggles mentally and physically. We live in a fast paced society where typically both parents work full time. In 2016 67.9% of married couples had both parents working. (“Employment Characteristics of Families Summary,” n.d.) Even if one parent isn’t working we as a society are overbooked, over-stressed, and over-worked. We therefore have made eating an offhanded thing we think of on the way home at night. We will pull over and grab fast food or a frozen pizza. Something quick and easy. Instead of a healthy nutritious breakfast as a start to the day, kids are stopping at Dunkin Donuts or other local donut shops grabbing a “coffee”. I put coffee in quotes because in essence it’s really cream and sugar with a bit of coffee added. Let’s start to slow down and make our dinner times meaningful with our families. Let’s start to nourish our bodies and our children’s bodies with good, whole food that we cook every night. Let’s stop the progression of the fat and sickness running the nation to an awareness and knowledge that food is medicine or poison. Pick yours… Resources: Childhood Obesity Facts | Overweight & Obesity | CDC. (n.d.). Retrieved May 29, 2017, from https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html Employment Characteristics of Families Summary. (n.d.). Retrieved June 1, 2017, from https://www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.nr0.htm [No title]. (n.d.). Retrieved May 29, 2017, from http://www.sirc.org/publik/foxfood.pdf The more I read about statin drugs to control this country's cholesterol, the more discouraged I become with our Medical Community. Some of the most intelligent people alive can't see the forest through the trees. We are a country handing out statin drugs left and right to everyone who exhibits elevated cholesterol without delving deeper into each person's
It is 2015 and the beginning of a new year. Gym owners love this time of year as everyone makes their New Year's resolutions and sign up for the gym! I love it because everyone seems to be determined to make a change in their life. With awareness and determination hopefully comes positive changes. My hope this year is for more people I know to become aware of their lifestyle and how it affects every area of their life. How exercise can burn off your stress. How clean eating can restore your health. I read too much about clean eating and can never go back to how I used to eat. I eat clean for the most part, make exercise a priority in my life, and use a ton of essential oils as part of my own personal wellness. I feel this makes me a better parent, spouse, and person in general. My body still feels 25 even though I am quite a bit more than that :) Take control of your wellness. Make 2015 a new year and a new awareness of who you can become.
Hi Everyone,
Today's healthy tip revolves around cholesterol. Did you know everyone needs cholesterol? Without it, people have a higher risk of death, disease and dementia. More and more studies show that cholesterol is not what causes heart disease. Sugar causes heart disease. The current test given by most doctor's offices measures your cholesterol number. Usually they say anything over 200 is bad and then as it gets higher they pressure you to go on medication to lower this number. To get more specific they measure the lipoproteins LDL and HDL. Typically it was thought that the higher concentration of cholesterol in the LDL caused heart disease. Now they are finding that it is actually the number of LDL particles not the cholesterol concentration in them. To make an analogy think of your blood as a highway, LDL as a car and cholesterol as a passenger. It is not the number of passengers in the car that is a problem, it is the number of cars on the road that can cause accidents. The increased number of particles can cause damage to the arterial liniing. With that being said, there are many thousands of Americans on statin drugs in this country when they really don't need to be. These drugs are not without serious side effects. I encourage all of you to make educated decisions before putting yourself on meds. You are your own advocate! Below is a great video to watch on cholesterol. Remember when it comes to health do your research and stay educated! http://youtu.be/DS5wTXhRWMA |
AuthorLynn Archambault is a professional health and nutritional trainer from Pepperell MA. She has owned Arch Fitness since 2009 and helped countless people achieve fitness goals that had otherwise eluded them. Archives
March 2020
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