In the end, it is all about our behavior and the choices we make. When we are armed with the right information, we can make powerful changes in our biology. We don’t have to be slaves to it. For food, so much of the issue is about quality, not quantity. Most people don’t appreciate the effect food really has on our body. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Small behavior changes and better choices can lay a foundation for long-term behavior change and bigger changes. The changes may not be immediate, but good health doesn’t come from popping a pill or one hard workout. Good health is a process and takes time and effort.

via A Philosophy of Strength and Health: Food & Health: It Doesn’t Have to Be So Complicated.

Let’ me repeat one sentence from above: Good health is a process and takes time and effort. It’s a journey not a sprint that we are talking about. I always think about how great it will be that I am more in tune with my body and can feel how it feels depending on the quality and type of food I eat. I read a lot about people eating the Paleo diet which I believe is very much like the Zone Diet and how once they get on the program, they can tell immediately when they go off of it.

We’ve made exercise feel like a chore to most people, not like a gift we give ourselves.”

Instead, she suggested borrowing the motivational approach used by commercial marketers, “an emotional hook that creates positive, meaningful expectations of how exercise can enhance people’s lives, a way to feel better.”

via Personal Health – To Keep Moving, Look Beyond the Physical – NYTimes.com.

I often have said that I think one of the reasons why I have continued on my healthy and fit journey is because it’s fun to me. I have met amazing friends who have become like family to me and also because I found something that I connected with. The bootcamp style of fitness really suited me whereas someone else may be more into running or swimming.  I agree that lecturing people about the dangers of not exercising and health implications doesn’t really motivate people. We all are guilty of the not-me thinking…Oh I won’t fall one day and break my hip, or I won’t have a heart attack if I continue on the path of obesity…you get the idea I am going for… You have to find your thing – the thing that will make it feel like fun or give you that rush. That is truly what it is for me — finding the right program, clicking with the people, and my workouts give me a rush – knowing that I lifted that much weight or am that sore — thrills me.

But new research suggests that interventions aimed at school-aged children may be, if not too little, too late.

Like children and teenagers, babies and toddlers have been getting fatter. One in 10 children under age 2 are overweight. The percentage of children ages 2 to 5 who are obese increased to 12.4 percent in 2006 from 5 percent in 1980. Yet most prevention programs have shied away from intervening at very young ages, partly because the school system offers an efficient way to reach large numbers of children, and partly because the rate of obese teenagers is even higher than that of younger children — 18 percent.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which helped finance Dr. Taveras’s study, is spending $500 million over 14 years to fight childhood obesity, but only in children 3 and up. And a multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health childhood obesity project that is giving out $8 million over eight years explicitly excludes pregnant women and infants under 1.

via Evidence Suggests Obesity Prevention Should Start Very Early – NYTimes.com.

I am not sure what else I need to add in here with this article – We as a country are getting fatter The fact that the rate of obese teenagers is even higher than that of younger children — 18 percent – is scary but that shouldn’t mean that you don’t address the obesity issue in younger children. If studies are showing that we need to get in there and get involved earlier, then that is what we should do. Not as easy as it sounds I know, but if we start the discussion now, we can act that much faster.