Fit Kids PDX

The average American eats 142 pounds of sugar a year, or about 2.5 pounds each week!

That’s a 23 percent increase over the last 25 years, and it is a major cause of the currently soaring rates of obesity and diabetes.

Dr. David Ludwig, who treats childhood obesity at Boston Children’s Hospital, says that one of the problems is the fact that the average convenience store is a nutritional disaster area.

Ludwig says that highly processed carbohydrates and refined sugars are causing hormonal changes that “drive hunger, cause overeating, and increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease.”

Sugar in some form is present in nearly every packaged product in a grocery store, including spaghetti sauce, salad dressing, peanut butter, mayonnaise and ketchup.

Due to deceptive nutritional labels and general lack of knowledge of where the hidden sugars are, Americans are eating far more sugar than they know. When searching for sugar, you must also keep a vigilant eye out for high fructose corn syrup and those dangerous artificial sweeteners. These are included in a wide variety of foods that you might not normally suspect.

When consumed in the massive quantities, sugars cause hormonal changes that lead to overeating. And don’t forget, carbohydrates found in processed foods, such as white bread and rice, break down to glucose and affect your body in the same way as refined sugar does.

Any meal or snack high in carbohydrates or sugars generates a rapid rise in blood glucose. To adjust for this rise, your pancreas secretes the hormone insulin into your bloodstream, which lowers your glucose (sugar) level. Insulin is, though, essentially a storage hormone, which is used to store the excess calories from carbohydrates in the form of fat.

Insulin, stimulated by the excess carbohydrates in overabundant consumption of grains, starches and sweets, is largely responsible for the obesity epidemic.

Even worse, high insulin levels suppress two other important hormones — glucagons and growth hormones — that are responsible for burning fat and sugar and promoting muscle development, respectively. So insulin from excess carbohydrates promotes fat, and then wards off the body’s ability to lose that fat.

Calling all Portland parents, kids and teens who are wanting to make a positive life change! Come join the fun March 29-June 11th for the 10 Week Fit Kids Body Evolution program. Learn how to begin eating and living healthy.

All classes and personal training at: Get Fit Studio, located at 1500 NW 18th Portland #107

SERIES PREMIERE FRIDAY MAR 26 9|8c
Jamie Oliver heads to Huntington, West Virginia—which has been called the unhealthiest city in America—to start his new cooking initiative. This show could really be the beginning of a revolution-it’s about time!!

Watch a Trailer od ABC’s Food Revolution

In this video, Jamie shows a class room of 1st graders a table full of vegetables. Not one child recognizes a single vegetable including tomatoes or potatoes! Holy cow!

Cost:
$900 for one-on-one training
$700 for groups of 3 or more

10 week program includes: nutrition counseling, book, binder, t-shirt, 7 day a week support, grocery store and farmers market field trip, pedometer and more!

2 training sessions per week:
Tuesdays and Thursdays, ages 8-13 4:00pm-5:15pm
Tuesdays and Thursdays, ages 14-18 5:15pm-6:30pm

How to Help Your Teen Lose Weight
By Heather Kimbrell

Obesity in children and teens is on the rise in America today. Being overweight is not only extremely bad for your child’s health; it can be emotionally devastating on a teenager. Even though the obesity numbers are on the rise the media pressure to be thin is stronger now than it has ever been. This combination leads to low self esteem and depression in the emotionally fragile teen. It’s your job as the parent to help your child overcome their weight problem with love and support. It isn’t just about physical health; it’s about their emotional well being to

Step 1

The first step to helping your overweight teen lose weight is to really understand how risky childhood and teen obesity is. Children and teens that are overweight have significantly higher risks of developing type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and depression. As a parent you love and protect your children. You do everything you can to keep them safe from harm. You wouldn’t let your teenager light up a cigarette in front of you so why on earth would you be fine with them consuming large amounts of junk food? How is it any different? You are the parent and it is your job to protect your children from harm. Obesity will harm your teen’s health, happiness and longevity.

Step 2

Now that we know how important maintaining a healthy weight is for your teen what can we as parents do to help? The first thing to keep in mind is how self conscious teenagers can be. You do not want to tell your teen that they are fat or overweight. Hurting your child’s self esteem isn’t going to help. In fact, children who are ridiculed and criticized about their weight are more likely to grow up having a weight problem or eating disorder. Instead, you should focus your efforts on the whole family. Discuss with your teen how important it is for the whole family to make changes to their diet and get in some exercise. Talk about how you are worried about the health of the entire family and what you all can do together to help each other get healthier. Then stick to it! Prepare healthy meals for everyone in the house. Get everyone together in the evenings for a walk around the neighborhood or park. Keep healthy snacks in the house and throw out junk food and candy. If you want your child to eat healthier you’re going to have to do it with them.

Step 3

Encourage sports and other after school activities. If your teen spends most of their time watching TV or playing video games after school, you’ve got to put your foot down. Tell your teen that the new rule is they have to be involved in at least one extra curricular activity. They can choose any sport they want or if sports aren’t their thing you can encourage them to join the band, color guard or volunteer to do community service with a local youth group. Not only will all of these activities provide some good exercise, but they will enable your teen to make new friends and build self confidence. Both of which are crucial to over all happiness and positive body image.

Step 4

Eat dinner as a family. Sharing family meals around the table is a practice that all families should try to do at least a few times per week. It’s a great way to bond with your children and get involved with what’s going on in their lives. Sharing meals together will encourage conversation and family closeness. But did you know that it could help your teen’s weight too? People who eat meals at the dinner table instead of in front of the TV or computer consume fewer calories at each meal. When you stuff your face with food in front of the television, you are so preoccupied by the show that your eating goes into “auto-pilot mode”. You are no longer aware of how much food you are eating, you will eat your food faster and you’re less likely to notice when you are full. So set the table and start a new family tradition of having dinner together.

Go through this routine twice.

20 Jump Squats

You determine the intensity based on your fitness level. Jump squats are an amazing workout for your butt and legs, however, you may need to start by simple keeping your feet on the ground and doing free body squats.

15 Walking lunges each leg (total of 30 steps)

20 Push ups. Move to you knees if you lose your form or get too tired

Plank for 60 seconds. Move to your knees if you lose your form or get too tired

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year’s TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.

To read entire article to listen to story, click here.

1. Cross Fit

CrossFit workouts may not be for everyone but you’ll get serious results! The CrossFit philosophy of functional training (natural and compound ranges of motion) incorporates using your body weight, kettle bells, weighted balls, pull up bars, rings, ropes and barbells. CrossFit workouts are similar to Olympic and gymnastic training, the Boston CrossFit blog has some kick ass videos showing how to get the moves right. Check out the website, there is a new challenging workout posted daily.

2. Body Weight Workouts

Body Weight Workouts. You can get a hard body fast with NO equipment! A lot of people don’t have extra space in their homes for equipment or want a good workout on the road…. no biggie because you can get an awesome workout with nothing but your own body weight. If you can’t do push-up, start on your knees. Use a chair or bench under a pull up bar to get started if you can’t already do one, help your self up and slowly let yourself down, it’s the negative portion of the exercise that will grow your muscles and provide the strength gains you need to allow you to do a full pull up without assistance. This prison workout is another great free body workout.

3. High Intensity Interval Training

High Intensity Interval training (HIIT) is a specific kind of cardio training that incorporates short intense intervals. HIIT will give your metabolism a serious boost and burn fat for hours. A typical example time ratio is 2:1 meaning jog for 60 seconds and sprint for 30 seconds. A beginner may complete 6-8 cycles but as your fitness level improves you can increase the amount of cycles you do. I have recently cut my cardio workouts out down from 60 minutes to 30 minutes. Why? Because I know that if I push myself as hard as I can for half as long, I’ll get more out of my workout. And it’s actually made my workouts more enjoyable.

4. Plyometrics

Plyometric workouts seem to be a favorite for actors who need to pack on muscle fast. I would say that if this is the training program for people like Christian Bale and Brad Pitt … then it works!

Plyometric exercises were designed specifically to increase muscle strength and power. It’s an athlete’s workout that incorporates explosive movements in rapid sequence. Here’s several examples of plometric exercises for your lower body at light, moderate and high intensity.

5. Functional Training

Functional Training is often referred to when discussing workouts that include compound exercises, meaning exercises that use more than one muscle group. The term functional implies that it replicates our bodies natural range of motion. We highly recommend compound exercises because it’s a more efficient way to exercise and it burns more calories. A few examples would be: Squats with an overhead press, lunge with bicep curl or lateral raise, deadlift with a bent over row.

6. TRX Straps

These are a fabulous tool for the beginner all the way up to extreme athlete. The resistance of the exercise all depends on your body position. It’s one of my favorites pieces of equipment because it rocks the core and all your stabilizer muscles!

7. Power Yoga

Ashtanga or Power Yoga not only increases your strength, flexibility and endurance but it’s an amazing way to relieve the body and mind of stress like no other workout. Since I incorporated power yoga (ashtanga or vinyasa) to my weekly workouts I have seen huge improvements physically, but have been most impressed with a new sense of well being. It has the ability to take you to your edge physically while soothing and relaxing your mind at the same time. If you are a serious weightlifter or athlete, power yoga is a great compliment to your overall training. My yoga studio in NW Portland, Yoga Pearl.

8. Kettlebells

I had seen the videos and honestly, I was a bit intimidated. I didn’t think I was going to enjoy using them but I was wrong! The kettlebell is an awesome tool for functional and compound training. The way they’re weighted and the way the grip is positioned allows you to comfortably swing, press and pull the the weight around.

If you start looking online for kettlebell instructional videos, you’ll find everything from the old school Russian routines to pregnancy workouts. You should have no trouble finding the right workout, what ever your fitness level.

9. Get Outside!

Walking may be the most basic exercise of all but it doesn’t have to be the easiest. Hiking involves truckin’ up a steep hills and moving around and over rocks and stumps. It’s a perfect way to really work up a sweat. Why not get some fresh air and beautiful scenery if you can. If a beautiful hike outdoors isn’t realistic, take a brisk walk to the park or around your neighborhood. Be creative, boost your walks by finding hills, walking faster, or go that 15 extra minutes. It’s also a workout that can be done with friends. Try to walk with someone who you know is in better shape, they’ll help you keep a faster pace.

Portland walking and running trails