Let's Get Physical......

Ok, so it's been awhile since my last post here, and I'm sure you're all wondering where I've been???? Right...oh well, I'll just imagine you are all filled with curiousity that just can't be contained.

I have been working out!!!! Why, might you ask??? Not because I'm dying to get out of the house, but rather my school district is getting all of it's employees to get fit. Not a bad idea and I was able to find a group of three other people who feel the same way as I do about losing weight.

Here's how it works....we all log in to http://www.livehealthyhouston.org/
and we enter and keep track of our weight on an honor system. Sounds good so far right? Oh, and we also get a free subscription to a magazine of our choice. Not too bad. '

Here's where it gets a little tricky. I'm not used to eating healthy. Never have been....my mother used to bribe me money just to eat fruit (i'm not kidding...it's that bad). So i have these little bad habits of eating junk food...and since I live in texas we have these certain thing here called "texas size"....which means I have a little problem with portion sizes. Not looking so fun right now.

However I do enjoy playing sports. At least I did...before my wife and I had our baby a month ago. I just got back into playing a little bit...with the blessing of my loving wife (mostly because I try to make sure that the house is clean and that the clothes are put away). Not too bad...but now I finding that I'm just breaking even....not really do enough to lose weight. So now I started running again. How fun.....kinda like going to the dentist and hearing that drill going off the whole time. Just like that...

So I'm not too sure how this little deal is going to turn out. I'm still hopeful about it. But I think it's not a good thing when even my wii fit keeps telling me that I'm unfit. Hmmmmmm maybe that bowl of icecream doesn't sound too bad right now. This is going to be a long year.

What happened to the good ol' days?

I'm sure that this is not a surprise to anyone but I just came across this story and I had to stop and ponder about it. Meals today at many fast food establishments have tried to include healthy food, but as you can see there are too many unhealthy choices. Students now are growing up in a culture where it's not only ok to be lazy, but with the facebook, and myspace, and everything else, why would a teenager want to leave their home this summer? As role models we also have to make smarter choices, and we can also try to incorporate some health fitness into the classroom.

I know that many of us are not P.E. teachers, but that doesn't mean we can't bring a little of that into the classroom. As teachers we can have the students discuss what makes a healthy food choice and an unhealthy food choice. Have them sort ads from a Sunday paper and discuss what they have experienced. Another way is to graph their heartbeat. Have them start cold, and find their pulse and record their rate. Then turn on some music have do some light aerobics for a few min and again record their pulse. You can increase the level of difficulty a few more times, and then do a warm down and take a pulse.

Activities such as these will not only have your students engaged in the lesson, but also aware of good healthy choices. Which is exactly what we as educators should all strive for. We need to encourage more activites just like we had when we were kids.