Child NObesity
Exercising the FUN way!
OUR PROJECT
Once we decided on childhood obesity as our community issue, we needed to develop our project. Our group wanted to focus on solving childhood obesity by exercise. We knew that a lot of pre-teens had misconceptions about exercise, and that once kids entered middle school they had a lot more options about how much they exercise. We chose the middle schoolers as our target audience. Since new technologies are becoming more and more common in our everyday lives and in schools, we wanted to incorporate technology into our project. To do this we found fitness apps and talked to teachers at our schools about using our material as they taught. We plan to make brochures with information about our project, exercising, and our website. We're also making fitness videos to teach people how to exercise correctly and about easy, fun exercises they can do.
OUR TROOP
Our troop decided to get our Silver Award this summer, so we split up into two groups. Both groups are using the community issue childhood obesity, but we went in two different directions. Our group is focusing on exercise, while the other group is focusing on nutrition. For their project, they are coming up with ideas for easy,
good-tasting, and nutritious foods that middle schoolers can make, as well as educating about nutrition in general. We plan to work together for some parts of our projects, including presenting at a Girl Scout leader meeting. Our troop has done many projects together before, including helping plan the Leader Daughter Cookie Mother Overnight (LDCMO) for 4 years. The LDCMO is a weekend overnight for the leader/cookie mothers and their daughters. We have planned many things, including the food and the activities that the girls do. Planning and attending the LDCMO is always one of the most fun things we do in Girl Scouts.
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CHILDHOOD OBESITY
When we thought about the issues in our community, we were really interested in childhood obesity. Childhood obesity is a very serious problem in our community, because of how common it is, and its terrible effects. Around 33% of children and adolescents in the United States are overweight/obese. And once a child is obese, they have an 80% chance of staying obese their entire lives. Obesity also has extremely negative effects on health. There are an estimated 300,000 premature deaths each year caused by obesity. And if it doesn't kill you, it can bring on countless effects on your health, including high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, joint problems, sleep apnea, cancer, metabolic syndrome, and psychosocial effects. Our group wants to prevent people from becoming obese by promoting exercise and good health. It can be hard to know if you are considered obese or overweight. You can figure it out by taking a BMI test. BMI stands for Body Mass Index, and it works by using a mathmatical equation. You plug in your height, weight, gender, and birth date, and using that information, the system tells you if you are above or below the weight you should be.
To find out if you are considered underweight, normal weight, overweight, or obese, click here for a BMI test for children or adults.
SILVER AWARD
Our Girl Scout troop is working on our Silver Award, which is one of the highest honors a Girl Scout can receive. There is the Bronze Award for girls in 4th or 5th grade, the Silver Award for girls in 6th, 7th, or 8th grade, and the Gold Award for girls in 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade. To complete the Silver Award, you need to identify an issue that you care about. The Silver Award can be done with a group of up to 4 girls, or by yourself. Once you choose your team, you need to explore the community and pick the project that you want to do. Your project must be a community issue, and it has to be sustainable, involve an expert, involve the community, and take action. Once you make a plan for your Silver Award, you send it in to be approved by the Girl Scout Council. When it is, you can begin work on your project.
To learn more about the different Girl Scout awards, you can visit the highest awards page on the Girl Scout website here
NUTRITION GROUP
The other half of our troop is working on their Silver Award by focusing on the nutrition portion of the child obesity problem. They have been making a cookbook that they are going to convert into an PDF that you can easily access from a computer, tablet, or phone. The book will include healthy recipes, that are also good tasting, and some ideas for nutritious snacks that teens will have time to make with their busy schedules. During lunch in many middle schools, students have an option of buying extras to eat from an a la carte line. Most of the things in that line are treats such as cookies, brownies, chips, and ice cream. While it's not bad to have that kind of stuff in moderation, some middle-schoolers are getting unhealthy foods like this every day. We think that one of the reasons is that they aren't sure just how bad for them the stuff their buying is. The group is trying to get nutrition information put up at a la carte, or at least inside their cookbook, so students know exactly what they're eating.
Check out the nutrition groups cookbook PDF here
FITNESS TRAINER
In order to gain more information about how to exercise the right way, we met with a personal trainer, Matt Mettler , and asked him some questions.
Q: What are some activities that teens can do to stay healthy?
A: You can ride your bike, swim, jog, dance, play catch, play frisbee, skateboard, play disc golf, play basketball, really anything with a ball and anything that gets you moving. You can even make a game up.
Q: How can you make exercising fun?
A: What you should do is find an activity that you already find fun and make it into an exercise. You can do this many ways. If you like playing cards, you can make a game where if you draw a 5 of spades, you do 5 push-ups, if you draw a 8 of hearts, you do 8 sit-ups, and so on.
Q: How long and how often should teens exercise?
A: Teens should exercise 3-6 days a week. Also, you can take something like the NFL Play 60, which says you should get at least 60 minutes a day of activity where you aren't sitting down. This can be anything, maybe just playing outside.
Q: How can teens fit exercise into a busy lifestyle?
A: You should incorporate it into your day like you incorporate homework. Figure out the best time of day for you to exercise. This could be when you have energy, or just whenever you have time. If you're tired, that's not an excuse to skip exercise, because it can actually re-energize your body for the rest of the day.
Q: What are some exercises that teens could do?
A: Teens should do things like basic cardio, burpees, sit-ups, push-ups, squats, and crawling. The main things you should focus on are fun, agility, balance, and core. All of these things will help in sports. As a teenager you shouldn't be lifting weights that much, focus more on exercises involving your own body weight.
Q: What type of stretching/warm-up should you do before or after a workout?
A: It's recommended to not stretch before a workout, because your muscles aren't warmed up yet, so you have a bigger chance of pulling a muscle or injuring yourself. Before a workout, do a warm-up that is specific to the type of exercise you are going to do. If you're planning on doing cardio, do some jogging in place or jumping jacks to get your heart pumping and blood racing. Afterwards, you can do some general stretching.
Q: What are your thoughts on what you should eat and drink before and after a workout?
A: You should hydrate the body before physical activity, and going as far as the day before if the activity is going to be strenuous and it's going to be hot outside. This will provide time for the water to actually be absorbed into the cells of the body. In a regular day you should eat three nutritious meals and healthy snacks in between, so whenever you exercise, you aren't more than 3 hours away from the last time you ate. After a workout, you should have a protein based snack.
We'd like to thank Matt for giving us his time so we could learn more about exercising. All of his information was extremely useful, and helped us a lot in our work towards our Silver Award.
To contact Matt, you can call him at 763-509-9100 ext. 310 or email him at mmettler@lifetimefitness.com.
