It takes a village...

Everyday I walk by the Brown School on Willow Street and I suppose I never really noticed, but today as I jogged by at recess time, I realized something very weird. There's a bench on the playground. I came jogging up the street, I hear the kids shrieking and playing, and then I see two kids...both overweight...sitting on the bench while everyone else plays. The boy was reading a book, the girl was eating a bag of Cheetos, licking her fingers, looking happy and uninterested in playing, delighting in her cheesy, salty snack. I looked at the rest of the playground, all of the other kids were running around, chasing each other, playing ball, etc. But these two could not be bothered. As I passed by them, the boy looked up at me, we locked eyes and then he looked back down at his book. In that moment, all I could think was "Get up, kid. You don't want to be me, 20 years from now, working to erase your past. Don't get into these habits now".

Childhood obesity is a huge problem, no pun intended. As our society becomes more technologically advanced, the asses of our children (and ourselves) get seemingly larger. As a kid, you go outside, wait for the bus (or are driven to school), you get to school, you sit down at your desk. You go out to recess, you may or may not run around. You sit around more. Then you go home, at which point you fire up the tv, computer, Wii, whatever and may never actually get any physically activity. Sure, you have gym class for 45 minutes a week...that'll erase a snack sized back of Doritos, maybe.

And as an adult, you've come up with a million and one excuses for why you can't work out, especially if you have kids. Now look, I'm not saying you're a terrible person or a bad parent, please. I have great respect for parents. I, myself, do not have kids, so I don't know the joy/pain/fatigue enjoyed by parents, but I do understand that it's a great challenge. I am trying to stockpile nuggets of wisdom in the event that I ever have a kid so that I don't put him/her down the path of obesity. But anyway, the demands of society and life have certainly put a stranglehold on your time. I get it. You wake up early, get the kids off to school, or get yourself off to work, sit all day at your desk. Your desk may have candy jars on it, someone's in the office may, it's someone's birthday, you have to celebrate with food. You have a "convenient", but nutritionally vacant lunch, because you didn't have time to go out grocery shopping. You have a long commute, you get home, with or without kids, make dinner, watch some tv to unwind and then it's time for bed. You're perpetually tired. You don't have time to eat well. Why is it so much more difficult to take 30 minutes to whip up something nutritious and delicious than driving up to a window and getting "food" in a paper bag? So you can then take an extra 20 minutes to watch TV? Sure, you might hate Rachael Ray, but she's serious when she says it only takes 30 minutes to create a wonderful meal.

I've been lamenting the fact that I feel like I've made some bad decisions in my life, leading me to the point I am now, in many areas of my life, not just healthwise. My wise friend, EOB, said "Well, lately I've been thinking that decisions aren't necessarily good or bad, that's it's all about choice. It was your choice to do this or that." And to be honest, at the time, you agonize over a choice, and it's not good or bad at that point...but as we all know, hindsight is, in fact, 20/20. A lifetime of not so great choices lead me to be overweight. Obese, actually. Let's just be honest. I was obese. I am overweight now. Hooray for small victories. Or large victories. Yeah, I'd say the loss of 80 lbs is a large victory. Sometimes I wish I could hop into my circa 1985 DeLorean and head back to my childhood and make better choices.

But as a kid, you don't know enough by yourself. You have to be guided by your parents. Your parents have to make good choices for you to emulate. I've talked about this before, and I certainly don't want to lay the blame on my parents, but considering that's where I learned my eating habits, this is partially their fault. And seeing those kids on the bench today, really made me think, they will probably go home and have a craptastical snack, which may be like eating another meal. I'll be straight with you, I'd come home and stuff my face...especially when I'd come home to an empty house. Guzzling soda, eating chips, tastykakes, whatever was in the house. And then I'd eat dinner in a few hours. I didn't really eat vegetables as a kid/teenager/early adult...so most of my meals were just meat and carbs. And as it's Friday, these kids may live in a household where it's Pizza Night or something like that. The weekend arrives and they'll sit inside all weekend, playing video games, watching TV, etc. The only good thing I can say was at least the boy was reading a book. (It seems that reading has become obsolete...so that at least made an unfortunate situation somewhat bearable. But THAT discussion is for another time...)

Even as I sit here, attached to my own technological device, I feel a bit guilty, like I should be doing something active. I went for a run today, yet I still feel like I should do more. I suppose I'm realizing that my body is getting used to this certain level of activity and that to see greater results, I need to kick it up a notch. Bam! (Thanks, Emeril.) I need to take my own advice and stop self-sabotaging. The more things change, the more they stay the same. For example, the last few weeks, I've been pretty lax about my food choices. I'm not gaining weight, but certainly not losing it either. But I'll get this overwhelming sense of "hunger", or could just be emptiness, and I want to eat. My kitchen/pantry area is definitely void of nasty junk food. The worst thing I have out there right now is a box of granola or a canister of almonds. So yes, if i chose to eat the entire canister of almonds, that would be bad. But when I graze around and try to satisfy whatever's going on in my mind, I'm stuffing my face with fruit and granola, wishing for chocolate.

And then I remember the times when I used to do that growing up, when the cabinets were filled with sugary deliciousness.

And I remember how I got to the point I was at a year ago.

Fat.

Unhappy.

Lost.

I don't feel lost anymore. Unhappy? Not all the time, that's for sure. Unhappy because of certain things, yes, but not with who I am. That's a big difference. Lost? A little, but again, not for the same reasons. Losing weight doesn't cure all of your ills, that's for sure. But challenging yourself to do things you never thought possible will do wonders for your self-esteem. You realize that you are everything you ever wanted to be and more, but that you had been drowning in negative self-talk and Ho-hos for far too long.

I don't know too many kids personally. But the kids that I do know, I try to impress upon them that they are worth the effort and the hardwork. They shouldn't allow other people to make them feel badly about themselves and that everyone has demons in their past that try to bring you down. I try to teach them the lessons I've learned, trying to steer them away from a path of self-destruction like I was on. If you have kids, show them the way to a healthy, active life. Don't let them go down this path. This is a journey that far too many people are going to need at some point in their lives if we don't help them early on. They say that due to the rising rates of obesity in this country that this current younger generation will actually see a dip in life expectancy thanks to diabetes and heart disease and all of that stuff. Don't let your kids be part of that statistic. Sure, it might be easier to heat up a box of chicken nuggets for dinner, or to give them mac and cheese every night for dinner, but in the long run...will it help them? Your kid's health should be a great priority in your life, only behind your own, perhaps, because without a healthy parent, that kid will be nowhere.