Friday! heeeeeey! I LOVE Fridays :) It's the last day of the work week, I get to pick up Brianna after work and hang with her for a while. Our weekend is coming up! I get to babysit Saturday but Fathers day is Sunday! Which means we get to pamper Mike all day :) I was just looking at some articles about Americans and obesity. My hospital is actually going to start doing community outreach events to battle childhood obesity. That's what a lot of my meetings have been about lately. So delving into some research there's some startling statistics! An estimated 160 million Americans are either obese or overweight. Now if you look at what the government is stating what is a healthy weight it can get a little ridiculous, especially with BMI. For instance I weight 171 pounds and at 5'7 my BMI is 26.8 and that's technically overweight. I can agree with that because I have about 11 pounds to go before I hit my second goal weight. The amount of children specifically obese in America is a little startling. When I was a kid if we had fast food we had chicken nuggets, fries and a soda. That was in the early 90's and now we have so many more options. Unfortunately with the poverty rate rising and access to healthy options not rising it's hurt America pretty significantly. I switched over my husband and kids to healthy eating in 2014 when I started my weight loss journey. We cut out sugar completely, we switched to all organic meats, fruits and veggies and really watched our processed food intake. We really still do that three years later. I cut out red meat for the most part of my families diet and I rarely ever eat red meat. We eat a lot of turkey and chicken for protein or fish. When I order my groceries (because I hate actually going grocery shopping) I'm really particular with what me and the kids eat. Ashley specifically always always always asks for ice water. I've offered her watered down orange juice and she always wants water. Her body knows water makes her feel better so she automatically asks for it. She goes through yogurt like a monster, she doesn't eat sugary cereals or anything. We did go to a FROYO place the other day and I let her pile her frozen yogurt up with crap sugar but that's so rare and we brushed our teeth pretty severely when we got home lmao! Cavities are not something we ever want to deal with. They're terrible. I've never had a cavity and I'm not about to get one now! SO when I do get my groceries I end up paying a significant more amount than if I had just chosen processed foods and pasta! You can get a box of pasta and a can of pasta sauce for under $1.50. So ultimately if you ate that everyday for a week you'd spend $10.50 for an entire week of dinners. I spend about $100 or so a week on healthy foods. We do a lot of smoothies also so that's fruit, spinach, greek yogurt and a protein powder. That's expensive! I was driving the other day and saw a sign that a fast food restaurant has any size soft drink for $1! You know what water costs? $3. That's absolutely mind blowing. Sugar is 800 times more addicting than cocaine, so once it gets in your system it's hard to flush it out. Your body constantly craves it. Call me what you want but I'd rather my kids be healthy and active than sit them in front of a tv or electronic eating crap all day. Americas obesity rate in children it's getting completely out of control and we need to educate our citizens. We also need to drop our prices for organic, non processed foods. Were the only country that does this! Our kids are so easily placed in front of the TV now it's ridiculous, GO OUTSIDE! I'm constantly doing something with the girls on the weekends to get away from snacking and being lazy. We as parents need to make a choice for our childrens health, don't let obesity take over your child and then they can't take care of it later on in life. Look for outreach activities in your community to learn about obesity and how to battle it :) I'm sure you'll see us out there shortly! I hope everyone has a great weekend and I'll see you all Monday!
Kristen
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