[illinichick]

I'm reading Body for Life for Women, and the author is talking about how our generation is "becoming so sedentary and overweight that they risk becoming the first generation not to live as long as thier parents"!!! How scary is that? I don't want to become a statistic. I'm not happy about the fact that my parents aren't going to live forever, but I certainly don't want my children to have grandparents but no mother!!! AH! (Not to get ahead of myself, I hope to actually HAVE children some day, which isn't going to happen if I continue to live my life at this weight...)

There's another passage in the book that states that "Women rarely "just do it".
For us it's usually "just obsess about it." That is one of the truest things about myself that I've read... How depressing.

Oh dear...

[sierra_ttw]

That's definitely a motivator - so is the thought of what will happen to our kids if we pass our habits on to them - not good! Kinda makes you wonder why we call a lot of the things we've come up with progress if what we're really doing is shortening our life spans.

Well, you've convinced me to get up and go to the gym tomorrow morning!

[happydaisy]

I ordered that book and just got it today! Sounds like just the kick in the butt I need to keep going...

[britomart]

Yikes..... That's pretty scary.

My fiance and I often talk about how we'll raise our kids when we have them, and we've been setting completely different expectations for them than we have for ourselves. How are we supposed to impose a "no cookies" rule (or what have you) when we sit around eating cookies? We can't make the next generation healthier until we get healthier. It's all about setting examples and being good role models!

[Marineswife85]

I watched that new show "Honey were killing the kids" and it was really a kick in the face. I dont want Jay to be a 250lb 12 year old. So im really glad Jason and I BOTH are changing the way we eat and live. I want to set a good example for him. LIke, were not going to COMPLETLEY cut him off from sweets and stuff, but hes going to only get them as treats every so often. I dont want Jay going to friends houses and stuffing himself on treats because i dont let him eat them you know what i mean? But at the same time, I got fat when I was a kid because my dads rediculously skinny and loves Little Debbie snacks etc, so my mom bought tons, so I would sit down and eat like 7 or 8 of them and not think twice about it because my parents never stopped me, and then teased me for being fat, which in turn made me eat more..
I dont wanna be one of those fat moms either.. I dont want Jay to be ashamed of me. Im not asking to be SKINNY, just thinner than I am now lol. If IM fat then Jay will probably be fat when he gets older.. OH well.. thats why i need to start kicking it up a notch..

[kms7z]

marineswife-
i think if you incorporate your son into your healthy lifestyle (take him on walks, involve him in meal planning, talk about how wonderful healthy food is, etc.) then he will appreciate the lifestyle and it will not be as FORCED upon him. this is what my husband and i hope to do when we have children (easier said than done, right?).

also, if your son has cookies at friends' houses, it won't be a daily occurence (unless he is over there ALL the time). it is normal for children to have desserts-- and i think your approach will teach your son that "cookies are a sometimes food"

[Bandie]

Hi guys! While I think that anything that motivates you to eat well and exercise (like being healthy and wanting to feel better about yourself, have a good quality of life, and being a good role model) is awesome, I think this prediction is media hype. I keep an article from scientific america that I clipped out regarding the "overblown obesity epidemic". It talks about the common perception that overweight=unhealthy, and that obesity is going to become the #1 killer in North America. The major study in which the prediction that has been often-quoted by the media about life expectancy falling because of obesity (which was published March 2005 in the New England journal of medicine) predicted that obesity will cause a 2-5 year decrease in life expectancy. The scientists who did this study made a number of assumptions (for example, they came up with the 2-5 years by comparing our society with a utopia where everyone was a normal weight, and there were no excess deaths caused by underweight, which actually has considerable health risks associated). They used old "risk" data, which did not account for advances in medicine in the past decade. Other studies have shown no statistically significant risk of excess deaths in obese populations.

Sorry, didn't really mean to rant about that study as much as I did; there are links of obesity to certain diseases like diabetes and heart disease to be sure, but it seemed a bit like sensationalism. My favorite analogy ever was of obesity to smoking. Yellow teeth and fingers aren't a cause of lung cancer, but smoking causes yellow teeth and causes lung cancer. Being obese doesn't cause diabetes and heart disease; poor nutrition and lack of exercise do.

I felt so relieved when I read that; it's help me forget the scale and focus on being healthy. I always felt like I "should" be a certain weight, and then I would be healthy - once I reached that BMI range I would be out of the "risky" area health-wise. Even when I was my most fit and eating well I felt like it was pointless because the scale told me that I still wasn't a normal, healthy weight. But now I check to see how many fruits and veggies and lean meats I've eaten, and how often I've made it to the gym or some kind of activity to judge. For me, it's those habits I want to pass down to the next generation, not monitoring my weight.