A New Life Path

Today, I have started on a new path.  I hope that you will follow my tracks on this long, one day at a time, journey to improved health and fitness.  My hope is to keep myself motivated, while sharing my baby steps towards progress.  As a “physically challenged” woman, on an absurdly limited income, I hope to also include tips and suggestions.  When you toss a wrench, such as being disabled, into the dieting works, I tend to think it may change the suggestions, as it does change the circumstances.

The "New Frontier"

"Physical fitness is often in the news today, but it has long been a national concern, and the government's response to it was shaped significantly during the Kennedy administration.

In the years just after World War II, concerns about the fitness of U.S. citizens, especially the young, attracted national attention. Several trends and developments in the country lay at the root of this anxiety. The nation's economy had changed dramatically since the beginning of the century, and with it changed the nature of work and recreation. Mechanization had taken many farmers out of the fields and allowed the ones who remained to do much of their work with far less effort. The factories, which had long been highly mechanized, were becoming even more so, and fewer and fewer factory jobs required heavy labor. Outside of work, new forms of entertainment emphasized watching rather than doing. But these changes may not have been as important as people's awareness that they were occurring. People were beginning to have to confront a new image of themselves and their country, and they did not always like what they saw. Worrying about physical fitness channeled and expressed these doubts."

The Surgeon General’s Vision for a Healthy and Fit Nation Fact Sheet

Today’s epidemic of overweight and obesity threatens the historic progress we have made in increasing American’s quality and years of healthy life. The hard facts:

• Two-thirds of adults and nearly one in three children are overweight or obese.
• 70% of American Indian/Alaskan Native adults are overweight or obese.
• The prevalence of obesity in the U.S. more than doubled (from 15% to 34%) among adults and more than tripled (from 5% to 17%) among children and adolescents from 1980 to 2008.
• An obese teenager has over a 70% greater risk of becoming an obese adult.
• Obesity is more common among non-Hispanic black teenagers (29%) than Hispanic teenagers (17.5%) or non-Hispanic white teenagers (14.5%)."

Its the shape
Photo credit: didbygraham