The Biggest Loser - Failing Kids

Stepping up.

Coach Milo playing mirror games.

There have been more than a few folks who have asked about The Biggest Loser and the new “kids” addition to it. That sinking, pit-of-the-stomach, feeling socked me as soon as I heard they’d have kids on the show. 

The biggest problem with the show is that it's on television, and commercial television is largely about one thing, making $$$$$. Shows need ratings to make money. So they will do what they need to do to get those ratings.

Sorry folks, the health of our future isn't a game show; it's not about getting ratings.

No dodgeball? Yeah right!

TBL is not reality. The only thing good about that show is it's getting folks talking about fitness. But, even within the fitness community, Jillian, the show's biggest star, is a one-trick-pony. "Let’s tear ‘em down and build ‘em back up!!!"  Berating and belittling go a long way toward creating tears, angst and anger. That’s the perfect recipe for ratings. Jillian is a good-looking, in shape marketing machine. She may be a great person - seriously. I wouldn't know because I don't know her. But the character she plays on TBL stinks. In her first show back, she pushed five people until they collapsed, and one quit. They had 5-mile walks. They, trainers, laughed at the effort. She kicked people out the gym, too. Give me a break. There are many who roll their eyes at me when I talk about fitness tasks. But if I were more like Jillian, would that be better? That's not great training, not even close. Actually, that's pretty pathetic. But in this country, if you're marketed right, you're the expert. Trainers throughout the country have to fight that stigma all the time.

Coach Ivan: Flag football
 with the young athletes.

I wish it were just my being jealous of a trainer who is in the limelight and is making a grip off every show and every product. But I'm confident and content yet still driven in my career path. This just irritates me. Now they’ve taken it up a notch. Screwing with adults is one thing. Many adults are psychologically and biologically prepared to deal with the ramifications of TBL’s information. Our teens are not (that's another thing, if the goal was to address our alarming childhood obesity rates, why did they start teens. They should've started with even younger children).

What ever happened to free play?

The first problem TBL has with the obesity problem is premise that they believe they are going to raise awareness of childhood obesity in the US.  File that one under, “Holy Self-Indulgent Bovine Excrement Batman!” Really? Does this show believe that it has uncovered a secret or that the nation fails to see the problem we have with our inactive, overweight and obese youth? Awareness isn’t the issue. It hasn’t been for a long time. Proper action is the issue.  Adults are acting too much on logic while dealing with obesity – an emotional issue. We have to use emotion to deal with emotion.

Moms, sons, daughters. Nothing
wrong with this picture!

The second problem TBL has with the children is they’re letting the regular trainers work with the kids. TBL, if it were looking to actually create a positive change within the culture surrounding our young folks and their health, could have gotten a person more adept at interacting with kids. They should have found the biggest  “kid” around to play with the three that they chose. OH AND WHAT’S WITH ONLY THREE KIDS?!?! Seriously, there are games you can play with three, but there are many more you can play with eight to 10. And with eight to 10 kids, there is a higher chance that there will be a wider cross-section of the nation's obese young.

Instead TBL is using the same trainers who are simply showing their softer side. But nobody is playing. Kids, even teenagers, want to play. Hell, even when NFL Play 60 did its two pennies worth, the kids still didn’t play! They cheered on the NFL Players hoping to get a player at their school.

Really, I love the thought behind the NFL’s Play 60 campaign. They want to do good stuff. They want to – at least it appears – be an agent for action with youth fitness. But the program falls well short of what it could be.

Want kids moving? Adults
have to move, too!

Our kids are going to get the biggest loser's message either directly by watching the show or indirectly by their parent's friend's ex-father in-law who heard it from that part-time crossfit instructor outside of Taco Bell. And the message they’re going to get is that it’s okay to tell everybody the social problems you have so we can all feel sorry for you and shed some tears.

It's sad. We understand. But it's not melodramatic and shouldn't be sensationalized.

We know the problem! We see it every damn day. What the nation needs to see is how to solve the problem. Telling the teens to try dancing and kickboxing?  C’mon, stop passing the buck! Get in there, and play games with the kids. Make them feel as if they are an integral part of something that’s bigger than them.

Stepping down. 

Hydration Time

Hey folks!

Eight glasses a day may or may not be enough.

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of water in our diet. By not drinking as much as we should, we're allowing a host of issues to potentially affect us. Generally speaking, 2/3rds of the body is water. Getting a little more specific: 



- Muscle consists of 75% water
- Brain consists of 90% of water
- Bone consists of 22% of water
- Blood consists of 83% water
From a functional standpoint, water:

- Gets nutrients and oxygen into our cells
- Helps protect vital organs by helping them absorb nutrients more efficiently.
- Regulates body temperature
- Helps get rid of toxins
- Helps our metabolism
Lack of water leads to:
- Sluggishness
- Headaches
- Muscle cramping
- Kidney stones
- Constipation
We need to take in at least half of our body weight in ounces of water each day.

So, if I weigh 100 pounds, I need to take in at least 50 ounces of water. Fruit drinks, coffees, sodas and sports drinks do not count. Good ol' water. You can drink the other stuff, too. But that doesn't count toward the water intake.

Now if you'd like to take it further, drink at least 25% of that total within the first 30 minutes of waking up in the morning. That, mixed with a protein-laden breakfast does an amazing job of helping us stay even-keeled throughout the day. We'll get into water a lot more later. But for now, here are few websites you can visit if you want to learn a bit more about water and its importance. http://www.thefactsaboutwater.org/health/the-functions-of-water-in-the-body/ .......... http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/jenheath4.htm ..........http://www.active-water.com/en/regulation_water_body.html .......... (Water is crazy important to our economy, too!) http://water.epa.gov/action/importanceofwater/index.cfm

If it's important, don't demean it.

In response to this article titled: Yay for Recess: Pediatricians Say It’s as Important as Math or Reading

Love that the medical profession is starting to raise a voice to this issue. The only problem is the understated demeaning of recess – otherwise known as freedom of movement without the restriction of direct adult influence.

Sure the headline says the pediatricians believe recess is as important as math and science. Then the quotes and statements in the article support the headline. But then the doctors don’t treat recess as an equal.

In the article, Murray says, “Children need to have downtime between complex cognitive challenges. They tend to be less able to process information the longer they are held to a task. It’s not enough to just switch from math to English. You actually have to take a break.”

The statement appears innocuous on is surface. But it’s wrong to infer that recess fails to involve complex cognitive challenges.

Moving muscles stimulate axonal growth. Axons carry messages between neurons. We have more than a 100 billion neurons at birth, and every movement we make helps fire those neurons, creating more thought pathways – helping us learn more. In one particular 1997 study, completed by Paris’ Pasteur Institute and the Developmental Biology Institute in Marseilles (Changeux and Henderson), it was found that the number of axons is directly related to intelligence. Folks, who move more, benefit from that development.

That study was buttressed by a 2002 study involving 500 school children that was completed at UC Irvine. That study (Quartz and Sejnowski) found that children who spent an hour each day in physical education class scored better on intelligence test than those who were inactive. These studies have been replicated numerous times.

The movements during recess aren’t mental downtime. That movement is learning. Running, jumping, kicking, hitting, throwing, catching, squatting, bending, extending, twisting, dribbling and tumbling are all complex cognitive challenge. The difference is the movements during recess are perceived as fun activities for the children. Fun is an emotional construct. At that age, we only have the ability to truly enjoy was we perceive as pleasurable to us.

Mother Nature didn’t screw up anything. Our brains were made to enjoy movement so we would want to move a lot. Sitting around reading and looking at numbers and letters isn’t fun. But for those who move more, sitting around is easier to tolerate.

This may seem like huffiness and puffiness from a movement maven. But we must understand the power our pediatricians possess. Recess IS NOT a break from learning, but they’re inferring that it is.

How did we get into this educational mess anyway? We got here because somebody incorrectly deemed physical education and recess as less important aspects of the academic structure.

--MFB