Making 'Healthy' Stick with Kids

A lot has been done to get kids more

active and to make good foods more

desirable--and available--to kids.

But it is not enough!

Corporations have a strangle-hold on

kids and schools and events via ads

and sponsoring. We have to take great

strides to override that.

A lot of schools have taken up the

'soda-free' zone, which is great, but an

equal number have 'ice cream shops'

because they're easy money for the schools.

Demand better menus for your kids' schools--

they desrve it, and it's your right to campaign for it.

Here are some more aggressive, across-the-board

ideas for trying to get kids health-smart...

the earlier the better!

***

How about a video game with top notch animation and

video talent, wherein the hero and heroine are empowered

by acquiring fruits and vegetables, and lose power with

every sugary snack!

(Of course, the game would have to be all about killing people

with guns and decapitating adversaries, because that's where

the kids heads are at. You can't take on violence and diet--

save something for another day.)

How about a rock star like Justin Bieber or Rihanna (ugh!) on a

song where they're sultrily displayed on a couch with nothing

but whole grains and raw veggies adorning them...maybe even

playing suggestively with a carrot stick or a split papaya?

I bet sales of fruit and veggies would go through the roof.

(Whatever it takes, Babycakes!)

Here's the problem; you can't just tell kids what to do.

Messages have to be hammered in repeatedly for it to make

a difference, and you're competing with hour after hour of

advertising that makes all of the worst foods seem desirable.

Plus they're influenced by their friends, their families, and so on.

Kids also don't understand the future; they are wrapped up in

the here-and-now, and things like commitment, repercussions,

preparation...they don't register.

So you need a hook...something that will sell it with a sexy allure,

cause that's what these kids are trained to respond to.

Product placement could work for fruits and veggies

like it has for sodas and chips.

But we have to take this seriously.

People say it's minor stuff--but they're

looking at the short term, not the long.

Let's see kids presented with pictures of

people in their 30s and 40s with severe

diabetic complications, like they show the

emphysema lungs of smokers to shock kids.

Let's see the morbid obesity shots as

the EFFECT of the actions they're taking now.

Something has to change.

Pop Quiz



There will be times in every day,
and times in every lifetime,
when you must decide;

"Will you struggle,
or will you survive?"

"Will you settle,
or will you strive?"

These are the moments
that define you....
encoding the future
and rewriting DNA.

What will you decide?

www.HealthyRevolution2009.blogspot.com



Taking Help With You

An awesome recycled leather backpack is one option!

Would you rather be 'cool' and aloof, attempting to work a public
image, or be well-prepared and comfortable in a greater number
of situations?

There's always a compromise involved, and that seems a key
question to need to know the answer to before venturing into
this next project.

My priority is always being well, being comfortable, and being
prepared (and I also hate to have to rely on others for anything!)

So in order to accomplish that, I take a nicely insulated, sturdy,
water-resistant backpack with me everywhere, filled to the brim
with all manner of helpful items.

It's pretty fashionable, too, and has multiple compartments for
keeping things separate. For someone with a billion issues like
me, it's nice to have what you need rather than rely on luck!

It certainly gives me a level of emotional and mental security, if
nothing else. (And that's worth the price of admission!)

My backpack contains:
-an EPI pin
-bottled water (Have you tried finding clean water in public?)
-first aid kit (band-aids, neosporin,
-eye drops
-aspirin
-Aleve
-nitro tabs
-blood tester
-spare glasses
-tissues and paper towels
-hand sanitizer
-medicine
-cough drops (including enough for those next to me who can't stop hacking!)
-hard candy for diabetic emergencies
-snacks
-cell phone and chargers
-book for unexpected waiting periods
-notebook for writing, making lists, etc.
-flashlight

And of course, men can put all the things a purse would normally
carry for women who use them; breath mints, travel toothbrush
and toothpaste for lunch time brushing, toothpicks, floss, and other
everyday essentials.

In the summertime, I carry an extra shirt and deodorant, as my
heavy perspiring soaks the shirt I set off in. (And of course, take a
plastic bag to store the stinky old shirt in!)

These are just a for-instance of what I do and how effective it can be.
The whole point of emergencies is you never know when you'll have
one, and being prepared once is way better than not being ready.
Your bag contents can be absolutely whatever would make your
time away from home easier; What do you always find yourself wishing
you had with you?

As the saying goes; "I'd rather have it and not need it than need it
and not have it!" (And I always have need of something from my
bag of tricks.)

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InFauxMation Overload

Everyone experiences a sense of not having enough
time to do what they need or want, being stressed out
from trying to keep up with all the demands on them, and
feeling whelmed and run down from their constantly
hectic schedule.

Part of this stress is from being tapped into too much,
connected to and reacting to everyone else's stuff.
Social media does not need to be on all the time; we
don't have to use it merely because it exists.

It has become a matter of the technology controlling us
rather than the opposite.

People used to have a better understanding of the need
to keep to yourself occasionally, appreciate some down
time, secure some time to be calm. Now every moment
of every day is filled with endless streaming information.
Information about strangers, events around the world,
hearing the opinion of every person living, and having
the most menial of instances broadcast as news.

It's too much to keep up with, and yet we're still trying to do so.

The days of playing board games, eating dinners together,
sitting down, slowly doing any task, and all the other normal 
actions that people write off as corny and old-fashioned had
some very good points to them. Not all progress has to
eliminate what came before. Some things endured for a reason.

The creative mind needs quiet and space. People need time
alone to hear their own thoughts, their own voices. We all
need to write, unwind, and get in touch with self. We all need
time to recuperate from our day and prepare for the next . We
need one-on-one and face-time to build and keep relationships.

We need space and time to unwind and unplug from all
that hustle and bustle. And yet the idea that friends will think us
'out-of-the-loop'--or perhaps the fear that we might miss some
vital tidbit--keeps us tuning in, even as we weary.

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Back Where We Started

"All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere

I turned someone tried to tell me what it was.

I accepted their answers too, though they were often

in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve.

 I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself

questions which I, and only I, could answer.

It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging

of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else

appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself."

-Ralph Ellison

"The Myth of Mental Illness"

(In deference to Thomas Szasz and his book of the same name.)

It's obvious that some conditions are real and needing
treatment, but many diagnoses and treatments seem a
more arbitrary labeling of eccentricities as malignancies.
Manufactured notions of 'unwellness' due to the dreaded
and most dire of all conditions within a patient; not reflecting
the established social norms.

Others gravitate to states of 'illness' due to easily-influenced
minds that are told they are unwell (and said patient buying into
that diagnosis and all the nasty innuendo that conspires to attribute.)

Others have unwellness caused by their very marginalization
and ostracization which accompanies being labeled as 'mental defect'
in a world that hates all differentness; they are removed from the
benefits of inclusion and in fact suffer derision and brutality as a
result of being different.

Abuse and isolation definitely can lead to mental distress.

If 'mental illness' is the end result of trying to makes sense
of the collection of absurdities making up this world, who's
really to blame? Those who crack up, or those who are unwell
enough to pull off the duplicity and cutthroat participation?

As always, those in charge decide how history is written.

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Fiction is Good for the Soul

Life, in its unadorned bare form, is a terrifying, crazy,
chaotic, whelming essence.

Nobody addresses that directly too much. We just go
through the motions and ignore the dragon in the room.

As a result of how scary and demanding life is, we see
that without a sense of purpose, a mission, a code, or
other motivation, things are pretty unbearable. Whether
it's a conscious recognition or a conscious choice, we find
ourselves drawn over and over to anything we can apply
significance to or denote pleasure from.

It's probably a subliminal preemptive strike, a sense of
self-survival asserting itself, to seek out connection and
focus on nice things, our hobbies, our desires, our seeming
connections. Some natural DNA-level code for creating a
sense of 'better' so that all the horrible realities are kept
at bay.

A self-medicating, self-induced delusion to keep us from
going psychotic. Because, when you look into the Void,
it's difficult to come back from it. What is seen and known
is extremely difficult to purge; it's difficult, if not impossible,
to go back to ignorance and bliss.

We gravitate to the soothing, even if subconsciously we
know it's insignificant, or filler, or low-brow, or subjective.
We need a break from the chaos. It's in us to seek healing,
sustenance, and calming, whether through music, sports,
religion, dating, marriage, or other externals.

There are a myriad of directions to go with the things we
fill our lives with; church, work, politics, lovers, spouses,
children, projects, hobbies, relaxation, play. Belief systems,
causes, a life of service to many. Darker interests, too, 
like drugs, gambling, self-sabotage, secret or risky sexual
encounters, danger, angry outbursts, cons, and the like.

We build a web of activities and supposedly solid connections
that serve as (the idea of) insulation and cushioning.

But for those who see the artifice for what it is, and cannot
embrace the distraction, nor find sufficient purpose, the impact
of lessened connectivity is tiring and whelming.

When you aren't adept at interacting or networking or
pretending or game playing, it makes averting your eyes
from the Abyss difficult indeed.

All of our pretty story lines provide quite the anaesthesia.

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