Apr 17, 2011

Trampoline Thursday


Here's how we've "adjusted" our lifestyle in the past week since the arrival of our trampoline:

1.)
We drink one 8 oz glass of water before each meal. It's an old trick for dieters and has some validity. The Teenager needs extra water anyway because of the seizure medications she has to take. They are metabolized in the liver and not without major side effects but a necessity to prevent her grand mal seizures.

2.) I've stocked up again on Weight Watchers meals for those moments when I am crazy busy and tempted to drive through a fast food establishment. Someone complained about the sodium content of a Weight Watchers meal so I did a little research.

The teenagers favorite Happy Meal consists of a cheeseburger, small fries and 1% low fat chocolate milk. This equals: 1060 mg Sodium, 700 calories, 25 g fat,
9 g saturated fat, 1 g trans fat, 88 carbs, 31 g sugar

The Teenagers favorite Weight Watchers meal. This equals 700mg sodium, 270 calories, 12.5 g saturated fat, 0 trans fat, 35 carbs, and 8 g of sugar.

This may not be ideal but it is a better substitute to utilize when we are pressed for time and or low on energy. After all we are all over worked and over stressed in this society. I don't expect to juggle my brutal schedule
and prepare, cook and serve organic, low fat meals 3 times a day. I mean get real.

What infuriates me is that absolutely everything in our society's media blitzing is geared towards weight gain. Take those thousands of commercials enticing children with sugary cereals and fat laden fast food meals. If I remember correctly the average child sees 10,000 of them a year. When shown a picture of Jesus in the documentary, Super Size Me, not one 5 year old could identify Jesus.

When shown a picture of Ronald McDonald, however, all of the 5 year olds knew who he was, where he came from and where they had seen him.

Evil, evil clown.

And cost?

When you can fill your child's tummy up from the dollar menu and a local drive-thru for less than the price of one bunch of broccoli it's a no brainier for lower income families.

It's a crime perpetuated by greed. And you all know how I feel about food industry greed. GMO's. High Fructose corn syrup...yada...yada...yada...

Veering off my rant now to:

3.) The Teenager jumps on the mini trampoline before each meal. This takes tremendous discipline on my part as I am her head coach and cheerleader. Ideally you should jump 30 minutes a day but The Teenager has difficulty making it 5 minutes without tremendous persuasion and cheering. We break it down to 5 minutes before each meal as exercising before meals is a proven fat reducer. The five minutes is not a solid 5 minutes either as she does a lot of starts and stops and complaining.

"I'm tired!"

"I
can't do this!"

"My heart! I'm having a heart attack!""

"My Liver! My liver!"
Yeah. I'm fairly certain your liver is on your right side, sweetie not your left side.

On Sunday though I had to laugh out loud at one of her complaints.

"These things* are flapping like a couple of penguins!"

* Please don't ask what "these things" are.

Mental note: Buy some tight fitting sports bras at Wal-Mart next week.

This is my cue to chime in with what little enthusiasm i can muster while dinner is burning downstairs:

Everywhere you go-oh
People want to know-oh

Who you are

so I tell them
...
you are The Teenager,

The mighty, mighty Teenager
...
Jump!
Jump!
Jump!

We also throw in as many 5 minutes jump fests that we can during the day between meals.

Keep in mind the Teenager has kept the 10 lbs off that the local hospital nutritionist helped us lose for over one year but has never gone
beyond the 10 pound mark. The seizure medication induced lethargy is only partly to blame.

Ideal weight for The Teenagers height: 90lbs (the nutritionist and I both laughed ourselves silly over this number.)

Realistic target weight per pediatric nutritionist: 115lbs

Last Thursday's weight: 138 1/2 lbs.

Today's weight: 137 lbs

Total weight loss in 7 days: 1 1/2 lbs

Jump!

And while we're on Van Halen....how totally revolting is David Lee Roth in this video? He's like a cross between Rainbow Dash and Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs.




Buffalo Bill

David

I'm completely frightened.

Almost as frightened as i am of that evil, evil clown...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

From Wikipedia

A system of sugar tariffs and sugar quotas imposed in 1977 in the United States significantly increased the cost of imported sugar and U.S. producers sought cheaper sources. High-fructose corn syrup, derived from corn, is more economical because the domestic U.S. and Canadian prices of sugar are twice the global price and the price of corn is kept low through government subsidies paid to growers.

Nice to know that once again, people get the shaft from large corporations.

Kathleen Scott said...

What a great program for The Teenager--and everyone else! I'm going to adopt the glass-of-water-before-dinner strategy. Like the idea of the trampoline too. Nothing seems as hard when it's only 10 minutes.