Category Archives: Health & Fitness

In this week’s lesson 4: “Life Skills You Didn’t Learn in School” the plan is to target three key areas essential to Healthy Living: Eating Diet, Physical Activity, and Avoiding Drugs (excessive alcohol). Maintaining a healthy lifestyle has the potential to enhance every aspect of your life, so if you haven’t found the facts and solutions to convince you why it matters, read on:

One out of every three children born today will develop diabetes at some point in their lifetime if dietary trends continue as they are today.

Nearly 50% of American youths aged 12-21 years are not vigorously active on a regular basis.

Eating Diet

The picture above is the new food guide and here’s a description about myplate.gov:

“MyPlate was developed as an effort to promote healthy eating to consumers. The MyPlate icon is easy to understand and it helps to promote messages based on the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The new MyPlate icon builds on a familiar image — a plate — and is accompanied by messages to encourage consumers to make healthy choices.” (United States Department of Agriculture, 2011)

To get started, lets take a look at the amount of each food group you need daily click here!

• To learn about Fruits click here
• To learn about Vegetables click here
• To learn about Grains click here
• To learn about Proteins click here
• To learn about Dairy click here
• To find the calories and food groups for a food, or compare two foods Click here.

Physical Activity

Regular exercise can prevent and reverse age-related decreases in muscle mass and strength, improve balance, flexibility, and endurance, and decrease the risk of falls in the elderly. Regular exercise can help prevent coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure. Regular, weight-bearing exercise can also help prevent osteoporosis by building bone strength.

• Click here to see the top 10 exercises to lose weight:
• Click here to see men’s basic workout routine to stay healthy.
• Click here to see women’s basic workout routine to stay healthy.

Here are some benefits of physical activity:

• Helps build and maintain healthy bones, muscles, and joints.
• Helps control weight, build lean muscle, and reduce fat.
• Prevents or delays the development of high blood pressure and helps reduce blood pressure in some adolescents with hypertension.

Avoiding Drugs (excessive alcohol)

Over 80% of adults when try alcohol in their lifetime. Alcohol affects the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord), which controls virtually all body functions. Drugs are more likely to be present among certain groups of people and in certain locations. Here are some tips on reducing the chances of being offered drugs.

• Hang out with people who are less likely to use drugs.
• Spend time in places where you’re less likely to encounter drug use.

Well that wraps up this week’s discussion be sure to subscribe or tune in for next week’s final topic and discussion of “life Skill You Didn’t Learn in School… Lesson 5: The Power of Networking!