A family 5K can be enchanting for the kids.

The Alliance for a Healthier Generation, sponsored by the American Heart Association and William J. Clinton Foundation and dedicated to battling childhood obesity, has issued eight ways families can get fit together. We list those eight ways below and go one step further, suggesting specific ways you can make this happen NOW! Meaning this week now.

• Take a walk. Stroll together after a family meal or walk around the mall when it's cold or raining. Just walking in your neighborhood is great exercise; as we mentioned yesterday, living in North Carolina means your neighborhood may be a little more interesting than you think. And if your kids think walking is boring, bring along some props to liven things up. When our kids were smaller, we’d often set out for a neighborhood “walk” with skateboards, rollerblades, a Ripstik and a Trikke, swapping toys along the way.
• Choose an outing. Spend a weekend afternoon going to a pool, skating rink or basketball court. Right now, with winterlike temperatures, a good bet in this part of the country is a visit to your local North Carolina State Park. At Crowders Mountain near Charlotte, for instance, you can scramble about at The Boulders access area. In Wilmington there’s Carolina Beach, where there’s a unique collection of carnivorous plants. The Triangle has miles of hiking at Eno River and Umstead, while the Triad has great views from atop Pilot Mountain and Hanging Rock.
• Take breaks. Try to fit in 10 to 15 minutes of rigorous physical activity several times a day. At our house, we call it, “Hey kids, let’s go play in the street!” time. We live at the end of a cul de sac, the perfect arena for kickball and Whiffleball and, more often, a combination of the two.
• Team up. Have the family sign up for a group run, walk or car wash. You don’t have to run a 5K, you just need to finish it. And even if you don’t think you can walk 3.1 miles, odds are that once you get caught up in the pomp, pagentry and comradery of a typical 5K, the miles will pass before you know it. Upcoming 5Ks around the state (we’ll give you a couple weeks of training to get ready): 4th Annual Sweetheart 5K and 1-Mile Family Fun Run, Rocky Mount, Feb. 4; 32nd Annual Run for the Roses, Raleigh, Feb. 11, Frostbike 5K, 10K and 1-Mile Family Fun Run, Hendersonville, Feb. 19, St. Leo’s School 5K, Winston-Salem, March 17, Winter Classic 8K and Kids Run, Charlotte, January 28.
• Limit TV. Select which shows kids will watch ahead of time and limit screen time to just those programs. A good first step: No screens in your kids’ rooms.
• Join a club. Buy a family membership to a town recreation center, YMCA or health club. Better yet, join a family-fitness-oriented Meetup group. And if you can’t find one in your area, start one. Start the process here.
• Learn something new. Have family members take a lesson in an activity, such as martial arts, fencing or gymnastics. Opportunities abound at your local parks and rec department. In Raleigh, for instance, you can learn the above as well as how to scale a mountain or right a flipped kayak, among a myriad of other things. Track down your local parks and rec department here.
• Chores count. Working together around the house or in the yard is another way families can stay active. Yes, kids, it’s true: Working around the house can be good for you. And parents, you can use this as an alternative if the kids balk at taking a hike or a Whiffleball break.

Scrub the toilet vs. playing kickball? We’re guessing you won’t have a problem.

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If you’re looking for a time of year that’s hardest on your body, you’d be hard-pressed to beat the one that kicked off with pants-unbuckling Thanksgiving and ends with a cold pack on your head New Year’s Day. Think about the damage alone done by the one-two punch of Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

Thanksgiving: overeating. Estimates place the typical holiday meal at 3,000-plus calories, or closing in on twice the recommended daily calorie intake for the average person. And that’s just for the main meal; in the case of Thanksgiving you can nearly double that amount if you throw in the follow-up leftover meals that will be consumed by day’s end.

Black Friday: stress. First, there’s the business of consuming nearly 6,000 calories on Thanksgiving, then heading out at midnight to elbow your way to the $2 waffle irons table. Add to that your wacko fellow shoppers — a female shopper at a California Walmart used pepper spray to keep her competitors at bay — and you’ve pretty much taken 10 years off your life with those two days alone. And the bulk of the holiday season remains.

You want a truly happy holidays, or at least a holiday season that won’t do you in? Then you need to do something that helps you deal with both overeating and stress. Lucky for you that some thing is one thing:

Going for a walk.

Walking is the nation’s most popular form of exercise. According to the National Sporting Goods Association, 95.8 million Americans walked for exercise in 2010 (exercising with equipment was a distant second, with 55.3 million participants). There’s good reason for this: most people can walk, it doesn’t require special equipment, you can do it spontaneously, out your front door, so it can be done quickly.

There’s more reasons to walk. According to the Mayo Clinic, walking can:

• Lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (the "bad" cholesterol)
• Raise high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (the "good" cholesterol)
• Lower your blood pressure
• Reduce your risk of or manage type 2 diabetes
• Manage your weight
• Improve your mood
• Keep you strong and fit

Walking isn’t a magic bullet. It won’t completely diffuse the stress of the holidays; but it will take the edges off and make the season more manageable. And it won’t exactly act as a cross to that batch of Christmas fudge your vampire coworkers bring in, but it will help in keeping the damage to a minimum. And, truly, a half hour at lunch, after work or at some point during the day can make a huge difference.

That said, are you ready to commit to a daily walk? And if not daily, then what is a realistic goal? Take our survey and we’ll report back in a week or so with the results. And take a minute to tell us your favorite place to walk. It could serve as inspiration to others.

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Turns out, though, that interval training can benefit anyone, especially those who need to get the most out of their workouts: the obese

This was the conclusion of a study by the Montreal Heart Institute’s center for preventive medicine and physical activity, released last week. The study followed 62 participants in a 9-month program for the obese called Kilo-Actif. The program focuses on both better eating habits and being more physically active. For the latter, participants engage in two to three supervised 60-minute training sessions each week. A key component of those sessions: interval training. (On the nutritional side, fyi, participants meet with dietitians and follow a Mediterranean diet.)

At the end of the 9-month period, participants showed, on average, across-the-board improvement in their key stats. Among them: 5.5 percent drop in body mass, 5.15 percent reduction in waist circumference, 15 percent improvement in “effort capacity,” 7 percent drop on LDL (‘bad”) cholesterol and an 8 percent increase in HDL (“good”) cholesterol.

"It is proven that, compared to moderate-intensity continuous training, interval training is more appreciated by participants,” said Valérie Guilbault, a kinesiologist at the center who oversaw the participants’ training. “This type of training is also more effective, because alternating between short periods of intense effort and rest periods allows for a longer training time."

* * *

For more on the study, go here.
For more on interval training in general — how it works, the benefits and how to incorporate it into your workout — go here.

Photo: Cheetahs are the ultimate interval trainers. And have you ever seen a tubby one?

The National Weight Control Registry was started in 1994 to identify adults who have lost weight and kept it off. Specifically, the registry’s 6,000-plus members have lost at least 30 pounds and kept if off for at least a year. Recently, they were asked how they did it and seven common themes rose to the top. Warning: None of these will make you slap your forehead and say, “Aha! So that’s how you do it! You’ve likely heard all of these before, and you’ve heard them because, at least for the 6,000-plus members of the National Weight Control Registry, they work. Without further jabber, the seven common themes for weight loss are:

1. Be active. More than half (54 percent) of NWCR members expend more than 2,000 calories each week. This equals about 200 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise.
2. Turn off the television. About 63 percent of NWCR members watch television for fewer than 10 hours per week.
3. Enjoy a low-calorie, low-fat diet. The average NWCR member consumes 1,380 calories per day, and less than 30 percent of these calories come from fat.
4. Keep your diet consistent. Resisting the urge to “splurge” on holidays or weekends, NWCR members eat the same foods on a regular basis.
5. Eat breakfast. Most NWCR members (78 percent) eat breakfast each day. This helps curb hunger and overeating later in the day.
6. Show some restraint. NWCR members exert great control over their eating habits, and they rarely overeat.
7. Keep track of your progress. Weighing in at least once a day and keeping track of food intake is essential for most NWCR members.

You’re a month into your new fitness program and you’re not seeing the results you expected: You are not alone.

And yet, you are.

“Every person is different,” says Sue Dissinger, Health and Wellness Director for the YMCA of Greater Charlotte. Your age, sex, genetics, personal physiology and environmental factors all combine to make your fitness challenge different from the guy on the treadmill next to you.

That may help to explain why, a month into your New Year’s resolve for a new you, it may feel like you still see too much of the old you. Perhaps the most common beef after a month of eating better and exercising? I’ve hardly lost any weight!

“Your entire body composition changes, not just the number on the scale,” says Logan Washburn, fitness director for the UNC Wellness Center at Meadowmont in Chapel Hill. “The way your clothes fit, for instance. Are they loser? Do they fit better? That’s something to pay attention to.”

If you’re exercising hard you may actually gain weight during the initial phase of a new fitness push, Washburn says. You’re burning fat and adding muscle; since muscle weighs more than fat, weight loss isn’t always a reliable initial indicator of success. However, since fluffy fat takes up more space than dense, compact muscle, loser clothing — especially around the waist — is.

If you’re a stickler for statistical evidence that your efforts are making a difference, check your percentage of body fat, which will decrease as muscle replaces fat.
You should also check your PH level, advises Danny Russo. Russo is a Charlotte-based personal trainer/fitness guru who travels the country with his RN wife, Janet, spreading the word of wellness to women through his FEW (Food, Exercise, Water) Program.

“The first thing I tell them,” Russo says when he appears before women at health clubs, hospitals, churches and community centers, “is to pee on this little strip of paper.” Because of our often unhealthy, chemically dependent diets, Russo says most of us have acidic body chemistry, which can open the door for a host of diseases and makes our bodies less efficient. Translation: fat and other unhealthy stuff tends to stick around.

Russo says he also instructs his clients to cut back on sodium and add potassium to their diets to take care of excess water retention. “You can drop 10 pounds of water and two dress sizes in just a few days,” he says.

And if you aren’t eating enough, you may be frightening your body into a circle-the-wagons mode. According to the Mayo Clinic, the average moderately active adult should consume at least 2,000 calories a day; even for a non-active person that total shouldn’t drop below 1,200. When the body isn’t getting enough fuel, it starts conserving and hangs on to as much fat as it can. “You don’t want to lose more than one or two pounds a week or your body goes into shock,” says Washburn.

A month into a new wellness program is also a good time for a gut check. Ask yourself:

• 

  The first thing Debra Delano, above, did when she dropped her 100th pound was sign up for sky diving lessons (top).

  Is the regimen you’ve chosen working for you? “There is no one program,” says Russo. Agreed, says Debra Delano. Four and a half years ago, the Charlotte resident weighed 257 pounds; a year later she was down to 157. Along the way she discovered that some of the exercise classes most popular with others — Zumba and yoga, for instance — weren’t for her. Instead, she’s become a disciple of weight lifting (“I lift a crazy amount of weight”) and line dancing, every Wednesday evening at Coyote Joe’s and often for 45 minutes, on her own, before work.

• Are you pushing yourself? Washburn says pain should never be part of your workout equation.  However... . “Exercise to where you’re slightly uncomfortable, to where you’re a little short of breath.” And, “It’s OK to be a little sore afterward.”
• Do you need a support system? Face it, left to our own devices it’s easy to blow off a trip to the gym after a long day of work. Enter a support network, be it a personal trainer, a group exercise class, or someone who’s going through the same thing you are. “Having someone to talk to on a regular basis can be important,” says Dissinger. “Someone who can help talk you through the barriers, about the feelings you’re having.”

If your long-term goal seems too far off, set short-term, weekly goals. “Tell yourself you’re going to go to the gym three days for 30 minutes, or you’re going to eat five vegetables a day,” says Washburn.

If there is a magic number in all this, says Washburn, it’s 12, as in weeks. “That’s how long it usually takes to break a habit and establish a new routine.

“Remember,” she adds, “it’s a lifestyle change. Your body’s changing. It takes time for your brain and body to kick in.”

Meanwhile, the Charlotte Y’s Dissinger says getting over your short-term hurdles may be as simple as sharing.

“The biggest thing is to not keep your feelings to yourself,” she says. Talking to someone, be it a  certified trainer or another sweaty comrade in the trenches, could be all it takes.

“There might be a simple fix to help you stay with it and get over the hump.”

For years, Debra Delano was content to carry extra weight — a lot of extra weight. Then, about four and a half years ago two things happened. One was Dr. Phil. “I saw him on Oprah, and he was saying that wearing a coat of 100 pounds of fat is not normal. People do it and they keep it on because it works for them. Then, one day, it doesn’t.” A couple days later she was walking through a department store when she caught sight of herself in a mirror. She took a long look and realized that her fat coat was no longer working for her. Within a year, she lost 100 pounds.

“I did it through nutrition at first,” says Delano, who lists her age “40-plus.” “I tried to keep my calories to around 1,200. I ate healthy, natural food, like my grandparents did. I held back on sugar and unnatural products.” The owner of an espresso bar, she also modified her business practices.

“I sell cookies and bagels and muffins and, I was constantly taste testing,” says Delano. “That food does not call my name anymore.”

Debra Delano before Dr. Phil and a department store mirror got her attention (here) and after (above).

She hasn’t had soda in years and keeps a close eye on sodium, carbohydrates, calorie content. She didn’t keep a food journal because she didn’t want to have to think that much about food. And she didn’t become militant. “I don’t like beef or chicken, but I love pork. Bacon — is there anything better in the world than bacon? I also have Ruffles potato chips every several months.”

Through modifying her diet alone, Delano dropped 40 pounds, especially interesting since once she started exercising, she become an adrenaline junkie. She sky dives, bungee jumps, scuba dives, zip lines and goes hot air ballooning, now sports a couple tattoos. Her daily exercise regimen consists of weight lifting and line dancing. The later she does once a week at a local club and daily, alone, for 45 minutes before work.

“It felt so good,” she says of being active, “that I just wanted to continue.”

That, she says, was what motived her to continue.

“When you feel better, your mind is clearer,” she says. “I can speak in clear sentences ... food does affect you that way. It’s amazing that way. It’s,” she pause, “it’s maybe like an alcoholic giving up alcohol.”

“The thing is, I wanted it. That was big. I didn’t want the excuses. There are a lot of things in my life I can’t control, but what I chose to eat, I can. Nobody forces you to eat this stuff.”

She was made aware of that again last month. “Over the holidays, I ate cookies and sweet things. I was lethargic, had mood swings, went through highs and lows. I just didn’t feel me,” she says. She went cold turkey New Year’s Day. “After 3 or 4 days with no sugar I started feeling like myself again."

Delano leads a radically different life than she did four and a half years and 100 pounds ago.

“Being a completely new me, I have a lot of things on my to-do list,” she says. “You know the book ‘100 Things to Do Before You Die?’ I’m speeding my way through that.

“I want to do it all.”

So is the solution as simple as not hanging out with big people, a solution that, presumably, would result in fewer and fewer big people to hang out with and, eventually, no big people to hang with?

No, according to University of Alabama at Birmingham obesity researcher David B. Allison. In another study, this one appearing in the Nov. 24 British journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society B,” Allison says it’s not even as simple as moving more or eating less. In fact, he claims, why we keep growing is a complex mystery.

Allison’s fascination with the obesity epidemic was piqued after checking out the marmoset population at the Wisconsin Non-Human Primate Center. He noticed that the entire population showed “pronounced weight gain” over time, yet after checking with staff at the center there was no obvious reason why. He began looking at other populations of mammals that lived with or around humans, from monkeys and chimps in research labs to feral cats in Baltimore. He wound up studying 24 sets of animals in all — and in all 24 sets the animals gained weight.

“The consistency of these findings among animals living in different environments, including some where diet is highly controlled and has been constant for decades, suggests the intriguing possibility that increasing body weight may involve some unidentified or poorly understood factors," Allison told Science Daily.

Allison and Yann Klimentidis, Ph.D., a post-doctoral trainee in the School of Public Health and co-author of the study are investigating some of those “unidentified or poorly understood factors.” Among their initial suppositions, expressed to Science Daily:

Light. “Studies have shown that subtle changes in the amount of time spent in light or dark environments changes eating habits. Allison wonders if increased light pollution in our industrial society may play a role.”
Viruses. Infection with adenovirus-36 is associated with obesity, and the presence of antibodies to AD36 correlates to obesity in humans. Could AD36 or other infectious agents be contributing to obesity in populations?”
Epigenetics. “Genetic modifications brought about by any number of environmental cues such as stress, resource availability, release from predation or climate change.”

Again, Allison says the reasons behind our growing waistline are likely numerous and complex: don't expect a silver bullet to emerge. Upshot for you: Keep eating well, keep moving.

Photo: What's making this marmoset fat?

Why, yes, it turns out. There is.

It may be no-duh research, but it demands repeating because so many people still, apparently, aren’t making the connection. According to a study of 47 of the largest U.S. cities, all 50 states, and 13 other countries, there is indeed a correlation between the amount of walking and cycling we do and how much we weigh. The study found the highest levels of walking and cycling in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Spain, which also happened to have the sveltest citizens. The most sedentary countries: Australia, Canada and, of course, us — as in the United States.

The study’s lead author, John Pucher, a professor studying transportation issues at Rutgers University, said in a release from the Center for Advancing Health: “As obvious as it is, it’s shocking that Americans don’t want to do anything about it. It’s amazing how unconcerned most Americans are about this.” (The study appears in the October issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Read more about it here.)

Amazing and dangerous in new ways that we’re discovering daily. In addition to the staggering burden on our health care system — dealing with obesity-related issues costs the nation about $147 billion a year — our slovenly habits are weakening our armed forces as increasingly flabby recruits report for duty.

Now, some of you may point to your last family reunion — Aunt Edna in her mumu waddling about making sure everyone has peach cobbler, Uncle Ralph beached on his chaise lounge — and say, “But I’m genetically predisposed!”

Good news for you comes from another study that found that exercise can reduce a person’s genetic predisposition to obesity by 40 percent. Researchers in the epidemiology unit of Cambridge University’s Medical Research Council looked at 20,430 people, the majority of whom had inherited 10 to 13 genetic variants known to increase the risk of obesity (some had more than 15, some fewer than six). Each additional variant increased the risk of obesity by 1.1-fold. However, the risk was 40 percent lower among the more active members of the study. So yes, you may face additional challenges in keeping your weight down if your people tend to be big. But you can battle your genes by going for a walk or taking a spin.

Just ask the folks in Switzerland, the Netherlands and in Spain.

Photo: Move!

From the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University comes “preliminary evidence” that keeping your brain sharp can help you physically. Einstein researchers took a group of 20 “frail” seniors (age 70 or older who walk less than a meter per second) and divided them into two groups. Ten went about their normal routines, 10 participated in the MindFit brain fitness program: For 45 to 60 minutes a day, three days a week for eight weeks, they carried out tasks that honed their cognitive abilities: focusing, planning, organizing, problem solving. After eight weeks, the MindFit folks walked slightly faster, but their ability to walk and talk at the same time improved significantly.

Lead study author Dr. Joe Verghese cautioned that the study size was small and that a larger clinical trial still needs to be conducted, but “the results suggest that brain fitness programs show promise for helping the frail elderly walk better.”

Read more at ScienceDaily.

Also suggesting that active agers are happy agers are mice whose nerve cells have been genetically engineered to glow in fluorescent color. What those groovy, glowing nerve cells showed, according to a study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is that exercise and “caloric restrictions” can rejuvenate connections between nerves and muscles, thereby delaying some of the debilitating effects of growing old.

According to researchers, for a healthy neuromuscular synapse to occur our nerve endings and their corresponding muscle fiber receptors need to match perfectly. Over time, though, those connections deteriorate. According to researcher Joshua Sanes, professor of molecular and cellular biology and director of the Center for Brain Science at Harvard: “With calorie restriction, we saw reversal of all aspects of synapse disassembly. With exercise, we saw a reversal of most, but not all.”

Again, researchers caution, more research needs to be done to understand the relationship between exercise, diet and healthy synapses.

Read more at Science Daily.

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In an unrelated study, more evidence that drinking water will do you well: In this case drinking two cups of water before a meal will help you lose weight.

In a study of 48 adults between 55 and 75, those who drank two 8-ounce cups of water before their three squares lost 5 pounds more than their non-drinking counterparts over a 12-week period during which all were put on similar diets. The drinkers, according to the study consumed from 75 to 90 calories fewer than the non-drinkers. The reason may seem obvious: The drinkers, with 16 ounces of liquid already sloshing around in their belloes, entered the meal feeling more full.

Read more at Medical News Today.

Photo: Mighty Mouse, a celebrated fitness buff and life-long adherent to a diet strong on dairy, is still going strong at 68. It is unknown whether his nerve cells glowed in the dark.

Well ... .

A curious finding comes out of a four-year study of 212 kids at 54 schools in the town of Plymouth, U.K. This latest finding from the 11-year-old EarlyBird Diabetes Study being conducted by the Peninsula Medical School finds that physical activity may not play much — or any — role in helping kids lose weight. The finding is based on a trial showing that when kids with weight issues were exposed to more physical activity, they only lost about 3 ounces each. The study did find that overweight kids tend to exercise less. Researchers were left to conclude that “early feeding errors” — hefty portions, calorie-dense snacks and sugary drinks — play a much more significant role in childhood obesity.

This finding was presaged by an earlier EarlyBird report that the one hour of moderate physical activity recommended each day for kids may not be enough to keep their weight down. Following that report, researchers were quick to note that while physical activity wasn’t found to reduce weight, “regular exercise improved metabolic health even without improving BMI.”

Kids in the study who met the recommended minimum — 42 percent of boys and just 11 percent of girls — did register better marks for blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and insulin resistance, a precursor to type 2 diabetes later in life. Moral: staying active is good for you, kids, even it doesn’t necessarily help you lose weight.

(I’m especially interested in the relationship between physical activity and weight in childhood. As a kid, I was always moving — football, basketball, baseball, riding the bike to far off places that would have horrified my parents had they known. Yet until I got into what was then called junior high, I was what was politely referred to in the day as “stocky.” And I ate relatively well, save for a Pop Tart problem that continues to this day.)

So, as your kids face the end of a presumably active summer and a return to the sedentary ways of school, should you ease up on the fight to make your school a more active place?

Not hardly, according to another report, this one from Cochrane Researchers, which reviewed 26 studies of programs promoting physical activity at schools in Australia, South America, Europe and North America. Their findings concurred with the EarlyBird study, noting that the programs didn’t seem to have much impact on weight. But the studies did find that the programs improved the kids blood cholesterol levels as well as fitness as measured by lung capacity. Further, the programs likely will play a role in shaping more active, healthier lifestyles that should carry over into adulthood.

Another reason for kids to stay active, according to yet another study: Kids who are obese increase their risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and type 2 diabetes among adolescents has now been linked with brain abnormalities and diminished cognitive performance. This according to a just-published study by the New York University Langone Medical Center, which detected the aforementioned problems via MRI scans. Such problems were previously observed in adults with type 2 diabetes, but it was assumed the condition was a result of vascular disease. The MRI results detected an uptick in white matter in the brain, believed to be caused by type 2 diabetes.

Yet another recent study suggests that kids may not be the only ones for whom losing weight is a challenge despite being more physically active. An Indiana University study of 12,000 people ages 20 to 64 found that white women tended to lose more weight than men or women of other ethnic backgrounds when meeting minimum national guidelines for physical activity. Researchers say that people with more LTPA — leisure-time physical activity — have an easier time losing weight, and speculate that the white women in the study likely had more LTPA than the other groups.

Which I'm sure has a number of women in that demographic, especially the ones with children, gagging. And not because kids tend to gobble up whatever LTPA moms of any stripe might have. Rather, it's because kids are bad for your health.

It's true. I read it here.