WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU. We want to be encouraged by your successes as you have waged the war against excess weight and other health matters. In each issue we will print one or more stories as we all try to encourage and inspire one another to stay the course. Submissions must be less than 1000 words, include your name and city. Email to peter@pacificrimwellness.com.
A Passionate Plea for Better Food for Kids
reprinted from
Spend 20 minutes watching the passionate plea of super chef turned food revolutionary, Jamie Oliver. His wish:
“I wish for everyone to help create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again, and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.”
Some highlights from the talk:
For the last 7 years Jamie has been working to save lives through food education.
Eating good food at home binds us to the best bits of life.
We have an awful awful reality now – this is one of the most unhealthy countries in the world.
Diet related disease is the biggest killer in the US today.
Smoking costs way less than obesity. Obesity costs $150B a year and will double in 10 years.
Obesity is a preventable disease – a waste of a life.
Fast food has taken over this country. Some of the most important powers are fast food companies.
The labeling in this country is a DISGRACE. The industry cannot police itself. How can you say something is low-fat when it’s so full of sugar.
School lunch is critical. Lots of respect for the school lunch ladies – they are doing the best they can.
Knives and forks are too dangerous for school lunchrooms? This means you are endorsing fast food – which is hand held.
If kids don’t know what stuff is – they’ll never eat it (cauliflower, eggplant, tomato, etc…)
Kids have a right to milk at school – but why all the added flavorings, colorings, and SUGAR.
With all this sugar, any judge would find the government guily of child abuse.
If I came here with a cure for cancer or AIDS, you’d all line up to meet me, but here is a preventable disease. We need to reboot our thinking.
The fast food industry needs to wean us off the hits of sugar, fat, salt over a 5 year period.
Labeling is an absolute farce that needs to be sorted.
New standard of fresh proper food for our children in school is required.
Every child should leave school with 10 basic recipes they can cook that will save their lives.
PATRICK HENRY HUGHES is a remarkable young man who was born without eyes and without the ability to fully straighten
his arms and legs, making him unable to walk. Additionally, two steel rods were surgically attached to Patrick’s spine to correct scoliosis.
Despite these overwhelming physical issues, Patrick excels as a musician and student. He began playing the piano at the age of only nine months, and now plays the trumpet and sings. He participates in the University of Louisville School of Music
Marching and Pep Bands with help from his father (Patrick John Hughes), who tirelessly maneuvers his wheel chair through the formations with the other 220+ members of the Cardinal Marching Band.
Patrick (Irishman of the Year for 2007!) is usually a straight ‘A’ student, having received only 6 ‘Bs’ during his entire educational experience—up to and including his junior year of college (3.9 gpa).
Read more about Patrick here, including about his first book, I Am Potential, after you click the image below to watch this video:
How to ride your bike across Canada, or do just about anything
by Lee Hodgers
BETWEEN LATE JUNE AND EARLY OCTOBER 2009, I rode my push bike 8654km from Cape Spear, Newfoundland to Tofino, British Columbia. Desire and drive were the two characteristics that allowed me to complete the journey. Everyone possesses these characteristics to a varying degree, but they can be worked on by anyone, towards anything. Rather than write a blow by blow account of the journey, I have condensed the beliefs that took me from the Atlantic to the Pacific. These beliefs can be applied to any cause or goal.
If you think you can’t, you probably won’t; if you think you can you probably will
Sitting in my living room with a map of Canada sprawled on my lap and a lifelong dream to chase, I realized if I thought I could ride across the country, there was only one way to do it, and that was to do it. Planning a specific route was too intimidating so I made my goal to ride from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Breaking down the goal into bite size chunks was the key. Sometimes to stay positive on the bike I’d think to myself, “if I just keep pedaling and moving forward then eventually I’m going to run out of road”. It worked!
Once you start you can’t stop
Starting something is the key to any goal or dream. In the beginning I had no idea how to ride a bike across Canada. I started by deciding that I would. Then I bought a bike and trailer. Then I decided a start point and a start date. The date came and I started riding my bike towards my first campsite. After a few days I started to relax. After a few weeks my body stopped hurting and became stronger. After the first month I’d passed through the Maritimes and most of Quebec ... momentum builds on momentum.
Dream—Action—Reality
Everyone has dreams. Some are easier to achieve than others but we’ve all got that big one where we fantasize: ‘imagine if I actually did that’. The point is, I’m an ordinary guy with no greater or lesser ability than the next person. However, I do have a knack for getting things done and believe the action part of this formula is most important. Dreams and ideas remain abstract until something is done about them.
Keep going, something good might happen
There were plenty of long afternoons where I thought, ‘why am I doing this?’ In fact, there were plenty of long mornings and entire days where I had the same thought! Eventually I realized that hard times can’t last forever and they don’t. The rain will stop, the wind will blow the other way and the hills will eventually flatten out. To get there though, we have to keep going and believe that something good is just over the next hill.
You can’t quit
My first challenging day was a 120km stretch between Ingonish and Cheticamp on the Cabot Trail. The wind blew, I was tired and by the 80km mark I was fed up. Stopping by the side of the road I thought to myself, ‘and this is only day 15, I’ve still got over two months to go’. There and then I realized that this would be the moment to steel myself against the several thousand kilometers still to ride. At that moment my mantra for the hard times became ‘you can’t quit’ and it worked. It was the first day I really entertained the thought that maybe I had taken on more than I could handle. To me, that wasn’t good enough and the ‘you can’t quit’ mantra saw me through.
Satisfaction
When I arrived at Long Beach and walked into the Pacific Ocean the mixed feelings I had are hard to describe. Elation, exhaustion, feeling happy to be finished, not wanting the journey to be over, thoughts of ‘where to now?’ but above all, cold feet! The water at Long Beach in October is freezing and I admired the hardy souls out on the water in search of a wave. The remaining 11km ride into Tofino was surreal, as were the first few days of being post tour. Three months later I know that self belief and hard work can take anyone a long way, and lead anyone to their goals no matter what they may be.
