As you know, my Healthworks team was chosen for Fiona’s Challenge. So, for the next month, we will be working with a personal trainer, attending bootcamp and FOCUS sessions (BURN, Gravity, or Pilates Reformer), and competing to win the ultimate grand prize: a $1500 shopping spree to City Sports! Wahoo! (I need new sports bras!)
As a starting point for the Challenge, my team will be assessed in three categories: weight loss, wall sit, and plank. (My assessment is this morning, bright and early! I’ll report back later!) At the end of the Challenge, we will be assessed again and the team with the greatest percentage of change wins!
Breakfast
Because I’m at Healthworks this morning, I prepared my breakfast last night to post this morning. I’m basically eating the same breakfast as I ate on Tuesday. I switched out the Chobani for vanilla-flavored Oikos though. I wonder how the Oikos scores?
Question of the Day
From children to adults, females diet along the way
What do you guys think about this article? At what age did you first start “dieting” or paying attention to what you eat?
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i heard about the fiona’s challenge.. sounds like a big time commitment but also looks fun!
i first started to “diet” at age 14. it worked and i lost some weight. since then i’ve gone through phases of caring/not caring about what I eat.
Wow, I can remember as far back as 1st grade thinking I was fat. I was seriously not though. No one had ever called me fat or chubby, but I thought I was. I remember back in 5th grade I overheard my grandmother telling my mom I had a big bubble but. I was not fat by any means though. I was an average sized kid all my life until college. But even before then, in 7th grade I think, I started “dieting”. I remember eating a small bagel with cream cheese at night time, then doing hundreds of crunches in the tv room to “burn it off” because I felt guilty. All through high school I went back and forth on watching what I ate to eating mcdonalds. I was still average weight though. In college however, I gained quite a bit of weight and it wasn’t untill I started working full that I focused on being healthy and working out. I’m not trying to blame my mother or anything, but I think I got my diet mentality from her. She was always trying to lose weight. She used slim fast, weight watchers and even ate some weird rice and bean concoction for dinner every night because it was diet food. She is now still over weight and has many health probalems because of it. I’m going to break the cycle and be a healthy adult and never speak “fat words” to my children!!
Hi Tina, hope things went well this morning! I started my first diet 10 years ago after my freshman year of colleage. I did Weight Watchers for the summer and will be forever grateful for their guidance and support. Though I no longer think in Points, my experience at WW was the first step in a long (and ongoing) journey toward a healthier lifestyle.
I started dieting in my late 20′s – I had moved to a new city by myself and started my first full time job, and I put on weight. So I started dieting to try and lose the newly gained pounds – didn’t work unfortunately.
This article was VERY disturbing to me. Having grown up in the Chicago suburbs myself (I was 5 years old when the 1986 article came out), I NEVER remember anyone my age being on a diet or worrying about weight….not until high school. Now, I find it SO VERY sad that young people are affected by this so much. I have heard 8 year olds recently speak of dieting and “being fat”….it’s bad enough that adults do it, but had I experienced it at 8 years old, I would have felt robbed of my childhood!
I would love to hear the details of your training sessions during the challenge! I’m getting married in 3 months and really want to look more toned. You look amazingly toned in your wedding pics!!
good luck at healthworks today! can’t wait to see how your day goes!
i became more aware of healthy eating just this past year after i developed an eating disorder and started to recover to a healthy life again
jenna
Interesting article. I think I started dieting around 6th grade? Still so young! It has taken many years to get to a place where I realize how silly that all was back then. Thanks for sharing!
I used to be a chunky kid, and never much cared about it til the 8th grade, that’s when all those years of being teased finally caught up I think. However I was NOT healthy about my eating changes (esp high school), more like lack of eating it became. Girls def need good role models to look up to and understand what healthy eating is so they dont go on crash diets and cause their bodies so much harm at such a young age. I wish I had someone to tell me that when I was only eating 7g fat per day in 9th grade! I think that’s why now a healthy lifestyle is so important to me
My first diet was probably at age 15. 5 years later, I think I’m finally starting to *get* it. I don’t need a “diet,” just a healthier lifestyle.
Good luck with your whole challenge! It’s really sad what’s happening today. I recently read in my diary from when I was 5 (yes 5) years old: “Tomorrow I am going on a diet”. I nearly cried. Obviously from a young age I’ve known about health, weight loss, diets, etc. Blah. Thanks mom! I now look at how my mom acts, diets, eats, and what she says around my 9 year old sister. And then I see some things my sister says. And I cringe. I want to cover her ears and raise her in a different environment. She’s going to grow up with so much emotional eating problems, just like the rest of her family. Parents and adults really need to watch how they act around the younger generation!
i never started dieting until i started acting.
I first started “dieting” right after college. The dining halls and my sorority chef did a number on me – or I guess I did a number on myself. In any case, I went right onto graduate school in Boston, walked everywhere, started doing aerobics, did Weight Watchers on my own and have been at a healthy weight since. The only times that I’ve gone up was when I was injured and could not work out and when I was pregnant.
As for the Oikos, I work for NuVal and we have not yet scored the Vanilla flavor. However, Oikos plain non-fat gets a 93. And Oikos Honey gets a 65.
All I can say about that article is “WOW”. I was a little overweight as a child and probably started thinking about weight when I was really young, maybe 3rd or 4th grade, but it wasn’t until high school that I really started to watch what I ate and exercised. Besides the media, I blame a lot of how young girls today view themselves on their parents insecurities. The things that I’ve heard young girls say about what their mothers have told them about their weight makes me sick inside. I hope more of today’s young girls start to get a more positive body image.
That article was a bit depressing for me because it reminded me of just how young I was when I first became aware of my weight and size.
I have a younger sister who was very petite and skinny growing up and my best friend in 1st and 2nd grade was also a toothpick. My sister got away with murder but I was eventually banned from hanging out with my friend, who used to call me a “fat horse” (my sister’s comments were far crueler). I was SEVEN YEARS OLD! I’ve looked back at pictures and while I was never skinny, I surely wasn’t fat.
At my largest – about 5’6″ and 135lbs at age 12 – a friend of my brother’s (who I had a HUGE crush on) pinched some fat on my thigh and made a joke about me being fat. I’d matured early and had already spent the last few years conscious that I was bigger than my friends, but that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I had my first bout with anorexia and dropped to 95lbs within a matter of months. I had a couple relapses over the years, and it wasn’t until I first started marathon training 5 years ago that I finally started to develop a healthy relationship with food. I’m admittedly still highly conscious of everything that goes into my mouth, but I no longer deprive myself.
Looking back, I remember my Mom always talking negatively about her body and dieting. I also remember looking at the skinny models in YM and Seventeen (not sure if anyone else remembers those ads in the back of both magazines for diet pills!) and comparing myself to my skinnier friends.
I still wonder if I’d gotten into sports at a younger age and learned to focus on what my body could do – rather than what it looks like – if I would have avoided the dieting traps I fell into. It’s something that weighs heavily on my mind when I think about having my own family.
Tina – going back to Trochanteric Bursitis, do you know what caused this.. when you say overuse..is it due to over training?
@Sandhiya: Probably? I also have some alignment issues and scoliosis. Why do you ask?
Tina, I workout almost everyday (I vary, both high and low impact and mostly group execises at NYSC) and a lot of people warn me about over training myself, I much older than you are (I am 38) but haven’t noticed any complications or pain so far, knock wood. I have been doing this for over a year now..am I doing the right thing? I have consulted my doctors (both physician and gyn) and they seem to think that I am doing fine..But this has been in my mind for a while now.. How much is over training?
@Sandhiya: I guess it all depends on your body. It’s different for everyone.
Wow, I remember being 8, and worrying about fat grams, and trying to hide the obsessiveness from my parents. It was not good! I’ve been aware of what I eat forever, but I definitely have gotten better about it.
Good luck with the challenge. I miss working out at Healthworks!
I remember being in about 3rd or 4th grade and talking about weight with a few of my friends and being horrified that I was the only one who weighed over 70 pounds. I was so embarassed and wanted to be skinnier! I rarely remember being specifically “on a diet”, but it is kind of sad that average-sized active kids feel bad about the way they look–especially so young.
Do you eat your bfast after the gym? I only ask bc I always want to bring yogurt with me to eat after my workout, but I’m afraid it’ll go bad sitting in my bag unrefrigerated…
sadly i can remember feeling too fat at the age of 5 even though i was not. i started dieting when i was 13 years old and even with being at a normal weight, still struggle with the obsession of calories/the scale/my poor body image. the hardest thing is trying to trust that my body knows the right amount of calories and instead of calorie counting….eating intuitively. I always feel this need to count calories i guess its a control thing but i’ve been doing it everyday for the past 8 years for everything that i’ve eatin its become a part of me?? i think its great that you’ve found a balance in your life and i hope someday to find mine! thanks for being a source of inspiration to others trying to find their balance too!
Interesting question. I think I started dieting when I was in middle school. Before that I was somewhat conscious of calories and exercise but never obsessive. I thank my mother for modeling healthy eating habits early on which helped me stay grounded. Thankfully I never went through any really horrible diets but I will say that the South Beach was not for me. I remember after a week of no carbs my brain started shutting down which was really bad since I was in college at the time.
I remember being around 12 years old. My aunt and I saw Dirty Dancing and I remember her talking about needing to lose weight to be as thin as Jennifer Grey.
Good Luck with a challenge! Sometimes something like that is the push you need to see results!
Unfortunately, I was made aware of my chunky stature at a pretty young age, around age 8, and accordingly, I started watching my diet. Let’s just say I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I developed an ED later in life.
On a lighter note, I wish you the best of luck on your challenge!
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