345 SE 5th, Madras, OR 97741 | 541.475.2275
Mountains of inspiration
Greg Williams, a member of the Flabby Farmers team, lost 47.8 pounds during the four-month Moving Mountains Slimdown Challenge.
The Movin' Mountains Slimdown Challenge is done for 2010, and we hope that participants had a chance to experience the joy of improved physical health, try a few activities that were new, and embrace some lifestyle changes that will be permanent. We honor the winners, but realize there are many stories to tell beyond those first three places, stories that we hope will inspire and lift up all of us as we journey together toward better health.
There were stories of learning to use physical fitness as a tool to manage or even delay the onset of chronic disease. One participant from Warm Springs is just trying to stave off progression to diabetes. An athletic person by nature, he had allowed his weight to creep up over the years, and was identified as at-risk for diabetes. He began the Warm Springs Diabetes Prevention Program, and had already lost 34 pounds when he entered the health challenge in March. His percent of improvement for the 16 weeks of the health challenge was 11 percent, furthering his ability to keep diabetes at bay.
K.S., of Madras, started the challenge barely able to walk 10 minutes, but kept at it, every week a little more, a little more, until achieving her new "normal" of 45 to 60 minutes a day. She reports increased energy and strength for living the life she wants to live, whether working on her farm, playing with her grandkids at the MAC, or even going on the ski biscuit behind the family boat. These activities had fallen off her radar of possibilities quite some time ago. K.S. is reclaiming her healthy, active life.
There are long-term stories of success, despite tragedy and loss. Martirae R. of Warm Springs, whose self-care journey began in grief one year ago, has lost at this point 116 pounds, through sheer sweat, determination, and faith. She created a mindset that working out was part of her well-being, like breathing and prayer, and has made incredible health improvements.
Her weight loss of 54.4 pounds, and percentage of change of 51.8 percent put her fourth in the running for individual women, which was a highly-competitive category this year. (Read her inspiring story on this page.) If Martirae can workout for an hour a day, five days a week, why can't we?
Christie Y., a local Madras business woman and mother, is inspirational to many of us just because she puts one foot in front of the other every day, and lives life, despite tragic circumstances in her family life. Her decision to put her health as a high priority provides a lesson to all of us who play the "I'm too busy to exercise" game with ourselves. If Christie can find the time to lose 24.4 pounds and change her measurements by 27.3 percent, then what excuse do the rest of us have? Her team from Madras Bowl reported enhanced fitness for their Relay for Life miles, including reduced soreness and muscle fatigue.
There are stories of people realizing that information is power, and that providing people with information to make the best health decisions possible is another important tool. Monica and Erica Torres are sisters whose family owns Mexico City Restaurant, a longtime Madras business, and were on the winning women's team. They realized that it is hard to make good choices when you don't have nutrition information when you eat out. Discussions with their father about how to provide patrons at their restaurant with nutritional information may yield some progressive work, making their business one of the first to voluntarily embrace menu-labeling outside of the recent law's chain restaurant requirements.
The partners who worked on the health challenge realize that it is sometimes confusing when folks who lose a lot of weight don't end up "in the money." The formula we use is simply adding up the percent of change in weight, waist, and hip measurements, a method that has been used in the community for years. We want to emphasize that waist and hip measures are especially responsive to exercise, and improvements in these measures can bring life-altering health benefits. We are also looking at how we can improve the challenge while at the same time bringing about sustainable health improvement for our communities.
Next year's challenge is set to begin in January of 2011, will run 16 weeks again, and will have pay-outs for first through fifth individual, and first through third for teams. We want to provide the community with an even more varied choice of weekly activities, including yoga, pilates, and maybe even zumba!
We also challenge this year's participants to "maintain, don't gain," to start the challenge next year at this year's ending weight, or close to it. Yo yo? No go.
Participants who would like to know their "numbers," and how they placed, may call Carolyn Harvey at Jefferson County Health Department, 541-475-4456, or Beth Ann Beamer at Mountain View Hospital, 541-460-4023.
In 10 years, we hope that we don't need the health challenge, that all our children, adults, and seniors are fully able to embrace lives of optimum health and wellness, and that some of those unpleasant statistics get turned upside down. Help us rewrite Jefferson County's health story. Let's start an epidemic of health.spread it around!