A Route to a Healthy Holiday         
By: Isobel Kleinman

When I think of the holidays - all the food, the drink and the sitting - it is difficult to imagine a healthy one. Few people do more than consume lots of foods and complain about how stuffed they are from all the partying they do over the Christmas holiday. Of course, not everyone sits, certainly not the hostess, who does the shopping, cooking, cleaning, decorating and serving. Her work helps her burn off some calories, but what about the others? One can only guess how they can burn off the extra food and cake and candy and drink when what they most do is eat, drink and unwrap their gifts.

Troubling is that we have a crisis in our country - too many people already waddling down Main St. In my city, a recent study showed that only 50% of the school population was at a healthy normal weight. If their parents are obese, then our students’ risk for obesity doubles. With that in mind, my usual suggestion for festive lesson plans to bring out the holiday spirit doesn’t cut it. We need to consider many ways to tackle our national health crisis - obesity - in a pro-active way. And, when considering how the holidays can exacerbate the problem, we need to find a way to guide our kids and their families so that the holiday excesses do less harm to their bodies.

As a result, this year I have a strategy to help correct the typical imbalance of too much food and too little exercise. Please take these suggestions seriously, and exploit the impact we have on our students and their families to create a Healthy Holiday.

In order to break unhealthy patterns, we need to enlist an entire network (classmates, friends, relatives and neighbors) to create change. I maintain that if we get our students thinking about what they do that is automatic (in this case over consumption with limited activity) it will no longer be automatic. So, if we make them consider the cost to their bodies and alternative choices, we will start to alter our students’ behaviors, and possibly their entire network in a positive way.

Those who know me professionally know that I have resisted giving Physical Education students homework for my entire professional career. Anyone using Complete Physical Education Plans for Grades 7-12 already know that I am more likely to give the teacher homework then the students. I think though, that if we can teach kids to bring in a healthy 2009 while enjoying the experience, that it is a worthy project and one I suspect will connect students with others and involve a life changing process.

This project is simple, although it can become much more complex if you or your colleagues in the math, social studies, science, health, and art departments want to join together to increase the goals. Since coordination takes time, and we have such a short time frame before the holidays, go it alone for now. Set the assignment, the goals, and collect the results. You can always let your creativity broaden the concept, and use it for the next long holiday or another school year.

Here is the plan.

A few weeks before the vacation let your students know that you will be asking them to document - in photos and/or a diary - the physical activities they do each day of the holiday. Use the time before vacation to brainstorm with them the types of physical activities that will fulfill their obligation. Be sure to include things that are not typically done in a gym or on an athletic field. Help students realize the variety of ways they can be physical, and then remind them that they need to record the amount of time spent engaged in what they choose to do.

You might aim to help students feel less isolated during the vacation away from school by offering them incentives to make plans with others. Give them extra credit for taking pictures of them participating in their activities with classmates, relatives, or friends in the neighborhood.

You can go further. You might ask them to figure out how many calories their activities burn in an hour, and then how many they burned over the length of time they performed their activity. This would require that you teach them what a calorie is, and where they can find the information needed to tell them how many calories their activities usually requires at a moderate or high energy pace. Remember, they need math skills to do the calculation, so getting the math department in on this would be just great!

You can go further by asking them to document what they consumed each day, how many calories that came to, and if they were able to burn them all off or not.

You (or the social studies department) can help them get a picture of how important food was in different historical periods and how for most, food was simply a fuel to keep their bodies going. You might have students imagine, how, in past centuries, assess to prepared food, packaged candy, and baked goods was limited. (Ever try to bake at a fire pit?) You might ask them to imagine life without cars, elevators, power mowers, snow blowers and tractors. You might ask them to imagine having to walk up the stairs, push the lawn mower, walk to a friend’s house, or have the luxury of transportation by horseback or a bike. Such analysis will help students make the connection that during earlier times, food was for survival, not pleasure.

You might want your students to take a look at their family members and document what they do to move. You might also ask them to figure out how many calories they think their relatives consume during the course of a normal day.

Armed with a digital camera, the photography requested would be inexpensive and the digital results fun to keep. Of course, there will be students without access to a digital camera so you will have to make plans for them. I suggest having them team up with kids who have digitals and doing the assignments together. If that is impossible, they can fulfill their assignment by keeping an activity diary.

During the course of the fitness unit, your students should learn that with or without moving, their body’s burn calories, though not many. If someone does not eat, their body will eventually burn its own fat and then, after exhausting that, will burn its own muscle.

Reinforce that students do not have to play a sport or go to the gym to burn calories, but that the more they do, the more energy they need and the more calories/fuel they burn. They need to know that by increasing the intensity of their movement, they increase their body’s need for energy (fuel/calories). Students can choose whatever they like to do to be physically active, but they need to exceed the national health guideline for adults (150 minute a week) and follow the guideline for children (at least an hour a day). Remind them to document all activities they do that last more than a few minutes so they can add up the time spent (and the calories the burned) by the end of the day. They can be shoveling snow, cleaning the house, kayaking up river, mowing the lawn, raking leaves, dancing at a disco, skiing, hiking, walking to a friend’s house, playing Frisbee, walking the dog, taking a swim, sailing their boat, or carrying home some groceries. You don’t care. What you do care about is their doing an hour or more of dynamic movement a day.

In conclusion, you will find that by taking something that the kids do automatically, and bringing it to their conscious, you will have made a dramatic impact on their life style. I have not been able to walk downstairs the same way since my college kinesiology teacher told my class to think about what we do when we walk down stairs – and that was years ago! Making something conscious that has been automatic is a powerful thing, and that is what you will be doing by having students record their activity (and consumption). You will be making them think about what they do (and eat). Health consciousness goes a long way to not only making the holiday healthy and happy, but breaking the chain of automatic bad behaviors.

Wishing you and yours a wonderful holiday season,

Isobel Kleinman

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