I looked in "You Can Do It" this morning and we should all be well on our way to the fitness and nutrition badges. (Julie, you should get this book too -- it's girl scout-like badges for grownups.) For fitness ("Exercise Your Options") we need to do 5 or 6 days of cardio per week, 30 minutes a day, 15-20 minutes of strength training twice a week, and 10 minutes of flexibility 3-4 times a week. You have to plan this and carry it out for a month, finding something that you genuinely enjoy, and keep track of what you're doing. You're also supposed to start and end with a fitness assessment -- blood pressure, resting heart rate, whether you can reach your toes and do situps and pushups. They also say exercise gurus say it really takes six months to make fitness a habit -- so do we earn the badge after a month, or after six, I wonder?
I know we've been at this for three weeks now, but I'm going to have to count this as week one, because I didn't do any flexibility until this past weekend, and I'm way behind on strength training as well. But we all need to post when we feel we've earned the badge!
Nutrition ("Eat it!") is also along the lines of what we've been doing. You're supposed to spend a week on assessment -- either do the Health badge or just assemble your medical history, and keep track of what you're eating. Then get to know the Pyramid (we've all done that step). Then make a meal plan for the week, following the guide. Make a shopping trip to stock up on healthy foods (and the book lists "Dark chocolate" as one!!), and ditch the unhealthy foods you have lying around (I figure that's what my kids are for, right?). Then eat well for a month. They also point out that you need to make gradual changes, especially if you're feeding your whole family, or you'll meet resistance (like me with whole-grain pastas!).
The health badge ("Care for your Health") seems like a no-brainer. You're supposed to collect your health info, and I should probably do a bit of that -- I've got health records in five states that have probably never been pulled together, although most of the records are probably long since irrelevant (but I couldn't tell you when I last had tetanus and MMR shots -- were they in college, grad school, or more recent?). So that's the hard step. But you're supposed to get to know your health insurance, and I do know that pretty well; evaluate your providers, and I do that on a continuous basis; schedule a year's worth of appointments (OK, so I'm due for my annual as of tomorrow, but I'm up to date on my vision and dental exams); go to your appointments and make them useful (mine generally are, though I'm in good health so I don't have a lot of questions, but I never hesitate to ask those I have); and consider alternatives (they mean, do you need a chiropractor, an acupuncturist, a massage therapist, etc.).
So, do you think we can earn all three of these by Christmas? We need to have our first ceremony then! (And we should figure out what other badges we have earned -- our own scrapbooking, Quit It, sewing, knitting, singing? Does a badge count if you did it before you got the book?) And how are we going to do badges -- design some on Mom's machine and stitch them out, or just use the stickers in the book? If we have real, stitched ones, we need some place to put them -- so are we all going to get denim jackets or something, or make some cheesy vests, or put them on a tote bag?
Just something fun to think about!
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