Keep Movin

I am Jim Sargen, founder and President of TriActive America.  I want to applaud the efforts of President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama to focus on and develop a program to combat childhood obesity.  I started TriActive America in 2003, because I,  a type 2 diabetic and son of a diabetic mother, was concerned about medical reports on the rapid increase of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes in children.

For years now, health experts have been discussing this growing problem.  Actually it’s a problem that mirrors another problem in America, adult obesity.  This is a problem that has arisen in the past several decades and is rapidly becoming the nations number one health issue.

This problem will become worse as obese children grow into adults and encounter at an early age symptoms of major diseases that now effect adults in their later years.  Some health experts now predict, that unless the current trend is reversed, the current generation will be the first generation to live a shorter life span than their parents.

If we think that health costs are high today, imagine where they will be in twenty or thirty years as this generation matures and requires significant medical attention.  All of this is avoidable.  A sensible diet and an increased level of activity can reserve the trend.

The Presidents and First Ladies leadership will galvanize a refocus on the basics of life.  We need good nutritious food to fuel our bodys engine and we need activity to burn the excess calories contained in the food we eat.

TriActive American cannot help with the first, but our TriActive Fitness and ELine  outdoor fitness equipment is our contribution to the problem of inactivity.  As schools reduce physical exercise and children spend more time at their computers or TV’s, time devoted to physical activity is substantially lower than when I or my son and daughter were children.  Add to this the host of unhealthy snack foods, fast foods and sugary carbonated beverages that children inhale and you begin to understand how this trend has developed.

We all started our lives as children and as we became adults, our lives changes so that the amount of time we devote to physical activity has dramatically been reduced.  Even if we focus our efforts on changing our children’s life style, if we do not change our own, our lack of effort will undermine much of the good work the Presidents program will engender.

Children look to adults as their role models.  Parents know that they have to tie the message of what they preach to what they as adults actually do.  Children are quick to note when parents actions do not match their words.

At many of the outdoor facilities that utilize our equipment, we note that children gravitate to using our equipment.  They enjoy the challenge and the fact that much of our equipment is active and offers opportunities for their creativity.  But the best experience for children is when they can do this with their parents, grandparents or other adults.