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July 05, 2005
For todays youth exercise more important than getting that "A"...
I was discussing with a friend of mine, just today, about kids and young adults and how the American population concentrates more on academics than on fitness and physical conditioning and I recently did a seminar at a high school and was very surprised and concerned about what is going on with the youth of America. It's just insane! It drives me crazy! When I was young or most of us in the generation between Y and X and P and Q and all that kind of stuff, we mostly were not that stressed. We had to do homework, we had to get good grades, we had to do this or that, but it didn't seem like there was so much pressure on the academics of it all. I come to find out; there really is no more pressure on the kids today. There's no more than we had when we were young. It just comes to be that the kids today and the youth of today can't handle the stresses or the pressures. They're not strong enough. They are actually a very weak generation. Why? Because there's no balance, absolutely no balance in what they do. Adults keep harping on - get good grades, you've got to get good grades, but they don't offer the positive stress relief of going out and running, or playing baseball, or actually doing something that can help to counterbalance, or to counteract the negative stress or negative effects of trying to get that A or get that B. You know what; we don't necessarily have to constantly get the A. Let's worry more about the kids, or the youth, being able to go out in the world and be able to form sentences and be able to work hard and take on responsibility. Kids today are taking Ritalin, like it's candy.
Youth and children are just like dogs, I don't care what anybody says. I have two dogs here, Bosco and Snoopi. One's a beagle and ones a Strattfordshire terrier mixed with a lab and a breeder told me when I got them, that they need 45 minutes of exercise, vigorous exercise every day. If they don't get those 45 minutes of vigorous exercise every day, they are the most ornery, pains in the butt dogs in the world. So, if my dogs need the exercise, and they don't listen to me when they don't get that exercise It takes me four times of calling my dog instead of one time. The same kind of things happens with kids and children if they're not exercising. There is all this pent up energy in them. They need a release. They need that release - and you keep piling on, piling on, piling on, and piling on all these other things. You have to get that good grade, be in the glee club, you have to do this and be pillar of society, which we all do want that, but it's not the most important thing. There needs to be that balance, where you can release all of that pent up energy. Adults just don't have stress, and we're even getting worse and worse at dealing with it also. So, exercise for the youth of today, is actually more important because it also helps to breed or to help to continue their healthful ways and kids are more productive when they've exercised and they don't have 14 thousand things on their head.
Posted by Rocco at July 5, 2005 01:18 PM
Comments
My opinion is that there needs to be more education about the actual mentality of those of suffer from obesity. To argue that fat people are stupid is almost as valid as saying that annorexic people are stupid. Both are different kind of eating disorders, only obesity is less socially accepted as something for which people have trouble treating.
Most obese people have emotional connections with food, or binge frequently causing them to suffer from uncomfortable digestive problems, and other long term health issues as you know. But to think that 'fat people are greedy' is merely an uneducated view. Many people are told to 'lose weight or die', but the majority of obese people still cannot sustain a healthy lifestyle. Do you think they love food that much that they would rather eat themselves to an early grave? or maybe its more likely to be a mental health issue that needs to be addressed abit more carefully than just concluding 'fat people are stupid'. I dont think they enjoy being stared at in the street anymore than anyone else would for any other physical abnormality.
The negative comments should be more on the direction society is going. There's too much media attention, and too much pressure on kids to be a certain weight that you've got one extreme or the other. The amount of people who are either obese or annorexic is increasing as fast as the focus on having to be a certain weight.
It is hard to bring up healthy kids when you suffer from being overweight, because the majority need counselling to overcome it. Why do you think 'weightwatchers' and 'jenny craig' are more effective than dieting and exercising individually for those who are big. it's because those services offer group and individual counselling, which is what these people need.
Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2006 10:22 AM
