Dish-Houston

The kids went NUTS as the Houston Texans’ defensive end J. J. Watt and offensive end Ben Jones along with the American Heart Association kicked off the NFL PLAY 60 Challenge with more than 1,000 students on Tuesday, Oct. 8 at Pin Oak Middle School.

The NFL PLAY 60 Challenge is a six-week program sponsored by the American Heart Association, the Houston Texans and the National Football League (NFL). The program is designed to help schools create a healthy lifestyle for kids by helping them form habits that will last a lifetime.

The NFL PLAY 60 Challenge is a month-long contest aimed at encouraging children to exercise at least 60 minutes every day. Watt and Jones played “Texans Feud,” a game show focused on health and nutrition facts, with the children. Jones won and in an impromptu press conference with attending media after the game Watt joked saying Jones must have cheated somehow and they would figure it out later back at the stadium. 

With kids spending a lot of time on video games, television and computers studies are proving they’re not getting enough physical activity. Six out of 10 children 9 to 13 years old don’t participate in any kind of organized sports or physical activity outside of school. Even more alarming, only one in four kids get 30 minutes of physical activity each day.

Today, nearly one in three children and teens in the United States are overweight or obese. This epidemic is taking its toll, as more and more kids are developing conditions and diseases typically associated with adults — including hypertension, coronary artery disease and type 2 diabetes. If this trend continues, many believe this current generation will be the first in American history to live shorter lives than their parents.

It is clear these kids had an amazing time and were absolutely inspired by these hardworking and dedicated men! 

By DISH Contributor Lori Freese:

311, The Weight Loss Phenomenon absolutely works…if you use it... correctly. The good parts of this program are that there are no forbidden foods or keeping score or track of anything, in fact, it thinks for you and there is a nifty little watch to wear. I do like accessories.

The parts that don’t work for my particular lifestyle are if you don’t have time to plan meals, go to the store, cook, take meals or snacks with you because you are away from home and or office for 12 hours plus a day, at events where there are not so healthy bites being shoved in your face plus drinks at lease once a day AND that nifty little watch is very sporty which doesn’t go with Couture.

So I gave it to a friend with a different lifestyle to try it out, more on her experience in a bit.

You see, the premise here is you prepare healthy meals and a few snacks a day and you “Eat at the Beep”.  It is that simple. This fuels your body, keeps your blood sugar and energy levels from dropping and thus you burn more calories. Your body doesn’t go into “storage” or “starvation” mode and because you’re feeding it healthy meals and snacks ensuring that it's always satisfied. Your body is built to crave food when it is not nourished. So you can be stuffed to the gills with McDonalds and still have the urge to eat because you body wants the vitamins and minerals provided by fruits, veggies and lean meats. If you don’t feed your body correctly (think putting diesel fuel into a gas engine) then you end up eating more and more and more of the wrong things and then obesity, diabetes and heart issues set in, among other not so amazing things.

This handy little watch takes the thinking out of fueling your body the way it was meant to be taken care of thus you lose weight. You really do! If you don’t eat donuts every time it beeps.

It comes with a pocket guide with meal suggestions, how much of which item is best to eat and a great read about what to expect during each phase of this 43 day experience. It is encouraging and most of all easy! I appreciate the scientific explanations behind why this works. You get me in the brain you cute little watch you!!

Back to my friend’s experience, she loved it! Being able to have the information handed to you, being able to prepare meals almost a week out and the little purse sized guide incase she was having a meal out was incredibly helpful. She didn’t experience physical hunger the entire program because her body kicked in and started using her fat storages as energy. After being a bit tired the first three days it was smooth sailing. She is going to continue using the nifty little sporty accessory because her life is different and absolutely worth it! 

Bonus, her husband lost weight too just by the different choices she was making! 

Healthy you, healthy family!

BY DISH CONTRIBUTOR SAMIR BECIC: 

               Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

                Who doesn’t remember these words from the Star Trek TV and movie franchise, a favorite show to countless millions of viewers and fans around the world? I definitely remember them, and I happily watched every single episode.  Naturally, something I noticed as a health “fanatic” was the Vulcan way of living.  In the show, Vulcans are classified as a highly intelligent, extra-terrestrial humanoid species, with a more robust appearance than an ordinary human.  To me, it was interesting that in writing this mythos, Gene Roddenberry chose to demonstrate the direct correlation between strength and intellect in the Vulcan race; an ideal coincidentally, held in high regard by the ancient Greeks. Being fascinated with the fictional Vulcan way of living, and their healthy life philosophies, I began researching available data, in the hope of extracting singular enlightenment for the human race.

Vulcan Diet

Vulcans prefer a vegetarian diet and would eat meat on a very rare occasion, if nothing else is available or for specific needs.  They choose water over other options and will drink alcohol only for celebratory purposes, because they don’t want alcohol to affect their logical faculties.  To Vulcans, consuming chocolate makes them inebriated, so they minimize their intake of it.

Vulcan Meditation

Vulcans live lives of strict self-control through extensive meditation practices.  While Vulcans are exceptionally emotional, they developed a meditation technique that calms them down and allows them to solve problems in a logical manner; this is one of the best ways to find logical solutions instead of emotional conflict.  Vulcans meditate on a daily basis to keep their center and calm. Put simply, their motto is “live long and prosper”…

Vulcan Training

Although generally philosophical and non-violent in nature, the Vulcans nonetheless developed martial arts techniques for their hand-to-hand combat.  Martial Arts are a highly ritualistic practice similar to the philosophy of Kung-Fu or Karate.  The majority of Vulcans are skilled in self-defense, and particularly known for their neck pinch that renders victims instantly unconscious.  Overall, Vulcans are physically stronger and more skilled in combat than their human counterparts.

                In the Star Trek narrative, Vulcans have become more advanced and evolved than humans, a necessary transition implemented to overcome their past behaviors, which might have been worse than that of humans. Consequently, they evolved because they chose intellect, healthy lifestyle, and mental balance (and even honing their combat and military skills).  Through this evolution, they have achieved a more fulfilled and longer lifespan; ranging between 100-200 years.

I wrote this article in an attempt to motivate millions of Star Trek fans around our own planet to live more like Vulcans. To harness the wisdom of our favorite characters like Spock and T’Pol!  Even if the Vulcans are fictional people, they still represent an ideal society, one replete with enlightenment, honor and tremendous skills, all of which we desire.  By following a similar philosophy, and finding an equilibrium between physical fitness, healthy nutrition, and mental balance, we can all benefit and improve our own society.

A special thanks to visionary Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek Franchise, for developing such a rich storyline and an avant-garde society.

BY DISH CONTRIBUTOR SAMIR BECIC:

DISH'S own Health and Fitness Guru Samir Becic sat down with his client and one of Houston's favorite television news anchors Dominque Sachse. Here are her perspectives on health, wellness, Houston and how she maintains her gorgeous figure! After all, she is one of Houston's most beautiful!

SB:   Houston is the fattest city in America, how do you think it got to be the fattest city?

DS:           Dining out in Houston is considered a pastime!  We have the most wonderful restaurants here, and our portions are Texas-sized.  Also, there are fast food restaurants practically on every corner. In tough economic times, for many, that's considered the only choice.

SB:    How do you think we can help Houston become one of the fittest cities in America instead of the fattest?

DS:          It starts with education on nutrition and exercise.  If people saw food as a drug, then it might alter their choices.  It's been proven that through drastic dietary changes, along with increasing exercise, you can reverse diabetes, which is plaguing our youth in record numbers now.  Food has the potential to heal, and it has the potential to harm, depending on how we use it.   Also, human beings were designed to move.  Our lifestyles are counterintuitive to the way we're made.  It's imperative that we do something to work our heart muscle, so that it can continue to work for us.

SB:    Over the course of your career, you have been supporting and promoting healthy lifestyle, in your opinion, what are the most important steps someone should take to becoming healthier?   

DS:        I've always believed that diet is 90% of the equation.  We have so many wonderful resources at our fingertips now when it comes to learning about nutrition.  The internet is a vastly useful tool to research and gain a basic understanding of optimal nutrition.  I've learned over the years that when I eliminate the "whites" from my diet, I look and feel my best.  That includes white bread, sugar, flour and dairy.  I find these foods have an addictive quality to them.  If you eat them, you want and crave more.  For me, it seems to take about 7 days to lose that craving once you cut them from your diet.  After that, you're home free..  Alongside nutritional adjustments, a regular fitness routine that's both attainable and challenging are a must.  The simplest thing is to walk out your front door and go for a jog or power walk with some sprints.  It doesn't cost you a thing and gets you out and breathing some fresh air.

SB:    What is your weekly workout routine?  What do you eat on a daily basis?

SB:    Is it difficult for a career woman to have a healthy lifestyle?  How do you work around it?

SB:    What is your biggest obstacle when it comes to healthy lifestyle?

SB:    Name some of your favorite exercises.

DS:         I like using my own body weight for strength training.  I'll do moves with Samir where I'm pushing or pulling him across the room.  The plank position is one of the best core moves around, and of course there's the good, old fashioned push up.  Again, you don't have to have a gym membership to get fit, just the knowledge of what to do and the desire to do it.

SB:    I know that your husband, Nick works out and is also in great shape, how important do you feel being active as a couple is to a marriage?

DS:         I believe it's critical to have a life partner who's like minded when it comes to a healthy lifestyle. Nick and I compliment each other well.  When we met, he exercised religiously, but his diet wasn't ideal.  My diet was clean, but I would let my fatigue get in the way of exercising.  So now, he eats better, and I move more.  We motivate each other to do our best because we want to be around for each other and our children for a long time to come.