Bringing Healthy Camp Habits Home Dr. Jim “Bones” Sears For two weeks each summer I work as a camp doctor at a summer camp in the California Sierras (near Yosemite). 2013 will be my 9th summer doing this and I look forward to it every year. My kids attend as campers, and they have a blast! I’m always amazed at how good I feel after two weeks up in the mountains! For one thing, I’m always moving. Each morning, I get up a bit early and go for a 30-minute hike. This really gets the heart pumping and is a great way to start the day! The rest of the day, I’m walking all over camp with all the campers going from activity to activity. Sometimes I take an extra trip from the lake up to the nurse’s building to take care of a bump or bruise, but the whole day everyone is moving! When I get back home it doesn’t have to mean a return to the typical sedentary American lifestyle. There’s no reason why we all can’t wake up 30 minutes early and go for a walk or jog before starting the day. We can walk or bike to school or work (I actually do ride my bike to work). We can walk to lunch – that’s actually one of the more refreshing things I do. I walk about 5 blocks to one of my favorite Asian restaurants. Taking a walk after dinner is also a great way to keep moving, and it usually leads to some good family conversations. I bet you can think of a dozen more ways to keep moving! Aside from constantly moving, another reason we feel so good is how we eat, or more specifically, what we DON’T eat. 34
|
goldarrowcamp.com
We don’t snack on junk! We have three healthy meals complete with lots of fruits and veggies, but the absence of junk snacks in-between meals is saving us several hundred calories a day. And it’s not just the calories that matter, it’s the fact that most of the snacks at home are empty junk calories like chips, cookies, or sweets! At camp, the kids are snacking on apples, oranges or raisins. Take the junk away (even at home) and I guarantee you will start to feel better. What?! No snacks?! It’s funny, but my kids and I don’t even miss it. We’re usually too busy having fun to notice that we’re even a little hungry. It’s interesting that it seems the moment I stop moving and start lounging, that’s when I get the cravings to snack! One of the other things I absolutely LOVE about being up at camp is the “no electronics” rule. For 2 weeks, all the campers have no cell phones, no texting, no Wii, no Playstation, no TV, no DVDs, no Xbox, no Facebook… Nothing but nature, and each other. Imagine trying this at home? How much would your kids complain if you told them no TV or video games for the next two weeks? You would have mutiny on your hands! But up at camp, no one complains… and they have fun… TONS of fun without all that! Apart from all the camp activities (horses, canoes, bikes, etc), even in their leisure time they play games, sing songs, tell stories, run around and have a blast, without any electronics. The benefits of relating to each other instead of a screen are amazing! It gives some very overused parts of your brain a little time off… and
awakens some of the neglected parts! Of course, you don’t have to be at camp to unplug your kids. Every few months, usually on a weekend, I’ll just let the kids know that we’re going unplugged for a day. WHAT?!?! was their response the first time I tried this, but they quickly found other ways to have fun. They invited friends over and rode bikes, played capture-the-flag, went on a “treasure hunt,” constructed a fort. When was the last time your family sat around the kitchen table and played cards, told stories, looked at old photos… or did anything that didn’t involve TV or video games? Try it! You’ll be amazed at how much your imagination can develop and how much fun you can have as a family using each other for entertainment! For my kids (and myself for that matter), the time at camp is the best two weeks of the year. It is the perfect time to give our bodies and brains a much needed vacation from the all the stress, technology, lack of movement, and processed foods that are normally a big part of the typical American life. It’s a time to recharge, relax, and remember what it feels like to be in optimum health. It gives me a great goal as to how I should feel like all year round. Dr. Jim “Bones” Sears is a pediatrician in southern California who stars on the television show “The Doctors” when he’s not sailing & mountain biking at GAC.