I have some pictures to show you.  There were about 40 kids this year, all sophomores and juniors that have been chosen Regionally by their Rotary Clubs for their Leadership Potential.  Unfortunately since they are minors without photo releases I can’ really show you the crowd, but you can see some of the things I showed and some of the Camp Counselors are returning RYLA grads.

Every year I bring in some strongman toys as it really seems to get the kids engaged in the presentation.

This year I decided to use a small strongman tire to show some stunts, and the fact that they don’t need a gym membership to exercise – body weight and a tire is plenty!

The tire I brought was a small 300 lb size we use for cardio and ladies strength training.  I also showed how I use it to simulate the hip drive on picking up an atlas stone.

I talked about how much sugar and chemicals are in soda, sweet tea, and commercially produced fruit juices.

I was also tying the health and fitness information into the ethics and leadership theme through these 3 main areas:

Personal Responsibility

Self-Esteem

Leading by Example

If you don’t lead from the front, you aren’t going to be able to help others.  You must do what you are asking others to do 1st!

One of the kids asked me before the event if I could actually jump on top of the tire.

I said sure – I think =) …

As you can see, I Did make it!  Unfortunately my heel caught in the tread of the tire, and I proceeded to fall backwards and hit my head and back on the concrete – OUCH!

I heard a collective gasp, and everyone started asking me if I was OK?

No problem, the concrete is fine!  I said.

I finished my talk, but afterwards I had to sit down for a bit to allow my mild concussion to recede =)

Then we all headed up to the cafeteria for lunch, where I am happy to report that the kids (and adults =) were carefully scrutinizing their plates to see if they fell within the rules I had laid out for nutrition.  I was told this went on for the rest of the week.  It is great to have your message sink in and make a difference in people’s lives!

I got a thank you note from one of the young ladies at camp:

Mr. Hoffmaster,

My name is Stefanie, I was the one who volunteered to show the lunges, inch worm, etc when you came to RYLA. I appreciate you taking the time to come and speak to us, you were my favorite speaker that we had come through the week. You made many great points and I loved what you said about real foods and that they don’t have ingredients.

I hope the best for you, your book and your new gym. I hope i can continue to stay healthy and work out, and with what you said about foods I hope that I can follow your guidelines to what I eat.
Thanks Again!! -Stefanie

So cool that she took the time to write me!

I hope you found this interesting, and that you will become personally involved in improving the local community.  Developing life long leadership, health, and fitness habits in the youth is critical if America is going to overcome the obesity epidemic that it (and the rest of the world) is facing.

Please contact me if I can help your group or organization in anything related to health and fitness in the local area! Hendersonville, Flat Rock, Fletcher, Brevard, Mills River, and Asheville are all easy for me to get to.  I have set aside Tuesdays and Thursdays to help out my local community however I can.

A study in the British medical journal found that 12-year-olds who drank soft drinks regularly were more likely to be overweight than those who didn’t.

In fact, for each additional daily serving of sugar-sweetened soft drink consumed during the nearly two-year study, the risk of obesity jumped by 60%.  Just 1 extra can of soda per day can add as much as 15 pounds to your weight over the course of a single year!

At that rate, it’s no wonder more than 65% of all American adults struggle with overweight and obesity.

And those who drink diet soda are just downing another type of poison, as diet drinks contain artificial sweeteners instead of caloric sweeteners. They don’t do anything to curb the obesity epidemic since diet soda is clearly linked to obesity as well, but through different mechanisms.

Sodium Benzoate (a common preservative in soda) can damage your DNA, which eventually can lead to cirrhosis of the liver and Parkinson’s.

High amounts of sugar, and more specifically fructose increase your risk of Many Cancers, Diabetes, and Gout to name a few.

Fructose, as opposed to glucose, is particularly damaging to your body due to the way it’s metabolized. The entire burden of metabolizing fructose falls on your liver, which creates a number of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout.

Likewise, it’s the difference in how your body responds to fructose that also makes it the leading cause of obesity.

Whereas glucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite, fructose has no effect on ghrelin and interferes with your brain’s communication with leptin. The result is overeating, weight gain and ultimately obesity.

Your body can safely handle about 25 grams of fructose per day from fruit, and this is actually quite a lot of fruit.  But just one serving of soda or “fruit juice” can exceed this threshold.

Via: Online Schools

The event was put on by the Coach/PE teacher at 6:30 at night with a decent turnout in Edneyville.  The event began with their jump rope team of 9 kids performing for 20 min.  Doing the math I could see that most of the audience were parents and grandparents of the kids performing.

I want to applaud the coach for caring enough to take his unpaid time to help the kids and community in the best way he knows how, and I went up and thanked him afterwards.

I told him if there was anything I could do to help him with in the future that I would love to participate.  I give talks to local schools, as well as strongman stunts (like pulling a school bus for Upward Elementary in Flat Rock NC)

After the jumprope demonstration their was a 10 minute video by an organization whose stated mission is to help fight children’s obesity.  The video was somewhat informative, albeit low quality, but something about really irritated me.

The head of the organization is Fat.  Obese.  Overweight.  With Rolls.

This is NOT an attack, but if you expect to Positively affect the lives of Children you had better look like you know what you are talking about.  Kids don’t care what you say if what you do does not back it up. This person is talking about how easy and simple it is to improve the health of children, but looks about to have a heart attack before the end of the presentation.

To me this is like telling your kid not to ever smoke, while downing 3 packs of cigarettes a day.

Do as I say, Not as I do.

Yeah Right!  What we do in front of children matters much more than what we say! If parents bring unhealthy foods into the home, children will learn to enjoy unhealthy foods, what you bring home Matters!

Conversely, if you only eat healthy foods, your kids will learn to like them. It is the biggest bunch of bullshit I have ever heard from parents that their kids won’t eat healthy, so they have to keep junk food in the house.

I ate what my mom made. Stop making excuses and Be the Parent!

I have a presentation I will be giving to as many Schools, Children’s, and Parent’s Groups as will have me entitled “Fitness and Super-Foods for Super Kids!” in the Hendersonville NC area.

I am also the incoming President of the Flat Rock Rotary Club.  It is going to be a major part of my platform to improve the lives of local children through education in Hendersonville and surrounding areas.  Children’s Obesity, Children’s Literacy, and Children’s Health and Fitness.

I am on a mission to change as many lives as I possibly can for the better, beginning in our local Hendersonville community! If you would like to have me speak to your organization or group please give me a call at 828-243-0379.  I am really looking forward to making a huge difference in the lives of children and parents this year!

1) Multivitamins. Vitamin supplements given to teens aged 13-16 raised non-verbal IQ scores by an average of 6 points.  However, it should be noted that several teens actually improved IQ by over 20 points indicating that nutritional deficiences may have been holding back mental performance. An additional part of the study of the same general age group again showed astonishing results: half of the students increased non-verbal IQ by an amazing 15 points! (here is a whole food multivitamin designed for kids)

2) B Vitamins and Vitamin C. One study showed a 25% improvement in scores in many categories of cognition and memory among those students with the highest levels of B vitamins and vitamin C as opposed to those with the lowest.

3) Choline. Choline has produced near miraculous results in animals studies. For example, pregnant rats receiving extra choline produced obviously superior offspring in terms of intelligence and memory.  The researchers wrote that “when rat pups received choline supplements (in utero or during the second week of life), their brain function changed, resulting in the lifelong memory enhancement.” Other studies have shown that choline supplementation forms extra dendrites, i.e nerve cell connections. The reason? Choline is a precursor for actylcholine, the memory-building neurotransmitter.

4) DHA. EPA and DHA are the two key omega-3 fatty acids in fish and fish oil, and DHA has now been shown in a study to increase the cognitive development of infants.

5) Exercise. Evidence mounts almost monthly that exercise increases IQ, intelligence, cognition, learning and so on. One recent monster study of 1,000,000 Swedish military males verified previous studies and showed that exercise increases brain power in many ways.

(note: excerpted from peaktestosterone.com)

Fast food companies partner with Hollywood and have all sorts of action figures from popular movies at their restaurants.

And corporations do the same to sell all kinds of thing – including vitamins – for children.

Have you ever taken a good look at the labels of the leading brands of kid’s vitamins?

On there you’ll find:

• Aspartame, which is a VERY controversial artificial sweetener.
• DiCalcium Phosphate, which is used in the “feed” that poultry eats.
• Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, which NOBODY needs to be ingesting.
• And all sorts of artificial colors.

Does that look NUTRITIOUS to you???

Ok, I know what you’re thinking:

“Yeah, that’s great. But what other choice do I have? If it doesn’t TASTE good, my kid’s not going to take it.”

Well, I may just have the answer to your prayers. But your child’s taste buds are going to have to decide. As a proud Prograde Partner I’m THRILLED to let you know they have just released an all-natural children’s vitamin. And they’ve gone to great lengths to taste test it with kids.

But again, your child will have to decide if it tastes good or not. So that’s why you can try Prograde Essentials for Kids for FREE! (Yes, there is a small S & H fee)

Just go to the link right now and discover how Prograde Essentials for Kids delivers the nutrition your child needs and deserves.

Yours in Health,

David Hoffmaster

I recently read something by Rocco Castellano that made a hell of a lot of sense to me.

“When are we going to start arresting parents of obese children for child abuse?”

Hello!! He is right!  As parents it is our job to make sure our kids are taken care of. The main things they need are clothes, shelter, schooling, and of course food.  However, if the food we are giving our kids is, in fact, slowly killing them, are we taking care of them? NO! By feeding them crap we are doing nothing but making an early appointment for them at the morgue. That is not parenting and something should be done about that.

Parents have gone to jail for things like not taking their kids to school, spanking them, scolding them, and even by not giving them enough food. Don’t get me wrong, I understand this and agree with some of it, but what I don’t understand is the fact that parents can slowly poison their kids with things like trans-fat and high fructose corn syrup and get away with it.

This leads to high blood pressure, diabetes, heart failure, sleep apnea, and many other medical problems that lead to death. It is our responsibility to teach our children how to be healthy so that it will get passed on to their children. In doing so, we can make a difference.

Knowledge IS power and is the best thing we can give our children.  Here are a few simple ways to spread the knowledge:  (this is what I do with my two boys):

• Have them write the grocery list and take them shopping
• At least once a week show them how to prepare a healthy meal
• Have them cook for the family one night
• Ask them for ideas- you will be surprised at what they come up with
• Have time set aside to exercise with them- it’s fun and they will value this time spent together

Don’t wait until it’s too late- START TODAY