This Week's Healthy SC Challenge Tips

The Healthy SC Challenge is the Sanford family's effort to get all South Carolinians to do just a little more to live a healthier lifestyle. The tips are designed to encourage individuals and communities to live healthier lifestyles in three categories - nutrition, exercise and help to quit smoking. The tips can also be found on the challenge's website, www.healthysc.gov.

Healthy Tips

Nutrition
Spring and Summer-like temperatures are here, which means more opportunities to get outside and be active and more choices (and cheaper prices!) for fresh fruits and vegetables. Fresh fruits and vegetables are the quintessential nutrient-rich, low-calorie foods. So why do so few people eat the recommended amounts? Here are some frequently cited barriers:

* They're too expensive.
* My small grocery store only sells apples and bananas.
* I don't know how to select fresh fruits and vegetables.
* They don't taste good.
* I can't cook.

Sound familiar? Fortunately, there are some great resources out there that can help you overcome these barriers.
Farmer's Markets: In addition to your weekly trip to the supermarket or grocery store, consider stopping at a nearby farmer's market. Farmer's market produce is usually locally grown, offered at lower prices, and very fresh. See if there's a farmer's market near you: http://apps.ams.usda.gov/FarmersMarkets.
Tips for Selecting the Best Fresh Produce: Buying a whole melon or pineapple can be risky if you don't know the signs of ripeness. This guide tells you what to look for when picking out your produce: http://www.utextension.utk.edu/publications/spfiles/SP527.pdf.

Easy Fruit and Vegetable Recipes for the Whole Family: While many fresh fruits and vegetables can be eaten raw without additional preparation (after all, they are nature's fast food!), these web sites provide great recipes for preparing a snack or meal with just about and fruit or vegetable you can buy: http://www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org and http://www.fruitsandveggiesmatter.gov.

Wondering how many cups of fruit and vegetables you should be eating each day? If you take out some measuring cups you'll see that over the course of a day it's really not that tough to meet these recommendations. A half-cup of orange juice and small banana on your cereal for breakfast, an apple for a snack, a large salad for lunch, carrot sticks before dinner, chicken stir fried with broccoli at night and a bowl of berries with a dollop of cream for dessert will do it!
-Stand Up (more) & Eat (better), www.standupandeat.org


Physical Activity
To achieve weight loss, reducing calories by eating less is the single most important strategy, but combining exercise with calorie reduction yields even better results - that is, more pounds (and more fat) lost.

Once you are comfortable with the idea of starting to increase your level of physical activity, think first about increasing your activities of daily living. There are small ways in which you can build more physical activity into your day. For example, you can run some errands on foot rather than in the car. You can drive your car to a shopping area, but intentionally park the car far away from the front door so that you will have to do more walking. You can take the stairs instead of the elevator. You can start off by walking downstairs a few flights and then eventually you can start to walk up a flight or two. Think of your own life and make a list of small changes you can make to add more activity to your daily routine. The attitude you want to develop is one of looking for ways to be more active instead of ways to sit more. This is a new way of thinking that you can slowly adopt.
-Shape Up America!, www.shapeup.org


Tobacco
Literary master Mark Twain may have very well hit the nail on the head when he said, "Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it hundreds of times." Like Twain, many Americans have tried over and over again to break the cycle of addiction that began when they smoked their very first cigarette. Many things have changed since the late nineteenth century when Twain was writing books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but one thing remains the same: Tobacco is just as powerful and just as deadly now as it was then - if anything, it's only become more so today.

Like Mark Twain, most South Carolinians recognize the need to stop smoking. Unlike in 1910 when Twain died, we've now got years of scientific research reminding us of the health problems we'll suffer if we continue to light up. South Carolinians today know they'll lead longer, happier lives when they nix tobacco, and yet they find a hundred excuses not to stop.

Quitting isn't easy. If it were, 22.5 percent of South Carolinians wouldn't continue to pollute their own bodies. But there are resources to help along the way. When you call toll free 1-800-QUIT-NOW, you'll be connected with a trained counselor who has experience in smoking cessation. You can talk about your cravings, your kids, your life*whatever it is that makes you want to light up. You'll find a friend in your counselor - a person who's been there, done that. A person who can help you realize that quitting isn't a 100-meter dash, but rather a marathon with no defined finish line. A person who realizes you can still occasionally want a cigarette; months and even years after you've stubbed your last one out.
-South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, www.scdhec.gov