Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Please note: The SIMPLE LIVING crew will be in California for the week of November 20, studying, shooting and enjoying friends, family, nature and Thanksgiving. Wanda’s diary entries will resume the week of Monday, November 28.

It’s been about six weeks since we’ve wrapped shooting for season #2 of SIMPLE LIVING. But yesterday was another shoot date—this time for a special community outreach video on the subject of overcoming obesity. The Moses Cone-Wesley Long Community Health Foundation underwrote a segment for the second series on the topic of overcoming obesity. That segment appears in the 10th show of the new series.

The grant also earmarked funds for producing a separate, stand-alone video for community outreach on the topic and working on that was our job yesterday in Greensboro and High Point. So, in addition to using some of the footage we’re including in the television segment, today we are shooting additional footage. What a wealth of information is available in Greensboro! We started the day by interviewing the visionary and charismatic foundation head, Bob Newton, at the Empire Room on South Elm Street in downtown Greensboro. Bob set the stage for the day by outlining the severity of the obesity problem and why the foundation has decided to focus on it in its work.

Lisa Ripperton works with a team at Guilford Child Health in giving hands-on advice to low-income youngsters who suffer from overweight and whose families appear willing to change patterns. As Lisa ran through a number of things overweight children and their parents can do, I found myself vowing to improve the eating patterns at our home. I wanted to guide Henry toward more healthful patterns. Namely more vegetables, and especially more green vegetables. Lisa and her associate, Linda, gave me some creative ideas, like take your child to a grocery store and let him or her pick a fruit or vegetable! And that we did today. Henry picked kiwis and raspberries, but it was his choice and he was thrilled. I also broke the news to him that we’d finish the box of PopTarts that we had but that from now on they would be considered a dessert, not a breakfast food.

We spoke with Cynthia Sevier, the Guilford County School Nutritionist, at Fairview Elementary School in High Point. Fairview has obtained a grant to promote fruits and vegetables to its largely low-income student population, and Nov. 18 just so happened to be the day of the fruit and veggie fair. So we were able to watch kids gobbling up pineapples and grapples (which to the untutored are apples dipped in grape juice). Bottom line: Kids love fruits and vegetables if left to their own devises.

We were inspired by Dr. Bert Fields, residency director of family practice at the Moses Cone Hospital. He talked about the centrality of exercise and physical fitness as part of a healthy life. That, he believed, was as important as eating properly in the big picture. He said that people battling obesity need to start with a small step, commit to 10 minutes of exercise two days a week and build from there. Dr. Fields’ ebullient personality and his personal story was inspiring to me: an ambitious product of eastern Kentucky, he was a cross country runner at Yale, who attended medical school at the University of Kentucky and ended up in Greensboro. He had so much energy, it was challenging for him to walk slowly down the corridor for our broll needs. “I don’t want to walk,” he said. “I want to run.”

The final interview of the day was with a lovely, articulate 12-year- old named Lauren Elizabeth Mast, who had lost 12 pounds on a diet and wanted to share her story. With the support of her mother, grandmother and grandfather, she’s gone a long way toward a sensible weight and long-term health. What a marvelous and inspiring day!