Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.

So, I'm listening to the radio this morning thinking that they must be joking.  I hear the jockeys talking about how the Canadian government has decided to lower the bar in terms of guidelines for daily activity.  Apparently they have decided that if they lower the bar, it might encourage more people to become active. 

HELLO?! On what f*&%ing planet does that make sense?  Does that mean that now because my kids don't feel like studying we should just lower the bar to 30% being a passing grade?  Are we not setting our kids up for a future of mediocrity?  It's a cop out on the government's part if you ask me.  Instead of putting more money into healthy initiatives and incentives, let's just spend it on re-printing our literature with our new couch potato guidelines.

The best part of the whole thing was the statistic they found for kids aged 12-19.  Their number one reason for not doing enough activity is not a lack of resources or anything that could be somewhat justifiable, they apparently are just too busy.  I know that demographic has a slate filled with the important things like texting, tweeting, Facebook and video games but instead of allowing their fingers and mouths to be the only things getting  a workout, why don't these kids' parents take an interest in their kids and make activity a priority.  No body wants to be the fat kid in high school but no body wants to get their a$$ off the couch to change it.  I get it, I was a teenager too, and no body wants to be told what to do by their parents but there comes a point where an intervention is needed.

I am not a fitness guru or anything like that, hell, I'm actually overweight but I've commited myself to changing that so seeing the government take such a defeatest attitude makes me see red.  I have, even with me not being in shape, always, ALWAYS made sure that my kids got at least the minimum physical activity needed, if nothing else to set them on the right track so that they would hopefully be better off than I was.  It makes me even more angry that the lower guidelines will in turn become the guidelines for school; the only place where kids can be guaranteed affordable physical activity.  If obesity is such an epidemic in North America, which it is (it's estimated that by 2030, 86% of Americans will be obese) then why are we lowering the bar instead of raising it?  Should we not ensure that our kids are doing more physical activity (at the very least at school) to fight this epidemic instead of letting them off the hook in hopes that they'll pick the slack up themselves.

It's all just a bunch of bullshit if you ask me, but that's just one mom's opinion.

~ Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, face the facts- Ruth Gordon