Jan­ice Lear­mond Criqui CPC

I was in my car dri­ving to my of­fice when I heard Wayne Le Blanc and Ger­ard Al­fon­so talk­ing about the Dig­i­cel Sum­mer Burn 2012. Reg­is­tra­tion and first weigh-in was on Ju­ly 6, 2012. One of the rules states that a team must con­sist of five mem­bers-three fe­males and one male-weigh­ing no less than 900 lbs. There are prizes for the team and in­di­vid­ual who los­es the most weight. The du­ra­tion of the com­pe­ti­tion is eight weeks, ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 9, 2012. Based on my cal­cu­la­tions, the fi­nal weigh-in date should be Sep­tem­ber 3. How­ev­er, the fi­nal date for all teams to weigh in is still un­clear, and it is im­por­tant for the Dig­i­cel rep­re­sen­ta­tives to ad­dress this is­sue. I am still await­ing an an­swer from one of their rep­re­sen­ta­tives that I spoke to at the work­out last Mon­day. The Dig­i­cel Sum­mer Burn posed a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for me to put to­geth­er "D AWE­SOME 5" team (Crys­tal Mack-team man­ag­er, John Ro­driguez, Karyn Rudd and Harold Lear­mond-Criqui) and to fi­nal­ly work with a pur­pose to­wards get­ting rid of ex­cess weight. We have all been try­ing to lose weight in­di­vid­u­al­ly with no suc­cess and have em­braced this op­por­tu­ni­ty with de­ter­mi­na­tion and pur­pose. That pur­pose is to get fit and be healthy.

High blood pres­sure a ma­jor con­cern

The age of team mem­bers range from 31-50 years, and as we get old­er the need to get fit be­comes ur­gent. Our team's ma­jor con­cern is high blood pres­sure. High blood pres­sure can lead to stroke and kid­ney dis­ease, en­large­ment of the heart, car­diac fail­ure and an in­crease in the risk of heart at­tacks. Treat­ment of high blood pres­sure in­cludes los­ing weight, re­duc­ing the in­take of cer­tain el­e­ments in our food, reg­u­lar phys­i­cal ex­er­cise, no smok­ing, and con­trol of stress. What can you do to con­trol your blood pres­sure?

• Get rid of ex­cess weight. Join­ing the Dig­i­cel Sum­mer Burn every Mon­day at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah is one way; avoid ex­cess eat­ing; eat few­er sweets, less fried and fat­ty foods.

• Cut down on ta­ble salt. Sea salt is a good al­ter­na­tive. Stay away from salt­ed pork or beef and oth­er salty foods.

• Ex­er­cise reg­u­lar­ly. It is hoped that af­ter the Sum­mer Burn work­out on Mon­days peo­ple will con­tin­ue to ex­er­cise. Be more ac­tive.

• Re­duce stress by do­ing things that re­lax you-get rid of ten­sion and emo­tion­al up­set. Get a trust­ed bud­dy that you can vent to... Trust me, af­ter a good vent­ing ses­sion, you will be so re­laxed.

• Re­duce al­co­hol in­take.

• You have to give up smok­ing-it is not good for you.

At the last ses­sion, a warn­ing was is­sued to team mem­bers about not los­ing weight the healthy way. Ex­er­cise and prop­er eat­ing habits will go a long way to­wards re­duc­ing one's size. For those who don't want to end up sprain­ing their mus­cles, please note that ex­er­cise should be start­ed slow­ly and built grad­u­al­ly. Healthy food choic­es are help­ful in every­day eat­ing for the en­tire fam­i­ly. For some­one to lose weight, that per­son's part­ner or fam­i­ly mem­bers must be sup­port­ive of their ef­forts. Fam­i­ly mem­bers tend to un­know­ing­ly sab­o­tage your at­tempts to lose weight. Ex­am­ple: My hus­band made a de­li­cious bowl of whole sausages and mush­rooms with lots of sea­son­ing and want­ed to eat that tempt­ing bowl of food in the bed­room. I had to lit­er­al­ly run him back to the kitchen be­cause watch­ing him eat would have wreaked hav­oc on my re­sis­tance to that type of food. We have to be mind­ful of the foods that we eat every day in or­der to stick with our weight man­age­ment pro­gramme. Last but not least, team mem­bers should read the hand-out that was pro­vid­ed on the Glycemic In­dex-a new way of look­ing at carbs. This doc­u­ment talks about low, medi­um and high Glycemic In­dex foods. Last week, Dr Oz on his tv show spoke about foods that are healthy for your heart. Some of the rec­om­mend­ed foods are on the low Glycemic In­dex list.

Ku­dos go out to the fol­low­ing:

• The staff at Long Cir­cu­lar Gym who put the teams and the pub­lic through the aer­o­bics and zum­ba rou­tines and weigh mem­bers of the teams

• The com­pa­nies that pro­vide the give­aways

• GNC for sup­port­ing "D AWE­SOME 5" team

• Dig­i­cel for hav­ing the Sum­mer Burn which is get­ting a lot of peo­ple ex­er­cis­ing af­ter work. I un­der­stand that a ma­jor bank just had a Biggest Los­er com­pe­ti­tion for staff mem­bers which was a suc­cess. Com­pa­nies that are tru­ly in­ter­est­ed in the well­be­ing of their em­ploy­ees should take note of this prac­tice and give cash in­cen­tives to get staff in­volved. Af­ter all, a new wardrobe will be need­ed af­ter the weight loss.

• To those com­pa­nies that pay for em­ploy­ees to at­tend the gym reg­u­lar­ly

See you at the next work­out to­mor­row. Chil­dren are wel­come.

Tips for Ex­er­cis­ing

• Ex­er­cise un­til pleas­ant­ly tired but don't push to ex­haus­tion

• Al­ways warm-up to pre­pare mus­cles be­fore ex­er­cis­ing and in­clude some gen­tle stretch­es

• Wind-down ex­er­cise ses­sion

• Rest for an hour af­ter heavy meals be­fore you start to ex­er­cise

• Don't ig­nore pain-it's your body say­ing "stop!"

• Easy rhyth­mic move­ments are best-cy­cling, swim­ming and walk­ing are the best all-round forms of ex­er­cise

• Al­ways check with a doc­tor be­fore start­ing to ex­er­cise.