First off the feedback emails about the last blog have been welcomed and thank you for all those who know have said they feel better about knowing the implications of their actions and also after trying the Human ECO Cleanse many have decided that a Colonic is not quite enough (that was my point).
Now to today's topic. I'm talking about your health and the health of your family - do YOU really care ?
I think that most people would answer that they do although their actions don't support their words. Otherwise the numbers of preventable illnesses would not continue to climb, or empty fitness centres on most days of the week would be full to overflowing, the parks would be teaming with life and they aren't, the average pant size wouldn't be increasing for both men and women and the true tragedy of childhood obesity would be a fictional story - which it isn't.
Most people who aren't in the health industry coping with this problem have started to switch off when they hear the "obesity" word and I have even seen reports stating them as alarmist. Television media reports often provide a different point to these claims from a well intentioned medical expert who counters the "need for a call to action" and they label this as "balance".
I find that a cop out for the TV program and if I hear one of the hosts of these morning shows state again "well it's all about balance" they will lose my viewership for good. They are not experts but only opinion makers. They seem to forget that they can influence in ways both good, and bad, and it is these comments that seem to soothe their own conscience. Also it has become a "me too" mentality, meaning well most of us are overweight so I must not be doing too bad.
All too often when it comes to health we hide behind the easy excuse of "well I'm very busy" and I will translate that for you - it means that "it takes too much time to see a result". You see we live in an ever increasing age of "instant gratification". There is text messenging, IM'ing (meaning online chats) and if only there was instant fat loss with no work, we would all be healthier. Well there isn't.
I don't believe that any parent wilfully inflicts harm to their children's health by over-feeding them and allowing them to be under-active however it is these two symptoms combined that adds to the high levels of excess that contributes to the weight gain and health problems.
You see there once was a time when the odd can of soft drink (soda) or sweet treat was actually alright to have due to our constant movement. Those days are long gone and have been replaced with multiple daily feedings, fast food snacks, which provide excessive amounts of sugar and salt and to cap it all off there has been the extinction of "Play-time" when most of the additional calories consumed outside of the three basic meals were used to provide the body with energy during activity.
So what do we do to combat this problem ?
I have spent the weekend trying to understand and strategize how best to assess and then help the families out there that have a desire to improve the health of their children and the family unit. Bottom line it's not easy and we are failing at it. Both in action and solutions.
To compete with the billions of dollars spent by both food and drink companies it will take an army of motivated individuals. You see the simple prescription is easy.
Eat Less and Move More!
That mantra hasn't changed since I started saying it to clients 15 years ago and in fact I think it has less impact now.
So we need a new method.
I made a conscious choice some five years ago to work on getting to the future generations by finding a way to relate to them. With their interest in technology, websites, animated adventures, super-heroes, comics and cartoons I felt that this would be the place to not only find them but appeal to them in a way that they like.
That was my inspiration for the Body Mechanics. They are actually a group of good guys (and are in fact human elements) fighting bad guys (diseases) and if they lose the body dies. Interestingly enough we had first designed the DVD Game to not have "death" mentioned but the children were adament that it had to have a consequence like real life - even more impressive as our peer group were aged 8-10 year old children both boys and girls.
Two years down the track and what we thought would be well received, has been, as it has garned 11 awards from US Parents and Childrens Advocacy Groups but it has failed to achieve the sales that we would have expected after the overwhelmingly great positive feedback and increasing need.
I think that we lie in between two major battlefields.
One is the entertainment industry. Although our Body Mechanics product is both an animated movie and interactive DVD game our budget while large by educational comparisons is miniscule in comparison to what a full studio animated budget is, which averages around $100M. I know cause I am in the process of making my next movie which is all entertainment.
The other area we cover is the educational industry. Now this is a very interesting area for providing the elements of education where children need additional help to grasp aspects or it is an area that provides advanced learning. Both of these are very lucrative and companies that specialize in reading, writing, arithmetic and science are doing really well.
Now there are other aspects which include "outside initiatives" that are focussed on getting children active at schools due to the lack of P.E. classes and an outsourcing of these also creates an income stream for fitness trainers. It is relatively low cost in comparison to media options.
However when it comes to programs based around nutrition they seem to be based around cooking for older students or gardening for younger ones as there were no easy ways to help children cover what is happening inside the body.
From all my years of learning when I was challenged to deliver understanding for clients on the human body and it's functions for getting healthy I remembered something and our team on the Body Mechanic project returned to the old adage of KISS. Keep it simple.
We used the good guys vs bad guys roles and even children as young as 5 were able to see from watching our movie, that if they take certain actions, then the bad guys goal or aim to damage the body, is that much harder to achieve.
For our good guys we provided them with nutritional solutions as weapons (for example if you eat green leafy vegetables you load up the body on Anti Oxidants) which are then used to combat the damage being done by the Free Radicals, Cholesterol and Diabetes II and this motivated the children to then adopt physical habits and practices to reduce the damage being carried out Cortisol (the stress hormone).
You see they don't want to get ill and no parent wants it either. It wasn't planned to be rocket science but maybe it is. Maybe it works for understanding because we don't assume that children will be challenged to follow a storyline of good vs evil and then we allow them to be their own health super-heroes.
I am now even more committed to getting this message out to the masses, and to provide the return owed to that one committed investor who actually believed we could make a difference.
Body Mechanics - saving the world one child at a time !
www.bodymechanics.tv
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